Forging new weapons meant solving the materials problem first.
Astrea Familia's finances were in good shape these days — and in a pinch, Isagi could always go ask Goddess Demeter for a bit of funding. That was never going to be an issue.
On top of that, knowing Fels and Riveria as he did, he had channels to source even the rarest materials.
So — forging a conventional Tier-One armament in the traditional sense was, at this point, completely trivial.
And to be fair.
That didn't mean weapons forged without the 'special materials' he'd collected from the Dungeon were somehow inadequate.
Case in point.
Zard's greatsword had been forged by a city blacksmith, hadn't it? At best, something that came from the hands of Goibniu or Hephaestus. If Isagi wanted, commissioning one of the forge gods to craft him a Tier-One armament wouldn't be difficult at all. So that wasn't the point.
The point was: what did he actually need?
Late at night.
After finishing the late-night snack Ryuu had brought over, Isagi settled into his usual routine — sitting with Cecil inside her workshop.
It was probably two or three in the morning by now.
Through the wide-open window, nearly every light in the city had gone dark. Only the magic-stone streetlamps in the distant alleyways still cast their faint, quiet glow.
The autumn breeze drifted in, cool and gentle, carrying away the stuffy heat that had built up inside the forge.
Cecil, as always, was perched in front of her cluttered worktable wearing nothing but her little white tank top, working through a slice of the pizza Ryuu had just brought back. Blueprints lay scattered around her in cheerful disarray.
"The most important thing about a weapon is that it suits the wielder."
That was one of those statements that was completely true and completely useless at the same time. Half the time, adventurers themselves didn't even know what kind of weapon they actually needed.
That was where the blacksmith came in.
That was the whole point of having a dedicated smith. Years of working together meant naturally coming to understand how someone used their weapons and equipment — not from watching their fighting style, but from the smith's perspective. Reading the wear on a blade. Tracing the marks left on a piece of armour.
Little by little, you built up experience.
And in the end, you forged something the wielder would pick up and think: this just feels right — in a way they couldn't quite explain.
When someone wraps their hand around a sword hilt, people always talk about "feel" — that vague, intangible thing that's nearly impossible to put into words.
The blacksmith's job was to make that feeling real. To bring it into the adventurer's actual combat. To make it something so perfectly fitted that they'd think: nothing else would do.
"Isagi, you want way too many weapons," Cecil said, pouting.
"Yeah."
"But making it like Ais's set wouldn't really work either."
She muttered under her breath as she chewed.
Forging a new Tier-One armament for the boy had been in the plans for a while now.
But Cecil had never quite landed on a good direction.
Especially because the starting point had been wrong.
At first, both of them had figured they could take a page from Ais's [Complete Hunter's Arsenal] — weapons that could shift and transform between forms. If he needed to use so many different types, why not just make something that could change on the fly?
But Cecil had shot that idea down in the end.
It wasn't that it couldn't be done. It just wouldn't work. Unlike Ais, what the Sword Princess actually needed from her weapons came down to two things at their core.
Simple. Brutal. Tough enough to take it.
And capable of dealing with large non-humanoid monsters.
Ais's imagined enemy was the [Black Dragon]. That girl was just that single-minded about it — so while the [Complete Hunter's Arsenal] looked like it had all these transformation modes, every single one of them was designed with large monsters as the assumed target. When it came to humanoid opponents, she still defaulted to [Despair].
But Isagi was different.
The enemies he faced came in every shape imaginable — large ones, humanoid ones, and occasionally ones that defied all reasonable categorisation.
To handle that variety, he needed that variety of weapons.
In which case, the solution was actually straightforward: different weapons for different enemies.
"Let's start with the greatsword!"
Simplify. Strip it back to basics.
Cecil decided to reset her whole approach to forging Isagi's weapons back to where they'd started — back to when the two of them were still in Solingen, when all they had was each other.
One weapon at a time. That's how they'd do it.
Right now, the [Moonlight Greatsword] Isagi carried had come bundled with his armour — more of a bonus item than a dedicated weapon. The first step was to separate it out and upgrade it properly, turning it into a standalone Tier-One armament in its own right.
And on the other hand.
Isagi had a new idea of his own.
Forging the Hunter's Arsenal for Ais had confirmed something: he could use his divine power to partially replicate the abilities of equipment from the game. If that was true, then —
He might as well go ahead and recreate those old... accessibility devices... actually no, those Sacred Treasures and similarly ridiculous items.
For starters, he'd had his eye on the undead-slaying blades from the Land of Reeds for ages now. He'd make two of them — didn't matter if it was the Gatekeeper or the Blasphemous one, he was getting both.
Yeah. Exactly like that.
With that decided, the options for the greatsword alone were already a bit overwhelming, honestly.
Under the night sky.
Isagi and Cecil quickly put their heads together and spent the whole night whispering back and forth — debating what to forge, whether it was feasible, roughly what materials they'd need, and sketching out the production schedule from there —
—
Autumn deepened. As the day drew closer when Isagi, Ais, Ryuu, and Lefiya would advance to Lv. 6 —
Haruhime reached Lv. 2.
The girl received a gift: a piece of magical equipment Cecil had forged using Far Eastern smithing techniques.
Since Isagi had been planning to forge a long blade anyway, Cecil had already studied that region's sword-crafting methods.
As a result, she had simultaneously produced a magical instrument tailored specifically to the unique "Onmyoji" system of the fox-person tribe.
In appearance, it looked like a crystal orb.
Its effect was simple enough: it amplified the duration of Haruhime's signature level-boosting magic while reducing the mental energy cost, among other things.
And at the same time.
The grimoires Aisha had been hunting down for Haruhime finally bore fruit.
The girl had learned a new magic: [Ninefold].
Its effect allowed [Uchide's Mallet] — originally a single-target ability — to extend to multiple targets simultaneously. Instead of chanting the magic over and over again for each person, she could now level up every member of the party all at once.
The girl's combat effectiveness had improved dramatically compared to before.
Isagi decided that on the next few Dungeon runs to grind stats, he'd bring Haruhime along and give her time to get comfortable with his special floor.
And beyond that.
There was more good news: Heith had advanced to Lv. 5.
She was the slowest to level up among all of them — but she had become a first-rate adventurer, and moreover, the city's only Lv. 5 healer.
The woman had every right to be proud of herself.
When Isagi heard the news and went to see her — planning to invite her out to Goddess Demeter's farmstead outside the city to celebrate —
He took one look at her and found Heith launching herself straight at him, laughing and crying all at once.
He had absolutely no idea what there was to get so worked up about.
"You — you don't understand anything!"
You have no idea what us ordinary people go through!
She had genuinely believed she would never reach Lv. 5 in her lifetime.
Though, of course — having gotten here, Heith understood perfectly well that Lv. 5 already looked impressive to the average adventurer. But within Freya Familia, it was nothing more than "executive level." She still ranked a full tier below Hedin and Allen, to say nothing of that monster Ottar.
The stronger you got, the more acutely you felt the gap between yourself and those who were truly powerful.
Oh, and now there was Isagi to add to that list.
That guy wasn't remotely normal either!
But this — it was like an obsession. A dream. Something that might mean absolutely nothing to a genuine prodigy, but to her personally, it was everything.
And more importantly.
In a top-tier Familia like Freya Familia, when a member advanced to Lv. 5, the Familia naturally funded a Tier-One armament for them. Loki Familia was the same way.
For the warriors of the Goddess of Beauty, this was equivalent to receiving a reward directly from their goddess — the significance went without saying.
"I've already decided, Isagi!"
The autumn afternoon was pleasantly cool.
Isagi walked with Heith from Central Park at the base of Babel, heading first toward the burger shop on North Main Street — planning to close up early today and head out to the farmstead beyond the city for a proper celebration dinner.
The city was as noisy and bustling as ever along the way.
This stretch of North Main Street always had an inexplicable excess of coffee shops and flower stalls.
Heith, who normally carried herself with a certain composure, was practically floating today — bouncing along ahead of him like a little kid, constantly turning around to walk backwards so she could face him, a playfully coquettish expression on her face as she talked.
"I commissioned Goibniu to forge me a close-range combat staff."
In the city, when major Familias like Freya's or Loki's needed Tier-One armaments forged, they went to either Goibniu or Tsubaki, captain of Hephaestus Familia.
So Heith's new equipment was going to be exceptionally high-spec.
What was surprising, however, was that she'd had a purely close-combat weapon forged — not even the standard hybrid staff that most mages and healers used to cover both melee and magic.
This reflected where she now saw herself.
Not just as a healer — but as someone who could hold her own in close combat, covering for Lefiya and the soon-to-join Haruhime in the frontline.
In other words: going back to her roots.
Before Lv. 4, Heith had always been a vanguard fighter. It was only because she'd convinced herself she lacked the aptitude to reach Lv. 5 that she'd switched over to healer.
And now —
She was switching back!
She'd been inspired by Isagi and Lefiya, in a way.
If the talent wasn't there, then you worked twice as hard.
During this period, Heith had been constantly pestering Ais and Tiona to train with her — and even while getting thoroughly beaten every single time, over the long run she'd naturally accumulated a tremendous amount of practical experience.
Under that kind of relentless, almost punishing pressure, Heith's close-combat ability had genuinely made a leap forward.
Isagi's read on it was this: Heith wasn't actually lacking in talent. She'd just happened to be in Freya Familia, where compared to the most talented members, she looked a little lacking — that was all.
And it had made her give up on herself a little.
Before, she'd already written off her chances of ever reaching Lv. 5 again — content to spend her days as a healer, opting out of the Familia's regular training altogether.
What else would you call that but giving up?
But now that she'd started putting in the effort, she could get there. Always.
And on that note.
Isagi had a little "surprise" for her, as it happened.
Specifically: the Tier-One armament he and Cecil had been planning to forge for Heith all along.
"Here."
It was already done.
This was what Cecil had been busy with in the background. Once she'd finished Ais's [Complete Hunter's Arsenal], the natural next project was Heith's equipment.
After this, the young blacksmith could throw herself fully into forging Isagi's own gear.
"What is this?"
"Poison Milk." "Hah?"
What Heith received from Isagi's hands was a book.
A very strange book.
The cover was deep purple, and the texture beneath her fingers was rough and wrinkled — it felt like some kind of hide. Monster hide, not human hide, Isagi was quick to clarify, which somehow made it feel even stranger.
And it was studded with what appeared to be eyeballs.
Heith broke out in goosebumps.
Flipping through it, there was nothing written inside whatsoever — it was purely decorative. In essence, it was simply "an item set with a large number of Magic Gems," with the form of a book as its outer shell.
Ah, right.
The so-called Magic Gems were, yes, those "eyeballs" studded across the cover.
Beyond standard effects like magic amplification, its most important feature was a special ability that could be actively triggered.
It was also the "unique exclusive effect" Isagi had inscribed into this piece of equipment using his own divine power.
Its name —
[The Holy Light Has Betrayed Me.]
"?"
"Don't worry about it. Just say it that way when you use it."
Like a magic incantation.
Upon activation, all healing magic would convert into damage magic — with a theoretical output equal to the original healing power.
And it had any number of interesting applications beyond that.
"Take it home and study it properly."
"..."
Silence.
Heith was too stunned to speak.
This was a direction she had never once imagined — and besides, who in the world made weapons like this? It completely defied all expectations. How was something like this even possible?!
Doesn't matter.
Ask, and the answer was simply: "divine power."
And that wasn't even the most shocking part. What came after left Heith even more speechless —
— …
Under the night sky.
The burger shop closed up early. The girls gathered together and set off on foot toward the edge of the city.
They passed through fields of golden rice stalks and orchards heavy with the sweet scent of ripe fruit.
And finally arrived at that familiar farmstead.
Goddess Demeter and the others had come early to prepare dinner.
The long tables in the courtyard were laden with a lavish spread — and the one thing Heith could not begin to make sense of was the fist-sized bubbles floating above the steaming, fragrant dishes, each one containing what appeared to be… a little girl?!
That was Saika.
The little jellyfish had not only received Goddess Astrea's Falna — she had truly become a proper adventurer of the Familia.
And what's more, she had already advanced to Lv. 2, and was rocketing straight toward Lv. 3 at an extraordinary pace.
____
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