After cleaning everything up, Kai cleaned Shino and tucked her into her room. He then began carrying each person to their respective rooms, making sure none of them woke up by using Mystical Palm. Afterward, he put away all the mattresses and other things, changed into sportswear, and went down to the garden, where he stood gazing at the stars, a little lost in thought.
In the middle of his musings, Kai turned his gaze toward the forest. For a moment, he thought he saw a man with light brown hair and honey-colored eyes standing in the shadows, looking disheveled and defeated, stripped of any trace of pride or confidence—a true loser in every sense of the word. This inevitably made Kai smile.
(It's time to leave you behind, Daniel. In the end, you were the true villain of your story. You made the stupidest choices possible and then blamed fate and life when you had to face the consequences. If only you had listened to Mom, to Kate, or to anyone who warned you about where your actions would lead, things could have been very different.
(But that's all in the past now. Right now, even though I'm not perfect, and I've made plenty of mistakes, your story has helped me avoid making mistakes as stupid as yours. From now on, I'll keep living my life trying not to sink as low as you did, and that starts by ensuring the safety of my family—the only thing that truly matters.)
After a few seconds, Kai turned his back to the forest and began walking toward his workshop, not looking back even once, determined to break free from the shadow of his former self, no matter how difficult it might be. At that moment, he called out to his trusted assistant in a calm voice, full of resolve and firmness.
"Sage, let's get to work."
With Kai's words, a beautiful fairy, no larger than the palm of his hand, with reddish-blonde hair, blue eyes, elongated elf-like ears, and two pairs of almost translucent wings on her back that looked as if they were made of light, materialized at his right side. She quickly responded in a serious tone.
"At your service, Master."
"How are you doing with the new Aura Script pattern based on the genetic data from the male Drider?" Kai asked calmly, to which the beautiful fairy replied in a serious tone, simultaneously conjuring several holographic screens in front of her master containing the relevant information.
"After running simulations using about eighty percent of our computing power, I'm fairly confident that it's possible to create an Aura Script pattern to stabilize teleportation using the male Drider's network of genetic intersections as a reference.
"In fact, although more testing is still needed, it's highly likely that the excessive genetic complexity of the male Drider is due to it having different patterns encoded that are similar to those of our Aura Script."
"…Sage, where do you think that thing came from?"
Upon hearing his trusted assistant, Kai couldn't help but ask in a slightly apprehensive tone, to which the beautiful fairy could only respond in a voice full of uncertainty.
"We have no way of knowing, Master. In this world full of 'quirks', practically anything is possible. There might be someone with abilities very similar to yours, or it could be something from a distant past or far-off future. It might even be something from another world—we can't rule anything out."
"That's true as well…" Kai couldn't help but nod, fully agreeing with his trusted assistant, but he quickly shook his head to organize his thoughts and promptly added.
"For now, let's not dwell on that and focus on what's important. Do you already have a base framework to work from?"
"Yes, although it might need some modifications, for now, I have this." Sage quickly replied while creating a new holographic screen in front of her master, displaying a complex Aura Script pattern, and explained.
"It's an adaptation of the Drider's genetic connections, which had some similarity to the data from the portal Nomu and the Kokuto pattern, organized into a theoretically functional pattern as far as we know."
With a focused expression, Kai studied the information on the screen for a few seconds, then nodded and commented thoughtfully.
"Perfect. Let's go with that, then."
At the same time, Kai arrived in front of his forge workshop. At which point the doors opened automatically, revealing a spacious but simple place with only a few furnaces of different sizes and shapes, some mechanical tools, shelves, and several anvils. There were also various tools and unhandled swords hanging perfectly organized on the walls. On the floor, not far from the anvils, several disproportionately large hammers could be seen.
Upon entering, Kai headed to a shelf near the door, which was completely filled with stacked ingots separated by labels on the front. Each label had a unique reference number that encoded the composition of each ingot. Kai took a couple of ingots from there, at which point Sage began turning on the furnaces, extractors, and other equipment.
With the ingots in hand, Kai walked over to a mechanical saw, which he quickly powered on and reinforced with his Aura. He then began cutting the ingots into perfectly equal layers, a task he finished with great speed thanks to the saw, which, intensified by his ability, sliced through the metal ingots as if they were butter.
"By the way, Sage." While alternating the layers of different metals to create a tower, Kai commented in a calm voice, then added.
"Come to think of it, instead of using up the last slot of [Coded Arsenal], we could use the 'general altar' and combine the Kokuto pattern with this one. After all, its only purpose is to stabilize the teleportation 'bridge'—everything else we'll handle with Emission, and that would make us much more flexible."
"That's a great idea, Master, although unexpected issues could arise. After all, the [Coded Arsenal] pacts are a bit restrictive."
Sage replied in a contemplative tone, while her wings began to shine in different colors, running calculations at full power to determine the feasibility. Kai could only nod in agreement and comment while picking up a welding machine from a corner.
"That's true as well, but it doesn't hurt to try."
As they discussed the details and possible scenarios of Kai's idea, he quickly welded the tower of metal layers he had made to a metal rod, then placed it in a furnace that Sage had previously heated. Once it was hot enough, he took one of the enormous hammers next to an anvil and began hammering with a force greater than that of a typical power hammer, but with almost surgical precision.
After hammering, cutting, and re-welding the metal he was working on, Kai finished with an elongated piece of metal, which he heated up to begin shaping into a double-edged sword. At that point, he set it aside, then placed his hand on his chest, where his two necklaces were, and gripped the hand-shaped pendant, closing his eyes.
"…It seems the requirement has been fulfilled. Let's go in."
After a few seconds, Kai opened his eyes and spoke in a calm tone, to which Sage quickly nodded and then sat on her master's head. Kai walked over to a corner of the workshop, where an Aura Script pattern was inscribed on the floor. He sat down there and closed his eyes again as his aura began to concentrate around the open-hand pendant in his hand. After a few seconds, Kai and Sage found themselves in a place that looked almost like a copy of the workshop, though with some differences.
First of all, the walls were densely engraved with Aura patterns, which glowed with a pale bluish color while emitting small clusters of light that began to act like tiny fireflies wandering throughout the space. This created an almost mystical atmosphere in the room. But without a doubt, what stood out the most were the six sword altars, perfectly arranged in a secluded corner.
The sword altars, which were organized in a pentagonal pattern with a larger one at the very center, had different Aura Script patterns meticulously carved across their surfaces with astonishing precision. These patterns appeared to connect to the swords they held, as if they were all part of the same piece.
On the five altars arranged in a pentagon, there were the swords [Secrets Keeper], a gladius; [Will Keeper], a curved black dagger; [Conqueror's Shackles], a flamberge with chains hanging from its crossguard; and what appeared to be an extraordinarily thin greatsword with striated blood-red edges, while the last altar stood empty.
Meanwhile, on the large central altar, there were various types of melee weapons, from Jian swords to daggers, including greatswords, bastard swords, and more, as if it were a small private exhibition. Even more curious, each and every one of these weapons had an Aura Script pattern that connected perfectly with the one inscribed on the altar—which was none other than the Kokuto pattern.
"Well, this is going to take a while, so let's get to work…" Kai said, stretching lazily, to which Sage replied in a serious tone.
"Master, should we run a test with the empty slot before trying the 'general altar'? Even though we still need to update the Kokuto pattern, it would be much more efficient to work on a stable, refined base."
"You're right, let's do that then."
Kai nodded in agreement at his trusted assistant's suggestion, then took some carving tools from their place on one of the walls and began calmly engraving the empty altar, following the pattern that Sage displayed on a holographic screen.
The reason Kai was able to conjure his swords so easily—all of them different and incredibly complex—was actually very simple: he was cheating. He didn't follow the traditional Nen conjuration method from the original series in his past life, which involved becoming so intimately familiar with something that you would even see it in your dreams. Only then attempting to conjure it. That approach was terribly inefficient and limited a conjurer's options regarding what they could create with their aura.
Instead, after several years of experimenting, Kai managed to find a way to 'cheat' and skip a bit of that long process, creating one of his most important abilities: [Coded Arsenal]. This ability was an application of his aura's Manipulation properties directed at himself, using as a catalyst the necklace Nemuri had given him so many years ago for his birthday. Since, Manipulation abilities generally required a real object with which the user had a strong emotional connection.
But by combining Manipulation with the mnemonic technique known as the "mind palace," "memory palace," or simply the method of loci, Kai was able to create a mental space that replicated his forge workshop. In that space existed the sword altar, which allowed that, once a sword was forged inside the mental workshop and placed on the altar, it became indelibly engraved in his memory down to the last detail.
In this way, Kai was able to conjure his swords with unparalleled precision—not only making them indistinguishable from a real one, but even several times stronger than before. However, Kai considered that achievement only a small milestone. After much experimentation, with the help of Sage—who at that time was still a sphere of light with wings—he managed to create the "secondary altars," which allowed him to create special swords with independent pacts, or in other words, unique abilities.
That's where the [Keeper] line was born, a name chosen with the future in mind—swords whose main purpose was to protect the girls. And thanks to the "secondary altars," the only sword with actual combat utility was also created: Conqueror's Shackles. That crimson blade was designed for such a specific scenario that it was unlikely to ever happen, but it was better to have it occupying one of his scarce slots than not to have it at all.
The reason there were only five secondary altars was simple: after trying countless pacts and Aura Script patterns, that was the best he could achieve. Unlike the cards, the swords had virtually no limitations, but he had made sure that the number of altars would increase with his total amount of aura. This had recently granted him the fifth slot, as originally, there had only been four.
***
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