Chapter 177: The Arrancar
After a couple more minutes had passed, Ethan slowly descended from his floating position, the reddish-amber glow of his eyes fading as his feet reached the ground .
Lucy clapped, giving him a standing ovation as he landed, with a a wide smile on her face.
"I should call you Sylvester Reeds the Second," she said through her jovial grin. "You just finished maybe twenty days’ worth of work in two."
Ethan smiled back, though his expression turned slightly puzzled. "Who’s Sylvester Reeds?"
Lucy’s eyes widened in surprise. "You don’t know him?"
Ethan shook his head.
"Okay, fair," Lucy said thoughtfully as they began walking toward the other part of the workshop.
"He isn’t even a citizen of Gritnia. He’s from Sloania and is the only reawakened Magi-Engineer in the whole world."
Ethan’s brow furrowed with interest. "How do you know about him if he’s not from Gritnia?"
"He makes and posts content on M-Tube," Lucy said, already pulling out her Arcphone and scrolling through the app. "Hold on, let me show you."
But Ethan’s attention had already drifted to the notification screens materializing in front of his vision.
[Self-Imposed Objective Complete:
-You pushed aircraft completion to 75%]
[Reward: 8,000 XP]
[Total Experience Points: 87,250]
He blinked at the numbers. In the last four days alone, he had gained a total of 36,250 XP.
"This Charge aspect has been more useful than I thought," Ethan thought to himself, looking down at his hands.
They were trembling slightly from the exertion, so he clenched them into fists, trying to steady the shaking.
But the strain on his body was undeniable. Every time he used the Aspect of Charge for extended periods, it put him under an unfathomable level of physical stress.
"Hey, Ethan, are you watching?" Lucy’s almost childlike voice pulled his attention back.
"Yes, yes," Ethan said quickly, leaning closer to her screen.
Lucy clicked on a video titled: "Watch me as I couple a Radeon Blaster Gun in 5 seconds!" The thumbnail showed a weird-looking smiley face of a man wearing thick protective goggles.
Ethan watched with mild amusement as the video began to play.
-
Toward Noon, the Same Day...
Ethan was back at the Clustervayne Guild building, standing at the makeshift workstation he had set up in one of the side rooms.
The table before him was cluttered with experimental and surgical tools.
Tweezers, small hammers, grinders, containment vials, and fragments of the Aranchras’s mana core were randomly placed on the table.
From the next room, one designated for training, the sound of clashing fists, growls and grunts echoed through the walls. Aliyah and Percival were going at each other in a sparring match, their voices occasionally rising in competitive banter.
Ethan barely noticed the noise as his focus was locked on the object resting on the table before him.
The completely crafted weapon, of SR-grade. This blade had once belonged to the Aranchras, although it had just gone through a solid reforging process.
After Ethan’s earlier study, where he discovered the microscopic crystals which was responsible for the phasing, he had extracted some of it.
Then he subjected the blade to heating, in a specialized forge; one that Arael had created using her Runic Chroma.
The ink had been solidified into a compact containment chamber, forming a bowl-like structure with reinforced walls.
And while applying her Change skill, she imbued the fire element into the ink construct causing to flames to erupt within the chamber. This was responsible for the heating mechanism
The sword had been placed inside and exposed to the searing temperatures while Ethan carefully applied the crystalline powder he ground from the Aranchras’s body.
He added melted fragments of the creature’s mana core to the power mix to create a binding coating that would adhere to the blade’s surface.
The essence of Aranchras’s mana core, was to provide a constant flow of power that helped bond the crystalline formations to the blade’s molecular structure, ensuring they integrated deeply rather than simply coating the surface.
After a few more hours, the crystalline mixture had bonded with the molecular structure of the blade itself as it was re-tempered under Arael’s sustained heat.
Her ink had also been used to reshape the blade’s form.
The flowing black substance wrapped around the weapon, retuning its edges, refining its balance, and giving it a sleeker, more dangerous silhouette.
When it was finally pulled from the forge, the blade gleamed with this violet hue, and had a more elegant design to it.
Now, it rested on the table before Ethan, still warm to the touch.
Hayley sitting nearby, idly played with one of the surgical tools on the table. She spun it between her fingers like a toy.
"Hayley," Ethan said without looking up. "Put that down."
She sighed dramatically. "Ugh..." then set it down, only to pick up another tool a moment later.
"Hayley."
"What? I’m bored," she said, setting the object down again. "When do we get to go for that B-rank breach we got the permit for?"
"Soon," Ethan replied, his tone distracted. "I just have to finish this. I’m making the final touches."
"Final touches on what?" Hayley asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the blade.
Ethan didn’t answer. He was too focused on modifying the pommel of the sword, carefully inserting a small fragment of the Aranchras’s mana core into it.
-
A certain amount of time passed with Hayley continuously talking about different things, complaining again about her boredom, and asking the most random questions.
But her voice faded into the background for Ethan who kept his responses to her at the minimal.
"Mhm."
"Yeah."
Nod.
"Mhm."
"Are you even listening to me, Ethan?" Hayley finally asked, her tone somewhere between amused and annoyed.
Her question coincided perfectly with the moment Ethan finished.
He set down his tools, lifted the blade, and held it up to the light. There was a purple-like glow along its edges.
"I present to you..." Ethan began, then paused. "Okay, I haven’t thought of a name yet."
Hayley let out a light chuckle. "Maybe we go with a name based off its feature. What does it do?"
Ethan’s lips curved into a small smile. "If I’m right, it should do this."
He gripped the hilt firmly and channeled his mana through the weapon. The blade’s surface looked like it flickered then it turned translucent.
Ethan moved the weapon forward, sinking the blade through the surface of the table, and it passed through without resistance.
He held it there for a moment, watching the countdown in his mind.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
The blade flickered again and returned to its tangible state, solidifying inside the table with a faint thunk.
Ethan pulled it free and set it down on the table, frowning slightly.
"Shit," he muttered. "I totally screwed the timing on that one."
Hayley raised an eyebrow. "What were you going for?"
"At least five seconds," Ethan said, shaking his head. "But I guess it was always going to work differently based on the original monster itself."
He paused, then added, "The cooldown kicks in as soon as the phasing ends. So there’s a delay before I can activate it again."
Hayley leaned back in her chair, thinking. "What about the hilt? Does that phase too?"
Ethan shook his head. "No. The hilt is made from some other material I extracted from the Aranchras’s body. It only locks into tangible state when I grip firmly."
A sudden thought then came to Ethan as a stared at the weapon. "Hm, I just realized I still need to make a few adjustments, but I’ll do that later"
Hayley nodded slowly, she looked impressed. Then she suddenly got a name. "Ghostblade?"
Ethan gave her a weird look. "That sounds cool, but it’s cringe. Feels typical."
Hayley laughed. "Okay, what then?"
Ethan thought for a moment as his gaze lingered on the weapon.
"Arrancar," he said finally.
A notification screen appeared in front of him.
[Name Saved: Arrancar]
[SR-Grade Weapon: The Arrancar]
[Description: A short blade capable of shifting between tangible and intangible states. Phase duration: 3 seconds. Cooldown applies between activations]
[Reward: 7,000 XP]
[Total XP: 94,250]
Ethan dismissed the notifications with a satisfied nod.
Hayley smirked. "So you’re naming it close to what the origin sounds like? So much for ’typical names.’"
Ethan chuckled. "Yeah, yeah."