Chapter 1405: Dreadreaver
The metal scraps from Jeci’s armor began to merge together in Northern’s hand. They softened under the white heat radiating from his palm, turning moist and malleable, losing every quality that made them recognizable as metal. Northern squeezed them into themselves, twisted them out, squeezed again. The material yielded like wet clay.
While he worked, he sent a mental command to a clone. Maw’Thoraxis’s corpse was dragged towards him. Two of his clones bent down with scavenger’s knives and shredded the skin plates of the dead monster away from its body, peeling them off one by one and passing them to Northern, who folded each piece into the ball of melted substance in his hand.
He allowed his autonomous shadow to seep out and bleed into the mixture as well, a dark thread winding through the molten mass. Then Northern began to draw out a shape.
Before any of this, before he’d even started the process, Northern had taken a good look at the metal that formed Jeci’s armor. It was crafted from something called the Dread Warden, albeit an inferior version of the original. This meant that the Dread Warden carcass-to-impurity ratio was quite low, and still it had been able to release the kind of power it did for Jeci.
Northern did not know what rank the Dread Warden was, but it had to be at least Belial rank. He vanquished those impurities and mixed the little he had of the carcass itself with Maw’Thoraxis’s carcass, letting his Supreme Shadow be the binding agent that held the two together.
Then he worked them under the white heat of his hands, turning the mass in and against itself until the two materials lost their individual character and became something new. He began pulling the melted metal outward, stretching it like moulding material while it was still soft enough to accept a shape.
Northern separated the melted metal into six parts. The first he used to form the chest plate and shoulder pauldrons together with the lower leg pieces. The second became the vambraces. The third, the boots. He fashioned a helmet with the fifth portion, pressing the metal into something angular and predatory, and the sixth he drew out long and thin, extending it into a tenebrous black steel spear.
The hammering process was easy. There was no hammering process. Northern simply let the heat cool, and as it did, the shapes formed rigidity around his design. Metal that had been formless moments ago locked into edges sharp enough to cut light.
It took less than thirty minutes, and this was especially because Northern was keen about the details.
Using the [Soul String], he tied the armor to his soul first. He would change the binding to Jeci’s later.