Chapter 186 - 186. Bucket
Noah stared at the ball of smoke in his palm with an excited expression.
'It's doable! I can use my Demonic form as a material!'
He wasn't sure that he could use the toxic smoke as part of the forging process until he managed to restrain it.
'The easy part is done, now I need to fuse the smoke with the bone of the chameleon and shape it.'
Noah took the grey bone with his free hand and created an incubating membrane around the two materials.
He focused, manipulating the black gas to enter the beast's body part.
Since he had used his refined "Breath" to activate the partial Demonic form, the toxic gas could be used as if it was the "Breath" itself in the Elemental forging method.
Of course, the difficulty in shaping the item would increase vastly that way.
That method was described in Ivor's "Sword Creation method", it consisted of defining one material as the core and using it to shape the other items.
The notes about the Elemental forging also explained how that was the most effective way to forge when using more than one material, shaping two different ingredients at the same time would increase the difficulty of the inscription by many times.
The smoke covered the bone and tried to enter it in order to fuse with its substance.
However, it was a piece of a rank 4 magical beast, it was hard to shape and resisted the modifications that Noah wanted to apply.
Noah stood still for a long time, his gaze never moved from the black membrane that encircled his hands.
Two hours had to pass for the bone to lose its defenses and allow the smoke inside its matter.
The two ingredients began to combine and faint pressure was emitted as the item condensed according to Noah's will.
'I knew it, the Undead chameleon is the perfect material to use for the first prototype.'
The bone morphed almost without resistance once it allowed the fusion with the toxic smoke, it didn't reject the new substance at all!
Of course, what Noah was doing at that moment was just the initial phase of the experimentation for his masterpiece.
Just two materials weren't enough to create something durable and powerful, there had to be a more intricate mixture in order for the inscribed item to reach a pleasing level in both those qualities.
That difficulty was ignored by the other inscription methods as they only had to perform an inscription on an item to apply a powerful effect.
Yet, the Elemental forging method was renowned for the power held by its creations, the higher difficulty in creating a good product was balanced by the strength of every finished item.
Just by looking at Noah's Moon needles, one could understand the advantages of such a method.
They had the power of the solid stage of a rank 1 cultivator and that with only a rank 3 material!
They were indeed strong but lacked durability, something that items created with other inscription methods had by default as no one would choose to inscribe an item of poor quality.
However, a problem appeared during the fusion of the two materials.
There wasn't any mistake on Noah's side, he had maintained a perfect control over the process for the whole time.
The issue was about the nature of the toxic smoke.
As it originated from a spell that emphasized destruction, it was intrinsic in its nature to destroy everything that was not his user.
The smoke began to corrode the bone.
If even Noah's saber couldn't avoid being corroded, it was no wonder that the same happened with other materials.
Noah tried his best to prevent the corrosion from happening but all he could do was staring helplessly as the black gas reduced the bone to nothingness.
The bone was devoured and the incubating membrane dispersed, the toxic smoke spread in the room before being blocked by the flickering inscriptions on the walls.
'It was a rank 4 material, coming from one of the most adaptive magical beasts in this world and with a matching element. Not even this could contain my spell.'
He sighed, laying on the floor under him.
'Well, at least I know that my Demonic form can injure dead rank 4 beasts. When I obtain a rank 4 body, I should be able to deal with that starved Cloud eagle. As for the forging…'
He sighed again.
It's not that he didn't foresee that circumstance, he knew the proprieties of his spell better than anyone else.
He had already found another way to use the smoke as a material without letting it consume the other ingredients.
Noah stood up and two items appeared in front of him.
One of them was his saber that he wielded with his left hand.
The other one was a bucket, like the ones he used to collect the blood of the magical beasts when he had to prepare for the Body-inscription spell.
'If the Demonic form hurts everything except me, then I have to use me as a material.'
The saber slashed his right wrist and Noah stretched his arm to make the blood drip in the bucket.
His eyes were cold as he looked at his own blood coming out of his wrist, he was quite used to that scene by then.
'First the Horned snake, second the Three-eyed bat, and the Night panther as the third one. Who would have thought that I would be the fourth.'
He laughed internally at that thought, he realized that he wasn't treating his body any differently from a beast's corpse.
'If this gets me what I need, I don't mind throwing away hundreds of liters of my blood.'
His body was alive though and had also excellent healing abilities.
The wound on his wrist closed after a few seconds and Noah was forced to open it again.
Little by little, the bucket began to fill.
He had a rank 3 body, spilling about three liters of blood made him dizzy and pale but didn't endanger his life.
That was also due to the fact that his bones began to emit a cold halo that increased its production.
In about twenty minutes, the bucket was full.
Noah took out another chameleon's bone and immersed it in his blood before going to rest.