"Using a puppet's body as a container to capture Great Deeds? That's… genuinely fascinating."
Watching the golden, vapor-like substance flowing inside The Silent's puppet body, Hephaestus couldn't help remarking. Great Deeds had always been the key requirement for an adventurer's advancement, yet no one had ever seen a physical form of it.
Until today.
Who would've thought something so abstract could be captured—and the method look so straightforward?
"If we want to apply Great Deeds to forging, we'll still need a weapon of sufficiently high quality," Hephaestus said. "Leverage the same property that uplifts an adventurer to elevate the weapon itself."
As an "outsider," Tsunayoshi offered a different angle. "Hephaestus-sama, that's the simplest approach, right?"
"It is the simplest," Hephaestus nodded, then pointed at the Great Deeds still coursing through the puppet. "Ideally, we'd fuse Great Deeds into the forging as a material. But capturing them is hard—and turning them into an actual component is harder."
"Especially since they're gaseous right now," she added. "Converting this into a workable material isn't easy."
Tsubaki agreed. Treating Great Deeds as a material at all was already pushing boundaries; making them something that could be blended into a weapon was harder still. Hephaestus's logic was solid, Tsubaki's thoughts reasonable—but both were boxed in by traditional thinking.
"I can do it," Tsunayoshi said.
The line cut through the haze. Hephaestus and Tsubaki stared for a beat before it clicked.
"Right!"
If a traditional smith couldn't do it, that only meant a traditional smith couldn't do it. It didn't mean someone with a special power—like Tsunayoshi—couldn't.
"How?" Tsubaki blurted.
"Simple: create a space that controls and retains Great Deeds."
The solution sounded simple and was, in practice, the hardest thing to realize—except that someone present could actually realize it.
After speaking, Tsunayoshi began shaping the specialized forging space. Moments later, a door materialized in the room. He walked over and pushed it open. Beyond lay the heart of a forest.
"Hephaestus-sama, Tsubaki—please."
Curiosity sparked, the two stepped through. Clean air washed over them; the oxygen felt rich enough to sharpen the mind.
Tsunayoshi moved ahead and pointed toward a set of buildings. "Rest and storage are here—relax between sessions, body and mind. And this is the key to the whole space: Forge Mountain."
He gestured to a path of white stone bricks leading deeper into the woods. "This way."
With Tsunayoshi guiding them, they followed the path to a cave mouth at the foot of a mountain. Dim magic-stone lamps lined the walls. As they walked the long entry tunnel, the temperature began to rise—and kept rising, pulling both smiths to full attention.
The passage opened suddenly into a vast cavern, the interior space expanded beyond imagination. In the center, a colossal earth-flame flowed and burned, bathing everything in light. Ranks of tools lined the sides—some for handwork, others mechanized. Off to one side stood a room veiled by a pale blue curtain.
Both Hephaestus and Tsubaki locked onto that room at once.
"Tsunayoshi, is that it?" Tsubaki asked.
"Yes. The entry areas of Forge Mountain—and especially this forging hall—are wrapped in fields that manifest and confine Great Deeds. That chamber is a special processing room for finer adjustments."
"My idea," he continued, "is to condense Great Deeds into a liquid, then perform fusion processing to blend them into target materials. Of course, that's only my initial concept. Whether it truly works needs your testing, Hephaestus-sama, Tsubaki."
He couldn't guarantee results; he could only say that, based on his understanding, he could alter the state of Great Deeds. Whether that made them forgeable was another matter. To reduce waste, he had laced the entire interior with barriers that limited Great Deeds, so failed experiments would consume less.
"My knowledge of the forging pipeline isn't complete," he added. "If something here feels off, I can reshape it."
Hephaestus took in the mountain-heart workshop with quiet awe: temperatures hot enough to melt stock, a well-proportioned forge floor, a zone for special-material fusion, and, crucially, systems tailored to handling Great Deeds. It met every foundational condition—and then some.
"This is more than enough," she said at last, praise warm in her voice.
Even if Tsunayoshi didn't know every step of the craft, the facility itself surpassed Tsubaki's existing forge in breadth and completeness. Hephaestus glanced at Tsubaki—whose eyes were glued to the workshop, attention swallowed whole—and knew just how satisfied she was.
"Look at her. Does that face say 'unsatisfied' to you?"
Tsunayoshi turned—and got a full-on cheek-to-cheek tackle for his trouble as Tsubaki's delighted shout echoed off the stone.
"Super satisfied!"
(End of Chapter)
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