The Immortal Continent

by Virlyce

  The crown prince stiffened. He looked angry before—for some unknown reason—but now he looks shocked. That’s right, be amazed! I might not have done any work to get these heads and leeched off an immortal, but the merits belong to me! The crown prince swallowed and stretched his hand out to touch one of the heads. It was the Fang Country’s experts’ leader’s. “This, this is Crown Prince Fang. You claimed his head?”

  “Yup! These guys cornered me, but I called on the help of my immortal buddy and he wiped them out instantly! Then he gave me the heads. Turn them into sky-realm-ranked swords from a smith, please! They have to look like this!” I gave the crown prince the blueprint that Ilya had created based on Durandal’s previous appearance.

  The crown prince took a step back. “You’re friends with an immortal…?”

  “Are you going to fulfill your end of the bargain or not? You said ten heads for one sword. I want two! They have to look exactly the same and be made of the same materials.” The second sword is for Durandal himself. Weapon spirits are supposed to use weapons similar to their weapon bodies, but Durandal couldn’t because his sword was lost or something. I bugged him about it, but he wouldn’t tell me where his sword went, so I stopped asking.

  “Right…. I’ll contact our smith right away, but it may take a while because his son was kidnapped.”

  “This guy?” I grabbed the spoiled brat, err, free ticket, wait, no, smith’s son, and held him up in front of the crown prince. “I saved him from a phoenix. Mm. Definitely. He said he’s the son of a sky-realm smith.”

  The crown prince’s eyes nearly fell out of his face. “You, you are quite the capable woman, Captain Fluffytail. Th—”

  Wait! “Hold on! Ilya! Are you listening?”

  “What is it?”

  Okay, she’s listening. I nodded at the crown prince. “Repeat what you just said.”

  “You’re quite the capable woman, Captain Fluffytail?”

  “Did you hear that, Ilya!? I’m capable! And you said no one would unironically call me that.”

  “You heard me when I said that…? And this doesn’t count.” Ilya flinched when I showed her my fist. “I mean, it counts, alright!? It counts! You’re very capable.”

  Just like I thought. Hmph, hmph.

  Chapter 22

  “Thank you for saving my son.”

  This person is the smith? He’s damn huge! He’s at least ten times my height! How the heck is his kid so short!? “Are you a giant?”

  The smith laughed with his mouth wide open, revealing a lot of missing teeth, and the ground shook from the tremors. Jeez. Softie said really good smiths were hard to find, but I could’ve spotted this guy from miles away. “I get that a lot, but no. I just have the blood of a titanic metal-eating bear running through my veins. You’re the captain who claimed twenty sky-realm experts’ heads and returned my son to me. I’ll create three weapons for you, free of charge.”

  Mm. The crown prince sent a message to this smith letting him know about me. And it only took about twenty minutes for him to arrive. Thankfully, I got a meal in during that time. I’m still eating through my supply of aurochsen that never seems to run out. Anyways, I get three free weapons! “I want two swords that look like this!” I gave the giant smith the blueprint that Ilya made. It was about the size of his fingernail. Could he even make a weapon fit for someone like me with such large hands? “And, and, uh, I wasn’t expecting a third weapon, but I want something that I can sell for a lot of money!”

  Ilya hit her forehead with her hand. Sheesh, for an alchemist who has to be very precise with her hands, she sure is clumsy sometimes.

  “You’re quite the honest foxkin,” the smith said with a smile. “Aren’t you afraid of offending me?”

  “Uh….” Did I say something he’d be offended by? I don’t think I did…. Is it because I asked if he was a giant? “I don’t care what other people say; you’re very not large at all and it’s totally every doorframes’ faults for not being large enough to accommodate you.”

  The smith stared at me. Then he turned his head to the crown prince, who looked like he was sobbing in the corner. “Is she … alright? You know, up there.”

  Hey! I try to be nice and he calls me an idiot!? This bastard. If he wasn’t the one making my weapons, I’d have beaten him up and stolen every … single … thing…. Wait a minute. A smith who can make sky-realm weapons must be filthy fucking rich! If I rob him now, I’ll literally be set for life! But the spoiled brat did say his father knew immortals…. Darn. I can’t let my greed override my sense of self-preservation! I guess I’ll let this man be rude to me. For now. I’ll remember his face to beat him up later when I become an immortal. Mn.

  “Sorry, she has a defect that prevents her from hearing things.”

  “Who’d you call defective, Ilya!?”

  “Why did you hear that sentence but not the sentences before that one!?” Ilya tried to run, but I didn’t let her escape.

  “Excuse me, foxkin,” the giant smith said. “You wanted two of these swords and a third weapon, correct?”

  “That’s right. Oh! Make the third one a hammer. It has to be big; the head has to be at least as wide and as tall as you! And the handle should be as tall as me, but it has to be thin enough for me to wrap my whole hand around it. And it can’t be big by being hollow! It has to be completely solid and filled with the best metals you have so I can thwack things properly with it!”

  The smith scratched his head, and the spoiled brat stared at me as if I had three boobs. “You know you won’t be able to sell a weapon that big, right?”

  “It’s not for sale! It’s for gently thwacking misbehaving people.”

  Ilya shivered. Jeez, if she’s cold, she should pull out a jacket.

  The smith frowned. “A gentle smack will kill someone. A weapon that big will weigh a little over a hundred tons.”

  “That’s it?” A hundred tons? That’s not heavy at all! Durandal’s previous maximum weight could go up to five hundred tons. And I could use something that heavy just fine when I was a saint-realm expert. Hmm. How much can I lift as an earth-realm expert? “Can you make it ten times heavier? Wait, no, twenty times! No. Thirty? Mm. Why is math so hard? Ilya, help!”

  Ilya sighed and rubbed her slightly swollen head before giving me a pebble. “Here. I’ll put a block of mana in front of you. By calculating how fast the pebble moves through the mana, I’ll be able to—”

  “Stop! You lost me at calculating. Just tell me what I have to do.” Ilya always insists on speaking with big words to show off her intelligence. That’s the only bad part about her.

  “Throw this pebble as hard as you can through this blue light,” Ilya said. A blue box appeared in front of me. Wouldn’t it have been easier for her to say that the first time? Alright. Throw this pebble as hard as I can. Does that include with qi? Hmm.

  “Unrelenting Path of Slaughter: Breaking Madness Pebble-Throwing Strike!”

  “…What are you doing?” the smith asked. “Are we still designing your weapon or not?”

  “I’m not sure, but Ilya knows!”

  Softie’s face paled as the pebble disappeared off into the distance. “If that hits someone, they’ll die….”

  Mm, would they? Nah. It’s just a pebble. A pebble never killed anybody. …Did someone scream just now? Hmm, it was probably my imagination. Anyways, blue symbols made of mana flashed in front of Ilya’s face, and she nodded. “Alright. The maximum weight you can swing is around four thousand tons. You’ll want your weapon to weigh about three thousand five hundred tons to use it comfortably.”

  “Mm. You got that, Mr. Smith? The hammer should be three thousand five hundred tons.”

  The smith furrowed his brow. “Does that have to be its base weight, or can I install a formation that can manipulate its weight freely?”

  “Formation!” I’m starting to love formations. They can do anything! Just like magic. Maybe I can learn how to create formations? I might not have an
y mana, but formations are powered by qi! I can totally learn how to create them. …But learning makes my head hurt, so I’ll have to take it really slow. I should just delegate the learning to one of my minions. That’s right! I don’t have to learn how to create formations myself. I can make someone else learn it for me! Like Ilya. She already knows how to create formations. But if she already knows, then hasn’t my goal already been accomplished…? I’m a genius! I achieved a goal before even starting! I bet Durandal would be proud.

  “Yeah, she’d like that formation on the two swords as well,” Ilya said. “Sorry for troubling you. She daydreams a lot.”

  “I do not!” I just don’t listen!

  “Alright, then shall I get started?” the smith asked. “These are the final plans, right? You can’t change them once I start.”

  “Right, go ahead!” I’ve been waiting for this day for so long! My bed’s just not the same without Durandal. I can kidnap Softie to replace his cuddles, but she doesn’t have a penis. But if she had a penis, I wouldn’t have sex with her because I’m loyal to Durandal! Probably. Well, it’s not like she’d grow one, so this train of thought is stupid. Durandal’s getting a body again!

  The smith reached into his mouth and … pulled out a tooth!? He rubbed the blood off against his shirt and nodded. Then he squeezed it with his hand! What was he doing? Is this smithing? Maybe it’s a good-luck ritual. When the smith opened his hand, there was a sword! It looked exactly like Durandal’s previous weapon body! “One sword done.”

  “…The heck?”

  The crown prince cleared his throat. “Yes, this is the power of our Kang Country’s sky-realm smith. Thanks to his titanic metal-eating bear bloodline, his teeth can transform into sky-realm-ranked weapons. Of course, he has a limited number of teeth, and they take quite a while to grow back.”

  “Two swords and a hammer, just as you requested.” The smith held out his palm, and there were two mini-DalDals and one giant hammer—well, the hammer was on the ground since he couldn’t hold it in his palm. This smith is amazing! …Couldn’t I have stolen all of his kid’s teeth? Mm, it’s too late now. If I had known, I’d have had Mr. Feathers collect those too. Ah, what’s done is done. I have a sky-realm-ranked sword for Durandal now!

  “Durandal! Come on out!” I retrieved Durandal’s spirit seed from my secret spot and grabbed one of the swords. Phew. Let’s do this. Careful, careful. Place the seed into the hilt…, and there’s the flash! …Eh? Durandal didn’t go inside? “Why didn’t it work?”

  The smith leaned over and squinted at Durandal’s spirit seed and the sky-realm-ranked sword. “It seems like the grade of your spirit seed is too low. You’d have to put it in an earth-realm-ranked sword.”

  …

  …

  …

  “Durandal!!! I’ll fucking fuck you to death, you fucker!”

  ***

  “L-little foxkin, please, calm down,” the smith said, his hands waving uselessly in front of Lucia. “There are ways to improve the grade of a spirit seed.”

  “Calm down!? Do you know how long ago I’ve had an earth-realm-ranked sword!? But I resisted the urge to stick this bastard inside of it because he insisted on a sky-realm-ranked sword! And you’re telling me he couldn’t fit in one in the first place!?” Lucia’s tail was thumping against the ground, breaking it while causing miniature earthquakes. I feel bad for the people living inside the burrows of the camp. I already counted thirty that caved in. I think I’ll go hide somewhere for now until Lucia’s anger blows over….

  “Ilya!”

  Why me!? Is it because I wanted to hide!? No, it’s probably because I showed fear. Lucia can smell fear. She’s like a predator—the hunting kind, not the giant squirrel. Well, she’s like that too, but … ah, you know what I mean. “Yes, Lucia?”

  “Give me a sky-realm expert’s body!”

  …What would she want one of those for? Well, I’m not going to deny her demands when she’s in this state. Do I still have any intact corpses? I knew I should’ve started with the earth-realm corpses first. Let’s see…, found one. “Here.”

  Lucia raised her new sword and diced apart the poor corpse. Then she dug out its sternum and carved a rune on its surface. She exhaled and squeezed the sternum with her free hand and it disappeared along with all the ribs. “Okay. I’m focused now!”

  …Did she just absorb a sky-realm expert’s bones? I know she didn’t make stew out of it and eat it, but somehow, it feels like she cannibalized it. Has she ever absorbed a person’s bones before? …Maybe.

  Lucia inhaled then exhaled and glared at the smith. “What was that bit about improving the grade of the spirit seed?”

  “You can improve a spirit seed’s grade at the Cave of Wonders. You can also increase the grade of a weapon but improving a spirit seed is significantly easier.” The smith licked the bloody hole left behind from when he had pulled out his teeth and nodded. “You just need a sky-realm-ranked object—even this hammer will do. Under special circumstances—the right material or location or timing—spirit seeds can absorb the energy within an item. The Cave of Wonders bypasses those circumstances and allows you to fuse the spirit seed.”

  A little like how Durandal’s spirit seed fused with a phoenix egg, huh?

  Lucia furrowed her brow. Did she understand? “And it’ll still be the same spirit inside?”

  She did! Amazing. …I should stop thinking such mean thoughts about her. They’ll slip out when I’m not on guard and I’ll be gently smacked to death by her eight-million-pound hammer.

  “As long as the sky-realm-ranked object you’re fusing it with doesn’t have sentience. If it does, there’s a conflict between the two. The winning sentience absorbs the losing one and becomes the main spirit inside.” The smith pulled something out of his interspacial ring and offered it to Lucia. “The Cave of Wonders can only be accessed by sky-realm-ranked smiths or those they let inside. With this token, no one will stop you from entering. Once you’re inside, there’ll be an altar that you place the spirit seed and sky-realm-ranked object on. Oh, I forgot. You’ll also need a million spirit stones. You feed a million spirit stones into the altar’s mouth, and the spirit seed and object will proceed with their fusion. It’s easy, no?”

  “Hmm? Why does it sound like you’re not coming with me?” Lucia tilted her head. “What if I mess up? I can’t remember such a complicated task!”

  The smith sighed and scratched the back of his neck while lowering his head. “I’d go with you if I could, but … I’m too large to fit inside the cave.”

  Lucia’s shoulders slumped. “Seriously…? Can’t you widen it or something? How do you even know it does what it’s supposed to do?”

  “The cave is composed of immortal bricks. It’s actually a small portion of a much larger necropolis built by immortals. For mere mortals like us, it’s impossible to even leave a scratch on the ground, much less widen a whole cave. The rest of the necropolis is a dangerous place, and only the Cave of Wonders is overseen by the Royal Smithing Sect that I belong to. You’ll have to be careful.” The smith sighed. “I’ll write down the instructions for you, so even if I’m not there, you’ll be able to figure everything out.”

  “Mm. Alright, I guess I’ll have to bring Ilya along.”

  Of course. Bring the person who’s still in the saint-realm to a place that even a sky-realm smith thinks is dangerous. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that. …Can’t Lucia just let me go home!? She could kidnap a weak sky-realm expert and force him to open the way back for me! Literally anyone else can read the instructions for her! She’s the only idiot that can’t read! Well, Puppers and Durandal can’t read the Immortal Continent’s characters either. Why doesn’t she have an intelligent spirit following her? …It’s because she has me, isn’t it? Gah, she even calls me her encyclopedia sometimes!

  “Anyways, where is this cave and how long does it take to get there?”

  “It’s in Dragonhead Country.”

 
Lucia and the smith stared at each other. Lucia tilted her head to the side. “And how far away is that?”

  “It’d take you ten years by flying boat, but…. Foxkin? Hello? Did she stop listening again?”

  “No, I just decided it wasn’t worth it,” Lucia said and pulled out her earth-realm-ranked sword. “In you go, Durandal!” She pressed Durandal’s spirit seed against the sword’s hilt. There was a bright red flash…, and nothing happened. “Why!? What is it now!?”

  A voice that I hadn’t heard in a long time came out from the spirit seed. How come Durandal always speaks at the most convenient times for himself? I swear he’s awake. “I said a sky-realm-ranked sword, Lucia.”

  “Fuck you! Go in!” Lucia made strange chattering noises as she growled while pressing Durandal’s spirit seed against her sword’s hilt. There wasn’t even a flash of light this time. “You stupid unreasonable bastard! Go in!”

  “Uh…, foxkin,” the smith said in a tiny voice that didn’t suit his large frame. “If you take a transfer gate, it’ll only take three hours to arrive at the Cave of Wonders….”

  Lucia froze. “Hmm? Three hours? …Fine.” She sighed and stuffed Durandal’s spirit seed into her panties before stowing away her weapons. Did she always keep his spirit seed down there…? Well, it’s not my problem. “Let’s go! To the Cave of Wonders!”

  ***

  Just like I thought, formations are magical. The place that was supposed to be ten years away became only three hours away because of this gate. I should get one of these for my mansion back home. I’ll set up a gate to Ilya’s dad’s house; that way, I could bother Ilya whenever I’m bored! Mm, it was a bit expensive to use the gate though. It took a hundred thousand spirit stones! …That’s a lot, right? I think it is. But it doesn’t matter. I almost have infinite money because of all those sky-realm experts from Fang Country! I tried counting all my spirit stones on the boat ride to the necropolis from the gate, but my head started hurting so I gave up. Anyways, we’re here!