Ch.42Gathering Materials (2)

“Ha, you’re going to get Nectar? You?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

I answered Arges’ incredulous question with a sincere smile.

Unfortunately, my heartfelt smile didn’t seem to reach Arges.

“Ha, if you bring back Nectar, I’ll make you not just one sword, but anything you want.”

He wouldn’t have made such a reckless blank check offer if he had felt my sincerity.

Or perhaps he just saw it as the recklessness of a young women.

Either way, this was only good for me, so there seemed no need to correct his misunderstanding.

“I’ll remember those words.”

“Remember it or not, I’m making weapons now, so get out. Close the door properly when you leave.”

Arges gestured for me to leave and added more charcoal that I had brought to raise the temperature inside the forge even higher.

The temperature rose so much that at some point, just breathing made my throat feel like it was burning.

Yet the temperature showed no signs of dropping, only getting hotter as if there was still room to rise.

‘I guess telling me to get out is his own way of being considerate…’

I understood Arges was showing his awkward consideration, but unfortunately, I had no intention of accepting it.

I took out potions from my spatial storage, placing them on the floor, then removed my robe and handed it to Lilly.

“Lilly, could you hold my robe for a bit? It has temperature control, so I don’t need it right now.”

“Do you really have to do this?”

Perhaps because we’d spent so much time together, Lilly seemed to immediately understand what I was planning. That’s why she was giving me such a worried look.

Since I had no intention of stopping, I spoke lightly with a playful tone to reassure her.

“Isn’t it much better to suffer a little now and live longer than to live comfortably and die early? And this is just like stepping into a sauna for a bit.”

“I don’t know what a sauna is, but I know I can’t break your stubbornness.”

After taking my robe, Lilly told me to come out quickly because of the heat and left the forge.

“Phew…”

After taking a deep breath, I gathered the potions and headed to the edge of the forge.

What I needed now was Lv. 5 or higher fire resistance. That was the minimum requirement to operate in the depths of the dwarf mine.

‘Or I could just become strong enough to protect myself like Lilly, but there’s not enough time to get that strong.’

Even if I brought back Nectar, the God-Slaying Sword wouldn’t be made overnight.

Moreover, one Nectar alone wouldn’t be enough to make it.

‘I don’t have time to leisurely build a campfire and stick my hand in it.’

Sweat beaded on my forehead and ran down my chin.

Drip… drip…

The sweat that gathered on my chin soon fell to the forge floor, and as it fell, it evaporated with a sizzling sound.

As I sweated, that much moisture disappeared from my body. My skin was burning in the hot air, and my body was consuming energy for recovery.

“Haa… haa…”

With Arges’ monotonous hammering as background noise, I was just breathing, yet my stamina was already bottoming out.

When dizziness made my vision blur and spin, I grabbed a potion, opened the cap, and poured it into my mouth.

I drank one potion and took one step forward. It was just one step, but it felt like the temperature had risen even more.

‘Or maybe… it’s just psychosomatic…’

It could be that my body was sending false signals, begging for help because its owner was doing something strange.

“Still, it’s more comfortable than having a knife stuck in my stomach… isn’t it?”

Past memories and pain tend to fade. So while I thought the previous experience was harder, I couldn’t be certain.

I poured another potion into my mouth and took another step forward.

I was truly thankful that potions were liquid, so I didn’t need to replenish fluids separately.

The monotonous hammer sound and my mechanical actions. Not much time had passed, but the world seemed to be becoming very bland.

I thought about calling Lilly for some small talk, but I gave up because I felt I might end up depending on her.

‘Lilly probably went outside because she knew she’d drag me out if she kept watching…’

Lilly and I met because I was forcibly possessed, but now we had become irreplaceable friends.

Is it because neither of us had friends to begin with that we get along so well? With such idle thoughts, I picked up a potion.

And a moment later, I could see the current state of the potion.

“What the hell…”

The glass bottle containing the potion was melting.

Thanks to the potion inside, it hadn’t completely melted, but when I applied pressure, the glass deformed to the shape of my hand.

I quickly poured the potion into my mouth and shook off the hand that had been holding the glass bottle.

“Ah, hot hot…”

Perhaps because the glass had absorbed heat, touching it with bare hands resulted in a worse burn than just being exposed to the heat.

To prevent a disaster if the bottles melted, I surrounded the potions with sword energy to protect them from melting.

“This isn’t even sword energy, what should I call it…”

However, the problem didn’t end there. When I protected the glass bottles from melting, my clothes started to burn.

It was because I hadn’t considered that potions might melt or clothes might burn in the game’s inventory.

I surrounded my clothes with sword energy as well to protect them from burning.

While burning clothes wouldn’t be a major threat to my life, being naked in front of Arges was completely out of the question.

“Might as well practice my cultivation technique properly…”

I maintained balance by quickly replenishing my aura whenever it was consumed while operating the cultivation technique.

* * *

How much time had passed?

Having consumed the last potion long ago, I continued my meditation silently in one spot.

I wanted to move closer, but I couldn’t because it might disturb his work.

Now that I think about it, not moving closer seemed like the right decision.

My condition was that bad.

Perhaps because my consciousness was fading, I could no longer hear the hammering sound that had been constant until now.

‘My aura is… bottoming out too.’

Although I tried to conserve it as much as possible, the rate of consumption was still several times faster than the recovery rate.

It was inevitable given the large area covered with sword energy to protect my clothes.

Still, it wasn’t a completely useless effort since I learned how to use it more efficiently.

Wobble.

I felt my upper body, which I had kept straight for meditation, falling forward.

I instinctively knew that I no longer had the consciousness to even maintain a sitting position.

‘Ah… this is really my limit.’

The desire to just plant my face on the floor and pass out surged. Nevertheless, I placed my hands on the floor to support my collapsing upper body.

That’s when it happened.

Splash!

Cold water poured over my head. I felt the temperature, which had only been rising endlessly, suddenly drop.

My fading consciousness was barely maintained by the thread-thin mental strength that remained.

I looked up to see who was standing in front of me.

There stood Lilly with a worried expression and Arges with a look of disdain.

“Crazy girl.”

“You could have told me… when you finished.”

“You wanted this, didn’t you? And get this fairy away from me, she was yelling at me so much.”

The temperature in the forge was slowly decreasing. It meant that all the charcoal I had used was consumed and the last embers were dying down.

I had bought a total of five boxes of charcoal.

One box would have been enough to forge a sword, but to sufficiently raise my fire resistance, I needed five boxes worth.

It was questionable whether Arges would notice my intention, let alone cooperate, but fortunately, he seemed to have gone along with it.

I collapsed face-down on the floor and breathed. Breathing normal air instead of air that felt like it would burn me made me feel like I would live.

“I did want this… but I really thought I was going to die. If you have more cold water, please pour it on me…”

“There are probably few who could endure this much in a dwarf’s forge.”

“Among succubi, I’m probably the first…?”

How could there be two succubi like me in the world? Even if you looked at all the Succubus Queens throughout history, there probably wasn’t anyone like me.

Splash!

Cold water poured over my head again, making me truly feel alive.

If being stabbed with a sword felt like I was going to go crazy from pain, this time it felt like my life was truly threatened.

“I think I’ll live…”

“I thought I was going to die from worry!!”

“Kuhak-!”

Confirming that I was safe, Lilly delivered a merciless back smash as if to let me know how worried she had been.

I could feel how serious she was as she hit me with wind instead of her bare hands, knowing her own strength was low.

“I’m a critical patient…”

“Shut up!!”