Return of the Sword God-Rank Civil Servant novel Chapter 696

PAAANG!

[ Art of Dismantling activates. ]

As he repeated the same process, he quickly got the hang of it.

Now, even without making any particular motion, he could cleanly dismantle an entire item in a single strike.

Jack, who had been watching the process, seemed to grow interested as well. He stopped the drama he had been watching and came over beside Su-ho.

- What're you doing?

"Something fun."

- So what is it?

"Crafting? No, I think modification would be more accurate."

A question mark practically appeared over Jack's face.

But Su-ho paid him no mind and continued what he had been doing, finally completing the item he wanted.

"Finished."

- What's this? A bracelet?

"More precisely, a cursed bracelet. Now I need to test it...... Can you equip items, by any chance?"

- You think I can?

"Too bad. Then where can I test this...... Ah, right. I have you."

Pi Seong-yeol entered Su-ho's field of vision.

Right.

Jack couldn't because he was a summon, but you were a Player, weren't you?

Su-ho beckoned.

"Seong-yeol, come here."

Pi Seong-yeol hurried over.

Su-ho handed the bracelet to him when he approached.

"Put it on."

"Understood."

Without suspecting anything, Pi Seong-yeol immediately put on the bracelet.

At that moment.

"Urk?!"

The instant he put it on, Pi Seong-yeol's complexion rapidly darkened.

At the same time, his eyes began trembling, his body staggered, and he dropped to his knees.

"Urrrgh......."

Once on his knees, Pi Seong-yeol soon pitched forward and clutched his chest.

His breathing sounded as though it might stop at any moment, and foam began gathering at his mouth.

Cold sweat broke out over him, and every pore on his body opened.

Jack frowned and asked,

- What the hell? What's wrong with him?

"He's been cursed."

- Cursed?

"Yeah. I can dismantle items now and reconstruct them into something new. So I gathered the curse options from cursed items and crammed all of them into a single bracelet. That's the result."

- You can do that?

"I can. That's the kind of power the Blacksmith Style is."

As he spoke, Su-ho jerked his chin toward Pi Seong-yeol.

"That bracelet originally had only one curse option. It raised the wearer's Strength by 10 in exchange for causing migraines. But I removed most of the components that made up the bracelet along with the Strength increase option, then stuffed it with a bunch of other curse options."

- What kind of curses?

"Off the top of my head, low-grade curse, intermediate-grade curse, vomiting, nausea, chills, fever, hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, acid reflux, mouth ulcers, things like that?"

Jack's expression crumpled.

- What kind of all-in-one hospital package is that?

"I just combined every curse-item option I could see. That's the result."

It was only a single bracelet.

And yet even a rough count showed that it had more than ten curse options attached to it.

If there was one disappointing part, it was that one curse-option fragment did not count as just one fragment toward the bracelet's total number of composition fragments.

For example, assuming an item's maximum number of composition fragments was 100, each individual fragment could count as a different number of fragments.

That was disappointing.

Because Su-ho had thought that if the composition-fragment limit was 100, he would be able to cram in 100 different curse options.

'If that were possible, I could make a truly horrific cursed item.'

Thinking about it in reverse, though, this was still a good experiment.

An item packed full of good options.

With this kind of modification, he would be able to obtain excellent items with ease.

'I think I understand why the First Lord of Ten Thousand Gold City created the Blacksmith Style.'

He too must have done everything he could as a Player.

He would have sought out good skills and learned them, raised his level and stats, and trained both his body and combat techniques.

He would also have crafted and equipped good items.

But he had reached the limits of all of them.

That was probably why he developed a technique like this—to push his already saturated specs even higher once again.

Around then, Pi Seong-yeol stopped making noise.

He wasn't dead.

He was merely on the verge of death.

Su-ho immediately removed the bracelet from his wrist.

"Huuuaaagh!"

The moment the bracelet came off, Pi Seong-yeol sucked in rough breaths like someone who had just been pulled out of the water.

Color returned to his face just as quickly.

"That's pretty effective. All I did was put on and take off a single item, and the difference is this extreme."

- It's almost like flipping a switch. But extracting options like this—is it limited to items?

"No. It works on corpses too. Only on things that are definitely dead."

- Oh?

At the mention that it also worked on corpses, Jack's expression changed.

"Looks like we were thinking the same thing after all."

- Because the really good options aren't on items. They're on living creatures.

"Though I haven't actually tested it directly yet, so I don't know how far it applies."

It was true.

Fairy Dragon Gomes and the Blast Furnace Dragon had only been things he had used back in the early stages of learning the Blacksmith Style.

How the Blacksmith Style would apply now that he had reached its ultimate level was something he would have to confirm gradually.

And since he would be able to make that confirmation before long, he didn't feel impatient about it.

Su-ho cast recovery and purification on Pi Seong-yeol as he spoke.

"We're heading straight to the Fairy Realm after resting a bit. How long do you want?"

- A day?

"Nice and simple."

He was willing to spare about a day.

The process of acquiring the Blacksmith Style had ended faster than expected.

'Then what's left is.......'