Infinite Alchemy
The blacksmith goddess stared at the extraordinary metal before her eyes—the finest she had ever seen in her entire existence within the Spirit Realm—and felt saliva pooling in her mouth. She wanted nothing more than to caress it, to run her hands over its surface, yet she could hardly contain herself. To her, caressing meant crushing and recombining. She would reduce it to powder and reshape it according to her will, correcting every flaw in its molecular structure. Her desire to perfect this absurdly assembled metal burned as fiercely as the forge flames she had loved all her life.
Even if the entire world betrays me, this fire and metal have always remained by my side.
The Goddess of Beauty, whose radiance had once made her abandon her hammer and anvil for the first time, had betrayed her with the handsome and powerful former War God. Even in the depths of that despair, the flames and metal had waited faithfully. And now they had granted her the power to create a divine weapon capable of subduing the highest gods who had betrayed and defiled her.
Gu-gu-gung! Gu-gu-gu-gu-gung!
Her body heated up before the unknown super-metal. Within the authority of Guerrilla Volcano, an ability she had believed impossible to activate now surged forth unconsciously.
“Hammer of Alchemy.”
Weeeeeeeng—! Weeeeng—!
Divine power vibrated. Though this authority should have been impossible to invoke with the divine power of a mere Upper God, its activation felt entirely natural.
I have kept it active for eons. Its proficiency is now as instinctive as breathing.
She even wondered why she had ever doubted its possibility.
The Spirit Realm Waiting Area is truly full of strange occurrences.
It had absurdly judged a blacksmith goddess like her as a combat god and subjected her to merciless vitality absorption and burdens. No matter how much she protested, no one listened to the words of a Spirit God who had lost her divine realm. Even after transforming into a goddess, the drain only lessened slightly—it never disappeared.
Even though this is the first time I’ve activated it here, it feels even stronger.
Uwoong! Uwoooong! Udududuk!
She lifted the metal she had been gripping tightly and fixed it in midair. No anvil could withstand the strikes of a hammer that crushed and recombined all metals, so she had created this authority out of necessity.
The fixation authority I combined from what that distant Otherworld god taught me is the only thing that lets me swing my hammer freely. With it, I could even create a divine weapon capable of binding and sealing a Main God. I could finally take revenge on the Divine Realm that abandoned me.
Her birth had begun with a calculation error. No one had anticipated that two Main Gods of the same Heavenly God race would produce more than triple the output during divine power coordination. Because she posed a threat to the Main God of the Divine Realm, she had been discarded.
I was abandoned for my ugly appearance, so of course I never knew about such things. What a painfully ironic mistake.
Her life had been filled with such bitter mistakes and regrets, yet within the authority she had honed through endless tempering, there were no errors.
“Void Play — Golden Refining Platform.”
Ududuk—! Ududuk—! Ududuk—!
A thunderous sound echoed as if the space around the metal had been forcibly fixed. The authority compressed and manifested so intensely that a massive golden anvil shape faintly appeared around the metal.
A glint of interest flashed in the Dimensional Lord’s eyes, followed by a small murmur of admiration.
“A Creator God-level spatial suppression authority… activated with the divinity of an Upper God? Remarkable proficiency.”
Buuuuwoooong—!
She poured more divine power into the already enormous hammer—large enough to match her own body—and increased its size. The hammer’s volume and weight grew in proportion to the concentrated power. It had already surpassed the size and weight a Main God could normally wield, but that did not matter. She mobilized every muscle in her body, rotating and compressing her strength to lift it—or rather, to draw it up through the air.
No Main God besides me could lift this.
Divine power no longer mattered in the domain of her personal alchemy authority. Weight or insufficient divine power were irrelevant. As long as the authority activated and could be maintained, any metal could be crushed and recombined.
Koong—! Urrrrrung—!
She paid no mind to the office being thrown into chaos by the aftershocks of her authority and divine power.
At this level, I still cannot fully excavate the essence of that captivating metal.
She raised the hammer above her head and swung it behind her back. Drawing upon every last drop of the passion and obsession that had sustained her, she cried out.
“Single Strike Crush—! Turn to dust—!”
Shuk—!
The massive golden hammer vanished in an instant. The goddess queens watching could hardly believe their eyes. It was not spatial movement, yet the hammer had moved at a speed that completely escaped their vision—while wielding such a heavy weapon.
Regardless of their shock, the hammer reappeared right in front of the metal fixed in midair.
Kkuk—!
A single point seemed to be pressed into the floating metal.
She had concentrated all the impact through her authority into a strike point smaller than a needle.
No matter how much she activated her authority, an Upper God’s divine power alone could never refine this miraculous metal. But there was one method.
If divine power is insufficient, overcome it with concentrated physical force.
Through this method, she had forged countless divine weapons with strength even Main Gods could not destroy. Yet because the users had been incompetent, they had failed to prevent the Divine Realm’s defeat.
The metal began to vibrate from the impact she had just delivered.
Gu-gu-gu-gu-gung! Deudeudeudeudeuk!
The surrounding goddess queens could no longer hide their shock at the successive miracles. The colossal hammer, swung at a speed that escaped their sight, had driven every ounce of its impact into the metal without the slightest waste. The rebound should have been tremendous, yet she had pressed forward with unyielding force, leaving no gap. Moreover, the fixation authority holding the metal in midair wrapped around the lump without the slightest tremor.
Thus, the hammer’s impact force and the metal’s repulsive force were converted entirely into striking power, concentrated at an extremely minute point, and wounded the metal that had been judged harder than Adamantium.
Yet the hand gripping the hammer trembled violently and was flung backward. A deafening roar tore through the air.
Kkaaaaaaaaang—!
The wretched scream-like shockwave devastated the surroundings. The metal’s property of generating rebound force proportional to the impact had activated. The rebound alone was powerful enough to send the entire office flying. The sound must have shaken the entire Spirit Realm Waiting Area.
The Dimensional Lord, who effortlessly contained the shockwave, let out an involuntary murmur of admiration.
A mere Upper God has generated enough physical force to damage metal with strength exceeding that of Main God-grade divine weapons.
It was a feat even he might not achieve with magic alone. But the blacksmith goddess paid no attention to the reactions around her. Her eyes remained fixed solely on the metal.
A tiny dot had clearly been marked on its surface. Ecstasy flooded the alchemist goddess’s face at the sight.
So it is possible after all. Then it is simple. I will keep striking it endlessly. Eventually, it will be completely crushed and yield everything to me.
She stomped her right foot to anchor herself and swung the hammer, tearing off her cumbersome upper garment and tossing it aside.
Kkukung—! Jjijijijik—!
Her upper body was now bare. Her perfectly trained, broad torso revealed breasts that seemed ready to burst forth. Her physique was more than twice as wide as an ordinary woman’s, and her chest matched that scale. What had been hidden beneath loose clothing was not merely the voluptuousness described as “small hills” among goddess queens—it was a mountain. Any man who preferred conventional standards might have felt revulsion. Yet her overwhelmingly developed upper body made even that size appear natural.
Furthermore, her clearly defined abs, arm muscles, and back muscles—developed to a degree that even combat-type Main Gods would shake their heads at—were revealed.
Muscles optimized for swinging motions, tempered and compressed countless times.
The delicacy to adjust atomic-level micro-strikes, the elasticity for instantaneous explosive power, and the endurance that persisted as long as her will remained unbroken—these muscles were her greatest pride.
A body tempered endlessly to the point that even the God of Strength could not help but admire it.
Even after becoming a goddess and suffering a decline in divinity, the body forged through countless hammer strikes had not weakened in the slightest. Even the ugly, distorted face and nose that had followed her like a curse after her reconstruction as a goddess could not diminish the pride she felt.
In the act of hammering, the beauty or ugliness of a face is meaningless. As long as I have this body, I can continue forever.
She swung the hammer with all her strength once more.
Shuk—! Kkuk—!
The point where the dot had been marked was struck again, carving slightly deeper. The goddess queens watching could only gape in stunned silence.
Even a Main God could never accomplish this.
For a hammer of such absurd size and weight to possess such precision was unthinkable.
I cannot even imagine how much control over swinging muscles is required to reach this level.
It would require an unimaginable amount of training.
Gu-gu-gu-gung! Teooooooong!
Another tremendous roar erupted from the metal, flinging her body backward. But this time was different. Both hands gripped the massive hammer’s handle like steel, swinging it like a club. In an instant, her upper body vanished from sight—or rather, countless golden streaks and afterimages filled the space between her lower body and the metal.
Shushushushushushuk—!
Continuous strikes were driven into the metal. The sound of her moving body filled the space with unbelievable sonic booms. The entire process of swinging the hammer seemed etched into space like a continuous photograph in a single moment. Her absurdly large breasts, the abs rising distinctly from them, and every muscle appeared in midair as if hundreds of overlapping figures had manifested.
There was only one target: the needle-tip-sized point on the metal’s surface. The massive hammer and the afterimages converged upon that single point as if merging into one illusion.
Pasasasasat—!
The super-metal made no sound as it turned to powder. On the opposite side of the space where the metal had been fixed, the blacksmith goddess stood with both hands gripping the hammer, her swing completed. The Demon Adamantium—possessing more than twice the hardness of the Adamantium used as material for Main God-grade divine weapons—had been shattered by the strikes of an Upper God’s divine power and authority.
An authority and achievement capable of bridging the gap between 2nd Circle divinities.
The Dimensional Lord, who knew the metal’s defensive power exceeded that of an Intermediate Main God, was astonished despite the absence of magical authority application.
Even an Intermediate Main God would not escape death if struck directly by that attack. She is only an Upper God, yet at this level… what would she have been capable of in her original Main God state? At minimum, an attack power that even a High Lord would struggle to withstand? Remarkable authority.
The massive golden hammer shrank back to her body size. She gazed at the powdered metal with an expression of deep affection.
Where else has there been metal that could withstand my authority to this extent? In the end, only after using even this did it reveal its true form.
This was the great authority that had made her a Main God. Yet because she had first manifested it alone in her forge, it was an authority no one else knew.
There had been no opportunity to display it again. More precisely, there had been no metal worthy of using it on.
The authority was simple.
Continue striking the metal fixed in midair until it is completely crushed.
She had given it a name herself.
“Infinite Alchemy.”
Amid the beautiful, shimmering haze of the pulverized metal—fine silver-gray powder mixed with radiant red particles—the ugly-faced goddess queen smiled in ecstasy, displaying the authority bearing the most glorious title of “Infinite.”