Forging Names Into Steel

The day after I had claimed Matchless Under Heaven and Strength to Uproot Mountains, I ate breakfast, took a bath, returned to my room, and sat quietly over a cup of tea, turning the matter over in my mind.

There was no longer any need to train my body, which meant my already leisurely hours had grown even more spacious.

It was a stroke of fortune that my coming-of-age ceremony and my entrance into the Academy were still four months away.

Well then... I didn't mind before, but now I suppose I ought to deal with the thing I've only just realized I need.

While I had thrown myself into physical training, I hadn't given it much thought, but now that it was over, I felt the absence of a proper weapon keenly.

Had I still possessed the Reinforcement I held before the Initialization, I could have fashioned a perfectly serviceable weapon from it. But I had already promised the Prime Minister I would stop producing such things, and besides — even if I had explained everything beforehand and poured the power of my words into Reinforcement, its hardness would have meant nothing against a force beyond mortal reckoning. It would have amounted to fighting bare-handed all the same.

Even a plain iron sword served the knights well enough, since they sheathed their weapons in Aura. In that respect, at least, my lack of talent for magic was a genuine curse.

Still... if I'm going to invest in something anyway, a weapon capable of changing form would be best.

Through Flawless, I could push the techniques of any number of weapons to their absolute limit.

The catch was that once Flawless initiated an action, it could not be used again until that action concluded. If swordplay was unavailable to me, I would have to shift to spearwork or hand-to-hand combat — so a weapon with a fixed shape would leave me badly inconvenienced at exactly the wrong moment.

It wasn't as though I could trudge around dangling dozens of spare weapons from my belt, either.

But then, a form-shifting weapon is hardly something human hands could craft in the first place.

In the end, I had no choice but to borrow the power of my words. I propped my chin on my hand and began scribbling onto a sheet of paper.

There was a hard limit to how many words I could hold, so after the Initialization, every empty slot had to be filled with painstaking care.

Especially if the word in question was permanent rather than single-use.

All right... then it has to be this.

After endless deliberation, I began writing down the words that surfaced in my head.

A weapon that changes its own form cannot, in theory, exist.

So wouldn't it be enough to simply summon whatever weapon suited the moment, whenever I needed it, fitted to whatever the situation demanded?

And so the words lining my paper arranged themselves naturally:

Creation.

Fabrication.

Refinement.

Of the three, anyone could see that Creation was the highest concept.

And yet I hesitated to claim it. Being the highest concept, it would inevitably come shackled with the harshest restrictions.

More than that, the fundamental meaning of Creation was to bring into being something that never existed before.

Granted, the word was rarely used in that strict sense — but if it were applied to the letter, I would be unable to summon anything that had already existed.

Reading the notification as it bloomed into view, I nodded — figures.

Something that had never existed before. But I carried the memories of a past life.

Through them, I could have "created" objects this world's civilization could never produce, so the restriction was only natural.

That's not the part that matters anyway.

My focus was on Refinement.

If I was going to wield a weapon at all, it obviously ought to be a good one, shouldn't it?

Say, for instance, a Divine Instrument.

Take the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons as a simple example: each entity within it possessed a unique ability drawn from its own recorded legends.

Then couldn't Refinement do the same for weapons — summoning the arms wielded by the great heroes and sages in my past-life memories, or the weapons said to have been granted by, or wielded by, the gods themselves?

One look told me that Refinement was the kind of word that sorted what it made into distinct categories, much like the Night Parade.

In other words, refining Item A today wouldn't lock me out of using Refinement for the rest of the day — only A itself would be off-limits, while B remained fair game. Or so I reasoned.

But that was purely my own speculation, so I decided to consult the System.

Relieved, I pressed further.

With the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons, I had been unable to inscribe the names of beings who held divinity. Part of that was simply that the parade's nature refused anything that wasn't a yokai or a monster — but beyond that, anything touching on the divine might have been barred outright.

Having absorbed every word of the System's counsel, I made my decision and attempted the combination. I dismissed the combination window — tired of seeing it a dozen times over — and spoke the word directly.

"Refinement."

At those words, I immediately shaped my remaining consonants and vowels into Armaments and Divine Instruments.

I had no idea what those last two lines meant, and I couldn't help tilting my head.

I'll need a more detailed explanation.

Then it was most likely thanks to the time, back when I was quite young, when I had slain monsters ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with my hundred demons in the Asis Duchy — and to my recent unbroken march of victories sparring against the knights.

Beyond that, there probably wasn't a soul alive who held any genuine awe for me.

Either way, an experiment was in order.

It costs only 130 Awe Points?

The Fangtian Huaji, in my past-life memories, was the weapon of the famous Three Kingdoms general Lu Bu.

A man who, in a mortal body, earned the epithet Peerless Under Heaven — his greatness requires no further explanation.

And yet the refinement cost for the weapon he carried was a mere 130?

Is that so?

Hearing the System out, I could see the logic.

Considered purely on its own merits, no distinguishing deeds of the Fangtian Huaji itself came to mind at all.

If anything, his beloved steed, Red Hare, had the greater share of legend.

So I dismissed the window, acknowledged the point, and paid out my Awe Points.

"Refinement."

Through Refinement, I called the Fangtian Huaji forth.

Flames kindled around my hand, hardened like cooling lava, and at last took shape as the halberd.

Beside the spearhead hung a crescent blade for cleaving through enemies, and beneath it a length of crimson cloth wound taut and true, fluttering in the air.

Objectively speaking, it was tremendously heavy — but my body had reached the realm of an Aura Master, and wielding it posed no difficulty whatsoever.

As for technique, Flawless would cover that, naturally.

The best part is that I can summon whatever weapon I want, whenever I want it.

Thinking that this was Refinement's ultimate advantage, I dismissed the Fangtian Huaji's refinement.

I considered my understanding of Armaments fully settled.

Which meant what mattered now was the refinement of Divine Instruments.

So I took a sip of tea, wet my throat, and listened to the System's notification.

I had always intended, after all, to found a religion and become its Pope.

And if that enterprise turned out to be not merely a pretext for destroying the Demonic Tree, but also a means of magnifying my own power, so much the better.

It was something I should have rejoiced at — but the way everything fit together too neatly left me a little uneasy.

I nodded along to the System's words and posed one small additional question.

My current Faith Points stand at zero, correct?

I had done nothing along those lines, so it stood to reason.

In any case, although I had added the Divine Instruments category, I had no Faith Points to speak of, so there seemed little need to rush into inscribing any names.

Armaments, apparently, were the pursuit I could actually make progress on right now.

Seven thousand?

I frowned.

That's absurd, isn't it?

Scouring my past-life memories, there were countless anecdotes about King Arthur wielding Excalibur — but nothing exceptional in the legendary record attached to Excalibur alone.

Setting aside how wildly various media had inflated and distorted it.

So seeing it demand roughly sixty-five times the Awe Points of the Fangtian Huaji simply defied comprehension.

...Ah. So it comes bundled with the sword when I manifest it?

What a... comfortably middle-of-the-road ability.

Nice to have, but perfectly fine without.

Still, thanks to its legend as a holy blade, it would no doubt prove exceptional whenever I needed to carve through demons.

Frankly, what caught my eye was not Excalibur itself, but the healing its scabbard would grant.

When I had performed the Initialization, I had kept Healing but discarded Treatment, Stamina Recovery, and Fatigue Recovery.

If Excalibur could fill that empty space, then spending 7,000 Awe Points didn't strike me as a bad bargain at all.

Even if I haven't inscribed a Divine Instrument's name yet, you can still tell me what abilities it would grant, right?

Unable to contain my curiosity, I kept asking.

What came to mind was the Wish-Granting Staff — the Ruyi Jingu Bang — and the Somersault Cloud, both famously wielded by the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.

Granted, part of their fame came from Sun Wukong having used them — but the staff and the cloud each carried a rather impressive legendary record even considered apart from their master.

Is there a limit to its length?

Divine Instruments were single-use.

But if its area and length knew no bounds, then — quite literally — I could swell it large enough to blanket the sky and crush my enemies beneath it.

And with no limit to its length, might I not even manage a decent sniping shot from some impossibly distant vantage point?

At that, my face fell.

Because in my past-life memories, the Somersault Cloud could cross one hundred and eight thousand li in a single second.

To put it in terms anyone could grasp: it could circle my past life's Earth and still carry on for another two thousand four hundred kilometers or so.

Since light circles the Earth seven times per second, the cloud moved at exactly one-seventh the speed of light.

Even if I could have refined it, I doubt my body could have survived it.

For one's instantaneous velocity to change that violently, my body might well have burst apart.

Mine was, after all, a flesh that had reached the very limit of what humanity could attain — not something that overrode every law of common sense.

It was a shame, but what could I do about a thing that was simply beyond refinement in the first place?

For now, I shelved all thought of Divine Instruments.

After founding my religion, there would be time enough to fret over them.

Say — could you tell me about Gan Jiang and Mo Ye as well?

Gan Jiang and Mo Ye were famed as the husband-and-wife swords.

Wouldn't they make an even finer gift for Lapis than the wedding dress I meant to give her someday?

That's not very romantic, is it?

...

Hearing the System out, I let out a long sigh.

A weapon whose power manifested at the cost of its wielder's own life — for a pair of husband-and-wife swords, the legend was far less romantic than I'd expected, and so I decided against refining them.

Discomfiting as it was, their unique ability was genuinely formidable, which meant the Awe Points they would demand would be steep indeed.

You couldn't just lower the required Awe Points a little, could you?

......

I had no retort to offer, so I quietly closed the notification window.