Danmachi- Hell’s Forge

Cursed tools

After that things were pretty much back to normal though there was a slight problem in that Hestia had to report my level up to the guild. It was one of the laws that familias had to abide by and Hestia was a pretty law abiding goddess and as a result I got put on blast as the record holder for the fastest level up. Funnily enough I had actually taken the record from Ais who had leveled up in about six months. Loki was not happy at all about it according to Hestia who gloated about it.

I can't say I was a fan of my adventurer nickname though as it was [Black mark]. To explain how nicknames came about you needed to understand that every six months the gods got together in an event called the Denatus. During this event they discuss recent issues and otherwise socialize with each other before deciding on the aliases of any new level two adventurers or any higher leveled ones than that that need new better aliases. Unfortunately the gods had this sort of hazing tradition where they always choose an embarrassing or childish name for new level twos.-

As a clearly talented up and coming adventurer the gods took one look at my info and decided to get mean about it. What I ended up with wasn't the worst alias but was super fucking shallow as they basically called me tattoos and called it a day. 

'What am I missing?' I pondered with a frown as I looked at my latest failed cursed tool.

Over the last three days I had been spending most of my time adapting to my new sight and trying to make a cursed tool successfully. The first of those was going fairly well as I was slowly learning how to sort of zoom out if you would so I can see normally.

'Time to start again.' I thought as I picked up the bone bracelet that had grown teeth and was trying to bite me.

I used my cursed technique on it and after screaming for a bit it turned back into normal bone shaped into a bracelet. This time I carefully coated the thing in cursed energy and began to try and infuse the energy into it. This was the first step of the process but it was what came afterwards that was where I always made some sort of mistake.-

Infusing cursed energy into an object came second nature to me which made sense as that was how I used my technique to begin with. It was only when i tried to add properties to the energy that things went sideways. At that point whatever I was working on seemed to turn into a sort of cursed spirit that was feral and attacked indiscriminately. The frustrating part was that some of them even had clear innate techniques but were useless to me due to their aggression.-

I can't even begin to say how many of these things I had to kill at this point or even the looks of horror Hestia gave me whenever I made one. These cursed things weren't alive but rather seemed a twisted mockery of it according to her and disagreed with her on a fundamental level. Until I figured out how to create normal cursed tools however there was nothing I can do about that. This time for example I was focusing on infusing the energy with the property of [polished] to try and make it more appealing without any danger.-

As the energy changed I thought that I had finally succeeded only for the bracelet to sprout an eye with three pupils that stared right at me. With a sigh I restarted and reset the bracelet back to normal.

'Hmmm, what if I try and put a restriction on it first?' I wondered slightly conflicted.

This was counter intuitive as you would think that you would need a technique first before you slapped some sort of restriction onto it. That was how it was usually done anyways as a curse user like me would apply a restriction to ourselves to buff some aspect in exchange for something else but usually only after having a technique to begin with.-

Using this knowledge I was trying to add effects to my pieces without the restrictions that I was going to add later to improve their quality. Still once I had the idea of doing the opposite it latched onto my mind like a maggot on food and dug in. I repeated the process of infusing cursed energy into the bracelet but rather than adding a technique I focused on adding a restriction in the form of "this object will never become alive." just as a test.-

"HAHAHAHAHA!" I cracked a wide smile and broke into laughter as the bracelet rattled for a moment before finally settling as cursed energy wreathed it quietly despite me not adding anymore.

I had found the trick after three whole days of experimenting based on normal logic. I couldn't help but be amused at how screwy it was to actually create a cursed tool. The steps were all so wrong and out of the box that it would take ages for someone rigid in their thoughts to figure it out without teaching. I was almost willing to bet if I wasn't willing to try the bullshit I thought of on the fly at this point i also would have taken way longer to figure it out.-

Now that I did figure it out though I tested if I could even add a technique to the item at this point and lo and behold I could. The bracelet shone as though instead of bone it was pearl when I added the [polished] property to it. Encouraged by this I tried to add another property as well [durability]. At first it appeared to work but soon the bracelets energy began to grow unstable and before I knew it the thing blew up sending shards of bone everywhere.-

I frowned at this as it was clear just looking at it that this wasn't a matter of the two properties clashing or even being too much for the material to handle. 

'Perhaps it is because I tried to add them one at a time instead of all at once?' I thought and grabbed another bone bracelet that I had made to practice on.

First I placed the same restriction as i had the previous one and then this time I split my focus to add both the properties at the same time this time which was slightly difficult. The bracelet rattled violently as the properties engraved themselves in the energy and I watched carefully at all the changes and as I expected the energy stabilized and I was left with a cursed tool that had both the [durability] and [polished] properties. Granted these properties were amongst the most basic ones possible even for a normal blacksmith but I still finally figured out how to make cursed tools which was worth celebrating.