“Deek, I must warn you. I’m not sure what will happen. This sword was forged in my dungeon, and it is ultimately touched with Miasma. I had once thought my daughter was free of miasma, but it slowly cursed her. As for your Alysia, the same may be true in the end.”
“We can only do our best.”
I was confident in my ability to remove that infection. Even if a bit of miasma ended up left inside her and it started to invade her soul, I’d be able to purify it again and again. Once I reconnected with Miki, she’d likely be able to help. I was sure Elaya and Astria could figure out something as well. Either way, I had a lot of resources to pull from, so even if things went bad, I was confident that we could figure it out.
“Alright, then let’s begin.” He turned to Alysia. “If you will…”
I wasn’t sure what he meant as he held his hand out, but the little girl got off of Alysia, and then she flashed, turning back into a blade. That blade flew toward the blacksmith who caught it in his hand. He now had two swords, one in each hand. One of them was a real blade forged by metal, the other was a soul blade formed by Alysia’s soul. Once they were combined, it would create a magic sword unlike anything ever seen.
Some magic weapons in this world were powered by a soul, but it was usually the soul of a monster. The most common blades include the souls of wolves, while one might even be lucky to find a dragon blade. This sword was going to contain the soul of a human. To some, this kind of action might be seen as evil, but I didn’t know much about such things. All I knew is that I needed the power to defeat my enemies and that Alysia wanted to try this path, which would keep this dungeon from wasting away.
“This is the part that will hurt.” He explained.
I reached out and grabbed the table, my hand squeezing it as I readied myself. Yes, I still planned to accept the pain on my own. He shoved the two blades into the fire. At this point, they were being merged at a spiritual and physical level. This wouldn’t be possible to do in a real forge without a great deal of magic and preparation. However, because this was a dungeon, he was able to do something unique.
I clenched my teeth as the searing feeling shot through me. The blacksmith looked down at Alysia, a slightly confused expression on his face. He then looked at me, the pained expression on my face and the red cheeks, and he nodded to himself.
“Deek… I can handle it.” Alysia spoke up through our reestablished Slave Communication.
“Please… don’t do this all by yourself.”
The pain was growing worse. The little girl who was sitting by herself watching us work looked at me and finally realized just what had happened. She gasped.
“H-he’s…” She pointed at me accusingly.
“Had I known… I would have done the same.” Her father said calmly.
“O-oh…” She blushed, looking down at her hands awkwardly.
“This…” The blacksmith suddenly grew alert as Alysia’s blade started to shift. He grabbed the handle, but it started to struggled.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Deek! I won’t let you experience all of the pain on your own!”
“If she keeps this up, the sword will fail.”
“It’s okay… I’m doing…” I wasn’t able to finish that sentence as the pain became too much.
“Deek… we’re in this together, remember? We need to do this… together.”
I looked up at the sword glowing red in the forge, and I shakily nodded. “Okay… I think I can… select how much…”
I decided to stop talking and just do it. I begin to send some of the pain her way, lightening the load on myself. It felt relieving as I gave her some.
“Th-this…” her voice came through shakily. “You’ve been… holding back.”
“That was… only 10%…”
“I began to share more and more with her as the pain increased. However, when I reached 50%, the amount of pain was still increasing. The burning and searing grew more and more, but I refused to give her more than 50%.”