endless path, infinite cosmos

chapter 176

Vahn had to spend nearly half an hour after releasing Fafnir explaining all of the details about its capabilities to Eva. She seemed to suddenly become very interested in his naming magic as well as any other skills he had yet to reveal to her. When she found out that Fafnir had 'magic immunity', she even tried testing a small scale magic that wouldn't damage it to see if it was as Vahn had claimed.

The ice that would have built up normally when she used her domain seemed to turn into steam in an area surrounding Fafnir. It was almost like there was an invisible sphere surrounding its body that encompassed the maximum spread of its wings. This meant that, for an area of 10m around its body, it completely broke down the structure of foreign magical elements. Eva realized that, unless she used her ultimate magic or physical prowess, there would be no easy way to deal with Fafnir. It wasn't an exaggeration to say the black dragon was the nemesis of all mages.

When she learned that it was capable of using magic but hadn't learned any, Eva became even more curious of the 'evil' looking dragon. She actually found its appearance quite cute and convinced Vahn to allow it to stay with her for the time being. Though he was a bit surprised by the request, after a bit of consideration, Vahn decided to allow Fafnir to stay in the orb. He gave it a mental command and told it to follow Eva's orders and be nice to her. He also told it that, if it could, try to learn magic from her in the future.

Fafnir stood before the two of them for a few seconds before it leaned down and tried nuzzling its snout toward Eva. She immediately became enthusiastic as she pet the hard and somewhat jagged scales of the malevolent-looking dragon. Vahn was also happy since now Eva wouldn't be alone in the space when he was in the real world. Though he was somewhat worried about Fafnir dissipating from a lack of energy, Vahn would be able to replenish it when he next visited. As long as it didn't use its mana in excess, it shouldn't be too difficult for it to last for the four years it took him to return.

As Eva flew around in the sky on the back of Fafnir at around 3700km/h, Vahn returned to his workshop and began forging what would be his weapon for the time being. Though he didn't rely on equipment nearly as much as in the past, Vahn didn't want to take chances and end up in a situation where he needed a weapon and didn't have one on hand. Because he assumed that the make and design of the weapon would matter when he named it later, Vahn had studied a bit about suitable legends that he could use.

Since he had grown somewhat fond of the mythos related to the northwestern gods, especially after naming Fafnir and [Gram], Vahn decided to keep to the theme and was now forging a weapon that would be capable of withstanding his vermillion-bird transformation. The sword he was forging was based on a legendary weapon that was wreathed in flames that could even burn through the foundation of the world. It was called Lvateinn, and Vahn was excited at the prospect of having a flaming sword to swing around and cut through his enemies.

Vahn spent nearly twelve hours just shaping the core of the sword and had used pure Orichalcum as the base. He then painstakingly carved hundreds of small runes into the core with the intent of gathering fire-elements from the air and reinforcing the structural integrity of the future blade. Though he believed that naming it with the [Keeper of the Akashic Tome] would fill in some of the gaps, Vahn wasn't going to cut corners since each use of the Innate ability had a certain significance to it.

After forming the core, Vahn took the pure white Adamantine that had been soaking in the blood essence of a red drake that could only be found rarely in the Iron Hills. This caused the pue white metal to take on a crimson red hue as absorbed the energy within the blood. By the end of the process, the blood had turned almost clear as water and Vahn used to the final product to shape around the core a form a large claymore-like structure. Since Vahn would only need the weapon if he was fighting something large or above his strength, he wanted the sword to be large and powerful enough to cut down anything.