Week End

"What the hell are these?" Nadaho asked.

"Where did they come from?"

"This one was just down there. Oh, we gotta go! I think I hear others."

Dives lifted Arnold and stuck the rest of the artifacts into his bag while Nadaho helped carry Zeeth. But his weight and Nadahos weak arms didn't pair well and they both fell, forcing Dives to carry them both and run out of the place.

'Why hasn't Afir come yet? Was there not enough mana depleted? Probably. Then what was going to help me?'

"Oh, I almost forgot!" Dives reached into his spatial bag and pulled out a small wooden box. It glowed slightly and opened up. Inside it was a strange metal pipe with clamps and magic circles carved into the inside. "Put this over your foot, it can act as a temporary magic replacement. Channeling mana into it can change its shape, be careful with it, it wasn't cheap."

"Thank you, Dives." the metal pipe opened around his missing foot and clamped down just firm enough to stay and not hurt while he pumped mana into specific parts of the leg to replicate a foot, shiny metal in place of his real leg. 'That was kinda anticlimactic, I thought some supernatural being was going to save me.'

Divers jumped into one of the portal rooms and teleported away, appearing in the city once again. Zeeth awkwardly ran back to the weapons shop with the rest and collapsed into his workspace while Nadaho and Dives tried to check up on Arnold and the artifacts. Eddie burst in as well and Nadaho yelled, "Eddie, where were you?"

"Behind! Soldiers took me but I broke away! I am here now! Safe!" Eddie tossed his hands up in the air like a cheerleader.

'Black, do you have a way to fix this?' Zeeth asked.

'No, I don't. At least not on robotic legs. The best thing you could do now would be to use that metal leg for now.'

'Damn! I need to get stronger. No, just better, at using magic and using my body. I need to be more efficient with what I do and do the best possible.'

'You're first going to have to get used to your new foot then.'

'No. not get used to this one. I will make another foot for myself. Using everything about circles that I know and the tools that I have, I will create a better foot. I need to give back the metal pipe anyways.'

'Create a metal foot? Like what your insides are made of?'

'No. an even better one, where I can feel and move it like normal, except it will be stronger and have more functions.;

'Boy, most people, no, all people in this world are made of flesh and bones. There is no one else with this kind of knowledge or expertise, anyone who can get a healer to bring their foot back, anyone who can't do that also doesn't have the resources to create an artificial foot, no research has been put into this, how will you create a new foot?'

'I will. I already have an outline in mind and that is all I need to get started. I don't need previous research, I will create this all by myself.'

'Good luck, I hope, for the both of us, that you succeed.'

'By the way, for someone called the Dark Lord, you are surprisingly agreeable. You help me out a lot more than I thought.' Zeeth said while writing everything he had just gone through in his journal, trying to fill it up with as many details as he could so he could fill in all the pages, how the bombs blew up, what the circles looked like, and even other people's dialogue or reactions.

'After many years of living, I have found that being disagreeable holds no benefit for me, a parasite who needs to live off others to live. I tossed my violent and overbearing personality a while back when my host died while she was distracted with me. One of my favorite hosts too. Didn't complain, I simply fought with her too much because she seemed too naive and was getting on my nerves, but that ended in a 15-month slumber where no one found me trapped in the stomach of a hordrite.'

'What's a hordrite?'

'A race of dry, grey creatures. After killing it, all its blood will dry out and bones can be collected. The skin can be worn to hide among them. Incredibly cautious lives in a large pack and hard to hunt.'

Immediately after filling out as much as he could in the book, taking seconds with water and ink magic, he got to create a foot for himself. Using the shell of a Blood Crocodile and discarded pieces of junk, he carved a circle to allow magic to move parts of the skin. He hammered a metal chunk into a long pole, attached a bulbous piece of metal to it, and tried to move it up and down like a toe. Using magic and metal, he recreated a foot and moving toes but was unable to get the circles to move them properly. The toes would always move up and down and then spin in circles until they popped off.

"Where am I messing up?" but he realized, he knew nothing of a foot's anatomy. Before anything, he needed to know how one worked before trying to recreate one, and even add circles for it to function. He asked Dives for a book on foot anatomy and details on each and every part.

"What do you need that book for? Just knowing about a foot's bones and muscles won't help bring it back. I don't even think you have a normal foot, which I still find very fascinating and disturbing at the same time, what the hell is that, how does it work, and I have so many questions." he said all at once.

"I just need the book, I promise to give you back your metal leg soon. I only have a few days left here before I go back so I need to dedicate all my remaining time on this, please just get me this information."

"Yeah, it'll be easy, just give me a second." Dives opened his screen and scrolled through a few things, finally wrote something on paper, and pulled out a large rectangular box with a small door on one side from a spatial bag. He opened it, dropped the paper into the bag, and a second later, a red button on top became green. He reached in and pulled out a book that read, "All About Feet, A Beginner To Experts Guide on Everything About Feet Anatomy."

"Is this good enough?"

"Yeah, it looks like it. Why did you just have one lying around? And what was all that?"

"I didn't have one lying around. I searched the market for one, designated it for spatial purchase, and bought it from the store via this nifty tool." he held the rectangular box, which looked a lot like a small house. "This is a long-distance Purchase Room, I send money through and the store that has what I wanted and will buy it will send that to me. Of course, it will only work for small things and those who can send long-distance messages, but it's super useful."

"Thanks, Dives, I'll pay you back later!" Zeeth yelled, taking the book and running back into the room. "Now, to understand the foot."

He worked with the book sprawled in front of him, trying to recreate each bone and understanding each muscle in the foot. "There are a ton more bones than I thought there were, what the heck. And how do these muscles work? How am I going to replicate it without understanding how to attach them?"

Thankfully, the book was very instructive and it took him a few hours but he recreated each part of the foot with the materials he had from his tomb. The only issue was, how were they all going to combine and work together?

He studied anything he could, the circles on the morphing metal pipe were first. How was it made to allow the metal to shift simply using mana? How did the mind control where it went? He learned a lot about moving circles using a combination of the Dwarves' knowledge and God's eye, but even that wasn't enough. The Dwarves' knowledge was extensive and incredibly helpful, but not enough of it was intricate or specific enough for his needs. They were a great base to start off from, but a lot of it was the basics of blacksmithing and circle creation. The harder stuff focused more on attacks and weapons, not moving delicate pieces of a larger work.

"Well," Zeeth said, "the next best thing I could do is to study the circles on the table."

'You know,' Black said, 'I've never had such a hardworking host. While I have had quite a variety, none have gone for nearly two full days working on a single thing, and that thing is a magic metal foot that is hardly done. I admire your will, but this is so damn boring.'

'Just go to sleep or purify me or something, I need to concentrate. How do I view the circles on this table without breaking it?'

'Have you forgotten something? I am an eye, my sole function is to see and perceive this world through ways you couldn't possibly see, if I try, I can possibly see the circles.'

'Why haven't you mentioned this before? I had the table try to outline the circles for me.'

'I've tried before and failed. The defenses on this table are incredible, there are circles protecting the protection on the inner circles, you wouldn't believe the details. I didn't want to tell you I could do it and then not do it. But with the help from the table by outlining what you wanted to see, I know where to focus all my strength and have finally broken through. Take a took.'

Black shared his vision abilities with Zeeth and showed something he could never even imagine. Circles upon circles were drawn into the table, covering it like a demonic altar. There were large circles composed of smaller ones, some that made up other shapes like hexagons or triangles that worked in perfect harmony to provide the table the ability to think, absorb, move, detect, and react, allowing it to create its own sentients of sorts. A simple one to allow it to follow its owner and still act individually, but still overwhelmingly incredible. There were parts he couldn't possibly understand, but other circles that seemed so simple yet so ingenious, so elegant in its form but so perfect in its function. Something he could've made with ease but never have come up with by himself.

"This-this is amazing. Just how much did- could Afir do? And Faber, what kind of genius was that? Wait, another of Faber's works." the blue shield. The "incomplete" shield that already surpassed anything he made, what could possibly be missing? But that wasn't the important part, it was to find out if there was anything else to learn from it. The blue shield had all its circles on display but Black made them easier to see and analyze.

He immersed himself in the work, creating new combinations of circles he never imagined before with the help of the table and Black.

He wrote in his journal, "I am creating a metal foot to replace my currently missing one. It has been one of the most exciting and fun projects I have done in a while. Working on the swords has gotten a little boring and having something so much harder to work on is a blessing. I think I will add a function to grow a small sword from the bottom. One of the biggest issues I had was using a drill to make small enough circles. I messed up many scraps trying to be careful with it but I think I can feel myself getting better. I need to find a better way to create small circles.

Today I have found a new way to carve smaller circles. I didn't realize the strings on the table are so strong. They are thin like hair but are white and shine in the light like silver. I'm not too sure, but I think there might even be minuscule circles carved into the threads. What kind of master of a beast made this? I will use the table for small, hard circles but I will still try to make it myself. Having my slimes taken away, I now realize that I can't trust anything to stay with me more than my own skills."

Using the thin strings on the table, he was able to carve smaller circles than he had ever done before, something very useful when working on such a small project that required so many circles. A day later, he finally popped out of his workstation. He had bags under his eyes and stunk like sweat, but he wasn't tired at all. It seems his slimes were still getting enough rest for him to stay awake as well but his body was taking a toll from staying up several days and working on something so detailed and energy-consuming. But he had done it. He finally had a foot that could move like a normal one using magic. A true breakthrough. There was just one issue, it didn't attach and work perfectly as a normal one.

While it moved like a normal foot, he couldn't connect his nerves to metal and control it through normal means, he simply had to connect it using metal and pumped mana into the right circles at the right places or time. It took a while to get used to it, but the extra functions that he fully understood were more useful to him than a robotic leg he couldn't use fully.

Meres appeared in his little room, knocking, "Hey, your week is up. We'd better leave soon."

"Meres! Look at my foot!" Zeeth yelled. The top shone and glistened so he wrapped a piece of alligator skin around the entire thing, adding spikes and grip to it.

"That's great. Now let's go, I don't like the feeling I get from this place. Dives, do you have my commission ready?"

Dives, standing behind him, glared but simply shook his head, "I tried to find some materials at the black market but there was an incident. By the way, where will you be going? If it's somewhere remote, maybe you could take Nadaho and Eddie with you."

"I thought you were taking care of them," Zeeth said.

"I was, but there is a much larger investigation being done on the whole thing than I predicted. If they find me harboring him, I will become the enemy of both sides, for hiding a black market raider and a thief, they think he stole the artifacts so it would be better for him to leave for now."