Soon, she brought over her personal blade.
Noah gently ran his hand over the long sword and Appraised it.
[Long Sword]
・Creator: Kezal (deceased)
・Holder: Taeko
・A sword custom-made for Taeko by a famous blacksmith
・Its balance, weight, length, and other aspects were adjusted to suit her usage habits
・Material: Wootz steel
・Slightly worn
・Poisoned: Oarburgh's original formula, 95%
・The blade is coated with a toxin that relaxes muscles
'Mm. A fairly ordinary sword.'
The materials were decent enough, no wonder the steel showed such a lovely grain under the light.
"Taeko, come here for a moment. Stand beside me."
"..."
The girl's surprise was written plainly across her face. She pressed a hand over her mouth, keeping any sound in, and then edged toward him one small step at a time.
Once she came closer, Noah directly reached out and grabbed her wrist.
"Kyah—!"
'...? What was that about?'
Noah blinked, thrown for a second, though he didn't forget the task at hand.
[Taeko]
・Human, female
・Age: 16
・Swordswoman
・Possesses high talent in swordsmanship
・Sword techniques: Kōfū, Flower Wind: Close-Range Slash, Dragon
・Compared to her speed, this individual lacks strength. When facing opponents who surpass her in both strength and speed, she is easily suppressed and has no effective countermeasure
Noah thought for a moment.
Just as he'd figured, Taeko was a speed-type swordswoman, her attack power rising or falling with how sharp her edge was.
Speed like hers meant she could slip away from a threat, so reinforcing her defense wasn't the priority, throwing armor on her recklessly would only drag down her one real advantage and slow her down.
As for increasing her strength.. clearly wasn't going to happen overnight.
The arm strength a sword swing demanded had to be trained up over time, which meant the real answer was, once again, the weapon. Keep it light, and push its striking power higher at the same time.
Noah closed his eyes and searched through what he knew for any special cases.
All at once, a streak of vivid crimson light arced through his mind.
A beautiful blade with the strange power to "tear a wound wide open," a concept-manipulation ability.
Right.
Ayatsuji Ayase's Device from the Blazer world.
Scarlet Claw.
Any wound caused by Scarlet Claw's blade could be expanded by activating its ability.
Because of that ability, even though Kurogane Ikki was far stronger than Ayatsuji Ayase, he had still been forced into a difficult battle.
After thinking it over briefly, Noah realized that this ability suited Taeko extremely well.
She was a speed-specialized swordswoman and had a special move like Tornado, which explosively increased her speed for a short time.
If paired with Scarlet Claw's ability, her original lack of attack power would be perfectly covered.
As long as she could make even the smallest wound, Scarlet Claw could tear it open and turn it into a serious injury.
Ayatsuji Ayase herself had once warned others not to let her blade graze a vital point, because even a scratch could become fatal.
Although it was not a one-hit kill like Murasame, it was more than enough as a way to make up for Taeko's weakness.
It was only one sword, but it could increase Taeko's strength to nearly three times what it had been.
Considering there might be situations soon where he needed her help, things would be difficult if she was not strong enough.
"Tomorrow, we'll take the sword and go out."
"Y-yes..."
After having her wrist held for so long, Taeko was almost about to shut down.
The moment Noah spoke, she nodded her agreement at once.
...
The next day.
With the Black Nightmare overhead, moving through the Capital was like having a full-map navigator switched on; finding a smithy couldn't have been easier.
The Science Division had had a workbench of its own before, a shame it had collapsed.
Having the Minister arrange something would've been more convenient still, but there was no reason to bother the man over a trifle this small.
There was no shortage of smithies nearby anyway. The closest was only a six-minute walk.
With his "navigation" guiding him, Noah found an unremarkable little smithy, tossed the owner a few dozen gold coins, and rented the whole place out.
Taking it all in, for a moment Noah felt as though he'd stepped back into a smithy in Orario.
True, all he had to do was dismiss the projection and he'd be home again, and only a single night had passed back there.
But for him, seven or eight years had already gone by, more than enough to leave a person aching with homesickness.
Noah stripped off the katana's hilt and guard and drew out the bare blade.
Setting it on the anvil, he first mended the damage along the edge.
Taeko had carried this sword a long time, and the feel of it in her hand was irreplaceable, the Wootz steel was good material, not the finest, but well-suited, so what this blade needed wasn't a reforging.
Reinforcing the material in a case like this would normally be flat-out impossible.
But Noah was another matter.
He placed his hand on the blade and activated his Development Ability, Enhancement.
Several flashes of light passed over the blade, and it was successfully amplified four times.
Its basic strength increased by forty percent, making it no worse than a Shingu.
In fact, it might even be better.
After finishing the repair, Noah suddenly felt a stream of information flow into his mind.
A portion of Taeko's swordsmanship experience had been understood by him.
This was Truthseeker's effect being triggered.
Now that the blade had been repaired and amplified, the next step was to give it a formula capable of "tearing open wounds."
...
The ability did not make the blade sharper, nor did it make the weapon heavier so its attacks would hit harder.
Instead, it enlarged the wound itself.
The result was simple. The damage the enemy received became much worse.
A conceptual interference ability like that was still difficult to recreate with Weaver alone.
At the very least, Noah would need to make a breakthrough in his current formula-weaving technique first.
Ayatsuji could use an unreasonable Noble Art like Gale Claw Marks as easily as breathing because "expanding wounds" was her own ability.
That was the terrifying part of conceptual interference. It could ignore the entire process and directly produce the final phenomenon.
Noah found that rather unfortunate, but the truth was that he could not do the same thing.
If it were within Spellweaver's own operating range, then fine.
But giving that ability to a weapon was impossible for him right now. At least, it was not something he could currently do.
Fortunately, what he was after wasn't granting the concept-interference power itself.
He only needed the weapon to produce a similar effect. The gap between those two things could only be called a world of difference.
"Then it's time to use this."
As Noah spoke, he took out a cloth bag and slowly unwrapped it layer by layer, revealing the dead blade inside.
It was a shattered blade, broken into many pieces.
Before it became like this, it had once been the sword of a girl named Akame.
That's right.
These were the remains of the Shingu, Kiriichimonji.
It carried a curse that prevented any wound it caused from healing.
Although it was not as terrifying as Murasame's instant-death curse, it was still a genuine Demon Sword.
Noah planned to transfer Kiriichimonji's ability into Taeko's sword.
It was the same method he had used to transfer the violent flames from the Amphisbaena's dragon liver back then.
For Noah, this kind of operation had long since become familiar.
All he had to do was use Truthseeker to analyze it deeply, extract the necessary "elements," and then transfer them.
So far, all the new materials he had "developed" had been created through operations like this.
Many of the weapons produced by the smithing spirits of the Hephaestus Familia had traits that could not be explained or understood under normal circumstances.
That was because Noah had always been using these "unknown materials" with unique qualities.
After the transfer was complete, the original Kiriichimonji seemed to lose its soul.
Even the final shine on the blade fragments faded away.
In the end, they had become nothing more than ordinary pieces of iron.
Now came the real work.
He had to grant a formula to the blade.
His personal armament, Annihilator, had been given six formulas: Phase Observation, Sure-Hit Arrow, Gale Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Converging Strike, and Cluster Strike.
He had named that system the "Empowerment Protocol."
By linking multiple formulas together and combining them with the weapon's own performance, the weapon could achieve all kinds of functions.
That said, even though six different formulas were engraved into it, all of those formulas had been copied from others.
Noah had simply analyzed their magic and then used Spellweaver to engrave the magic circles.
But within the range of magic he knew, there was nothing like "expanding wounds."