1.
Equipment made for Ruby.
Shoes... I decided they weren’t something I needed to worry about right now.
Why? Ruby was still shooting up in height. Her feet wouldn’t stay the same size either.
Of course, I could make shoes that grew along with her... but their fit might end up being awkward.
There was no reason to insist on shoes while accounting for all that.
In the end, I concluded that I should make a secondary weapon and an insignia.
"..."
If there was one thing I’d learned while crafting equipment, it was that secondary weapons and insignias had an incredible degree of freedom in both form and design.
Dolores’s [Primal Flower Garden] was an insignia.
Yeomhwa’s [Fiancée] was a secondary weapon in the form of a rose magazine.
Just looking at those two showed how different they could be... honestly, it was difficult to tell which was a secondary weapon and which was an insignia just from their appearance.
An insignia was essentially a badge, but if you really wanted to push it, you could call [Fiancée] a badge too and pin it to your chest.
The closest thing to a standard was that a secondary weapon tended to support the operation of one’s primary weapon.
Which meant that if it supported the functions of Ruby’s Ruyi Jingu Bang... no, [Totality: Ascension], it would be closer to a secondary weapon.
"But this isn’t support equipment, is it?"
Yeah. It was a little different.
Riding something around would help her swing her staff, but...
It would essentially give her an entirely separate ability, so it seemed better to make it as an insignia.
Of weapon, armor, and insignia, the insignia.
Come to think of it, I had never personally set up more than one piece of someone’s weapon-armor-insignia set.
This time, I also had to account for the primary weapon I had made for her...
Drawing out harmony between the two pieces of equipment seemed like it would be important.
Clang.
I lightly tapped the Azure Cloudstone with Dunbringer.
Flutter.
As expected, a gust of wind flowed out from the impact and flipped my bangs right up.
What should I combine with the Azure Cloudstone, the base material?
"Let’s set things up."
Late that evening, I went into the storage room and began picking through materials...
After some time had passed, though...
The answer had more or less been decided this time.
"Spirit stones."
Ruby was a spirit wielder—someone who handled spirits, not threads.
There was no way I could leave spirit stones out as a material.
I did have some spirit stones left, but...
The problem was that they were upper-grade and mid-grade ones.
They were three-star and two-star materials respectively, so they felt a little lacking now. They had once been precious materials that I couldn’t use because I had none to spare, but still.
The Azure Cloudstone was five-star... so I needed to match its grade.
Besides, Ruby had supposedly become friends with spirit generals.
Just what grade of spirit stone would a spirit general give her?
When I looked up, sunlight was streaming through the storage room window.
Perfect timing...
I went to find Ruby right away.
"Ruby."
"...Yeah."
Ruby, who was sitting at the dining table tearing into a venison sandwich, waved a hand at me.
What was with her eyes? She looked a little hollow.
Well... that could happen.
I sat across from Ruby and got to the point.
"Do you have any spirit stones?"
"If you need them, I do."
"...I need them."
The very statement, If you need them, I do, was incredibly unfamiliar to me, but I nodded for now.
Ruby stuffed the rest of the bread in her hand into her mouth, then stood up.
"Follow me."
Oh.
Was it going to be this easy again?
I followed Ruby out into the garden.
On the lawn under the morning sun, Ruby looked up into empty space.
"Could you come out for a moment?"
Whoooom...
A powerful gust suddenly blew in one direction.
I had brought [Totality: Vision] because I knew this would happen.
Once I put on the goggles, two enormous figures were standing at Ruby’s sides.
A spirit clad in blue armor, and a spirit clad in red armor.
...They looked incredibly cool.
"Could you give me a little bit of spirit stone?"
Ruby held out her palm toward the two generals.
"Please."
The two enormous generals suddenly looked at me.
I immediately bowed my head.
Yeah, I was a little intimidated.
After watching me for a moment, the generals brought their hands to their armor.
The blue general pressed a hand to its chest, while the red general hooked its fingers over the edge of its shoulder guard...
Tap, crackle.
As though picking crumbs off their armor, they each plucked something free.
The fragments they removed gradually rounded out, then hardened into fist-sized stones.
The two generals bent down and placed one stone each on Ruby’s palm.
"Thank you."
When Ruby thanked them with a smile, both generals lightly nodded.
Then they naturally moved back, stood tall, and resumed guarding Ruby’s sides.
...She really was like a princess.
"Here."
"Uh, thanks..."
Two stones passed into my hands.
They had not looked particularly different from a distance, but...
Once I held them, I realized I was completely wrong.
"Wow."
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[General Spirit Stone: Wind] [★★★★✦]
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『A crystallization of power given by the wind spirit general to one it holds dear.』
『Commands scattered air currents into a single flow.』
─────────────────
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[General Spirit Stone: Sunlight] [★★★★✦]
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『A crystallization of power given by the sunlight spirit general to one it holds dear.』
『Gathers scattered light and directs it in a single direction.』
─────────────────
Four-and-a-half-star spirit stones...
Have you ever held an exercise device called a gyroball?
When you spin it up to the limit and grip it tight, it pulls your wrist in every direction, feeling like it might fly away at any moment if you loosen your grip.
That was exactly what these spirit stones felt like right now.
The wind inside spun like mad... making even my hand tremble.
And the sunlight?
Just holding it made my palm hot, as if I were standing beneath the blazing sun.
They were different.
They were clearly four-and-a-half-star in grade... but the value I felt from them did not seem as though it would be overshadowed even if I put them beside the countless materials I had assessed so far.
Just like how the five-star equipment circulating on the market and Lionel’s four-and-a-half-star equipment were on completely different levels.
These materials were simply born different.
And if I used them with the Azure Cloudstone...
"...Ruby."
"Yeah."
"Thank you for giving me materials like these."
The words came out with genuine sincerity.
Ah, I wanted to get started already.
"I’ll show you heaven."
I wanted everyone who received my equipment to be happy.
"I’m going now, Ruby. Thanks."
"Eep?"
I suddenly hugged Ruby and gave her back a few light pats...
Thud, thud, thud...
Then I immediately turned around.
Creak, slam!
Back in the workshop, I shoved aside the workbench and lined up three materials on it.
Two General Spirit Stones, and the Azure Cloudstone.
"..."
Just looking at them made the corners of my mouth rise.
I pulled up a chair, sat down, and slowly examined the three materials.
Last time, I melted the wind and sunlight spirit stones separately, then combined the molten liquids.
The new material I created by harmonizing those two attributes was Harmonics.
It had been good. Really good, but...
Did I really need to do the same thing with these?
If a cut of meat was decent enough, you could grind it up and make hamburger steak.
If you kneaded it well and cooked it deliciously, it could become an excellent dish.
But suppose you had a premium marbled Korean beef ribeye right in front of you.
Grinding that up to make hamburger steak...
Honestly, would be a huge waste.
So this time, I would preserve the raw materials as much as possible.
"Listen, Yuna."
What were the components of a cloud?
How did one form?
Let’s think of clouds floating in the sky.
The beginning was simple. Sunlight... sunshine heated the water in the sea and on the ground, evaporating it and mixing it into the air.
Invisible water vapor—the raw ingredient for clouds.
Then came the process of lifting it high into the sky.
When sunlight heated the ground, the air above it became warmer, lighter than the air around it, and rose upward.
The water vapor rode upward with it.
This was... convection.
And as that rising air expanded due to the surrounding air pressure... it cooled.
Then the water vapor condensed into droplets and floated there. That was a cloud.
So what did the wind do?
It gathered clouds in one place and set their course.
All sorts of rhythms had to align. If the sunlight was too strong, the water would evaporate; if the wind was too strong, the clouds would be swept away.
『Commands scattered air currents into a single flow.』
『Gathers scattered light and directs it in a single direction.』
The materials that would make that control possible were right in front of me.
I picked up the Azure Cloudstone.
Well, I say picked up—it was the size of my head, so I had to hoist it up.
This would become the base of the insignia.
But what was I supposed to do with something this big?
I was worried about the clouds inside if I carved it down...
They were flowing along the veins within it. If I handled it wrong and they escaped, that would be a disaster.
"What should I do?"
Tap, tap...
Just then, while I tapped the Azure Cloudstone with my finger...
"...Wait a second."
What had I just said?
I said the wind created the clouds’ paths and moved them.
Then couldn’t it also tune the clouds inside?
"..."
A reasonable deduction.
I picked up the Wind General Spirit Stone beside me and carefully pressed it against the side.
Hummm...
Vibrations traveled from the point where the two stones met.
The air currents whirling within the spirit stone shifted to one side... and the clouds inside the Azure Cloudstone slowly began moving to the opposite side as well.
"Wow..."
The scattered white masses were pushed aside, while white clouds gathered and stuck tightly to the side opposite the spirit stone.
Thanks to that, the rest was completely empty.
Now that I had gathered the clouds on one side, I could carve away the empty section first.
Click.
I placed the Azure Cloudstone on the workbench and secured the Wind General Spirit Stone to the bench so it remained firmly attached to its side.
Then, in a single stroke...
Crack.
I split the Azure Cloudstone in half.
After that, I repeated the same process over and over.
I changed the position of the Wind General Spirit Stone, pushed the clouds to one side, and split away the empty part.
Then I turned the stone to the other side, moved the clouds again, and split it.
I felt like a shepherd boy.
But as the stone got smaller and smaller, the clouds inside became increasingly packed together...
Sizzle...
I brought over the Sunlight General Spirit Stone and pressed it against the stone, lightly evaporating the clouds.
This was another process I had never tried before, but it was not especially difficult.
I cooled the heat at intervals, then gathered the clouds again.
After who knew how long...
"Now it’s finally about the right size."
The Azure Cloudstone, once as large as my head, now fit in my hand.
The clouds inside were far more densely gathered than before.
It felt as though I had crammed clouds tightly into a small stone.
"Pretty."
It felt like holding the sky in my palm.
I held the Azure Cloudstone up to the light for a moment, then put it back down on the workbench.
All right, the final step.
The size was right, but it was still a little thick.
This was something she would wear as an insignia, so it could not stick out too much...
Hummm...
I moved the Wind General Spirit Stone to the top.
The clouds that had been gathered into a round mass began to be pressed downward.
"That’s it, that’s it..."
I gave the clouds a little massage with the spirit stone, pressing them down.
Once I confirmed that the upper portion had been emptied...
Crrrack!
I carved away the top as though opening a lid.
Scrape... scrape...
When I smoothed the carved section flat, the clouds spread out in a thin, flattened layer inside the blue stone plate.
"Done."
With that, the shaping work for the Azure Cloudstone that would serve as the insignia’s base was complete.
Now, for the next step.
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