Chapter 33: First Explosion
The dull sound of the explosion made their ears ring. Purple smoke mixed with black soot instantly filled the basement in a split second. The sudden shockwave rattled the old brick walls, sending years of accumulated dust and spiderwebs raining down on them from the ceiling.
Kanos coughed hard. He waved the thick smoke away from his face using his left hand. The smell of burnt copper and rotten sulfur sharply stung his nose, making his eyes water. His face was covered in black dust. His gray cloak hood even had tiny holes burned into it from the hot sparks. He quickly patted down a smoking ember on his shoulder before it could burn through his shirt.
At the corner of the table, Sili was laughing so hard he had to hold onto the back of a rickety chair so he wouldn’t fall over. The skinny information broker slapped his own knee, completely entertained by the disaster unfolding in front of him.
"I told you!" Sili wiped a tear from the edge of his cracked glasses, his voice echoing loudly in the cramped basement. "Red spider blood is a highly reactive fire element. It is basically liquid gunpowder. You mixed it directly with the wild energy smoke from a Gargoyle Bat core? Of course it blew up, boss. You are incredibly lucky your fingers did not fly straight through the roof just now."
Belida coughed loudly near the door. The giant knight waved his hand in front of his face with a deeply annoyed look. The air in this room had become incredibly stuffy and toxic to breathe. He kicked a broken piece of scorched glass away from his steel tipped boot.
"If you two want to burn this warehouse down to the ground, you should have told me from the start so I could wait outside," Belida grumbled. He crossed his massive arms, clearly unimpressed with this so called magical experiment. "Those parchment papers cost us a small fortune, Kanos. Burning them for fun is just bad business."
Papuyu, who had been squatting on top of a pile of empty grain sacks this whole time, stayed completely silent. She did not even flinch when the glass bottle shattered loudly earlier. Her dead gaze remained focused on watching the dark street outside through the narrow air vent. The hitman did not care at all about the commotion at the experiment table, acting like the loud explosion sound was just a passing carriage.
Kanos ignored Belida’s complaint. He wiped his face using his dirty sleeve. He stared at the expensive parchment paper in front of him that was already half scorched. The edges were curling up, turning to gray ash. This was the fifth experiment, and all five ended up as failed, life threatening fireworks.
"I need a liquid to hold the smoke’s shape," Kanos said flatly. He took a slow, deep breath to lower his racing heart rate. He picked up his wooden brush, ignoring the black soot covering its handle. "If I only use pure smoke, the energy is way too wild to be assembled into complex structures. The lines break apart before I can even finish the frame. It needs a binding glue."
Sili stopped laughing. He walked closer to the table, adjusting his slipping glasses. He peeked at the remaining red liquid in the spare glass bottle. The broker leaned closer, observing the thick spider blood with serious curiosity.
"Core smoke is pure energy from the world system. Spider blood is physical biological material. You cannot glue two completely different dimensions together using normal carpentry methods," Sili rambled quickly, his words rushing out without a pause. He tapped his own temple, clearly enjoying showing off his theoretical knowledge. "They violently reject each other. Unless you have a catalyst. Something that can force these two extremely volatile objects to merge without generating explosive energy friction."
Catalyst. Kanos stared at his wooden brush in silence. The word echoed repeatedly in his head.
Up until now, he always used his remaining HP or his own blood to pay the material cost for the objects he drew. This world’s system absolutely hated anomalies. The system demanded a heavy, physical price for every single line Kanos drew that crashed into its rigid rules of physics. To make something from nothing, the world demanded flesh and blood.
But drawing living structures or large golems would drain his blood dry before he even finished sketching a single leg. He would die of severe anemia before his army was built. If his physical body could no longer be used as payment, that meant the price had to be paid with something else. Something the system could not easily measure or drain directly from his veins.
His mind. His absolute focus and mental stamina.
"Move," Kanos told Sili. He gestured casually for the guy to step back a bit.
Sili immediately took two steps back, but he leaned his head forward in intense anticipation. He did not blink, ready to record Kanos’s every move.
Kanos opened a new glass bottle filled with red spider blood. He dipped the tip of his brush into the thick liquid, letting the wood soak completely. His left hand then reached into his cargo pocket, pulling out the purple monster core that was still continuously exhaling thick smoke.
He did not mix them directly on the paper like before. Kanos closed his eyes for a second. Focus. Extreme focus. He blocked out Belida’s breathing, Sili’s shifting feet, and the dripping sound of the damp basement. He pictured a simple steel frame in his head. Just a small cube. Very dense. Very tight. No air gaps at all inside it. Perfect geometry.
Kanos opened his eyes. He dragged the bloody brush tip right through the plume of purple smoke hovering in the air.
He instantly felt a massive shockwave hit his brain. This time it was not because his chest hurt. He felt a forceful, agonizing yank backward inside his skull. An incredibly sharp dizziness stabbed right behind his eyes, exactly like someone driving a long ice needle deep into his brain. The system was fighting back. It demanded physical payment for the creation, and Kanos stubbornly blocked that transaction, offering his raw mental stamina instead.
He squeezed his focus dry to force the wild energy from the purple smoke to submit. He wrestled the volatile smoke, forcefully shoving it into the frame of the red spider blood line. The wooden brush in his hand vibrated violently, threatening to snap in half.
"Hold," Kanos muttered quietly. He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
Fresh blood dripped from Kanos’s nose, falling and dirtying the wooden table. The pressure in the room became incredibly heavy. Belida even shifted his fighting stance near the door, sensing the sudden, unnatural drop in air temperature.
But the line hovering in the air did not explode.
The thick purple smoke was slowly sucked by force into the red stroke Kanos was pulling. The wild energy finally lost the battle against his absolute concentration. The color changed in the blink of an eye. The bright purple and crimson red merged, turning into pitch black. A pitch black color that seemed to absorb all the dim light around it. It looked like a literal tear in reality.
Kanos pulled his brush up, closing the final line of the cube.
A pitch black steel cube the size of a fist fell and smashed into the wooden table with a very heavy thud. CRACK. The rickety table instantly snapped right in the middle. The thick wood splintered, unable to handle the sudden, massive weight of that tiny cube. The black cube hit the stone floor, cracking the solid brick beneath it with a loud bang.
Kanos dropped his brush. His breathing was ragged and shallow. He leaned weakly against the chair, panting heavily as cold sweat drenched his back. His head throbbed terribly, pounding with every heartbeat, but the corner of his eye managed to catch the system panel hovering quietly nearby.
[ HP: 350/350 ]
His remaining HP did not drop at all. Safe. One hundred percent full. He had successfully moved the massive cost of creation from his physical blood to his mental capacity.
Sili walked over and squatted down slowly. He stared at the pitch black cube on the broken stone floor with his mouth half open. The broker hesitantly reached out, trying to pick the cube up. He grunted, straining his skinny arms and using both hands, but the tiny cube barely lifted an inch before dropping back down heavily onto the floor.
"This is crazy," Sili’s voice came out very quietly, far different from his usual loud and chatty tone. He wiped his dirty hands on his pants. "This ink has a density heavier than pure iron. Way heavier. But it does not emit any mana traces at all. It feels like a dead rock."
Sili looked up at Kanos, pure awe mixed with a genuine hint of fear written clearly on his face.
"You... you just created a brand new material entirely outside the Yomalvara system catalog."
Kanos wiped the blood from his nose slowly using his thumb. He stared at the heavy black cube on the floor. The headache was absolute torture, and he knew he could not spam this method endlessly without eventually passing out or suffering permanent brain damage. But the theory worked. He finally had the right ink that would not kill him instantly.
His eyes looked extremely tired but shone with a sharp, dangerous ambition.
"Good," Kanos answered coldly, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders. "Now we can start drawing a real army."
