The shopping trip ended when Melodina hauled two living sandbags in the house and allowed them to fall.
"Seriously you guys!" Melodies slammed the shopping bag down on the table. "How old are you again? Five? You couldn't walk into a shop and buy..."
Lux brushes past her and into a toilet then empty her lunch.
"Horrible..." The elf collapsed on the floor.
"...few magic gems." Melodies finished her sentence with a frown. "It appeared that I am the literal savior of your organization. Seriously, your religious hocus pocus is starting to annoy me."
Cy barely stood up before falling again.
"First, it is hearing a voice from an ore. Then it is inherent aversion of Magic gem,"Melodina complain. "To be honest all the material you told me to buy is ridiculously random I swore you chose it from lottery."
Ebony walked into the scene to found two girls barely standing up. It was as if they were lock inside a room of Kryptonite for a week.
"What happened?" Ebony said slack-jawed. "Who did what to them?"
"I afraid something like this might happened," Rem waltzed into the room with a tonged in hand.
Using the black tool, he picked one stone up from the bag.
"Nasty thing filled with so much agonizing memory it turn me queasy. The room full of this junk must look like a horror show. In the end, unless we know how to humanely extract those mana from a living being and solidify it's then we got to use this radioactive Uranium as a material...luckily, we might be able to purify it."
"You are talking as if it will blow up on your face, " Ebony said skeptically. "People had been using it for thousands of year."
"And you never conquer one forbidden ground in that thousand years too." Rem said, tossing away the gem. "Guessed the world really hated your gut. Maybe you should use cleaner energy source the next time."
Rem turned to congratulate the two girls as best as he can.
"Anyway, kudos to your bravery, you got more material than I expected. What's up with that?"
...
Next hour saw Ebony and folks cycling through the stuffed we bought and decided how best to melt it.
Quite depressing.
"The is a rare synthetic stone, " Ebony pointed at the purple color are. "This powder is pixie dust and this is a fossilized lightning slime. Why do you buy this?"
"She said the voice told her too, " Ebony pointed at Cy.
"Yes I think it was this, " Lux show them the golden ore.
"Fascinating, " Ebony picked it up. "We suspect that this stone might be sentient but we never think it could be communicated with."
Ebony looked through the material.
"Good, Synthetic stone could be consolidated into an ore that could be alloyed with the Gem. Pixie dust could be dissolved in water to enchanted the sword."
"No, " Lux said closing her eyes. "The stone told me to purify the Synthetic Stone and created a homogeneous melt with the ore and used pixie dust as an additive. The melt must be a bath in the moonlight and transform into an ingot via ancient Druid method and blessed by natural energy near a holy ground. The forging of the blade needs to be bath morning light and quenched by highnoon in a mixture of dissolved lightning slime and...(Lux's eyes widened) my blood?"
"The stone told you it's processing method?!" Melodina looked at the ore incredulously. "That was a pretty magical and ritual heavy process. This combined with the fact that you had to be hell of a blacksmith to finished making the blade within 5-6 hours...with non-magical techniques it would be impossible. Even with techniques...I don't think ever can do it."
"Ancient weapon is often created unrealistically with a bunch of rituals, "Ebony popped her self down on the chair. "Although we got to admit that those weapons really are something to worry about. The process to make them was loss."
I had an idea.
"Guys I think we might pull it off you just need a way to fashion and complete the blade in six-hours right?"
"Yeah you had an idea?" Ebony said.
"Lady my magic was design to rape reality. Give me prep time and I can do anything...now I had to set a special condition to pull it off."
Scathach walked in
"Guys I had a bad news." She said. "Emma sent an A-Classes and the audition squad here."
"Who is it?" Cy perked up.
"You know her very well, " the badger replies with a bad taste in her mouth. "Illma Xoldia Road."
...
Somewhere in the town, a pretty woman was putting on her makeup.
A small two-stories house was burning behind her as she walked toward a group of heavily armed men carrying massive weapons meant for killing the monster.
At the feet of those men, an old woman cried as her home burnt down and with a strength defying her age she started rushing into a fire howling. Despite, her suicidal effort the beautiful woman spun back and fire a lance of flame into the elderly's leg crippling her.
"What you are thinking you senile hag?" the woman said nonchalantly while painting her lipstick. "Emma still want you to work off your debt."
"Please!" The old said crawling toward the burning house. "My husband's momento! His bow is in there."
"And why should I care?" the woman finished donning her lipstick and walked toward an old lady, stepping on her hand, crushing it slowly.
The old woman cried in pain before choking back a sob.
"Please..."
"Oh, no, no, no, " The woman looked into her victim's eyes and feel nothing. "Everything on that land including the house belongs to me now and I decide the quickest and most efficient way to clear the land is to burn it down. Your house had nothing worth taking and its material was so old it wouldn't be sold for scraps in the market. Burning was the best solution."
"It is my home!" She cried.
"It was never your home old hag, " the woman ground her hand down. "You never bought the deed in the first. You are illegally living on someone else property. I am the owner now and I decided anw eviction is in order."
The woman sob,
"At least please let me had my husband's bow, " the old woman said.
"Sorry, " the woman said condescendingly. "Getting that bow from the burning house isn't stipulated in the contract. Plus, I wouldn't want to get my self dirty am I?"
The house burnt down amidst the cries of an old woman.
"Ms.Road, you had to go to that meeting!"
"About the dragon right?" Illma said. "Geez what did we get ourselves into."
...
"That bitch is 100% evil," Cy said to us. "Which should tell you exactly how many bolts were lose in Tie Hua's head when she tried to recruit the witch personally for three times straight."
"Tie Hua is your senior sister right," Lux said to Cytortia as Ebony began melting the ore.
"Heavenly Daughter of Steel," Cy said. "One who ambition is higher than heaven. She was also the strongest of the Heavenly daughter in combat. That living ice-cube is personally leading the effort to conquered numerous Forbidden ground. Thank master she failed every time but not due to lack of trying. Her strength and leadership gathered enough admirer to form a highly efficient private army. Emma enterprise paid attention to her greatly and many gods bless her as the greatest of genius only rivaling by Chuang, the Heavenly daughter of Fire. Even by that comparison, the only reason Chuang had not been absorbed yet is that she allied herself with Eastern Field empires and the Holy Order making her too big of a target. To make it worse, Tie Hua team up with another one of my senior sisters who was said to be the greatest artificer after my master and the blacksmith who people rumored to be the second coming of Ebony herself."
"Ah, That girl Kar'dia Tianshang right?" Ebony said airily. "I had to admit she way above me at the same age. Although the same could be said about Melodina."
"Hey Mom," Said Melodina. "Between me and that girl who would come out on top as a blacksmith."
"Right now 50/50." Ebony said. "I taught you everything I know and your natural talent is impressive. But is one of the best Earth mage around and a seasoned A-Rank. She had some trick you didn't had but I would say, if head come to head, you would give her a run for her money."
"Well, good to know, I wouldn't feel satisfied unless I fought her head on." Melodina said.
At this point I believed it is my duty to drag the conversation back on course.
"As much as I want to know about your child-hood bully, I wanted to know why should we be afraid of her?"
Cy looked through the window and grimaced.
"Rem, Tie Hua never care about good or evil. All she wanted in her rank is ability and talent. She wanted only result bar the method. Even then she never went to personally recruit someone, much less done so repeatedly, except with one outlier: Xoldia Road."
"What is she? Why did someone like Tie Hua wanted her so bad?"
"Because she was ruthless, strong and effective. She had no qualms about method she had to use and accomplishes all task spectacularly. Let me give you an example. Once she was asked to take out a criminal organization. Her method: kidnap the son of that organization's boss and the daughter of the rival gang leader...."
"...Lure the target into the warehouse to meet the naked mutilated corpse of the girl and orchestrated the rival gang and the girl's father to walked in at that moment. A rage filled fight erupted as the two gang went for revenge attack. She then blew up the warehouse with everyone in it. Handed the boy over to the rival gang for them to kill and accelerate the gang war which nearly wipe them out then clean stroll down a clean the survivor...down to every man, woman and child."
"I heard the story," Ebony said. "The following gang war nearly destroyed the community and even now the other criminal are vying for control over what Illma did."
"Worse of all," Cy said. "She showed no remorse regarding what happened. Hell she even joked about how the girl squirmed as she set a dog to rip her apart."
I sipped the water.
"Your senior sister wanted her as a clean up crew."
"Precisely," Scathach answered for Cy. "Ever since becoming Nuwa's disciple Tie Hua only showed anger once and that is the moment Xoldia rejected her offer and applied for Emma instead. She is right now a invigilator in the Enterprise and a pretty high-ranking one. Hell, that gang war and uprising incident alone generate enough weapon sale for Emma for Illma to get a promotion."
I looked at the map. What is the most effective measured for a sadistic bitch with no moral qualm to kill a dragon?
Firepower was one. But now it had to be more sadistic and beneficial for her cause. She fought to gain.
"Hey, Melodina, why didn't Emma took over this town yet." I asked.
"Because not everyone would take their bullshit head on."Melodina said. "We know they ruled by fear and intimidation so we don't give in and stand our ground."
"But some already have. So why don't they just took over the rest using those guys."
"Are you underestimating us too much?" Melodina said flatly. "This town was not just a shopping center or an industrial street. We are a community. We helped each other went thing got rough. Those who grew up here are neighbor and families. No cooperate hound would take that from us. Some of us are willing to die to protect our home. What we create here is our pride."
I see...and Emma probably know it too.
"Can you gather the town citizen on one spot?"
"Yeah, there are automatic summoning broadcast installed all over the town that will call everyone to the city center."
I closed my eyes the road for victory was forming.
"Cy get your alchemy kit it time to bring miracle."