With no reliable source of fire, attempting to decrease the bones' durability was the best option...
Breaking a fresh bone was not an easy task – in the end, after more than a few attempts of breaking the one in his hand, Viria settled on finding a rock and smashing it against the bone after putting it against the first barrier.
[Mole-rabbit bone (trash)]
After he finally managed to splinter the sides of the bone with the rock, the description in the dialogue window finally showed what he wished for.
"Repair."
Although it was just a single bone, Viria ended up using one of the options.
The next moment, a faint light engulfed the bone and the prison shiv, and after a few seconds, the shiv was the only thing that remained.
[Prison shiv (mole-rabbit bone) – low grade soul artifact – it sometimes breaks but can be remade from any kind of trash in your possession.
Abilities – Bone weapon (The higher the mastery level, the higher the damage dealt by the weapon) - - Rabbit strike (Adds the speed of a mole-rabbit's jump to the attack)
Mastery – level 1/10
Durability 11/30 –repair– -remake-
???]
"That's not much..."
Considering how low the durability of his soul artifact dropped after dismantling a single monster corpse, the value that it got back up to after using a single bone was disheartening.
It really took a lot of time and effort to turn a material into the trash...
On the other hand, with the rest of the bones remaining in the pile, just waiting to become trash, Viria should be able to restore the prison shiv to almost perfect condition.
"...no time like the present, I guess..."
The young men sighed and picked up a new bone from the stack.
Going through every single usable bone from the single corpse brought up the prison shiv's durability back to a whooping twenty-seven out of thirty points – which allowed Viria to confidently went through the other two corpses.
Unfortunately, neither had the monster core.
But while restoring his soul artifact's durability to full, the young man has realized something else.
"...it is lighted up..."
Viria muttered to himself, looking at the -remake- option in the dialogue window showing up for his artifact.
The intrigued young man looked around carefully for what could be considered trash amongst the things around him...
[Rock (material)]
[Scraps of mole-rabbit meat (material)]
[Piece of mole-rabbit skin with fur (material)]
[Scraps of mole-rabbit skin with fur (trash)]
"...how is that supposed to work...?"
Viria frowned, picking up the only thing that the newly discovered appraisal revealed to him to be trash.
It was bloodied slice of skin with thick fur on the other side.
"It should allow me to cancel the choice, right...? Remake."
The young man bit his lips, squinting his eyes at the option and saying it out loud.
[Pick trash from your possessions to use as a material for remaking your soul artifact:
-mole-rabbit bones-
Available augmentation
-mole-rabbit skin-]
"Augmentation?!"
The dialogue window popped up and Viria's eyes widened at a new option.
[Only one augmentation trash is available. Augment your current weapon with -mole rabbit skin-?]
It was clear that the word augmentation was another key phrase that received the reaction form... whatever it was that was responding to Viria's voice...
"So, that's how I am... trash that cannot be used to create a blade gets turned into augmentation... Augmenting means making things better, right...? This... this is ridiculously good...!"
Viria's shocked face slowly brightened up with an excited smile creeping its way in as the young man bit his lips feeling the joy of discovering a properly fleshed-out crafting system in an already good game.
"Use mole-rabbit skin as augmentation."
Viria declared and once again his soul artifact and the trash in his hand, fusing the two together.
After a bit of waiting, once again only the prison shiv remained in Viria's hand with a slight change of design – that being a tiny piece of fur dangling from the artifact's handle...
"...I kind of expected it to wrap around the whole handle... but I guess that would require cured leather and not fresh skin..."
Viria said in hesitation before focusing on the dialogue window with the artifact's description.
[Prison shiv (mole-rabbit bone) – low grade soul artifact – it sometimes breaks but can be remade from any kind of trash in your possession.
Abilities – Bone weapon (The higher the mastery level, the higher the damage dealt by the weapon) - - Rabbit strike (Adds the speed of a mole-rabbit's jump to the attack)
Mastery – level 1/10
Durability 31/31 –repair– -remake-
???]
"...it's not much, but it's an honest improvement... I guess..."
Considering how minimal the change was to the overall look of the weapon, it wasn't all that surprising that it did not influence the weapon all that much.
Still, however minuscule the change was, it did confirm that it was possible to improve the artifact without completely remaking it, which was huge.
"That said... I still don't feel tired, so it cannot be that late... right? I have time!"
Reinvigorating by that discovery, Viria firmly clenched his soul artifact in his hand and nodded to himself, before turning his attention to the gate...
---------
"SCWEEE!"
*DING* *DANG* *DENG* *DANG*
"...hmm...? Wait... Is this the morning bell that Bossac was talking about...?"
The absence of natural light can mess with a person's time perception more than one expects – and Viria experienced just that when he was aiming his prison shiv at the head of yet another mole-rabbit drolling after the flesh of its own kin just out of its reach.
"Oh, well. I won't be able to return to that shack on time anyway, might as well finish this one off too..."
*SHING*
"SCWEee.. egh..."
The young man with dark circles under his eyes shrugged his shoulders and ended the mole-rabbit's life with a short, precise jab.
"SCWEEEE!"
"SCWEEEEEE!"
"SCWEEEE!"
"...!"
He hurriedly opened the gate to snatch the body, and flinched when he realized that this time not one but three mole -rabbits were approaching him at the same time.