An interesting thing alex discovered was that he could actually strip each of the other five elements from the bioenergy crystals if he was very careful leaving a crystal with only spirit in it. these spirit crystals had terrifyingly high usefulness in upgrading the elemental affinities of the hunters weapons. alex had chosen an abandoned weapon that was simply gathering dust in freya's weapon chest for this experiment. she hadn't even noticed that it had gone missing despite her switching weapons per whatever monster she was hunting at the time. it was a very weak weapon with mild electrical properties before alex got it.
This was definitely not true after his experiment however as the weapons elemental affinity skyrocketed to the point it caused the weapon to break down from the poor materials it was made of. the parts of the weapon that could handle the strain of the new elemental affinity were sending off bright arcs of electricity constantly on the floor. alex had only seen such a phenomena from the kirin made weapon that freya used often. secretly alex shed his scales , fang , gem , horns and spines to create a weapon using his own materials to test the spirit crystals on.
For this step he slightly cheated by using the system to create a fun sized forge from dragon quest eleven. it was a small thing compared to the monstrous forge the actual smiths used along with the fact that it's pure white and gold coloration definitely didn't make you think of it as a forge. the alchemical smelter that melted and fused the materials together stood over the solid forging platform and had a lid on the top of it and a special looking hammer on the side in a loop.
Creating a tool to help him with forging alone wasn't really cheating as far as alex was concerned since his research was on bioenergy and spirit rather than weapons and forging. he did feel the pinch however as bringing the thing to reality cost him close to fifteen million points from his ever growing stockpile. what alex had forgotten was that while it was technically impossible to fail to create something with the fun sized forge you could still fail to make anything decent quality. his lack of skill was made apparent after the hideous longsword was crafted by him. the blade was lumpy and dull with weird striations while the guard and handle were a mess to put it lightly.
Even a cold individual like alex was embarrassed at his shoddy creation to the point he immediately stuffed the thing back into the alchemic smelter to melt down again along with some more material since he didn't have any perfectionist pearls. unlike in dq11 the fun sized forge actually took those pearls because the alchemical smelter lessened the amount of material every time it smelted stuff and the pearls filled that loss. alternately you could also do what alex did and simply toss in more materials to compensate.
Thanks to his sharp focus and powerful mind alex only failed another twenty times before he succeeded in creating a base longsword without massive flaws. contrary to what most assume there is no such thing as a flawless weapon but rather that term actually just referred to the weapon not having any major flaws that could harm it's functionality. alex's crafted longsword along with most of the weapons crafted by the fun sized forge fell into this category which showed how amazing the crafting level of that world was. this was mostly to do with the use of magic in the forging process that smiths from this world lacked.
Alex was quite irritated to discover however that the weapon he crafted from his parts was useless for his research since it swapped between elements based on whatever it was used on. since there was no dominant element using a spirit crystal to enhance the weapons affinity was entirely pointless for alex. in the end alex simply hung the longsword in it's sheathe between the elemental orbs like a decoration since he couldn't bring himself to waste all the effort he put into crafting it.
In the end alex settled for dragging materials from his kills (mostly teostra) to the smithy to have them make him single elemental weapons for his experiments. the fun sized forge was hidden under piles of hides when alex wasn't using it every now and again simply so it paid off the cost he spent for it. the admiral had gotten into a bit of an argument with alex however about the longsword hanging in the netting overhead. the man insisted that it was wrong to keep such an obviously exceptional weapon to collect dust like that. but alex refused to hand over a weapon that could actually pose a risk to his life since it was made of his own materials.
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For those wondering i have decided to slow down and flush out the stuff alex does in his own free time now that gaining more power isn't an issue for him. please keep in mind the gap between iceborn and the main story is quite far apart , in this story i'm going to say about a year later in fact. the time difference is hinted at in the game so it's not like i'm messing with the time span all that much either. in this time the focus with be set mostly on alex growing as a person rather than as a monster , that said don't ask about humanizing things or romance because i will not be adding any of that.
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My p@treon is listed under my pen name : loskro if you are having trouble finding it. patreon.com/user?u=81578854