I wasn't the sort to rest on my laurels though and began to expand and chronicle my findings with the limitations and rules I needed to follow when crafting cursed tools. After about a hundred experiments that branched off my previous discoveries and idea I had a list of things that I could follow to make successful cursed tools. First was that at the material I used determined how powerful I could make the tool. This was further divided into two categories, refined and unrefined that each had their own pros and cons.-
Refined materials I discovered held sturdy and straightforward properties like [durability] and [polished] better than more esoteric and flexible properties like [channel] and [control]. Unrefined materials were the exact opposite. Anyways the base material itself also played a large part in how powerful I could make a cursed tool. So far I had determined that in order of power from weakest to strongest the scale went organic cloth, flesh or hide, bone, wood, stone, metal, dropped cloth, dropped flesh or hide, dropped bone, dropped wood, dropped stone, dropped metal, dungeon wood, dungeon metals in normal order of usefulness and finally magic stones.-
For the metals found in the dungeon I was referring to, mithril, orichalcum, adamantite, aqua iron, deep iron, flame iron, crimsonite and fulgur ore. Each had a different use but usually the best was pure adamantite followed by orichalcum and mithril. It cost me a pretty penny to buy a small amount of each of these let me tell you as even mere marbles of the stuff commanded a hefty price. I should also clarify that Magic stones can't be used as is to make cursed items or they'll detonate in a spectacular fashion.-
No I can only use magic stones after all the mana has been drained from them rendering them "useless" according to normal practices. I had discovered this on accident actually as the magic stone powered lamp we used ran out of energy and need to have the stone swapped. I had a 'Fuck it, what's the worse that could happen?' moment and tried to turn the spent stone into a cursed item. Only to realize that the damn things can be refilled with cursed energy after they are spent and used to empower cursed items if added during the creation even though the stones themselves can't hold any cursed properties.-
Moving on from materials the second set of rules I discovered was that I couldn't add more than six properties to anything if they had no synergy to them. This wasn't a hard rule so much as a ' I suck at making shit' type rule. Each new property required a lot of focus to add and at the moment I was simply unable to go beyond six unrelated properties and that too only if I was willing to sacrifice quality for quantity. The next rule was that imbuing techniques required strict restrictions or I'd make a cursed spirt instead.-
That whole loose "this thing won't ever become alive" restriction was not enough to prevent the item becoming a cursed spirit and I needed real balanced restriction to safely add techniques to things. Even further if I wanted those techniques to actually be somewhat useful I needed to trade things for it. A good example is that I made a ring that can summon and control water but the trade off was that it can't summon more than five gallons at a time, it can't control water further than twelve feet away from the wearer, it uses the wearers energy as fuel for all actions, it will never be alive and is quite fragile.-
Like I said I had to be VERY specific about what the technique allowed and didn't allow if I wanted something useable that wasn't a cursed spirit. As a fun addition I also had to use the negative emotions related to whatever technique I was imbuing to add a technique to something. For the ring it was fear of helplessly drowning, dark huh? Speaking of cursed spirits I had sorta figured out how to make cursed spirits I created loyal to me and it was pretty much by adding restrictions to them that turned them into my slaves upon birth, I wasn't a big fan of it.-
I tested to see if it was possible and after confirming that, yes it was, I destroyed the cursed spirit and promptly put it in the "do not do again" pile of notes. That might be really wasteful but you'll forgive me if the idea of playing god and owning slaves didn't sit well with me. Creating something alive and aware just to enslave it at the moment of it's creation was just cruel on a level I wanted nothing to do with.-
Sadly cursed spirits were malicious beings by nature and I couldn't create one out of positive emotions at the moment. I had a theory that it may be possible to do so if I figure out the reverse curse technique but until then i was shelving this idea. Anyways the final rule I had figured out was that the power of my cursed tools was capped by my own skill and power. In this regard I was effectively on the same level as any other level two craftsman in terms of how powerful my creations could be.-
Sure refining the unholy hell out of a material before shaping and "enchanting" it made my stuff more generally better but actual utility was the same as any normal craftsman my level. I could probably exceed this cap if I were to do so sketchy shit like tying my crafts to blood sacrifice or gods forbid life sacrifice. But I honestly didn't see any reason why I SHOULD resort to that sort of thing. Add on that I was fairly certain that I would get hunted down for these "heretical practices" if word got out and I was double sure I wanted nothing to do with it.-
While I was busy getting the rules and knowledge of cursed tool crafting figured out Bell was making good progress in the dungeon. I had effectively spent an entire month just adjusting and figuring out this new stuff after leveling up and in that time he had grown most of his physical stats to C rank and had even gotten a skill after an embarrassing run in with Ais who he clearly had a crush on now. He had apparently ran into a variant war shadow and gotten saved by her but had run away afterwards.-
The story was honestly adorable as it just went to show how awkward he was around women. Weirdly though he got a skill from the encounter that frankly sounded like some next level bullshit. Liaris Freese, which let him grow more quickly depending on the strength of his feelings. Look my growth because of the smoke I absorbed was anomalous and all that but his skill was plain cheating. It was literally warping reality on a minor scale based on his emotions to make him improve faster than he should.