A Moon God version of a [Major Sin Card] would send a Magic Guide Spirit out of control, true-but so long as he could use other low-tier [Major Sin Cards] to adjust it... wait. Why not just blend in a thread of his own Major Sin during the Forging itself?
The idea struck Dark like a spark in the dark.
If both "Pride I" and "Pride II" could bring a Magic Guide Spirit evolved through "Lust III - Moon" back under control, then adding a little of Dark's own "Lust" while Forging the "Lust III - Moon" should, in theory, improve the card outright.
And since both were "Lust" to begin with, the Moon God's "Lust" and Dark's own "Lust" wouldn't clash much. It was worth the attempt.
The Moon Goddess statue held at least a hundred points of "Lust" right now. If this worked, it meant Forging three controllable "Lust III - Moon" cards in a single go!
Three copies of "Lust III - Moon" would transform the whole shape of his deck. "[Magic Beast (Eevee)]", "Curse Cage: DemiDevimon", "Drifloon"-every one of them could use "Lust III - Moon" to evolve.
And "Ditto" could use "Lust III - Moon" to climb to four stars as well!
Even if the gaps between battles ran short, he wouldn't have to worry about the long cooldown on the "Lust III" series of Magic Guide Cards.
In short, he would have far more room to breathe.
The problem, at present, was that he had exactly two points of "Lust" on hand...
Dark thought it over, then dug an iron case out of the bottom of his pack, one sealed tight enough to be airtight.
The interior held a cushioning magic-guide apparatus. He had borrowed it specially from Professor Kazel back when he asked him to modify the "Flower Cards".
Inside the case lay three test tubes stoppered with oak. They could store thought-matter as well, though not as reliably as a Thought Bottle-fit only for temporary storage.
Each tube could hold at most ten drops of "Major Sin".
Dark had borrowed a full set of three at once, roughly the capacity of one Thought Bottle.
And in one of those tubes sat two drops of "Lust"!
It was the reserve he had put aside last month, brought into the secret passage precisely for the forging of the "Mental Furnace".
His original plan had been to carry out the "Tri-Armed Armament Forging" right here in the passage, so every material the process required was already prepared.
But if he meant to run the "Lust III - Moon" improvement experiment here instead, two drops of "Lust" clearly wouldn't cover it.
Which meant a choice had to be made.
Option one: forge the armament here in the passage, and carry out only sixty drops of the Moon God version of "Lust".
Option two: refine "Lust III - Moon" here, come back next month for the armament, and likewise carry out an extra sixty drops of Moon God "Lust".
Take the first road, and the goddess statue-stripped of the Moon God's lingering soul-would be nothing but ordinary stone. Even if the temple didn't vanish, the statue could no longer store "Lust", so there would be nothing to come back for.
Take the second, and there was no guarantee that some new variable wouldn't crop up before he returned next month.
For all he knew, once he walked away he would never find this temple again.
"Compared side by side, forging the armament matters more."
Dark's brow creased briefly, and he settled on the first option.
"Sixty drops of the Moon God's 'Lust'. If things go smoothly, that's two refined 'Lust III - Moon' cards. Good enough."
With that decided, he would fill two of the three test tubes first, begin the armament forging, and fill the last tube once it succeeded.
Every step planned, he set to work at once.
Once two tubes stood full, he pulled two long rectangular boxes from the bottom of his pack.
Both boxes were partitioned inside into rows of compartments.
Each compartment held a different base material.
Dark had grown thoroughly practiced at the "Tri-Armed Armament Forging", and he laid out the experiment then and there on a stone table inside "[Paradise]".
…
The vast majority of the materials the experiment called for had been prepared in advance; he had only to take them up and use them.
The troublesome part was the potions that had to be mixed on the spot-the Red Spider Lily used to make the substrate, above all, was critical.
Luckily his hands knew the work well. He finished compounding every potion in short order, then drew out a blank Magic Guide Card and spread the Red Spider Lily evenly across its surface, giving it the foundation for Illusory Transformation.
Throughout the process the Moon Goddess watched him without pause, though her lack of knowledge left her unable to make sense of what Dark was actually doing.
As the experiment progressed, though, an uneasy premonition began to gather in her, thickening by the minute.
When Dark pushed the work into its late stage, the part that required the "Tri-Armed Armament Forging" proper, she could hold back no longer. "What exactly are you doing?"
Dark sounded genuinely puzzled. "Didn't I already tell you? I'm helping you move house."
Moon Goddess: "..."
Paying the lingering soul no further mind, Dark drew out "Lust III" and beckoned to the little Drifloon.
Hovering over the Thought Bottle with a ravenous look on its face, the little Drifloon drifted over, plainly reluctant to leave.
Dark raised his hand, pinched "Lust III" between index and middle finger, and swept it lightly through the air before him to activate it.
A heartbeat later, "Drifloon" evolved into "Drifblim" within the light of "Lust III"!
Dark had long since grown used to the sight, but the evolution of a "Drifloon" was in truth an astonishing thing-its entire level of existence had been hauled upward in one enormous leap.
And the thing that had driven that evolution was "Lust III", of all cards!
The scene struck the Moon Goddess's lingering soul like a bolt of lightning. She was shaken to her core.
Perhaps only in that instant did it dawn on her that Dark's talk of reshaping her divine soul, of completing her resurrection with her own will intact, might not be empty words after all!
The truth was that whatever Dark said, only one goal had ever been rooted in her: resurrection.
For resurrection, she would do anything.
Naturally she retained a certain latitude in pursuing that final goal.
The wish to "keep her own consciousness", for instance, was a private preference.
Dark had indeed moved her.
But until he demonstrated the ability to actually deliver what she wanted, there was no chance she would let herself be talked around so easily.
Not even after dwelling in this temple so long, watching hope refuse to come.
Yet what Dark had shown off without even meaning to had finally stirred her.
So she spoke again. "What do I have to see before I can believe you?"
Dark's fingers stilled mid-motion.
He had all but given up on communicating with this remnant of the Moon God, and here she was raising the subject herself.
"Don't tell me it's because of the 'Drifloon' evolution."
His gaze turned distinctly odd.
If a single evolution performed in front of her was all it took to make the Moon Goddess consider surrender, then what on earth had he been working so hard at?
It was too late for that now, though.
He didn't even lift his head. "Whether you believe me doesn't really matter. I was only talking to you out of basic decency. The fact is, the outcome stays the same whether you agree or not."
The Moon Goddess was stunned. "You mean to force me?"
Dark: "..."
Seriously? (o_O) You're only figuring that out now?
Moon Goddess: "Then I have no choice left at all?"
Dark raised an eyebrow. "Not quite."
Moon Goddess: "?"
Dark: "You get to choose whether to accept it happily, or to accept it even more happily."
The Moon Goddess considered this for a while, then asked, baffled, "Why is happiness the only option?"
Dark kept working as he answered. "Aren't you happy right now?"
She thought again, longer this time. "I am not experiencing any emotion related to happiness."
"You will be," Dark said.
Moon Goddess: "..."
Dark turned to Drifblim. "That's about it. Go pull her lingering soul out."
"Mii-yo!"
Drifblim carried itself with noticeably more poise than it had as a Drifloon. It gave a small nod and floated toward the Moon God's statue.
Dark, meanwhile, began carving the [Tri-Armed Transmutation Circle].
But the Moon Goddess's next words made his hand stop.
"Wait. How am I supposed to cooperate?"
"Driff-mii?"
Drifblim hung in the air, tilting its head down toward Dark as if it, too, awaited his answer.
Dark glanced at the half-forged Magic Guide Card on the table, then up at the face of the Moon Goddess statue. He simply picked up the Living Metal he had already finished carving. "If you can climb in here on your own..."
Light flickered through the Moon Goddess's eyes. "Can it hold my soul together without letting it scatter?"
Dark thought about it. "Probably not."
That choked her off completely; she couldn't get a word out for a long moment.
Dark smiled. "Only for now. Once I finish the Forging, it will. You should know by now that gaining anything carries risk-nothing comes free. And besides, you don't have a choice."
…
Stripped of its trappings, the matter really was that simple.
It came down to the difference between willing and unwilling.
In the end, the Moon Goddess's lingering soul chose the more dignified route: willing.
Which had, admittedly, something to do with the fact that she had come to believe what Dark told her.
As long as it carried her one step nearer her final goal-resurrection-she could accept it.
Otherwise she would sooner have snuffed herself out.
…
And so, only three minutes later, the Moon Goddess statue blazed without warning, a wave of sacred aura bursting outward.
Dark watched with narrowed eyes as the statue's outline blurred, a translucent figure rising slowly from within it, then contracting sharply toward the face until it stood the size of a human being.
Her whole body was transparent, and tendrils spilled outward from the joints of her limbs like the arms of an octopus.
Beyond that, she matched the statue exactly.
Dark had witnessed the Moon Goddess's revival with his own eyes once before, but on that occasion she had returned in the form of Angewomon, and the aura she gave off had been colored by Angewomon, wholly unlike her true self.
"In that case, come in."
Dark lifted the Living Metal high. The Moon Goddess's lingering soul reached down from the air above, turned into a beam of clear Moonlight, and in the space of a blink poured into the Living Metal.
In that instant...
the Living Metal in Dark's hand became a statue in its own right, releasing a holy white glow.
"How does it feel?" Dark asked.
The Moon Goddess's voice had gone faint. "Not good. You had better hurry."
Dark gave a small nod and immediately began sketching the [Tri-Armed Transmutation Circle].
Once her lingering soul left the statue behind, it was no longer steeped in "Lust", and the Living Metal itself could not store "Lust"-the time she could remain in existence was severely limited.
Fortunately, Dark's hand at carving the [Tri-Armed Transmutation Circle] had grown practiced.
In only a few minutes, a complete three-dimensional spherical Forging array stood before him.
Dark took up the test tube holding the two drops of "Lust", drew out one drop with the magic-brain dropper, and let that single full point of "Lust" fall into the glowing sphere of the [Tri-Armed Transmutation Circle].
At the instant of contact, a halo rippled outward.
That one point of "Lust" flowed along the sphere's outer skin and soon ran through the entire array.
He studied the changes carefully, weighed them, and decided against adding the second point of "Lust".
As the mental irrigation finished, the whole array converted successfully into the "Mental Furnace".
Dark let out a slight breath, picked up the Living Metal again, and gave his instructions.
"The Forging that comes next may be hard to endure. If you want to keep your own consciousness, you had better focus."
He didn't wait for the lingering soul to reply. He set the entire piece of Living Metal into the "Mental Furnace".
Then he took up the Mana Pen, touched its tip to the crown of the "Mental Furnace", and began pouring mana in, slow and steady.
As the mana flowed, the white light inside the "Mental Furnace" grew fiercer and fiercer.
Seeing the smelting proceed smoothly enough, he fed the second point of "Lust" into the furnace as well, to shield the Moon Goddess's lingering soul.
If that soul were ground away mid-smelt, the whole effort would collapse at the final step.
Armament Forging was, after all, not the same as Forging a Magic Guide Spirit; two points of "Lust" ought to be enough.
Dark threw himself wholly into the control of his mana, fine-tuning the smelting the way a smith regulates the heat of a forge.
Time crept on. The mana inside him drained fast, and then something stirred faintly in his mind.
He snapped his focus tight-and felt the familiar sensation of a Flower Card triggering.
He called up the system at once, and sure enough, his "Lust" reading had dropped by a point!
[Lust -1]
Just like that, a "Lust" that had already been down to the low nineties fell below ninety!
After watching it climb and climb, this was the first time Dark had pushed "Lust" under ninety.
Delight surged through him.
If he could drive "Lust" down into a genuinely safe range, the coming holiday would leave him far more room to maneuver.
Besides, what he needed most from here on was "Pride", not "Lust".
His good mood didn't last long. When the "Lust" reading reached eighty points, it jammed and stopped moving.
Yet he could feel it clearly-inside that "Mental Furnace", the hunger for "Lust" had not been satisfied at all.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉