Awakening the Divine Spark
Chapter 232: Make it!

Chapter 232: Make it!

Blergh!

As soon as Lee attempted to move the wind particles, he involuntary convulsed and spewed out a mouthful of blood. And then another one.

This wasn’t what he went through after regaining consciousness when Arax fed him the earth spark. Back then he only coughed up the blobs of impurities that had accumulated while he was unconscious.

Now he was actually internally bleeding. And externally as well. Blood was seeping through most of the tiny cuts across and for a split moment Lee felt as if he was a sieve.

Fortunately, he didn’t bleed out. Lee forced himself to calm down and performed a simple breathing exercise, designed to normalize the flow of elemental energies, and that stopped the bleeding pretty quickly.

One didn’t have to be a genius to realize that the damage was caused by the wind element that tore him apart from the inside. Either there was a trick to using it, or a technique, but it was clear that before attempting anything Lee had to recover first.

During the next couple of days Lee continued to meditate, and, while the wind within occasionally got out of control, and he was forced to cough up blood every time, the outer wounds were quickly healed. He couldn’t use any element, though. The moment he tried, he go hit by a storm from the inside that resulted in spewing blood.

Lee’s best guess was that after swallowing the other sparks, while he was unconscious or tormented by the agonizing pain, it took months for his body to get accustomed to them. Or maybe it was the other way around – the new guests had to properly settle down. Either way he decided to not actively use elemental energies for now.

The little workshop was a bloody mess and to get it in order actually took a longer time than for him to recover.

He had a lot of it, though. From the three months he got from Bastil less than half a month had passed, and Lee began to practice the Assassination Thrust again.

Daniel did pester him a bit about the ritual Lee supposedly performed. The best explanation Lee could come up with was that his technique had gone wrong, but now everything was fine and the plan was back on the table.

His neighbor was upset with the fact that earlier he had to rush his work and finish the weapon so quickly, but Lee didn’t feel bad at all. He had no clue his recovery wouldn’t last the usual two months, and thanked Heavens for that. It provided him with the extra time to practice, despite the fact that he couldn’t use the wind element yet.

***

"What the f ... what is this crap?!" Bastil roared at Lee, looking at the pants Lee supposedly crafted.

It was a premium artifact from the Celestial Abyss’s collection, but it was designed for a regular human. Judging from what had Lee promised, it was clear he was going to create something specifically designed for Lucien Duvant. Unfortunately, the retarded artificer’s apprentice created something that would never fit the dwarf.

"Lord Bastil!" Lee pretended to be taken aback, "Those are incredible trousers! You can try them yourself!"

"So what? Don’t you know that ..." Bastil intended to scold Lee, and even punish him, but then realized the kid had seen Duvant only for a brief moment months ago. He probably didn’t even remember how the lord of the castle looked like from the stress.

More importantly, Bastil might be ruthless, but he wasn’t an idiot. The results of Lee’s work clearly showed the kid had a promising future. He could continue to craft artifacts for decades, and maybe centuries if he managed to become an elemental lord.

Bastil wasn’t going to take the blame though. He shouted and cursed Lee for a while, and left, slamming the prison door behind him.

Only then Lee could finally heave a sigh of relief. The third stage of the plan was a risky one.

Now began the fishing part. Lee had to force Duvant to meet him, thus he began to fake-work on the next big project.

He drew a person’s image on the wall, a person of more or less regular size, except few features like the shoulders and hands which resembled Duvant’s. Next to it he drew separate pieces of armor – helmet, chest armor, gloves, belt, trousers and boots.

When Bastil came next time, he glanced at the wall, forbade Lee to create any of that, and ordered to make a normal artifact weapon. Lee had two more left, and already expected he will have to fake-craft both.

During the next two months he drew runic symbols next each of the imaginary armor pieces on the wall. They were random ones he copied from the seal on his palm, but he drew them in the form of circles, triangles and even stars, and for a non-expert they certainly looked mighty impressive. It was obvious Lee was researching something incredible, and it didn’t take too long for Bastil to come to that conclusion.

Meanwhile, the time Lee got was fully invested in practicing the thrust. He kept polishing the move from day to day and probably had performed it hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times.

When three months had passed after he swallowed the wind spark, Lee began to practice the application of the wind energy.

There was an unexpected problem. Previously he could use one of the elements for a brief moment without too big repercussions. Unfortunately, with the addition of the wind spark, no matter what he tried, as soon as any element was infused in any move, Lee felt like there was an explosion taking place inside of him.

His inner organs got damaged every time, and he had to rest for the night so that the water spark could fix everything. Unfortunately, the activation of the water element carried the same side effect, and Lee found himself stuck in the loop of self-destruction.

The only salvation were the breathing techniques he kept performing for half the day so that he could practice the other half. No techniques, at least none of the ones he knew, helped to balance the elements. Only the breathing exercises were effective, but turns out even those had a downside.

Of course, Lee was probably the only person in the world who would call the rapid increase of elemental particles within his Dantian a downside. People diligently cultivated for years to achieve the result he got in days, but he only became more desperate.

Lee guessed that it was because of the synergistic effect the four sparks had, but to him it was a ticking time bomb. The stronger the elements within him became, the bigger backlash he experienced every time he infused his move with one of them.

The only ray of hope was the prospect of meeting the overlord as soon as this was over.

***

After Lee fake-crafted his last spare weapon, Bastil’s curiosity about his research was finally peaked. He carefully inspected Lee’s fake schematics on the wall, and inquired what characteristics these artifacts would have. Lee didn’t invent a complete nonsense, but wasn’t too down-to-earth either. He managed to capture Bastil’s interest the moment he mentioned the potential resistance of the armor set against the spatial element.

As soon as he saw the change in Bastil’s expression upon mentioning a spatial attack, Lee changed the whole concept. It was too obvious that for some reason the shorty downstairs was afraid of this particular element and it turned out to be the best bait.

"Are you sure you won’t need spatial sparks?" Bastil asked.

"Mhm." Lee nodded, pretending to fully focus on the drawing on the wall, "I’m going to neutralize the effect using ..."

"Alright, make it!" Bastil said.

"I ... I’m sorry, your Lordship." Lee said, "I don’t dare to craft armor anymore. The last time I did you were angry at me for crafting the wrong size ... let me forge only weapons for you in the future, alright?"

"I’ll give you the measurements." Bastil said.

"I ... I’m afraid I’d have to take them myself ... your Lordship!" Lee said in a trembling voice, taking a half-step back as if afraid Bastil would smack him.