Making something designed to replace a functional aspect of the body was hard work. No, it was on a whole different level than simply being ‘hard.’ The balance aspect had to be just right. What good was a new leg if it was too heavy to lift? Likewise, if the prosthetic was flimsy and too light, it’d collapse underneath the patient's weight or get sent flying by wayward gusts. 

Dozens of attempts later, I’d yet to produce even a prototype. Eight pounds of iron were down the drain, and that was with recycling the failures and turning them back into ingots. And it wasn’t like I was trying to do this alone. Kokan stayed with me long after the moon took its place in the sky to help me sketch better designs. He’d pen his thoughts down and make little diagrams and drawings of the prosthetics, taking notes on where it’d be preferable to have a screw and where it’d be better to be all in one piece. We’d talk for hours, but it mostly resulted in exasperated sighs and headaches. 

Meanwhile, his daughter had stopped forging for the shop and focused solely on helping me. She took over melting the raw iron into ingots so I wouldn’t have to stop to do that. She offered a practiced hand and advice to guide my hammer strikes. When it came time to try out a design, such as using two thin support beams to mimic the fibula and tibia, she told me flat out that my forging skills weren’t up to par to handle such delicate work. She apologized so abruptly for being harsh. I thanked her, but I used low-quality iron to practice something I knew I couldn’t accomplish. 

A week of attempts passed me by. Whenever I returned home covered from head to toe in dirty soot, I didn’t want to look at it like a reminder that I failed to achieve my goals. Instead, I listened to Tilde’s advice and took pride in my appearance because it meant I tried my hardest—something I never did as Shuuta. Not that I was ever given a chance, but it felt good to put the hard effort in because I wanted to become someone better. I wanted to prove everyone wrong. I wanted Lyudmila Springfield to become so totally better than Shuuta Fenton that I’d never have to think of him again. 

I wanted to say Niva was doing well, but that was oversimplifying things because she couldn’t be summarized in just a one-word update. Sure, perhaps her blisters and bruises were looking a little better, but physical healing couldn’t affect the mind. Bad dreams and night terrors were common occurrences, and it wasn’t rare for me to go to bed fully dressed so I could get up with her when it happened. 

At first, even touching her hand was enough for her screams and thrashing to double in volume and tenacity. I’d have to reassure her safety, then promise I was working hard for her to regain her mobility for her to even calm down the slightest bit. But her hysterics also meant her wounds kept reopening, giving her little time to heal. During this week, she also went into potion dependency withdrawals. Gallons of sweat drained down her body, with her constant twitching and restlessness. She spat out her food during breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and whatever she did eat was vomited right out of her mouth. Her skin felt clammy, and she was often disoriented and passed the time gagging or clutching her stomach. 

Her cries of agony were heart-shattering to someone like Kokan and Ichiha because Niva was young enough to be their daughter. It was rough on me, too, because I knew exactly what she was going through. The fear she felt? I experienced it. The fright? The disgust? The pain? I had to suffer through it all. 

When I held her hand to calm her down from her night terrors, I’d whisper the promises I’d made her. Sometimes, that made her cry harder, but rarely did she simmer off at my words and tearfully nod. On those days, she’d try to eat her breakfast with her good hand, yet most of the time, she didn’t have the strength to lift a spoon. Thus, it always fell to me to feed her, and I was okay with that. Taking care of her allowed my mind to rest, reset, and prepare for the following day, which consisted of my attempt at creating a prosthetic leg. Until now, Niva wore Kokan’s shirts since they were pretty much like a dress, but I managed to snag a black blouse, skirt, and a white wig. She flinched away when I helped her get dressed, but that was probably an involuntary reaction to her former abuse. 

Sekh and I were still hesitant to tell Niva our pasts, so we refrained from that until she could speak and hold a conversation. It felt like she wanted to, though, since she always had her mouth open and tried her best to vocalize her response in a series of awkward noises. The dedication was something to be admired, and it struck me in the heart chord because she was fighting hard. 

But since she was on the up-and-up, Kokan taught me how to properly massage Niva’s limbs in a way that would maintain her muscles. He said this was important because the road to recovery would be faster. So, I started with her good leg, raising it up until her pained expression told me to stop, then went to work on her calf before switching to the other leg. After taking care of that, I ran my fingers down her arms, gently pushing and copying Kokan. It was probably slightly painful for Niva, but she endured it since she knew this would help her walk again when the prosthetics were done. 

As I predicted, Gloria used her illusion magic to transform Arella into a run-of-the-mill human. Her cover was working at Noelia’s bar as a barmaid, using her feminine wiles and charm to extract information from the drunken patrons. She never worked as a prostitute, though. Anyone who slapped her ass or grabbed her by the hips received a heavy beating, leading to her gaining a nickname as the Iron Maiden. Every night, she communicated with Gloria via a ring enchanted with [Telepathy], but I couldn’t hijack that conversation. As for Gloria? She had transformed the room in front of the boss’s chambers into her bedroom. She had more than one storage-type skill, so the room was decorated in record time. It was far too... sterile. Muted browns and soft whites, a hint of black and gray here and there to match her gunsmoke eyes. I wasn't a fan of it. 

The shadowguard’s waypoint wasn’t visible, so he was out of range. And Irisa and her parents kept to their word and avoided Arella’s waypoint if she was out doing some shopping. 

But as for the Barclays in Dirge’s capital city? I had nothing. There was something in the newspaper about holding a state funeral for Noelia Carpenter. And there was even a printed image of the ‘slave’ half-breed Noelia was said to have saved. This world didn’t have printers, but there were printing presses. It was still expensive to print color, though. Especially since Gloria had the paper distributed all over Dirge. I thought that was a mistake since it meant any rumors about a Soul Warrior’s death would be true. Any enemies would see it as a sign of weakness, but Gloria didn’t seem stupid. Arella was sharp, perhaps even brighter than Kokan, yet she told Gloria to go ahead with it. I wondered if this was a writ of challenge? 

If only I had a way to hack into their telepathic conversations... And there was that stuff about a council, too. Honestly, the Barclay family probably paid for everything. If so, they were far wealthier than I was led to believe. This couldn’t have been cheap. 

Yeah, it was all bullshit. Nothing more than a fabricated story to change the public’s perception of that rotten woman. But it worked. The murmur about Noelia started to sound positive. Some even regretted the way they talked and thought about her. 

It was sickening how easily they changed their minds about her. After being paid by Gloria, the guild announced they would take 500 people to the capital to witness the funeral. Tickets sold like wildfire, but I didn’t care about that. If I were stronger? Then yes. I would've volunteered and caused some chaos in the capital. I wouldn’t have killed the shadowguard, but I could ruin a solid portion of Gloria’s army. 

But I was still weak.  

I wasn’t anything special. Certainly not smart, strong, tough, or athletic. But after becoming Mila, I’d like to believe I was close to gaining the perseverance and self-discipline I sorely needed. If not, then how did I have the strength to face each day knowing that I probably wasn’t going to achieve my goals? 

Tilde had started to pound a positive mindset into my brain. Why? Perhaps she feared the repeated failures would grind my self-confidence the same way flowing water could split a mountain. But it wasn’t just her. Sekh and my desire for revenge kept me going. In my dreams, I imagined impaling Meruria’s head on a pike and casting those damnable traitors into a magmatic chasm full of molten magma. Then maybe I’d launch a wave of fire over Cridia, which would spread to the world and envelope it in an abyssal flame, ending the planet and fulfilling the dreams of a woman who’d put her faith in me? 

I was strong. I had to tap into determination because it would be foolish to ignore all the faith my closest companions had in me. If I wanted to feel weak, I could count on them to bring me back. If I felt like a failure, I knew their encouragement would pull me out of despair.  

Because I wasn’t Shuuta anymore. I wasn’t a friendless, sad sack of an abused existence born for the sake of being put down. 

---

As the days passed, the dungeon was still closed off to the public, and the people of Ria were making a fuss. A town was often constructed around or near a dungeon since adventurers needed a place to rest and resupply. The loot gained from there obviously needed a place to sell, and when you did the math, it was as clear as day that the two had a symbiotic relationship. The damage Gloria and Arella had caused was healed. From a quick check via my map, everything looked fine. The inhabitants were spawning like normal, but every night, one of the two guards standing out front would enter the mines and slaughter the monsters.   

Sure, a dungeon could exist without a town, and a town would do fine without a dungeon. But having both? Well, it was just good for business. In a capitalistic society, it would be inconceivable to think about putting a blockade on the dungeon because the money would stop flowing. But this wasn’t one, and the rules didn’t apply here.   

Even as I spied on Dirge’s Holy Lord, I only learned information when she loudly complained after a telepathic conversation with the council. Complaints had reached them, and they had problems with Ria’s current circumstances because the economy was slowing down. She spared few compliments and spat many curses about them once the connection was severed. I doubt she was elected to lead Dirge. There was a low chance democratic elections even existed here. But if I was going to kill her, I needed to know more about this council. Karen’s father, if I had the family tree right—granted, I knew little—was probably the head she talked about. According to the newspapers, his name was Bart Barclay. If he was on the council, he and his family held a substantial amount of influence on Dirge and its Holy Lord. But if they posed so many problems, why didn’t Gloria get rid of them. Nothing said you had to have a table of advisors, although it was a good idea to surround yourself with people brighter than yourself. Very few rulers could single-handily run a country without any assistance. Those foolish enough to attempt to do so often found themselves with a knife to the back or poison festering within their stomachs.   

But I didn’t care about Dirge. I cared about Irisa, her parents, Sekh, Tilde, and Niva.   

Although things looked dire, the Gecko Swap Shop, Ichiha’s store, was growing while everything else was declining. On a good day, the GSS was lucky to get a handful of window shoppers because its wares were often available at other shops for less. That changed, however, when Karen Barclay’s store refused to budge on lowering their prices after Noelia’s ‘disappearance.’. The other stores religiously followed because they were all about profit at the expense of good will. Ichiha took advantage of the fact that her store was paid off, nearly everything was made in-house, and they had a rather large stockpile of generic general-use items.   

All she needed was a little bit of advertising. Tilde took care of that. 

At first, things weren’t flying off the shelves, but that changed when she decided to put a few of the bandages weaved from my web for sale. 

Healing herbs and remedies were at an all-time high, which included regular bandages made from cloth. It cost me nothing but time to fill a spool with my webbing, and Kokan’s and Sekh’s practiced hands were able to pump out quality gauze at a respectable rate. Once word began to spread, it was hard to keep them in stock, so I remembered what Irisa said about my webbing being used for fishing. She ran a few tests to see how they fared when wet and tensed, and the results were positive.  

Thus, I was responsible for two products that, in just two weeks, brought in more money than the last six months. I was happy with my webbing being used that way. All I needed was a good meal, and I could spin for hours at a time, which was far more than a regular spider.  

And it was practice, so that was that.   

So, it wasn’t odd to come home late from a hard day at the forge to find the shop with 10-15 customers. The increased popularity worked wonders for me since Ichiha could leverage it to find a buyer for Amos’s clothing. When I moved in with them, her reputation was in the gutter. She didn’t have anything to do with the incident between Kokan and Erin, but people hated her. That was half a decade ago. Time was said to heal all wounds. Verbal attacks and grudges were included. But after Gloria arrived and turned everything into a shit show, Ichiha’s prestige and stature were recovering nicely. Kokan remained upstairs, though. He only ever went out at night, and even then, he was restricted to just the harbor to do a little bit of fishing with his daughter.   

When Ichiha closed the store for lunch one day, she finished up early and skipped out to take care of some errands, one of which included purchasing better clothes for Niva. 

---

Eighteen days had passed us by, and on the nineteenth, I was at Smithy’s Corner with my favorite 89-year-old oni with horns. Tilde joined us. Dressed in a brand-new strapless dress I’d bought her, she shimmied around the furnace and showed off at every turn. 

“Aww... What’s wrong, Master? Am I too sexy for you? You got a stiffy? Tell you what. Buy me another dress, and I’ll let you whack it to me tonight. I know you’ve been backed-up,” she said, posing with her arms behind her head and her flat chest thrust forward. 

“EH?! Mila? You got an erection here?” Irisa gasped and looked at my crotch. With red-tinged horns, she glanced back up at my face, and I stared daggers towards a flying nuisance. 

“First off, I’m not hard. Second, stop that shit. You’re going to give Irisa the wrong idea. Third, I just bought you that. I didn’t even steal it. And you know what’s wrong,” I hastily replied. 

“See, the problem is that you’re trying to do it without any help.” 

“No, I’m not. Kokan’s been up with me past midnight for the past two weeks. And Irisa’s been here by my side non-stop. I’m not doing any of that loner bullshit because I know I can’t do this on my own.” 

“That’s right!” Irisa said. She stood behind me and rested her chin on my head. We had time to kill because we had to make a few more ingots. I’d recycled what I could from my failures, but 8 times seemed to be the limit. 

“Not that kind of help, numbnuts. What do you have that no one else does?” Tilde said, pointing to her forehead. “I was really hoping you’d figure it out without me telling you. 

“Numb...nuts?” Irisa whispered. “Can they get numb?” 

“The AI? But how can that help me with something I've never made before?” I inquired. 

“Look, [Biological AI] is meant for so, so, so, so much more. It can make shit for you, manage your shit for you, even search shit for you and highlight shit for you to pick up. But remember what I said? How it learns? You feed it with data, and it grows smarter. What the hell do you think you’ve been doing these days? Fine, I'll make it even simpler for you. Your mistakes have been a boon for the AI. But it’s not just you. It learns from all around you. When Irisa makes something? It learns. When Ichiha’s cooking? It learns. Walking down the street? It learns from other people talking. When you’re surrounded by like 40 blacksmiths? Yeah, it’s learning from all of them. It does nothing but learn, learn, and learn.” 

“You couldn’t tell me this sooner?” I asked in disbelief.  

“I can lead you to water, baby, but I can’t force you to drink. There are some things you have to do and learn by yourself. It’s called self-growth. Try it sometimes.” 

I slowly shook my head and asked the AI for help. 

There is not enough data to complete the request, my lord. 

“Tilde, what the hell? It isn’t working?” I turned back to the snickering fairy. 

“That’s because the prosthetic you’re picturing is so far out of the realm of your possibility that you’d need a whole team of scientists and about 60 years of experience. Remember, you’re not in your ‘country’ anymore. The advances in technology and healthcare cannot compare to what you’re familiar with. Be stricter with your wording.”  

Sighing, I asked again, but I wanted to make something that would allow Niva to walk. Then, and only then, did it show me a list of instructions that were clear and precise. 

“Shit... I was too focused on the end game, weren’t I?”  

Tilde nodded. “Yeah, you were. It’s like painting the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling when you don’t even understand color theory. Remember, the prosthetics aren’t permanent. When you're more skillful, you can always remake them. That’s what you plan to do with Big Tits’ mace and shield, right? Have different iterations?”  

Sighing and nodding once more, I rubbed my head and knew I needed to apologize to Niva the moment we returned home. “Wait. The chapel was painted in the early 1500s. Color theory didn’t exist until Newton did his experiments in the 1660s. But I know what you mean, Tilde.” 

I grabbed a few cooled ingots, tossed them in the furnace, and the annoying fairy started to explain this new facet of [Biological AI]. It used something called ‘augmented reality’ to show me the holographic guide. When looking at the furnace, I could track the temperature of the individual ingots and the furnace itself. It was honestly amazing. Even more so when I could tell the AI to alert me when it was a particular temperature, which manifested as a smartphone-like alert in my vision.   

Okay, so the AI can monitor temperatures. To unlock it for cooking, I probably need to cook more.  

When my ingot was ready, I grabbed it with my tongs and raised my hammer, but the AI used AR to show me how to hold my hammer and how fast to hit the metal. It even used AR to highlight the exact spot I was supposed to strike.   

“Irisa, I’m going to need your help, okay? You’re way better than me. I don’t know how to share the data I’m seeing, but I can read what it says.” 

“Sure, I don’t mind. Mine will probably be better than yours. Is that okay?” 

I nodded. “The important thing is getting Niva the mobility she deserves. My selfishness has put this off for too long, and I’ll be a damn fool before I deny her anything because I didn’t make it.” 

“Yes! That’s what I’m talking about. Character development? Check. I’m sad because I had a long rant ready in case you decided to be a bitch and either give up or refuse Green Tits’ help.” 

“Green...tits?” I heard Irisa whisper. She looked down her shirt. 

“Whatever,” I bemoaned, trying to tune out the annoyance fluttering like a bat out of hell. “But answer me this. How come the knowledge that should have come with [Blacksmith (Lv. 4)] isn’t there?” 

“You used over 100 SP at once on like 5 different skills. It takes time for that to process. You haven’t taken a break, so it’s no wonder why you’re not feeling any different. When you learn or level up a skill, it’s engraved onto your soul for your body to use. So yeah, the easiest solution is to take it easy for a while. You’re a bright High Elf with a fat cock. It should be easy for someone like you.”  

“What does that last part have to do with it?” Irisa questioned Tilde, but I sighed for what felt like the fourteenth time and asked if we could get started. 

We worked throughout the day until the glimmering flicker of our furnace was the last to be extinguished. Heaving for air, Irisa dropped her hammer and fell to her butt, gasping hard while sweat dripped down her cute face. She kept a smile while staring at the completed leg. I was afraid I’d messed up on delicate bits, but the AI’s AR feature gave me proper outlines to follow.  

Still, there they were. The leg was a vague-looking ‘shell’ to fit over Niva’s stumpy knee. I wanted the shin tube to be much thicker to resemble Niva’s other leg, but that added too much weight. It was the same with the feet—one of which was standalone since Niva had most of her other biological leg. I had to strike a balance because it couldn’t be solid metal or completely hollow. 

Both the leg and foot were one solid piece, but I added holes to the top of the socket for a suspension belt to wrap around for added security.  

Even though we both made a pair, Irisa wanted me to use my creations since she saw me put so much effort into them.  

They were ugly... so, so, so ugly, but I couldn't choose aesthetic appeal over functionality. Not when it was concerning Niva, of course.   

I held out a hand for Irisa and helped her to her feet. We were both utterly exhausted, but the smiles on our faces said what didn’t need to be uttered. I stashed the leg and foot in storage, helped Irisa clean up, and we were off towards the house with certainty towards the future fluttering in our hearts.