Danmachi- Hell’s Forge

Flip it

Hestia immediately turned more unfriendly at this and glared at the man. 

"Best come inside then, I want to hear the full story before making my judgements." I said firmly.

The two nodded and walked in before finding a seat where Ouka began to tell his side of the story.

"At first everything was going well as we dived down to the fifteenth floor but that all changed so fast. We ran into a monster party and ended up fighting a retreating battle that Chigusa got seriously injuried in, the one who we were carrying. As we fled up the dungeon we saw your people and to my great shame I passed the monsters chasing us onto them to escape." he said with a deep apologetic bow.

I walked into my workshop without a word and grabbed the coin before returning. "Flip this and I'll give my sentence." I said holding the coin out.

"What is it?" Takemikazuchi asked warily as he eyed the coin.

"It detects whether or not someone feels genuine regret for their actions. Laughing face means no and crying face yes. There are ways to deceive the innate ability to detect falsehoods that you gods have and this will make it absolutely clear whether he feels genuine regret from what he did or not." I said seriously and Ouka took the coin without hesitation and flipped it.

The coin glowed blue in midair and landed on the side with the crying face that continued to release a bright blue glow. I sighed as my anger dissipated at this sight as it meant the man genuinely regretted his actions. The situation was all around shitty for everyone involved and so I decided to let it go.

"You will need to apologize to my friends but we won't pursue this any further." I said before grabbing the coin and leaving.

This matter was over as far as I was concerned as the one responsible was offering a genuine apology and in the end no one died or was crippled so that was enough. To be clear if the dude wasn't fucking regretful I was fully planning to take his eyes so he couldn't continue being an adventurer. Someone who could damn others without regretting it was too dangerous to allow to grow more powerful as who was to say they wouldn't turn to murder at some point out of convenience?-

The matter was all but taken care of at this point though as all that was left was the official apology and that had nothing to do with me. That was between Bell and the others but I already knew they'd likely forgive the dude. Well except maybe Daphne but she's a bit of a sour puss anyways so not that big a surprise. With that matter settled and not expecting any more guests I went into my workshop to work on the magic stone converters like I have been trying to only to get interrupted at every turn.-

It wasn't a simple matter of just increasing the power of the original technique I used but rather updating the out of date original model to my current standards. This meant a full overhaul of the entire thing and that took time as it was no easy thing. Refining the green dragon scales into shape and quality for housing this technique was as simple as it got but making the cursed technique and most importantly restrictions for it was delicate time consuming work. If I had to describe it I'd say it was like building a pocket watch from scratch except the watch was in the shape of a cube or sphere.-

Also the gears that made the thing work were cats that didn't want to be there. Needless to say any distraction or interruption cost my progress dearly. Honestly though I relished the challenge it provided me as it meant I was making more progress towards my goal. It certainly helped that the converters had a practical application that I wanted sooner rather than later. Right now the original Wyvern magic stone converters could only barely convert level two magic stones in a decent amount of time but level three and higher had a much more unreasonable amount of time needed to be emptied and converted to cursed stones.-

Specifically three days for a level three stone and nearly two weeks for a level four non monster rex stone. The Goliath stones on the other hand looked like they were going to take around a month and a half to just be converted which was simply unacceptable. My more powerful creations were heavily energy demanding and while level three stones work at the moment I was rapidly approaching the point of needing level four stones for some of my more unhinged ideas.-

For example I had been slowly lining the fence around our property with dormant cursed stones in preparation for my plan to create a special type of barrier around our home using the sea of cursed energy above the city as it's power source. Speaking of that plan I still needed another Goliath stone to use as a filter for the massive amount of energy that plan will be channeling. The first stone was primed and ready for it and the second was about three quarters done so I needed to get the third stone ready as well which naturally meant actually getting the fucking thing first.-

'Unless I'm wrong the next respawn time is around now so I might want to check to make sure nobody took it already.' I thought with a sigh.

I imbued my current iteration of the conversion technique and restrictions into the dragon scale item and put a level one goblin stone on it to see if it worked. The mana was pulled out of the stone near instantly before swirling around the cursed energy conversion plate before getting stuffed into the stone again.-

'The conversion rate is stable and the energy loss is within acceptable parameters, need to test on higher level stones to understand if this is only for level one stones or not but it looks good.' I thought noting down the current design in my notebook.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

I moved on to do exactly that with a level two stone that while slightly longer to convert still did so WAY fucking faster than my original model converter. I then put in a level three stone and once again the cursed tool took longer than the previous two leveled stones but was drastically faster taking only ten minutes compared to the three days of the original model.