"Princess Assault!"
Silver and black bicolored lightning pierced through the air, and two dazzling flashes of sword-light suddenly materialized in the space.
The sword hilts spun twice in Jhin's hands before plunging into the ground and dispersing into motes of light. He exhaled a breath of stale air and turned to look at the monster slumped in a pool of purple blood. No faint golden glow rose from the corpse — meaning that once again, no materials had dropped.
As the Gourmet Edifice left the main traffic road, the frequency of monster encounters had gradually risen. Although most of them were just common and elite-tier monsters, in such numbers they were getting pretty annoying.
In order to finish his [Elemental Armament] before reaching Maple Sugar Valley, Jhin took the initiative to clear out the surrounding monsters. The continuous armor construction over this stretch of time had pushed his [Mana Manipulation] and [Elemental Manipulation] skills up to Lv3.
The elemental weapons condensed from Dark-Corrosive Thunder — which he had previously been unable to stably control — now came to him as naturally as a hand to its glove. To ensure their stability, he had even added an extra layer of metallic shell condensed from earth-element over the elemental weapons.
At present, the [Elemental Armament] had completed every piece of armor save the head. Once the helmet was done, this magic could be declared fully accomplished — but Jhin was stuck precisely on constructing the helmet, with not the slightest scrap of progress. Clearing monsters had become, in its own way, one of his outlets for venting.
When he returned to his companions, he still wore the same gloomy, sullen look.
"Master, regarding the construction of the helmet, do you still have no clue at all?"
"Yeah. It feels like my brain's been stoppered shut by a wooden cork."
"In that case, why don't you lean against my lap and rest for a bit? Pecorine and Megumin haven't come back yet."
"Didn't I say I'd take care of all the monster subjugation?"
Kokkoro gently massaged Jhin's head as she spoke: "They went off to gather fruit nearby. It isn't monster subjugation."
"I see."
"About the matter of constructing the helmet, would you tell me a little about it?"
When you have no train of thought, just stewing over it on your own makes it all too easy to end up in a dead end. Finding someone to talk it through with isn't a bad way to solve the problem either.
Jhin buried his head into Kokkoro's soft little belly and, voice muffled, began describing the problems he'd been running into while constructing the helmet.
According to his original design philosophy, each piece of armor represented one type of amplification — the gauntlets for strength, leg armor for speed, body armor for defense, and the headpiece, naturally, for mental power.
On the amplification effects themselves, there were no issues at all — but neither-large-nor-small problems like field of vision, range of motion, and sensitivity had been continuously obstructing the construction of the helmet.
"Kokkoro~ when you elves design full-body plate-armor, have you ever run into this kind of problem?"
"Master... your breathing — not so forceful, please... my belly tickles a little."
"Ah... right, I'll turn around."
Kyaru, reading the situation, didn't go over to disturb the two of them and instead trotted off to the other side with her water cup in her hands.
Kokkoro adjusted her breathing, her soft, lovely pair of hands once again resting on Jhin's cheeks, rhythmically pressing his temples in light little circles: "The elven race doesn't have heavy-armored warriors; everyone's armor is rather minimal. If one were forced to name something similar to full-body plate-armor, it would probably be when we operate the War Treant."
"The tribesfolk share senses with the Treant, attaining a state of complete oneness between person and tree."
"But my [Elemental Armament] is a spell — there's no way to achieve shared senses through it."
"Master, haste makes waste — those are words you yourself once told me." Kokkoro used her fingertips to smooth out the brows he had knotted into mountains and rivers. "Since the things of our world can't serve as reference, why not think about how the armor on your side is?"
"Over on our side, we left the era of cold weapons behind ages ago. The most you'd see is at some full-armor competition... there's no reference value at all... wait!"
Jhin suddenly bolted upright from Kokkoro's lap. The Main World's armor really couldn't serve as a reference — but there were all kinds of movies, anime, and games!
The armor in those — as much as you could ever want. He was bound to find something to model after.
The instant his train of thought opened up, it was like a reservoir throwing its floodgates open; inspiration swept through his mind like a towering tidal wave.
He stepped away from Kokkoro, and the silver-grey [Elemental Armament] surfaced over his body. The once smooth, orderly armor surface was now covered all over in cracks, as though it had just survived a vicious battle.
Then, amid the startled cries of Kokkoro and Kyaru, it shattered with a thunderous crash.
The very words "armor" and "plate-armor" had been the biggest constraint on Jhin's [Elemental Armament]. They had trapped his thinking within the fixed impressions of those terms, leaving him forever convinced that it had to be designed in the shape of plate-armor.
Having broken out of that mental cage, all sorts of reference-worthy armor came surging into his mind. After turning it over and over, he at last settled on the form for the [Elemental Armament].
The earlier sense of blockage felt as though it had never even existed. A suit of pitch-black battle armor with biomass and nanotech textures wrapped Jhin's entire body.
The suit was etched throughout with gilded patterns. The head bore a flat, sword-tip-shaped single horn that, paired with the gilded patterns, carried a mysteriously beautiful aesthetic. A tattered, pitch-black scarf coiled around the neck and fluttered in the wind, and the metallic pauldrons jutted from the arms like demonic talons, adding a touch of cruelty to the battle armor as a whole.
From appearance alone, rather than battle armor, it looked more like a specially-styled bodysuit worn over Jhin's frame.
Megumin, returning with armfuls of fruit alongside Pecorine, didn't even want the fruit anymore the instant she laid eyes on the brand-new [Elemental Armament]. She tossed it straight onto the ground and rushed over to his side, touching here and peering there.
"Is this a new spell you researched? It looks ten thousand times cooler than the previous [Elemental Armament]!"
"But how come there are no eye slits left on the head — hey~ Jhin, can you even see?"
"I can see. Stop poking around at my face."
A voice with a metallic timbre came out from inside the battle armor, which only got Megumin even more excited as she went on shouting about how cool it was.
Not only was she pleased with the current look of the [Elemental Armament], Jhin was equally pleased himself. In the tidal wave of inspiration, he had picked out the warframe styling from a game he had once played called Warframe, while also referencing parts of the warframe's design settings; during the construction process he had infused a touch of life-force, and so created this current suit of battle armor.
"Megumin, step back a moment — I'll show you something even cooler!"
"Okay!"
Seeing Megumin pull back to a sufficient distance, with a flick of thought Jhin separated himself out from the suit of battle armor. The armor itself, however, did not dissipate along with him — on the contrary, it picked up a piece of fruit, wiped it clean, and handed it to him.
He cocked an eyebrow at the rest of them, smug. "How about that? Pretty stunning, isn't it?"
Kyaru really wanted to pry open this guy's head and see what on earth was packed inside it. He had only chatted with Kokkoro for a few sentences, and yet he had managed to create a suit of battle armor along the lines of an alchemical golem. That sort of efficiency and talent could probably drive an alchemist who specialized in golems to an early grave.
Megumin, in much the same way Pecorine looked when she ran into a gourmet feast, was drooling waterfall-style straight out of her mouth, her eyes so red that Jhin half-suspected she'd shoot lasers out of them the very next second and burn straight through him.
"Jhin! Hook me up with a set too!"
"Sorry — can't be done."
"How could you do this to meeeee!!!!"
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🔥 New history: Path of Elation in Warhammer 40K
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