It wasn't until the evening that Rayleigh finally returned home.
Hearing the sound of the front door, Alfia descended from the attic with a book in hand.
After the two completed their second Kaido treatment of the day, Rayleigh brought out the item he had acquired.
"Alfia, this is for you."
"Hmm?"
The woman took the small box Rayleigh offered, opened it, and held the contents in her palm.
"A pendant?" she asked, examining the gem hanging from a delicate gold chain.
Rayleigh explained, "This is a Magic Item created by Asfi. It possesses a cognitive hindrance effect designed to lower the recognizability of the wearer's appearance, and it can also physically alter your features to a certain extent."
Hearing his explanation, Alfia seemed mildly interested.
What Rayleigh failed to notice was the fleeting flash of genuine gratitude hidden deep within her eyes.
Alfia handed the pendant back to Rayleigh.
After a brief pause, Rayleigh took the jewelry, stepped behind the woman, and unclasped the chain.
To fasten it smoothly, he gently lifted her beautiful white hair.
As her long hair shifted, it released a faint, pleasant fragrance to his nose.
While wearing the pendant, Alfia channeled a sliver of her Magic to activate the item's effect.
Suddenly, her striking white hair looked as if it had been dyed with ink, rapidly shifting to pitch-black.
After the color settled, she opened her closed eyes.
Rayleigh noticed her distinct heterochromic eyes had both shifted to a deep blue.
Contrasted against her exceptionally fair skin, she now resembled a frail sickly beauty.
Alfia looked into a nearby mirror, observing her altered reflection, but she did not seem entirely satisfied.
"Although my physical appearance has changed, my aura cannot be easily disguised... In that case..."
Alfia adjusted the Magic Item again.
A delicate tear mole appeared beneath her eye.
Even though she merely added a single mole, the slight imperfection caused a massive shift in her overall aura, making it virtually impossible for anyone to connect this frail woman with the terrifying embodiment of Talent.
If anything remained unchanged, it was her graceful figure.
"This way, we don't have to worry about you being recognized. If you want to go out occasionally, it won't be a problem," Rayleigh nodded, mentally giving 'Perseus' a thumbs-up for her craftsmanship.
Aside from the legendary Sage from 800 years ago who pushed Mystery to its absolute limits to forge the Philosopher's Stone, Asfi represented the modern ceiling in the field of Magic Item creation.
And that ancient Sage, furious that his patron deity smashed his Philosopher's Stone, created a forbidden secret art of immortality.
As a result, he suffered the catastrophic backlash of that Magic, transforming into a living skeleton that felt neither hunger nor thirst, forever unable to update his Falna again.
Asfi, on the other hand, was still growing.
In the future, she might possess the potential to surpass that ancient Sage.
"Thank you."
Alfia whispered her thanks softly, then rose and returned to the attic.
Starting the next day, Rayleigh's forge gained a beautiful, quiet female clerk!
....
Bang!
Later that week, the door to the workshop was suddenly thrown open.
Rayleigh looked up from his workbench, his eyes meeting a Pallum girl with short pink hair.
"Oh, it's just you Lyra."
"Huh?" Lyra looked deeply offended. "What do you mean, 'Oh, it's just you Lyra'?! Hey! Are you disappointed that it's me?!"
"Not really."
"Tch!" Lyra bared her teeth, then suddenly flashed a highly smug expression. "Guess what I came to find you for?"
"I'm not guessing."
"Nani?! You can't just say 'not guessing'! Guess quickly!"
She rushed up, grabbed Rayleigh's arm, and shook it aggressively.
Shaken to the point of helplessness, Rayleigh had no choice but to surrender.
"Alright, alright, I get it."
Forced into submission, Rayleigh raised his free hand in a gesture of defeat.
Lyra giggled. She reached back, gripping the short sword at her waist in a reverse grip, and drew the blade.
"It responded to me! My Zanpakutō!"
'Hmm?'
Hearing Lyra's declaration, Rayleigh immediately perked up.
"Really?"
"Hmph, let me show you!"
The Pallum girl wore a completely boastful expression.
She held the blade backhanded, her thumb, index finger, and pinky raised while her middle and ring fingers rested loosely on the hilt.
Rayleigh raised an eyebrow slightly at the sight.
'That pose... not bad.'
As anyone familiar with the Shinigami world knew, aesthetic was heavily prioritized.
Whether the physical pose struck during a Zanpakutō release looked cool or not heavily impacted the visual experience.
Judging purely from this stylistic perspective, Lyra's talent was actually quite decent.
"Weave the net, Arachne!"
The Zanpakutō flared with spiritual light.
The short sword in Lyra's hand dissolved, transforming into a pair of sleek black gloves enveloping her hands and forearms.
The backs of the black gloves featured two menacing spider-shaped decorations, and the knuckle sections were reinforced with heavy metal guards.
"You really successfully achieved a Shikai." Rayleigh looked at the Arachne gauntlets on Lyra's hands with pleasant surprise.
Lyra, however, flashed a sudden wicked smile.
In the next second, Rayleigh caught something in the air reflecting the ambient sunlight, faintly glimpsing crystalline strands crisscrossing the workshop.
Thwip! Swish!
Spider silk, nearly invisible to the naked eye, had completely blanketed his surroundings at some point during her entrance.
As Lyra made a sharp pulling motion with her fingers, the silk instantly tightened, wrapping around Rayleigh and binding him in place.
'This is?'
Rayleigh felt the extreme tensile strength and constricting force of the spiritual spider silk.
While surprised by the binding strength, he also discovered that these threads actually secreted a trace amount of toxin directly into his skin.
He deliberately did not resist the bindings to analyze the effect.
He quickly realized this toxin was not simple. His cognitive processing actually started to become sluggish.
If it were before the war, he might not even have noticed this subtle yet fatal neurological change.
But ever since he awakened the Gif Blessings - Minor, he had grown accustomed to his highly active, hyper-efficient mind.
Therefore, he noticed the cognitive delay immediately.
'Does this poison affect the central nervous system?'
There was a stark discrepancy in his senses. His physical perception of time and actual real-time had separated.
This specific effect reminded Rayleigh of the "Superhuman Drug" developed by Mayuri Kurotsuchi, the mad Captain of the 12th Division of the Gotei 13.
Except, Arachne's effect was the exact opposite of Lyra's spider toxin.
Lyra's spider toxin suppressed the nervous system, making a person's senses sluggish and delayed.
The Superhuman Drug, on the other hand, made a person's senses hyper-sensitive.
Or rather, "overly sensitive"—dialed up to an agonizing extreme.
For example, if a drop of water fell from above, the physical process took 1.5 seconds.
But if a person under the influence of that drug focused their attention on the drop of water, their brain would process the event as if those 1.5 seconds had been extended into hours.
The Superhuman Drug pushed a person's sensory receptors infinitely beyond their biological limits.
What would originally take only an instant would be infinitely prolonged under the drug's superhuman senses.
Furthermore, the drug specifically targeted the pain receptors.
This meant that what would normally be one second of physical pain would stretch into an incredibly long, agonizing eternity.
Mayuri Kurotsuchi once used it on the 8th Espada, Szayelaporro Granz, extending the agony of a sword piercing his heart to last for roughly a hundred years.
In other words, trapped within Szayelaporro's heightened perception, he watched his own heart being pierced but could do nothing to stop it, all while enduring the agonizing, hyper-analyzed sensation of the stab for a century.
An ordinary person could hardly bear ten seconds of such an experience, let alone a hundred years.
What was even more terrifying was that the victim couldn't even retreat into madness.
Their senses enhanced by the Superhuman Drug, forced them to experience every micro-second with crystal clarity.
The sensation of every single cell and every microscopic layer of skin being pierced would clearly register in their mind and body.
Even within the unethical depths of Mayuri Kurotsuchi's research, the Superhuman Drug was classified as a highly "inhumane" chemical weapon.
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