Chương 68: Chapter 67 Buddy’s Hidden Treasure

"A mana stone?" A jewel radiating brilliant colours lay inside the hole Buddy had dug. As though entranced, Karath crouched and lifted it from the earth. This was not the same mana stone he had brought from the underground laboratory. He could tell as soon as he held it. It was slightly smaller than the one consumed during the drake battle. More importantly, the texture was different. The first mana stone had been extremely hard, exactly as the word stone suggested. This one felt faintly soft beneath his fingers.

"Ah. So this is where Buddy hid it." Karath looked up in surprise when Gerina spoke as though she recognised the object.

"You know what it is?"

"That stone you are holding was found near the drake's heart while everyone was butchering the corpse. Gerina thought it was merely something the monster had swallowed and intended to throw it away, but Buddy picked it up and carried it somewhere."

"Ah..." Karath stared at Buddy in astonishment. Had the wolf remembered seeing Karath use a mana stone and deliberately saved something similar? Karath had already felt uneasy after consuming the only mana stone he possessed. If another monster as powerful as the drake appeared near the village, he had no reliable method of dealing with it. Buddy had now removed that fear with ridiculous ease.

"Thank you, Buddy. From now on, Karath will give you the finest meat and hearts every day." Karath approached the wolf, who held his head proudly, and stroked his fur. As though understanding every word, Buddy barked twice and wagged his tail. Another fifteen days passed after Karath rose from his sickbed. His daily routine remained simple. The moment he woke, he sat cross-legged and repeated the breathing method used to accumulate mana.

After gathering a sufficient amount, he left the house and headed toward the place where the drake's remains were stored. The bones, scales, and tendons had been cleaned and moved into a newly constructed earthen building. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. It served as the settlement's communal warehouse and had been built specifically to prevent the valuable materials from remaining scattered outdoors. Naturally, Karath had ordered its construction.

Without his intervention, the tribe would probably have left everything exposed to the weather indefinitely.

"Karath! Are you making Kaden's weapon today?" Kaden called out with an expectant expression as Karath walked toward the warehouse.

"Yours is too large. It has to be made last." Karath laughed and walked past him. Until recently, Kaden had mocked him for becoming weak. Now he expected to receive his weapon before everyone else.

"Tsk. Kaden really needs to learn how to read the situation."

"Krahahaha! That is part of his charm." Krog's teasing voice and the booming laughter of the older warriors followed from behind. They had gathered near the well to wash before departing for hunting and patrol duties. Under ordinary circumstances, Karath would have joined them now that he had recovered. Instead, he had been excused. The task assigned to him was more important than hunting or scouting.

"Today, Karath should prepare Krog's weapon." After entering the warehouse, he examined the bones scattered throughout the interior and selected one of a suitable size.

"It is absurdly large." Had Arnold attempted to lift it in his previous life, he would have needed both arms merely to embrace its weight. Karath carried it to the only properly organised section of the room and sat upon the floor.

"Haa." After taking a deep breath, he moved the mana inside his body and interfered with the energy flowing naturally around him. The mana surrounding his right hand twisted into strange patterns. Hummmmm. A sharp sound that made the skin crawl began repeating above his palm. It was the Third Circle spell Wind Cutter. More precisely, it was Karath's personally modified Wind Cutter, Version Three. Version Two had been a failure.

A conventional Wind Cutter compressed air, rotated it, and launched the resulting blade toward a target. As usual, Karath removed the part responsible for flight. Instead, he greatly increased the intensity of rotation and compression. The result was a violently spinning chainsaw formed from blades of air above his right hand. Removing the directional pattern reduced the required calculations. However, the actual mana consumption remained at the Third Circle level.

That meant Karath's mana reserves had finally grown enough to use Third Circle magic freely. It was the reward for gathering mana consistently throughout the previous fifteen days. Karath brought the rotating wind blade toward the drake bone held in his left hand. He had developed this modified Wind Cutter specifically to process the drake's skeleton. Working ogre bones against other ogre bones had been difficult enough. Drake bones belonged to an entirely different level.

Rubbing bones together worked reasonably well for sharpening an edge or creating a point. It was extremely inconvenient when trying to cut a material into a specific size. Most drake bones were far too thick and large for an orc to grip properly. Karath therefore cut them into suitable sizes and shapes. Afterward, the women used smaller drake bones to grind the edges and sharpen them. This work was the reason he had been excused from hunting and patrols. No one else could cut the bones into usable forms.

That did not make the process easy. If the improvised Wind Cutter could slice through drake bone effortlessly, Karath would never have needed to nearly kill himself during the battle. Hummmmm. Screeeeech. An unpleasant grinding noise erupted where the Wind Cutter met the bone. Fine white powder sprayed outward like sawdust. That was why Karath thought of the spell as a saw blade. The absurdly durable bone could only be worn away little by little, as though he were slowly sawing through it.

"Haa." After grinding for approximately one minute, Karath had cut only one centimetre deep. His mana reserves were already near exhaustion from maintaining a Third Circle spell for so long. He closed his eyes and began breathing again. Once his mana recovered, he recreated Wind Cutter and resumed sawing. Making weapons for the warriors was not Karath's true goal. There was another project he wanted to attempt using drake bone. The problem was that his intended work required extremely precise cutting.

Karath had almost no experience with a saw in either of his lives. The only time he remembered using one was during military service.