Chapter 170: Chapter 156: Trial and Error

Artificial Human Right Arm (Quality: 50)
- Enchantment: Durability (Rank 4)
- Enchantment: Body affinity enhancement (Rank 4)
- Enchantment: Biological integration (Rank 4)
- Enchantment: Irremovable (Rank 4)

"Body affinity enhancement?" I queried.

"It seemed like an interesting thing to test," shrugged Grover. "We don't know if your spell will work at all, and if it does, we don't know what will be transferred. Will a durability enchantment translate to your natural arm growing tougher? Will a body affinity enhancement give you a boost to your spells? Might as well learn as much as we can from a single experiment."

"Fair enough," I agreed, pulling my tunic off to avoid clothing getting in the way of the test, immediately eliciting a stare from Cluma.

"How come you don't have any muscles?" she asked, once again displaying her lack of any sort of filter. Darn it, and there I thought she was staring for other reasons. How was I supposed to build up muscle when the System strength stat didn't require it? I'd never seen anyone at the level of an Earth bodybuilder, but some of the delvers had plenty of visible muscle definition, so it must be possible. Presumably it was just a case of working out normally, but it wasn't as if the guild had a gym.

Ignoring Cluma's distractions, the first thing we needed was a baseline, experimenting with how much weight I could lift without any magic getting involved. I kept my physical stat boosting ring, because I wanted the extra endurance, but as long as I kept it on at all times, things should still be fair.

After that was stage one [Detach], removing my right arm at the shoulder.

"Woah, that's freaky," commented Carys. "It's not bleeding, though?"

"This is the first form of the spell. It leaves a portal in place to keep blood vessels and nerves connected. It's the second stage that disconnects them."

"Wait, slow down!" exclaimed Cluma, who was still determined to be the voice of reason in our group. "You can't just pull your arm off! First, make sure everything is set up properly, and lie down!"

"You don't need to worry, young lady. We have two healers here, and Vargalas provided a potion of major healing, too."

"Major healing?"

"It'll heal up to five hundred health points, without the nasty side effects of the last potion I provided you," said Vargalas, presumably referring to the hero's last stand he'd made many years ago. "I strongly advise a hearty meal afterwards, but regrowing a mere lost arm is child's play."

Wow, that's a decent alternative to a healer. It could completely refill my health pool twice over, with plenty of room to spare. Carys obviously felt the same, given the massive pout she was sporting.

I placed my removed arm on the floor, ready for [Redistribute], then lay down myself. Grover took hold of the artificial arm, Carys and Kari standing nearby, with the others watching from a greater distance.

"Okay, we're as ready as we'll ever be," said Grover. "Go for it, lad."

"Okay, I'll go on the count of three. Three. Two. One."

I ignored the screaming from [Danger Sense] and activated the second stage of [Detach]. I immediately wished I'd had the forethought to stuff something into my mouth to bite on. It hurt.

Skill [Enlarged Health Pool] advanced to level 8

I was down thirty points of health. My next heartbeat cost me another five, as I sprayed blood into the air. The next cost only four, and I could feel the wound writhing. The pain made it impossible to inspect myself in any detail, but through [Mana Sight], I could see the arteries constricting. It wasn't Kari or Carys; it was my own System-boosted regeneration, ensuring that I wouldn't bleed out.

Skill [Rapid Healing] advanced to level 2

By the third heartbeat, a wave of life affinity washed into me, sealing the wound fully. Grover attached the artificial arm over the top. I lay with my eyes screwed shut for a minute as the pain gradually dulled to something more acceptable.

"Are you okay?" asked Cluma worriedly.

"I'm fine. Turns out that losing an arm hurts, which I'm sure comes as a surprise to no-one."

I thought I was used to pain, but it had been a long time since I'd taken serious wounds in a dungeon. Apparently, some of my tolerance had faded in the time since.

I tried to flex the fingers on my artificial arm. They responded, but awkwardly. My original still seemed to be working, but again, controlling it was awkward. I'd never before used the second stage of [Detach] on an entire limb, and now I was effectively trying to control three arms at once. I shouldn't have been able to manage it at all, if not for the System's ability to patch extra abilities into my brain.

"It's lighter than I expected," I commented, expecting the thing to weigh me down and leave me completely off balance.

"It's mostly hollow."

A couple of minutes later, I felt safe to start experimenting. Lifting weights with my new right arm—which managed the feat without being torn off, thanks to the irremovable enchantment—and my original left one, revealed that the new was stronger. No wonder some delvers chose to use artificial limbs instead of regrowing their real ones. It was less dexterous, but I didn't know how much of that was its nature, and how much was my own control. It may well be that the biological integration enchantment quality made a difference, too.

I cast [Strength], and my stat still jumped by the normal twenty-five points, but my artificial arm grew disproportionately stronger compared to the other. It seemed that the spell had a greater effect on it, despite the fixed increase to my stats, presumably due to the affinity enchantment.

I cast [Superimpose]. The spell activated successfully, but then spluttered and hiccuped.

ding
Working...

"Umm..." I said.

"What? What went wrong?" exclaimed Cluma.

"I just had a notification that said nothing but 'working'."

It was strange; the spell was stuck in its activating phase. I'd never seen the System spit out a 'working' message before. Had I just done something the System didn't know how to cope with, and it was trying to make up new rules on the fly? And it had suspended my spell till it was done? How long would it take? Could I cancel it?

"The spell seems to be..."

With an almost audible thunk, the spell completed, my original arm turning transparent and ethereal.

Skill [Superimpose] advanced to level 3
Class [Eldritch Mage] advanced to level 16
Class level increased intelligence by 1
Class level increased strength by 1
Class level increased dexterity by 1
Class level increased endurance by 1

"Oh, never mind."

"This is bad for my nerves!" complained Cluma, poking me repeatedly in the chest.

"I think the problem was that [Superimpose] can only overlay matching body parts. The real and fake arms are both my 'right arm', but they aren't identical, so the spell got confused over whether it was or wasn't allowed."

"I have heard of that 'working' message cropping up when something really unusual happens, and the System takes some time to process it," added Kari. "It's nothing to worry about."

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"Good, let's carry on then."

Cluma backed off again, still looking nervous, while I went back to weight lifting. The difference in dexterity was immediately noticeable, with my artificial arm responding every bit as well as my original. The strength was significantly boosted, too. The only issue was a constant drain on my mana. I'd never noticed it before, but presumably [Superimpose] had a continuous cost that depended on mass or volume. My previous experiments were so small scale that I wouldn't have noticed against my regeneration.

"Awesome, so the spell works. Now let's swap the arm out."

I lay back down, cancelled [Superimpose] and activated [Redistribute], only for it to seize up in the same way as [Superimpose]. Once again, it took half a minute for the spell to kick in.

ding
Working...
Skill [Redistribute] advanced to level 10

Regardless of the outcome, this experiment was worth it for the levels alone.

My teleportation completed normally, leaving me whole once more.

"Eww," said Cluma. "Was that supposed to happen?"

"It's logical," answered Kari. "We sealed the wound, after all, so it needed to be reopened for the original arm to reattach."

I had no idea what they were talking about; my arm was fine.

Ah, it was the other one that was the problem. The artificial arm no longer had a clean end, but had some amount of flesh stuck to it. Eww, indeed.

"Everything back to normal, lad?" asked Grover, while I stood back up.

Nothing seemed to be hurting anymore, which was nice. I poked the fake arm, and could still feel it, but the sensations were heavily dulled. It was very hard to move, too, far less responsive than when it had been directly attached. My original arm seemed to move normally, though.

"Yup. everything's working, and the artificial arm is still linked."

"Great. Then let's resume the experiments."

More weight tests showed my strength had returned to its normal baseline, with [Superimpose] providing a massive boost. Furthermore, the body affinity enhancement continued to work, letting [Strength] provide a greater boost than it should have. Which led to the final experiment.

Cancelling [Superimpose], I took a small knife and cut into my arm. The battle between steel blade and flesh went about as well as expected, with the blade emerging as the undisputed victor. Reactivating [Superimpose] and trying again, I found I needed to put far more pressure on the blade in order to inflict any sort of wound, and even then, it was shallow. The downside being that when I did manage to make a wound, the artificial arm split in the same spot. That meant that if I was unlucky, my wounds would end up destroying the enchantments.

Obviously, the full durability of the artificial limb wasn't being transferred, or this steel knife wouldn't be able to wound me at all, but it was still impressive. The final design would likely need to engrave enchantments on fake mythril or orichalcum bones, using a high-ranked steel material for the flesh, to protect the enchantments. Perhaps more of the durability would be transferred at higher levels of [Superimpose], too.

That wasn't the only problem. Doing this to an arm was simple enough, but I couldn't do my complete body. In fact, I couldn't see a way to do any of my vital points. I couldn't say for sure what would happen if I activated the second stage of [Detach] on something containing my heart, lungs or brain, and I had no intention of finding out.

The limit would likely be my four limbs, for which I'd need to use four [Detach] links. I didn't have any spare. I could replace some of my teleport beacons with full limbs, but then they'd be too big for [Shelter], and I'd end up with an artificial limb whenever I teleported to one. It would require me to remove some teleport beacons, or level up [Detach].

So, the experiment had been a resounding success, but there were logistical issues that precluded turning that success into an immediate power boost.

"Grover?" I asked, trying to pull the dwarf back to reality from where he was staring in awe at the metallic arm.

"You have no idea what you just did, do you kid?" he asked, without looking up.

"Proved that [Superimpose] works with artificial limbs as well as I could ever have dreamed of?"

"Not that, you fool. Look at the cut you just made!"

"Yes?"

"You just cleanly sliced mana-reinforced steel—with a fourth rank durability enchantment, nonetheless—with a completely unenchanted, regular steel knife."

Yes? Like I'd thought to myself, that was evidence that the full durability hadn't been transferred. It was a bit annoying that some of the fragility of my regular arm seemed to have been transferred backwards, but I don't see why that would make Grover interested. Unless...

"No, you aren't forging adamantite by hammering my arm."

"There will be no hammering of arms!" agreed Cluma forcefully.

"Of course not. That wouldn't work, anyway; it would just make a mess of my workroom. But if I could link iron to adamantite in the same way..."

"What's the advantage compared to forging steel and then converting it to adamantite later?"

"The conversion needs to be done prior to any enchantment. Doing it that way round, I can't make things like your staff, that have the enchantments on an internal core."

"Couldn't you have made a hollow staff, and inserted the core later?"

"And how the hell do you propose I bond the two together?"

Bah, they don't have modern Earth tooling. The System makes up for most of it, but there's a limit to what you can do with a pair of tongs and a hammer. On top of that, my [Basic Crafting] wasn't high enough level to inform me of exactly how mythril and steel needed to be linked for enchantments made on the mythril to apply to the steel. No doubt there were complicated rules.

"So, are we done yet?" asked Vargalas, looking bored despite the fact no-one had asked him to be here in the first place.

"Hey, where'd the cut go?" asked Kari.

I looked at my arm, where the shallow cut had already healed up, and the first, deeper one was well on its way. "I have a pile of healing bonuses," I answered. "Little cuts like that heal in no time."

"No, not on your arm. On the fake one!"

I looked down at the metallic arm, where the shared cut was indeed missing. If it shared my damage, did it equally share my healing?

Grover looked back down, and I shuddered as the awe on his face changed to hunger.

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