Crusader King-Chapter 134: Beneath the Statue(20)

It was almost complete, all the drilling was finished and as such he tossed the devilish tool that had been plaguing his hands for far too long aside with it landing on the glass stones, shattering one in the process, something that made Cades forehead move as he had stepped on them and the monster itself had also stepped on them during the fight, both with much more force than the measly drill, a drill that was barely two feet long, barely four pounds heavy, it was not enough to shatter this stuff, or at least it shouldn't be.

Cades, however, acted as if he didn't really care, because he cared about something else far too much right now, he was at the next step, he would now have to make mana valves, and in front of him there already laid a few of them, a few of the stones he would have to spent a long time on so that he would finally be able to move his right hand and arm that had been hurting ever since it had been ripped off again, the hand that felt as if it was still griping, the shoulder that felt as if it was still being ripped off.

There were multiple ways to make mana valves, the basic principle was to make something that reacted to a certain force of mana with a certain force of something it was supposed to do, such as, in this case, curling up fingers or even just an arm in and of itself, both things that are easy per se but much more difficult when it comes to artificing as Cades could already feel in his back that had started to hurt after he had been working on the fingers for a few hours, after all he had ended up spending about four or five hours on the hand and the fingers alone, with the arm itself ending up at around two hours, not even counting the outer boy he hadn't even utilized yet, the body he was going to use magic for to attack them to 'his' new bones that he would cover in something before, perhaps other bones, perhaps also the soft dirt with some spells.

It took Cades about an hour for each of the mana valves that still glowed in a increscent yellow light as he was finished, but now all of the stones were full of incredible sigils and runes like he had almost never seen before, or at least it seemed like that when one first looked at it, but in truth each of them consisted of hundreds of separate runic sequences intent on causing a singular thing to happen, something that was however quite similar to a ehetrian muscle, seeing as many muscles have to be moved to cause one thing to happen most of the times, such as even just moving the eye or the tongue.

There were four in total, all intent on moving them in all kinds of directions, each of them with varying grades of mobility, the highest one being the one he would add at the shoulder so he could circle with his arm and gain greater mobility during the fights against possible future opponents, something that he could be completely certain would happen eventually, whether he liked it or not, actually, especially if he didn't like it when one truly thought about it.

He had added some smaller holes inside of them that he would use to hold the mana arteries with which he would, in the end, be able to finally move his new arm using the holes to burn the arteries shut, forever holding them in place, and now, he finally began the ending process, he finally began the assembly of his newest, and perhaps, greatest ever masterpiece.

Cades slowly and carefully put the mana valves into the required positions, one into the sphere he had hollowed out for his stump of a shoulder, one at the wrist, one at the same location as the previous one, just a bit lower, within the lower arm, the one intended on curling the fingers and gripping something, mainly the sword and his tools as he hoped, and lastly, there was one on the lower regions of his upper arm intend on curling up his very arm, a function that he had almost forgotten, just as he had almost forgotten movement from his shoulder, something that would've been detrimental had he only discovered it later on, such as when he first tried it on and would be unable to move the arm at all, aside from the hand that would then be stuck, permanently being stretched forward.

It took him seven hours of filigree work to do it, it took so long that he had to take a break through it so that he could use the regeneration blessing active he had acquired from Manug all that time ago, just so he could heal his hands that had been ripped apart by the surprisingly sharp needles that should've broken from the stress multiple times, but in the end he managed to do it, basically blacking out and only remembering him putting stuff together, over and over again.

He wanted to remember the process, he really wanted to, but at some point he had just blacked out, and in the end it was mainly just putting stuff together as one could hear from the bits and pieces he remembered after all of that.

Cades turned around once more.

He knew what had to be done, he picked up four mana stones and connected them to the arteries that he had left hanging out of the almost finished prosthesis, filled partially with dirt so that a attack would be blunted in regards to the impact, something he had partially already regretted as it had become painful to work with his hands after searching for the softest possible dirt from the brown treasure hidden beneath the onyx stones all around him.

Finally, Cades closed his eyes and began to do the part he was looking forward to the least, after all, he had to somehow connect the prosthesis to his mana stream, his arteries, his blood, he had to stick it together, and as such the four mana stones that now hung from the end of the entire thing had hooks, and now he began to anchor them within the flesh of his stump, in the end using the previously prepared magnetization magic of the big stone in the middle of the four smaller stones to permanently make it stick.

Then, finally, it was done.