My fun with the new recruit had to end at some point though as I myself still had to prioritize my own growth over hers. After she showed that she could handle a goblin and wouldn't slack off in her training I pretty much cut her loose to do as she pleased. The piper came a callin soon enough however as word finally reached Hephaestus that I had gone on a date with Syr. Currently she was sitting across from me with a VERY unhappy look on her face as she stroked the cursed spirit cat on her lap.-
"Ok so to be fair I only did it because I owed her a debt and that was the price of repayment she wanted." I said frankly.
"Oh I know all about why you did it, you've made no secret that part. No what has made me angry is that you still haven't asked ME on a date despite having no reason not to anymore." she said with a huff.
"I know, I've just been rather busy since then. Been whipping the fresh meat into shape while working on some commissions I had." I said with a helpless shrug.
Her eyes narrowed at me after I finished speaking "As true as that is I doubt your own reluctance in the matter hasn't it's own part to play as well." she said making me wince slightly.
She was right of course as while I was telling the truth about how busy I was I also avoided the idea of a date with her intentionally. She wanted sole possession of me as far as romance was concerned and I simply wasn't comfortable with that sort of commitment at the moment.-
This was one of those tricky moments were I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. If I gave in and took her on a date she'd want a second third and fourth before I ended up more or less exactly where I didn't want to be. At the same time I couldn't exactly keep telling her no without offending her deeply. She may be more down to earth than most gods but that didn't mean she didn't have her own godly pride and expectations. My reasoning might have worked before Freya pulled that stunt but now it wasn't good enough, Hephaestus needed to reassert her claim to me to satisfy her jealousy.-
I had to give her at least one date and soon or she might turn spiteful out of her own wounded pride.
I sighed "One date, no more. I have no desire to get involved with someone right now but it will only sour our future interactions if I don't give you this. Don't even think of pushing for more though as I'd rather cut you off entirely than be forced into something I don't want." I said firmly.
She frowned at this for a few moments before sighing "Fine, your desire to avoid commitment makes no sense to me but I won't be greedy and risk ruining my chances." she said before smiling. "I'll send someone to get you in three days for our date." she said taking control of the whole date before she left.
'I feel like i'm going to regret letting her take the lead here.' I thought with an odd expression.
Naturally I now had to prepare another set of clothes for the date as it would be rather rude to wear the same clothes as I had on my previous date.
This time though I didn't go for pure opulence like last time as Hephaestus was more into practicality. With this in mind I went into my workshop and dug into my materials for minotaur hide and wyvern scales. I refined the hide to ascension that was my current limit before thinning it and recoloring it into a silver hue. Reforming it into a tuxedo was easy after that which completed the work on the hide for now as it was time to deal with the wyvern scales. For those I simply fused a handful together before ascending them all at once. Once that was done the resulting material was still of a pink coloration but now had veins of gold streaking through. -
I took this material and carefully formed it into a set of much smaller scales that I then carefully wove into the hide tuxedo. The final product was a eye catching scaled tuxedo that was primarily pink and gold with silver peaking through around the edges of the scales. Pink wasn't really my color though so I shifted the coloration of the scales from pink and gold to black and gold. This gave the suit a regal aura that even I couldn't help but admire as it sat on the rack.-
Naturally I didn't half do shit and went ahead and stuffed in a few quality of life type cursed techniques into the suit. Heat control, self repair, self cleaning, that sort of thing. I sneakily attached the necessary cursed stones for these techniques in the pockets of the jacket and pants. With my outfit now complete for my next date I moved back to doing what I wanted. That is to say I sat on my ass and meditated on the theoretical cursed techniques of Ophelia's weapon.-
There were quite a variety of directions I could go with her weapon given how fresh her usage of the weapon was. Even with the seven property limit I had to what I could add there was a vast amount of properties to choose from though one of them was definitely going to be [Durandal] so her weapon didn't break. I thought about using [Conceal] as well for it's base in illusions but thought better of it since that was a direction she could push her magic towards in the future. In the same vein though there was [Flow] that would make it easier for her to channel her magic through the weapon.-
The next property I narrowed down was [Severing] for what I believe should be obvious reasons. I thought about [Bleed] but it wasn't really a good fit with her assassin build. Once she broke stealth her ability to do damage would drop precipitously. Right now she was stacking up to be a one hit wonder type fighter where her first strike was the most dangerous while the rest kinda averaged out rather low. There was nothing wrong with that of course if you had the build for it which she did thanks to her illusion magic but it meant stall effects like [Bleed] were pointless.