"This is mildly problematic." I eventually said after reading the status paper several times to make sure I didn't miss anything.
"Mildly!? This is ridiculous! You have a skill that literally declares you the first of a race that has never existed before!?" Hestia yelled in frustration.
"That part is a bit annoying sure but by no means surprising. This isn't the first time my race has changed remember?" I pointed out.
She huffed angrily at that but seemed to calm down a little "That doesn't mean that this isn't a problem. We will have to report your level to the guild and it's going to cause an investigation again. When that happens how will you explain any of this?" she asked seriously. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵✦𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖✦𝙣𝙚𝙩
"I won't need to, Hermes will be asked to look over my status again and once he sees it's legit the other gods will be annoyed but unable to question it again. At worst they'll be curious as to how I jumped a level. Not like they can force me to answer that question either without violating the right to privacy all gods have to their children's falna even further. Hermes was reasonable if pushing it since checking for foul play was necessary but nothing beyond that." I said with a shrug.
"Hermes is going to be bad enough learning about this. He can't spread it without paying a heavy price but just knowing it alone is a problem." she said with a frown.
"Haha, you are thinking in the wrong way my dear goddess. Knowing what's on my status will be a curse for Hermes. He's a manipulator by nature, likes to have everything under his thumb. I now have enough power that there is nothing he can do to control me. And he will know this too. It will eat at him something fierce, really it serves him right in my opinion. Guys a prick even if he claims to be "neutral" in all his dealings." I said with a grin.
"You are only a level five though?" she said confused.
"You may have forgotten but I was never a normal adventurer. At merely level three I held the strength of a level five, borderline six. Now though I am two whole levels higher. If I can't go toe to toe with Ottar at the very least I'll eat my weapon." I said with a chuckle.
It wasn't all good news though as now my workload had grown dramatically. I now had to get used to my new level of crafting as well as my now massive reserve of cursed energy and increased stats. I didn't just skip all the stats I would have gotten during level four after all but by going straight to five my stats behaved as if I had gotten to the max again before leveling up. I couldn't leave the healing coffin though as this massive shift in my falna had me physically ill.-
Not unlike limit sickness really but I wasn't going to complain too much even though I was effectively bedridden. I wasn't idle as I sat in the coffin letting it do it's thing, quite the opposite in fact. I had Bell bring me some of my Draconite that I was trying to manipulate with my cursed technique. The fact I was succeeding just barely had me thrilled to pieces even as I felt miserable. If I put the full force of my cursed technique behind my efforts I could just barely cause a change in the Draconite.-
'The resistance of this stuff is fucking ridiculous.' I thought seriously after barely managing to start the fusion of two separate pieces of the material.
Forget making anything out of this stuff I'd be lucky if I could manage to even shape it after several hours of continuous effort. And that was with my curse-smith DS being at E grade! To put that into perspective a normal smith with a DS that high would be able to easily work even Orichalcum which was one of the most durable materials known. With the sort of resistance I was getting from this stuff I had to guess it was at least a level eight or even nine material.-
Not that that was surprising really since the conditions to spawn this stuff were incredibly hard to achieve. It spawned from the bodies of dragon type monsters and ONLY if they were either powerful enough or old enough. Even then the stuff formed in incredibly small amounts. From my understanding the Valgang dragons that were high level five monsters were the greatest source of the stuff since they were rarely killed. Not because they couldn't be killed but because doing so was hardly worth it for those that can kill them for one key reason, numbers. -
The Valgang dragon were a unique monster species that fully monopolized an entire floor of the dungeon and existed in high numbers. Add on their firepower and you fight one and have to deal with at least three others trying to kill your ass simultaneously, seriously not worth the effort. Ironically it was also because of this unwillingness to fight the things that there were no recorded instance of a confirmed variant Valgang dragon. My theory that the one eyed black dragon might have been a Valgang dragon at some point was just that, a theory. -
There was simply no way to confirm it one way or other as I highly doubted the big black bastard would be the chatty type. Whatever the case I could only just barely convince, yes convince, the material to change. Honestly I'd probably find trying to herd feral rabies infested cats in heat easier. I did love me a challenge though and it kept my mind occupied while my body suffered so it was a win in my book. Hestia was a doll and made sure I was taken care of while I was sick even if she was incredibly stressed out about my current status.-
Despite being laid up in my coffin I still got some visitors though, mostly because of the barrier to be honest. As it turns out birds are kinda assholes who can and will land on anything high up if they find it. Hard to hide a massive barrier when theres a small flock of birds just chilling on it's surface after all.