Thanks to this experiment I knew that I was still not QUITE ready to make the shield the way I wanted and moved onto a piece of equipment I had been neglecting but probably shouldn't, headwear. Admittedly my head was my single most vulnerable place on my body as it was the only place that I had zero chance of surviving if damaged. Hell if I used my technique fast enough I could survive having my heart pierced but brain damage is an instant kill on me. Despite this I have left my head unprotected until now.-
There was no excuse or grand reasoning involved this time I just simply hadn't cared to do anything about it until now. People naturally try and protect their head and vital parts and I was no different so I hadn't felt the need to have head protection. I knew that needed to change before I tried going deeper into the dungeon. Unlike pretty much every other adventurer I was a true solo delver and that meant I either had to have protection for my head or the sort of perception that couldn't be caught off guard.-
Having both would be for the best but I simply knew that there was no way in hell I wanted that sort of perception. Can you even imagine how bad it would suck if you literally couldn't miss any detail of your surrounds ever? Someone farts and you suddenly felt like you had been hit toxic fumes or you see all the dirt and crusted stuff on everyone's hands? Yeah no I would probably want to l kill myself with senses like that and chose to just protect my head with armor instead. For the technique on the piece I wanted something that would make it versatile.-
My idea was to make something about like Tosens hollow mask from bleach. The thing covered his entire head without any openings at all really save the narrow slit down the middle. I on the other hand want to remove the slit entirely leaving my entire head completely leaving a smooth bald surface to work with as a base. I needed a way to breath so I just added a standard sharp toothed hollow mouth and nose. For vision I made the inside of the thing transparent so even if you couldn't see my eyes I could see just fine.-
For my hearing I added sharp ears on the sides that had small holes inside of so the sound reached my ears perfectly without actually exposing them. The for aesthetic purposes I had Darth Maul style horns on top of the otherwise bald top. The final result was intimidating to say the least even if it was only a proof of concept type prototype that was made of simple refined bone. The solid white of the bone seemed off to me though so I darkened most of it until it was dark colored, almost black.-
The only parts I left white were the horns and teeth of the head piece giving it a nice contrast that I liked. With the shape and coloration done I slipped the entire thing over my head and began to make minor tweaks to the shape so it fit me snuggly but comfortably. The only annoying part was getting the mouth to open with mine that I solved by adding a hinge at the side that pushed open the teeth when I lowered my own jaw. Still I was fairly satisfied with the thing as is by the time I was done as it was almost unnoticeable when I had it on besides the weight and feel of the material.-
'Now I just need to make a version out of something more durable and turn it into a cursed tool.' I thought with a grin.
After some debate with myself I decided to get into my stash of orichalcum that was renowned for being stupidly durable and adamantite that was one of the best metals for imbuing magical properties into, both of which the dungeon made. I didn't have a lot of the stuff since it was rare beyond rare to find on the floors I frequented but I still had just enough for a single helm in the style I made.-
The two metals were also NOT supposed to alloy together at all but my cursed technique didn't give a fuck about that and did it anyways. The resulting fusion was stupid durable AND great at holding properties. It was also kinda heavy but that was less important in my opinion. Using my technique some more I shaped this lump of metal into the exact same shape and size as the prototype I made previously.-
I also turned the material transparent on the inside and this just left me with the cursed technique that I wanted to imbue and I already had the one i wanted chosen. [Environmental adaptation] or to explain in detail the ability to allow me to be unaffected by external environments. This meant I could breath underwater, in a cloud of poison, or in an environment without oxygen. The best part is that the technique has a quite a few restrictions already built into it just by virtue of how it functioned. This meant that with the restrictions I add manually in addition the technique will last me a long time.-
Cursed tools with more restrictions also tend to be more powerful as well so once I imbued this technique on the prototype because I had to test it I'll know what I'm looking at for the real deal. The answer it turned out was a little more restricted than I had thought but not by so much that it still wasn't a good piece. I had not accounted for the time it would take for the adaptation to the environment to occur but it was merely thirty seconds so it wasn't something that would cause me much issues on the real deal.-
The final touches of course were the changes of the metals coloration to match the prototype more or less though the shininess remained which I was fine with.
"I dub thee [Forgemasters visage] may you serve me well in the times to come!" I said dramatically before laughing at my own antics.
With that done I was pretty much set to go back into the dungeon tomorrow. The look on Lili's face when I handed her the shield i made prior was hysterical. She looked at me like i was insane for just handing such a valuable item over so casually. That was until I told her that I was the one who made it at which point she looked more amazed at me than anything else. By this point she knew I made statues and figurines and stuff like that but she hadn't been let in on my actual crafting side of things, mostly cuz I forgot to.