Jingai Musume 135

Enhancing Zaien
Editors: Joker, Speedphoenix

“Alright, you ready, Enne?”
“Anytime.” The blade seemed nervous. Her voice was filled with an unusual stiffness.

I moved forward with my plans nonetheless and pressed the item in my hand against her blade. She made the kind of sound a kid would when getting a shot as the thing I was holding integrated itself into her body. I analyzed her the moment it vanished in order to check her stats.

***
General Information
Name: Zaien
Race: Magic Weapon
Quality: Immeasurable
Attack: 962
Durability:1190
MP: 831

Unique Skills
Telepathy
Vampirism

Skills
Crimson Blaze IV
Self Repair III
Personification III
Wind Magic I

Titles
Intelligent Weapon
Dragonslayer
***

“Looks like it worked,” I said with a satisfied nod. “So, how do you feel? Anything seem off at all?”
“No. I’m fine.”

Her words came with a surge of happiness. It seemed that she too could tell that she had gotten stronger and was happy with the result. I’m glad that went as well as it did.

Zaien’s attack and durability had both basically doubled since I last checked. The changes stemmed from a pair of reasons. The first was that she had drunk a significant amount of the Retardlord’s blood. And the second was due to the action that I had quite literally just taken: strengthening her by merging her blade with one of Lefi’s fangs.

Weapon Transmutation used to come with a clause that stated that I could only ever transmute something once. Levelling the skill had caused that part of its description to change. It was now capable of performing the act up to twice on any individual piece of gear. And as Zaien was my main weapon, I immediately settled on boosting her stats with the most powerful materials I had on hand.

As usual, Lefi never failed to disappoint. Merging her fang with Zaien’s blade had made the sword noticeably sharper.

Enne’s stats weren’t the only thing that had changed about her either. Defeating Lefi’s mentally deficient acquaintance had led her to obtain a new title. Analyzing it provided the following description:

***
Dragonslayer: This weapon is especially effective against dragons. It is capable of rending their flesh, shredding their scales, and depriving them of their lives. All dragons are left vulnerable before its blade; none may defend against it. All stats are increased by 50% when in combat against a dragon.

***

Though violent encounters with dragons didn’t exactly fall into the realm of normal, I had the sneaking suspicion that Enne’s Dragonslayer title was going to prove useful in the future regardless. I had, for some godforsaken reason, ended up as the King of Dragons, so I figured I was probably going to get involved with them eventually, one way or another. Well, Ms. Dragonslayer, I’ll be counting on you whenever the inevitable decides to rear its ugly head.

Despite the fact that the skill quite literally said that all were left vulnerable before Enne’s blade, she still couldn’t cut through Lefi’s scales. They were just that tough. But how!? It literally says… oh whatever.

Another thing that Enne had gained was the ability to cast wind magic. Unlike Crimson Blaze, her newfound aptitude for spellslinging didn’t stem from a magic circuit. It was simply something she had learned through the use of a skill scroll. You know, I’m almost starting to think that Enne being able to use skill scrolls basically deprecates her magic circuits.

I still wanted to fill the last two magic circuit slots she had, of course. However, I hadn’t done so just yet. I wanted to wait until I finished grinding Enchant all the way to its maximum level in order to see exactly what it unlocked before making my decision. Active abilities seemed nice and all, but they weren’t exactly what I would call cost-effective. They burned far too much mana in order to achieve their effects. That was why I was instead looking for something that would passively support me. Ideally, I wanted something that would enhance either my physical or magical strikes. As far as I could tell, that seemed to be the kind of thing that Enchant would probably provide me with, as it had already unlocked several similar circuits. For example, there was one that provided whatever it was carved on with passive poison damage.

Of course, one of the first things I did when considering magic circuits was to ask the resident expert, but unfortunately, it turned out that support magic lay outside Leila’s field of expertise. She told me that she could probably figure something out, but that it would take quite a bit of time. I didn’t really feel like putting her through all the trouble, so I decided to just call it off. Actually, now that I think about it, why don’t I just dump all my skill points into Enchant and call it a day? You know what? Might as well. Skill points exist to be used, after all. There’s honestly not that much of a point in holding onto them.

With my decision made, I opened up the menu and dumped my points into the skill, thereby taking it all the way from level 5 to 10 on the spot.

The first three magic circuits unlocked by the skill were Bursting Embers, Inferno Blizzard, and Nightmare. They were interesting, but I decided to ignore them for the time being. They were active spells, and I wasn’t all that keen on turning my primary weapon into a mana sink. Might work well on a sidearm though.

Of all the magic circuits I had, the ones unlocked at levels 8, 9, and 10 were the most eye-catching. They were more or less the exact things I had been looking for. They enhanced magical prowess, physical attack power, and regeneration respectively. To top it all off, all three of the circuits were the most powerful versions of their respective enchantments.

“Alright Enne, you ready for your new Magic Circuits?”
“Mhm.”

I pressed the palm of my hand against her blade, activated Enchant, and carved two of the three effects into her magic circuit slots. Doing so added a new category to her character sheet.

***
General Information
Name: Zaien
Race: Magic Weapon
Quality: Immeasurable
Attack: 962
Durability:1190
MP: 831

Unique Skills
Telepathy
Vampirism

Skills
Crimson Blaze IV
Self Repair III
Personification III
Wind Magic I

Titles
Intelligent Weapon
Dragonslayer

Special Effects
Magical Prowess Boost of the Highest Order
Physical Attack Boost of the Highest Order
***

Heh. Sweet. Looks like little Ms. Enne here is getting hella strong. Enne was no longer the only weapon whose stats I could see. Maxing my Analyze skill had provided me with the ability to see exact numbers on other types of weapons as well. Looking at the many things I had stashed away in storage provided me with a rough idea of how weapons were tiered based on their values. I ended up loosely defining them as follows:

Inferior Weapons
Attack: 50-150
Durability: 30-200
MP: None

Common Weapons
Attack: 150-300
Durability: 200-400
MP: None

Uncommon Weapons
Attack: 300-600
Durability: 400-700
MP: None

Rare Weapons
Attack: 600-900
Durability: 700-1100
MP: Varies

Legendary Weapons
Attack: 900+
Durability: 1100+
MP: Varies

The guidelines derived from my observations dictated that Zaien was effectively on the tier of a legendary blade. I wonder how strong the hero’s sword is. Probably about the same, actually. I wasn’t able to figure anything out last time I saw her ‘cause it was cockblocking me with some sort of enchantment, but with my stats the way they are now, I think I might actually be able to check it out anyway.

Come on Nell, where the hell are you? Whatever happened to coming over and hanging out and stuff?

Though I was curious, I wasn’t actually all that hung up on how Enne compared to Nell’s holy blade. The plan was to make her the world’s most powerful sword, and as it stood, Enne was still on the weaker end of weapons in her tier; I was planning to keep beefing her up regardless. She’s growing up so fast.

Enchanting Zaien had been today’s goal, but I figured that I might as well slot a few circuits into the ring that Lefi had given me while I was at it. After a moment’s consideration, I ended up deciding to give the ring the magic and regeneration buffs. The regeneration one seemed particularly useful. It would cause my HP to automatically recover so long as I had the ring equipped. Combining its effect with my now inflated health pool turned me into one hell of a tank. Heh. Looks like I’m getting a good bit stronger too.

“Alright Enne, you wanna go see how much stronger you are now?”
“Mhm. I can’t wait.”
“Then let’s do this!” I holstered the red and black blade on my shoulder and set a course for the great outdoors. “Lefi! I’m stepping out for a bit!”
“Very well. I shall inform the others.” With that said, the dragon casually waved in my direction and saw me off.

***

Editor’s note (Joker): Hey, guys! Joker here. I know, I know. I said in my last transmission that I’d do these notes a lot more, but give me a break! Boss translates too fast and it prevents me from scripting these shows in time. I know you guys would prefer a new chapter over my show, so I let boss release the chapters without filming the show for you guys. Plus, I’ve been very busy playing Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers. I’m level 76 now, so yay for me. If anyone’s interested in trying the game, it’s free up to level 35 on every job, so you can try a bit of everything and see if it’s right for you. If you do decide, my character is on the Primal Data Center on the Exodus server, so hmu on Discord if you play. Only a couple questions to get to today, since everyone was excited about what was happening in the story, so thanks to kx, Cassius, and Mrpurplecowface for your questions, and Tonatsi for the, unfortunately, continuing headpats. Seriously, why headpat me? Nirvash has a much more headpattable head. Pat hers. And if you’ve got a question for me, or just want to headpat Nirvash, leave it below with the hashtag #AskJoker or #HeadpatNirvash. See y’all in the next chapter!

<– Prev — Next –>