Danmachi- Hell’s Forge

Much like with the previous half of the payment I deposited this sack of coin into the vault where it was supposed to go. For the rest of the day after that I spent my time working on creating spatial bags with mixed results. The first attempt of the day sort of imploded on itself and just like winked out of existence. Let me tell you watching that happen less than a meter away from you will put your balls in your throat if you've got them. That was fear on an existential level and not something so easily shook off.-

My second attempt could technically count as a success as the space within in the bag did indeed get bigger, by about a millimeter. I measured and everything and was rather irritated at the stupidly high energy cost for such a small amount of extra space. I was REALLY detailed about the restrictions when creating this item and as it turned out went overboard which meant that so much energy went into just the restriction that almost none went to the technique itself. It was a valuable lesson if nothing else and got set aside for future reference.-

My third and fourth attempts were both failures on a material standpoint as standard cheap cowhide bags couldn't carry such a powerful cursed technique. Make no mistake anything related to space and time were powerful things. If you are wondering why I was attempting something like that when I was obviously not ready for it then my answer was simple. I needed to do this now while I was too weak to actually cause an issue rather than latter when a single mistake might erase a quarter of the city on accident.-

Right now any failure I had was localized to the church and pretty much harmless but if I made those same mistakes at say level four the power in each cursed tool I made would theoretically hold the potential to cause mass destruction. Mix that with something as volatile as space manipulation and you run a serious risk of causing a whole portion of the city to cease to exist. I'm talking you blink and suddenly a quarter of the city is an empty crater with perfectly smooth edges. Yeah not a fun thought to have so naturally I was trying to find the correct formula for these spatially expanded bags while I couldn't cause something like that.-

It was a little pricey but I purchased some minotaur hides that I turned into bags and began trying again. This proved a good idea as the far superior minotaur hide bags were MUCH better at holding cursed energy in larger amounts as well as more powerful techniques being imbued into them. My fifth attempt was on the right track but skewed a bit as the space around the bag was expanded which let me tell you is some trippy shit as it looked like my arm stretched by another foot or when holding the bag.-

I tried to turn the bag inside out but ended up creating a spatial crusher in the process. By that I mean the expansion pressed against itself from all side creating a point in the center of the bag that pushed against whatever fell into it. This pressure crushed whatever the object was until it was made into a hyper dense sphere that couldn't be compressed any further. I was pretty sure that if I kept adding stuff to the bag it would eventually form a blackhole and thus I reset the bag entirely.-

My sixth and final attempt for the day was also a failure and much like my first imploded though taking my right hand with it this time. It was rather troublesome to be honest as I had to drink two potions and use a whole reservoir of cursed energy beyond that to regrow my hand. Even after that i had the unfortunate situation of having to "tweak" my new hand with my technique for the rest of the day before I felt normal again. I made a note to try and figure out how to use my technique from a distance if I wanted to experiment like this in the future.-

I didn't need a lot of distance of course but as I discovered through this event the fact I had to be physically touching something to use my technique left me vulnerable to blowback like I had just experienced. There was no time for me to throw the bag before it imploded or drop it at all, one second it and my hand holding it were there and the next gone. I felt no pain or anything at all for a few moments after it happened which let my vision register the loss of my hand before my arm did.-

Thankfully Hestia was up top in the church when this happened so she didn't realize that I lost my hand. I wasn't going to mention it either as I knew for a fact if I did she would ban me from experimenting like this. I made sure to erase the small amount of blood that I lost from the floor and even while fixing my new hand to get it back to normal I acted like nothing was going on. As much as I could appreciate her care for Bell and I there was simply no feasible way I wasn't going to get injured by experimenting in the future.-

In this case I paid the price of progress in flesh and blood and more likely than not I will have to do so again in the future so getting banned from experimenting was not something I could allow. Thankfully if she did ever discover me in a situation where I lost a limb or the like I could at least regrow it which definitely helped my case. There was a side effect of regrowing a body part that I discovered however that Naaza had neglected to mention, I was STARVING.-

I don't mean like really hungry but rather my body was in a genuine state of starvation as all the stored fat or extra energy in my body was converted to flesh and bone to make my new hand. As I mentioned some time ago my technique doesn't create anything new but merely rearranged and utilized what was already available. In the case of regrown limbs my technique takes the route of using the bodies own stored energy and fat or extra muscle to achieve this end.-

I noted this down in the notebook as it was important information in the future as if I was going to regrow another limb in the future I was going to force that person or myself to eat a feast before hand. In theory this should help mitigate the strain on the body that I and no doubt Naaza felt. The fact she hadn't mentioned it also peeved me just a smidge because this was VERY important information. I was going to ask her about it tomorrow before I headed to the dungeon.