Danmachi- Hell’s Forge

"Now that you've leveled up I assume you'll be going deeper into the dungeon now right?" She asked changing the subject.

"Nope!" I said with a snicker at the incredulous expression she had at that answer.

"But why not?" she asked confused.

"I like to squeeze every drop of potential and benefit I can from each part of the dungeon I explore before I move on, I simply haven't done so yet for the Great tree labyrinth." I said honestly.

"But aren't those monsters now sorta weak for your current strength?" she asked missing the point.

"Besides the green dragon and variants that sometimes show up down there that's true. However the drops and materials from those floors are especially useful for me. I even discovered a whole new species of monster down there the last time I went so who is to say that I might not discover even more wonderous things there before i'm done with the place?" I said with a widen grin.

"You used that weird magic of yours to find those monsters right?" she asked curiously.

"Cursed technique but yes that was how I discovered the species. It wasn't even all that incredible a find to be honest as even normal grubs are well known to live inside trees so finding out that monster grubs were also found there in the dungeon trees was kinda a matter of course." I said with a shrug.

"Whatever you say, anyways when are you going to make Cassandra and I some new stuff?" she asked bluntly.

"Have some patience. I haven't forgotten or anything but for Cassandra alone I'll still need more time as I am not quite able to use that refined unicorn horn yet. As for you there's not a whole hell of a lot I can do for you besides giving your current weapon an upgrade since you rarely use your full power. I can't even really make any supportive items for you either as you suck at staying in one fighting style. Seriously like it's either you are on the front lines or are playing distraction with hit and run tactics." I said annoyed.

She got quiet at that as I wasn't wrong at all. She had been rather indecisive about how she wanted to fight and it made things annoying for me to try and make any useful items for her. For the rest of the familia's members it was easy as shit to find a way to improve on their fighting styles because they are consistent in how they did things.-

Not to say that Daphne wasn't skilled in fighting because no one gets to level two without SOME degree of skill but she was all over the place in how she fought. Sometimes she was right up there with Bell, Welf and Lili at the front directly fighting the monsters but then other times she was practically acting as a rogue that skirted the fight to take attacks of oppurtunity before slipping back to a safe distance.-

Even worse was that she had a whole ass magic that she simply refused to use unless it was absolutely necessary. The REALLY annoying part for me was that it was a boosting type magic to boot which meant she was never at full power without using it which made my job as a craftsman so much harder than necessary. I'm not saying that being able to go from one style to another wasn't good because it certainly was. But when it starts to get in the way of you improving it's probably time to decide which was your primary style and which was your back up.-

I left her to think about that and went into my workshop to tinker with my new limits in the crafting department. Naturally the potency of my [Hell's forge] technique had gone up considerably after my level up so the upper limit of material levels went up to level five and maybe even six once I got better at working on stronger more potent stuff. This wasn't to say my skill went up merely that my technique was more potent, better fuel for it now after all.-

First I tested my technique on level one materials like goblin teeth and war shadow claws. I was amazed to find that it practically cost next to nothing to mold the things even after refinement. A fascinating thing I discovered was that after I pushed a materials refinement to the limit it transformed qualitatively. I affectionately refer to this transformation as "Material Ascension". Goblin teeth that were ascended for example reached level two in quality while also gaining a sort of special property having to do with the weapon wielding DS's that boosted them further than normal.-

'Hmm, so a normal monster material pushed to ascension gains special properties like a variant monsters drops but more specific to that species as a whole rather than the single individual. Is this why variant drops have special properties? Do they themselves ascend to a higher existence and thus their drops do too?' I pondered this phenomenon curiously.

I experimented further and came to the nasty conclusion that at the moment I could only ascend level one materials. This wasn't because the materials were too strong either but rather it was like my technique itself was resisting the attempt, in other words a bottleneck had reared it's ugly head yet again.-

Admittedly I had been wondering when I'd find another one after I broke the previous one when I fought that minotaur so long ago. From what I understand they weren't exactly uncommon in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen as each user of a cursed technique pushed the limits of their techniques and that meant finding areas that they stalled in until they got some form of enlightenment. The two most common bottlenecks were [Domain expansion] and [Reverse cursed technique]. -

Both were notorious for the difficulty they presented to accomplish with even someone considered a prodigy of that world like Satoru Gojo only figuring out [reverse cursed technique] after coming close enough to death to feel it's chilling breath on his face. Smaller bottlenecks like this one that I had just discovered however should be far more common and easier to get through so long as you kept banging your head against it till something broke. I wasn't going to be doing that just yet though as I had so much more room in other directions that I could improve before I really needed to expand my technique to go further.-

Honestly speaking my cursed technique was one of those bittersweet type deals in that for all it's vast power it actually had TOO much potential. It wasn't nearly as straightforward as my newly minted [Hellfire] cursed technique that was basically just a quirky fire. My [Hell's forge] simply had too many different potential ways that I could expand and improve it because of the sheer vastness of the concept it embodied.

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