CORE Vol. 3 pt. 16

Corra awoke to the sight of my face over her. Ahti and Crim suggested that I lay her on her back and position her so that the back of her head would be resting atop my thighs, so I followed their advice and waited for Corra to wake up. Though, almost immediately after waking up, she quickly went into a flustered panic and proceeded to pass out once more.

A short while later and the same thing happened once more. Only, this time, Corra seemed to be even more dramatic. She even smiled after passing out again and continued smiling until she eventually woke up. Or rather… until she pretended to wake up, considering that she never actually passed out that last time and instead only pretended to so that she would be able to enjoy the comfort of my body for a longer time.

Now then. As much as I would like to talk more about my day-to-day life with everybody, there is something else of importance to write about.

The Emperor’s Picks made a discovery.

Now, before moving onto the actual discovery, I would like to explain something.

I started to behave more like a proper emperor. At the very least, I behaved as a proper emperor as described by Deiti. How she learned how emperors were supposed to act was something that I had zero knowledge of, but I did generally have faith in most of what she said. So, when it came to something like:

“You should always sit on your throne when receiving news from your monsters!”

I was willing to listen to her. That was why, whenever somebody had news for me, I was told by one of my other monsters that there was news first, allowing me to go and sit on my throne before receiving the original bearer of said news for a detailed report of it.

Now, something else that I should have noticed you might be curious about sooner – the top of the volcano. As you should remember, the humans used their firearms from the top of the volcano to try and kill us from above. They even almost killed me… and they did kill Nakra. I was hesitant to spend much time on the platform hosting the monument—my throne—after that, but I had the idea of always dedicating some guards to watching the volcano’s rim. My basalt constructs helped with that. They stood ready, their dutiful eyes ever watching the top of the volcano from the platform to catch even the tiniest hint of attackers. Though, it did take them a while to get used to their job.

The constructs often mistook things such as flying birds as potential threats and would warn me about them. It was only when I explained to them what birds were, after having Deiti remind me of what birds were, that they realized the birds were harmless and found a new sort of joy in watching them occasionally fly in the sky over the volcano.

With that explained, let us return to the news. Novla was the one chosen to present the news to me seeing as how all of my summoned kobolds looked up to him in a way. He was what they were all meant to eventually become. He was large, powerful, and intelligent. It might have taken him a bit of warming up to them seeing as how he wasn’t exactly on good terms with the kobolds of Deta’s former village, but he essentially became the pseudo leader of the kobolds and aurbolds I summoned. Of course, they still saw me as their greatest leader – the leader of their pseudo-leader!

That is a new title I could give myself! CORE, the Leader of Pseudo-Leaders!

No, it doesn’t quite have the same charm to it as the Emperor of Kings. Though, maybe it would work for a more… lower level sort of deal. After all, there are many leaders under my command who are not high enough to call themselves kings. Then again, it is not as if I have many kings under my command anyways. Let’s see. There’s… wait, why am I thinking via written word? There is no point in me even writing this considering that you should all be well aware of the various leaders around the world under my rule. If you don’t know them, then I am concerned about how much exposure you get to this world’s events.

Now, let us actually return to the news!

“Elder CORE,” Novla said as he held what looked like a large chunk of shiny, black metal in his arms. “Your miners found this. When the ancients attacked and caused all that shaking, it must have weakened a wall that the kobolds found themselves drawn to. They broke through it and found this on the other side.”

“What is it?” I asked.

Lucia, who was standing next to him with a wide smile, took the opportunity to speak up. “It doesn’t surprise me that the kobolds were unfamiliar with this. It is an extremely, and I do mean extremely, valuable metal. We took to calling it ‘Obsidian Metal’ when we discovered it. We’re not quite sure how it forms yet, but due to its resemblance to obsidian while having a durability greater than steel, we figured that it would be an appropriate name for it. The lump in his arms is worth enough to buy… you don’t have an idea of how economics work, do you?”

I had no idea what she was talking about in regard to economics and neither did Deiti. Or rather, Deiti did have a very vague understanding, but her understanding of economics could be summed up with, “I know that virgin sacrifices are more valuable than non-virgin sacrifices.”

Regardless, the kobolds’ natural draw to valuable metals paid off. Though, even with their natural sense of where the most valuable mineral and metals are, it was still a rare enough find that none of them were sure of what they found.

Back to economics, I asked Lucia, “Does it have to do with virgins?”

“Wha—… what?” Needless to say, Lucia looked confused as to how I could ever even think of asking that.

“Virgins. Are virgins important in economics?”

“That’s not… how it works. Virgins have nothing to do with economics. The only time a virgin would be important is if you’re trading… slaves, I guess? Slaves for a very specific reason, but that doesn’t matter unless you’re basically on the opposite side of the world where they supposedly still do things like that.”

“What’s a slave?”

“I’ll explain that to you later. All you need to know right now is that the entire practice is horrible. I know that I’m not exactly one who should be speaking about the best way to treat other people… but it’s bad. Anyways, this metal. It’s extremely valuable. Some of the hunters have found deposits of it outside of the volcano, but they were small and no deposits inside were found in safe places. It’s been treated more as a bonus than a priority.””

“What is it used for?”

“No idea. Hunters aren’t allowed to use it and we ship all of it back to the mainland. It probably ends up in the hands of whoever the highest bidder is, probably to be turned into jewelery or used for decoration. Only one weapon was made out of it. A sword. That was just to experiment with it and see how good it would turn out. It came out great. It retained the natural, glassy look of obsidian without any of the chipping problems. Not only that, but it did an excellent job in maintaining its edge no matter how hard somebody used it. Honestly, if the hunters were allowed to use weapons made out of it, the monsters in this volcano wouldn’t last much longer. Human greed should be thanked in this situation. If it weren’t for selling all of it to get the highest profit, we might not be here right now.”

“I see. Then we should use it.”

“Right? Though, you’re going to have to be careful with it. They found a deposit larger than what the hunters have been able to find, but there still isn’t much there. Maybe enough for a few weapons.”

“Understood. Thank you for telling me about this. Is there anything else?”

“I have something else to report,” Novla spoke up. “Lucia suggested trying to add some of the ancients’ chitin to some iron. The iron came out stronger.”

“We essentially produced steel,” Lucia said. “So, as long as we have iron ore from the volcano and chitin from the ancients, producing steel is possible for us. Though, only in small amounts. We would need to expand the smithy area to get a greater production of it going.”

Thanks to hearing the first report and the second report back-to-back, I had an idea. “If combining the chitin with iron makes steel, which is stronger than iron, what if we combine the chitin with obsidian metal?”

Now, this would normally be a great time for Novla and Lucia to be amazed at my ingenuity by coming up with an idea that never crossed their minds! There was no better time for them to have a light of inspiration and applaud me for my idea!

But it was not meant to be. After all, they were smart. They already had that exact idea which was why they delivered the news in that order. “We were going to ask for your permission, Elder CORE,” Novla said.

“Given just how rare this obsidian metal is, I thought it would be best to explain the situation to you first instead of going for it without your consent,” Lucia explained.

“Then if all you are waiting for is my permission, you may proceed with it! Is there anything else?” I asked.

Novla and Lucia shook their heads.

“I see. Then you may continue with your tasks, and thank you once again for informing me of this. And Lucia, I wish for you to explain this ‘economics’ thing to me later.”

“I’m not the most versed when it comes to economics, but I can try,” Lucia said.

I had no idea just how much I would regret ever asking for that explanation.

Now, I will spare you from the explanation of economics. If you do not already understand economics, you will never need to. Nobody does, truly. Only the people who are in charge of economic matters need to understand how economics work. Some of you may be concerned about living by a system that you do not understand, but… trust me. Place your faith in your emperor!

And by that, I mean that if I of all people can hardly understand how it works and still be the emperor of everything and anything that ever will be, then you do not need to understand, either.

Instead, let us get to the results of experiment!

Once more, I sat atop my throne with Corra and Ahti by my sides as Novla came to present the culmination of his efforts. Within his hands was a small dagger with a blade that shined like polished obsidian with swirling streaks of pitch black in it, and I could tell even from a distance that it looked incredibly sharp. The true question, however, was whether or not it was stronger than steel, a plain spear made of an ancient’s leg, and an equivalent blade made of only obsidian metal.

Dian and Sidi carried with them multiple weapons for demonstrating.

First off was testing it against a regular dagger made of steel. For the purpose of the test, we had Crim swing the blades against one another. He would not be hurt in the event of missing or the blades breaking while also being capable of extending his arms to swing at each other from the front.

When swung against each other, the experimental dagger did not only win against the steel dagger, but it cut through the steel dagger. As soon as the upper half of the dagger found itself embedded inside of the slime of Crim’s arm, I was thankful he agreed to test the weapons out rather than using somebody else who might get hurt. Though, the constructs and gnomes probably wouldn’t have been too harmed.

Moving on, the next test was a spear made of an ancient’s leg versus the mysterious dagger. Unlike the first test, this trial was performed by attacking the spear with the dagger rather than attacking each other and meeting midair. First was a slashing attack. Next was a piercing attack.

While the experimental dagger struggled when it came to slashing, it still managed to cut into the leg. The piercing thrust, however, managed to pierce all the way through to the other side with ease. Piercing the leg was even easier with the dagger than with another leg, so the dagger succeeded in two out of three of its trials.

And so, we came to the final test. An experimental dagger versus a dagger made purely of obsidian metal. It looked like the experimental dagger but without the swirling streaks within it. 

Crim took the daggers and brought them against one another with slashing attacks, putting blade against blade as neither refused to budge. This was repeated over and over again without any significant difference, leading us to believe that adding chitin to the experimental dagger made no difference.

That was until one of them chipped from the repeated blows.

The experimental dagger…

Came out on top.

After just a few more repeated swings against one another, the obsidian metal dagger was sliced through and shattered, leaving only the obsidian metal dagger in pristine condition with what appeared to still be all of its sharpness.

There was only one thing left that I could think of to test out this new dagger. Taking it into my hands to perform the true final test myself, I approached the nearest wall, held the dagger in a reverse grip, and thrust the tip of its blade into the wall with every single last ounce of my strength poured into it!

The dagger pierced straight into the wall, which did hurt me considering that it was a wall of my dungeon, and sunk in until it was stopped by my hand on the grip. Even when I retracted the dagger, it still looked just as new as it did before.

“Well done!” I shouted, smacking my hand against Novla’s back. I meant it to be in a friendly manner, but I didn’t notice the look of pained discomfort on Novla’s face as each smack from my hand knocked him forward a little. “You are truly a masterful craftsman, Novla. This may be the most powerful blade in the entire world!”

“Elder – Elder CORE, I might be proud of myself, but I don’t know if I would call it the strongest in the world,” Novla said.

“No, he has a point,” Lucia joined in. “I’m struggling to think of any way to make this stronger without bringing in magic to enhance it.

“Imagine how powerful the Obsidian Guard will become if we upgrade all of their weapons and shields with this!” I shouted. “None will be able to even think of defeating them!”

“Unfortunately, we have nowhere near enough obsidian metal to upgrade all of their equipment. Oh, and we should come up with a new name for this alloy.”

After receiving a quick explanation regarding what alloys are, I nodded and looked to Novla. “You are the one who did the work of combining them. It is only right that you name the alloy.”

Novla took a step back and looked hesitate. “Are you sure, Elder CORE?”

“I am! I would never say anything that I am not sure about. Now, tell us what the name of this alloy will be.”

“Then… what about Emperor’s Metal?”

“No.”

“I thought you wanted me to name it?”

“It loses its meaning if you name it after me when you are the one who made it. If that is what you wish to go for, it would be better to name it Novla’s Metal!”

Novla was quick to raise his arms in front of his body while shaking his head. “Please, don’t. I don’t want an entire metal or anything else named after me.”

“I have an idea,” Lucia said. “Why not remove the L so that we get Nova? Nova Metal? Personally, I think that sounds nice.”

Novla and I looked at one another. “What do you think?” I asked him.

“‘Nova Metal?’ I like it. Yeah, we’ll go with that,” Novla answered. “I… guess it’s still kind of named after me, but it’s not too obvious if people don’t already know who I am.”

“Then that settles it! From now on, this will be known as nova metal! The strongest metal – alloy, to ever exist!”

Novla looked a bit embarrassed by the praise, but his smile told me that he appreciated it regardless.

Have you ever seen a giant, muscular man covered in scales with an appearance that many call ‘scary’ or ‘intimidating’ smile? If you have not, then allow me to tell you now that it is one of the most precious, innocent smiles in all of existence.