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Chapter 203: Research

Arwin lifted his gaze to look at her, holding back a laugh. “Lillia, I don’t think you can just stuff food into a random hole and hope it gets power from it. It’s a heart. A creepy one, but it’s still a heart.”

Lillia’s nose scrunched. “What if you make a bunch of sharp spiky things on it?”

“I get the feeling that squishing food up and stuffing it into a heart isn’t going to do anything better than shoving a whole roast turkey into it,” Arwin said with a shake of his head. “I do like the idea of somehow converting the food to something the heart can use, though.”

“The can use bit is the problem. I don’t think hearts are meant to consume any amount of energy,” Lillia grumbled. “The stupid Prism thing we got was an exception… but maybe we could take inspiration? It was also a heart, right?”

“I think it had more magic in it. This one doesn’t have a Mesh identification.”

Lillia looked back to the red lump of flesh on the anvil and chewed her lower lip. Her tail snaked out from her pants and brushed back and forth across the floor in thought. Arwin’s eyes followed it, temporarily mesmerized.

“Maybe that’s what we have to focus on making first,” Lillia said.

“I could tell.” Lillia snorted and she walked around the anvil to stand near him. Her tail snaked out to wrap around his leg and pull him closer. “Could we start by making something that converts magical food into pure magical energy? That would handle one of the issues.”

“Huh.” Arwin tilted his head to the side. That was definitely easier said than done, but it was a step along the right path — and it gave him another idea. “Maybe we treat the heart like an actual heart. Just… a magical one. If we can get the magical energy stored in some kind of liquid, we could treat it like blood.”

“That’s… strikingly unsettling,” Lillia said. She grinned. “It just might work. How do we even start that?”

Arwin cast his gaze around the room to take in all the components he had. This wasn’t making a weapon. It was a lot more complicated, but all he could do was take things one step at a time.

“If I think about it, I’m basically trying to distill [The Hungering Maw] into an item. Intent is really important whenever I make something, so I bet it’ll be the same for when we’re trying to artificially replicate it. I need to somehow imbue intent into my intent."

Lillia nodded sagely. Then she frowned and gave his leg a gentle tug with her tail. “You lost me. What do you mean?”

“You know how your intent heavily controls the result you get while crafting… or cooking, I guess.”

“Yeah. I get that part. But how does intent have intent?”

“We don’t know what kind of food this is going to eat or how it’s going to work,” Arwin said after taking a few seconds to collect his thoughts so he could articulate them properly. “So that means this contraption is going to have to be able to take in some random kind of food and convert it to magic energy. That requires intent.”

“Right.” Lillia nodded. “I’m still with you.”

“So if I work from the bottom up, the converter needs intent to convert magic food to pure magic, but I need to make the converter in the first place. That also requires intent. So that’s basically two layers of intent. I need to have the intent to make something that can in itself simulate intent.”

“That is a damn brain twister,” Lillia said with a shudder. “I’ve got you now.” She paused for a moment and a small grin flitted across her lips as she poked him with the tip of her tail. “Figuratively and literally.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Arwin laughed and shook his head. “That’s good, because it’s threatening to slip out of my head even as I think about it. I basically need an Awakened item, but I can’t just force something to wake up. I can only make them with the potential to wake, and the only item that’s done that so far is Wyrmhunger."

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” Lillia suggested. She rested her chin on Arwin’s shoulder and thought for a second. “I think you’re making your end too complicated. Reduce the requirements. I’ll make sure the food always has a similar form of intent behind it. It’ll just be the closest thing to pure strength that I can get. Then you have your bit focus on harvesting the strength energy and converting that. Leave the rest of it as waste.”

That would definitely reduce the amount I would have to do. I still need to deal with the crux of the issue — finding a way to convert magic food to magic — but it narrows the scope.

“Good idea,” Arwin said. “This is definitely something that has to be made in pieces. Basically a set… but for a heart instead of a living person. Three pieces, I think? Each one can have intent to help reduce the food down to a base magical form and help the process along.”

“What if you replicate something similar to normal eating?” Lillia asked, her eyes lighting up as she abruptly straightened, nearly yanking Arwin off his feet when she forgot that she was still holding onto his leg with her tail.

He stumbled and she jerked to a halt, her cheeks going bright red. “Sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Arwin said as she released him, shaking his head and laughing. “How damn strong is your tail?”

“I mean… it’s there for a reason. What, did you think they were just ornamental?”

Arwin scratched the back of his neck. If he was honest, he hadn’t really put that much thought into it in the first place. But, now that he was, he couldn’t shake an image of Lillia swinging by her tail from branch to branch in a canopy like a monkey. He coughed into his fist. “So what was it that you realized?”

“Oh, right!” her eyes lit back up. “I think I figured out how to make this! We have to replicate the actual digestion process. The first part of the set can physically break down the food and prepare it for treatment. The second one can mix it with something that melts it down somehow, separating the waste from the useful energy. Then the third can pass that useful energy into the heart. How about that?”

It was as sound an idea as any, and Lillia sounded so excited about it that Arwin couldn’t have brought himself to say anything other than yes anyway. It was surprisingly straightforward in concept.

That was good. If he could visualize it, he could make it. All he needed was the intent, willpower to push it through, and monster parts that could enable him to do what he needed.

The first part… I guess I need to make a fake mouth? A millstone of some sort, perhaps. Or just jaws. I’ve got a lot of Wyrmling claws and fangs. I’ll have to do some testing to figure out if ripping or crushing is more effective.

“What kind of food were you thinking of making?” Arwin asked as he walked to his pile of Wyrmling parts and started gathering the materials he would need. “Is there something that would lend itself to pure strength more?”

“Meat,” Lillia said without a second of hesitation. “It’s muscle, and muscle definitely has the most strength intent. The exact type depends on what it came from, but I think that should be general enough.”

How do we actually eat things? I’ve never put thought into it. I just chew. I need a reference.

“Do you have any food on you right now?”

Lillia blinked. She rifled through her pockets and pulled out a small piece of blackened meat. “I’ve got this. I was experimenting with Wyrm jerky. It didn’t turn out very good. Turns out, you can’t speed up how fast it dries by setting it on fire. That just burns it.”

“Could you eat it for me? I want to see how your mouth works.”

She arched an eyebrow, then shrugged and put it into her mouth. Arwin stepped closer and squinted at her as she started to chew.

“Hold on. I can’t see what you’re doing. Open your mouth.”

Lillia stared at him. She raised a hand to cover her mouth before speaking. “You want me to chew with my mouth open? What am I, a barn animal?”

“It’s research. I can’t see myself eat.”

Shoulders slumping slightly, Lillia let her hand drop and did as he asked. Fortunately for both of them, there wasn’t that much jerky. Less fortunately for Lillia, it looked to be as tough as a strip of leather and it took her nearly a minute to finish it.

By the time she was done, her cheeks had once again been reddened by embarrassment and Arwin was intimately aquainted with just how someone chewed a particularly stubborn piece of jerky.

“I really hope we don’t need to do that again,” Lillia said.

“I don’t think so.” Arwin shook his head, his thoughts still focused on just how he’d make a functioning replica of a mouth work. “Unless demon jaws work really different than human ones. Do you think you should watch me eat and—”

“Unless this is something you’re really interested in doing, I am going to firmly decline.”

“Eh. That’s probably fine. I think I’ve got what I need,” Arwin said. Lillia blew out a relieved breath.

“Good. Then how do we do this? I could go start making some practice food. It’ll take me a bit before I figure out how to optimize it.”

“You could, but I think you could still help me. I want to try something,” Ariwn said thoughtfully. “I’ve got a grasp of the physical mechanism, but you understand food and its purpose more than me. Do you think you could try to help me form the actual intent for the item?”

“Is that even possible? I’m not a crafter.”

“I’ve got no idea,” Arwin admitted with a shrug. “But we’re trying to make something that really feels like it has no right to exist. Might as well see what else we can screw up in the process.”

Lillia grinned. “When you put it like that, how can I refuse? Let’s give it a shot.”