Master of Kaidan

Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Reforging

Although Feng Xue had already resolved to experiment with the Golden Finger, he still put a lot of effort into selecting the target.

From a literal perspective, recasting probably meant forging an item again, similar to how some games allow weapon crafting through obtaining random attributes, but this time he could specify the elements involved.

Thus, the issue of what item to recast the "Suffocation" element onto was worth considering.

First, the item certainly could not be too large, for it would be a joke if he ended up with a top-grade item he could not carry away.

Second, it must be a useless item.

After all, considering the risk of recasting failure, if he exploded the only item that could be considered a defensive weapon—the short blade—he would truly be left without any means of defense—even though his combat abilities were nearly non-existent even with a blade.

After some thought, he took off his armguard.

At that moment, he actually regretted that he had chosen to wear a white robe in the style of Ezio for the sake of looking cool, rather than choosing the classic look of Altair, which would have provided him with many small throwing knives for practice.

Although Ezio's white robe also had numerous small accessories like belts and a shoulder cape, Feng Xue felt that choosing these things to incorporate the "Suffocation" element could easily backfire catastrophically.

Undoubtedly, it was supposed to be refined for a weapon.

Fortunately, he was not the kind of cosplayer who pursued absolute accuracy in reproduction; rather, he preferred aesthetics, which meant he didn't choose Ezio's classic sleeve blade but opted for the one styled after the French Revolution known as "Phantom Blade," which could be used as an arm crossbow.

Despite the poor craftsmanship and the PVC material being practically harmless, these fulfilled the criteria of being a "weapon" and "useless".

Moreover, if successful, compared to the more challenging melee weapons, the crossbow arrow was undoubtedly more suitable for a novice—even though the device could only shoot the unsharpened plastic blade a few meters.

After some consideration, Feng Xue detached the mechanism from the faux leather armguard; this way, even if the refining failed, he could still keep the armguard for storing the short blade.

After preparing all this, Feng Xue turned his attention back to the "Phantom Blade," and the identification function displayed its attributes again—

Name: Inferior Sleeve Sword (Pseudo)

Elements: [Assassin], [Flying Prop]

Indeed, this item didn't even possess the [Weapon] element.

However, Feng Xue, who had identified everything on him earlier, was not surprised by this. He switched the Golden Finger to the recasting panel, aimed the crosshair at the "Phantom Blade," and selected the sole [Suffocation] option.

As the confirmation button lit up again, Feng Xue almost closed his eyes as he pressed it, and a numeric input box popped up along with the prompt—

[Please select the amount of "Identity" to invest (optional).]

"Ah, this..." Feng Xue's face showed distress as he was unsure how much to invest, but based on his past experience with mobile games, he knew it was inappropriate to invest nothing at all. Guided by the thought that the "Identity" extracted from corpses couldn't prolong life anyway, he dumped all 84 towers' worth from the corpses into it.

With this action completed, a vortex formed from the crosshair in the central panel of Feng Xue's vision, and a massive amount of data along with the [Suffocation] element swirled into it, drilling into the sleeve sword like a funnel-shaped tornado.

This process sounded rather fantastic, but in reality, there were no special effects, just a fast-spinning vortex that Feng Xue observed, where streams of Identity collided continuously, appearing as strings of code constantly rearranging before forming into characters with some significance.

When the last bit of information disappeared with the vortex, what remained in front of him was a completely altered sleeve sword.

The previously shoddy PVC material now had a hint of metallic solidity, and the enclosed blade gleamed with a cold light; even the internal gear structure had undergone significant changes.

With the help of the identification function, new attributes appeared before Feng Xue:

Name: Phantom Object·Suffocation Blade

Elements: [Assassin], [Flying Prop], [Suffocation], [Weapon]

Description: The personal weapon of an assassin, this weapon can add most of the user's abilities, including those of other weapons, to its use. Enemies wounded by it will struggle to breathe, making it difficult for them to engage in strenuous movements.

Note: Remember to pick it up after use, or, if it's too troublesome, you can use it in close combat. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

...

"This entry is quite detailed!" That was Feng Xue's first thought upon seeing the lengthy text before him.

While still simpler compared to many game equipment descriptions, the extensive details were a significant improvement over the typically two-line attributes shown by his Golden Finger previously.

"The 'Identity' I invested earlier, did it constitute the [Weapon] element? Does this mean that if I had invested more 'Identity,' I might have generated elements like [Automatic Recovery] or [Guaranteed Hit]? And this 'Phantom Object' prefix, it sounds similar to 'True Object' and 'Pseudo Artifact.' Could it be some kind of special proprietary noun?"

Feng Xue scrutinized these few lines, feeling a sense of déjà vu, and after much consideration, he finally found the answer from a very ancient memory—

"Isn't this Phantom Assassin's first skill?"

As an old player who started playing Dota from the era when the Immortal Shield still needed to be crafted, Feng Xue had a deep impression of the hero Phantom Assassin, especially her simple ultimate that aside from increasing critical hit rates, mesmerized many bettors.

However, compared to her ultimate, the much-altered Suffocation Blade had little presence, being merely a general utility tool for heroes to finish off or keep enemies in place. In fact, it only became noticeable when Dota 2 began allowing the inheritance of passive buff and attack effects.

Now the item in Feng Xue's hand, although sharing the name, did not rigidly repeat the skill effect but was a more realistic adaptation.

However, even according to the settings, Phantom Assassin's first skill should be an actual "Skill," a method involving an enchanted dagger, where the dagger itself is not important.

But the item before him seemed more like it had the Phantom Assassin's skill permanently attached to one piece of equipment.

This seemed to imply that his Golden Finger was not simply grabbing fantasy items for refining results.

So, what exactly determines the refining results?

This question flickered briefly in Feng Xue's mind before he suppressed it; the examples were too few at present, and figuring this out would likely require many more experiments...