I Can Devour Monsters' SSS Talents

Chapter 420: The Ancient Rank Armor! ( Ps Bonus Chapter )

The door of Ironsoul forge opened with a short metallic bell sound.

A wave of heat coming from inside the workshop hit Lian and Kain in the face almost at the same moment.

There was nothing calm about this place.

The sound of hammers hitting metal could be heard from different parts of the workshop, the flames of several furnaces were burning deep inside the workshop, and orange sparks were thrown into the air from behind the blacksmith tables every few seconds.

Dozens of swords, axes, spears, and pieces of armor were hanging on the walls.

Some of them were even releasing a weak flow of mana while inactive.

It had been about nine months since the last time they came here, and during this time, it did not seem like anything had changed.

”Close the door! You’re letting the heat of the workshop escape!” Magnus shouted in a rough voice without even turning his head.

Lian looked at Kain and then closed the door behind them.

”I haven’t been here for nine months and that’s still the first thing you say? Don’t I get a better welcome?” he said with a faint smile.

The sound of the hammer stopped.

The old man standing behind the blacksmith table stayed still for a few moments, then put his heavy hammer on the table and slowly turned around.

Magnus looked almost exactly as Lian remembered him, the same hair and beard, and arms that, despite his old age, still looked more like the arms of a warrior than those of an old blacksmith.

And the same frown that seemed to be permanently carved into his forehead.

But when his eyes fell on him, his frown changed for a moment, enough for Lian to notice the surprise in his eyes.

”So you’re alive and doing well after all.” Magnus said in a lower voice.

”I look like it, I guess? Did you expect me to be dead?”

The old man completely put the hammer aside and walked a few steps forward.

His eyes moved over Lian’s body once again, and this time he also noticed the changes after his first evolution; slightly wider shoulders, greater height, and a body that perhaps did not look very different from the outside, but its structure was no longer the same body from nine months ago.

However, there seemed to be something more important to Magnus.

”Nine months! I kept an Ancient Rank armor in my storage for nine months, just because its stupid owner decided to go into a Special Realm one day and disappear.”

”Thanks for not selling it.” Lian said jokingly, clearly not bothered by his words, after all, he was already used to this behavior and way of speaking.

”Don’t think I did it for you, I worked on that armor for months. I wasn’t willing to see my masterpiece on the body of another idiot.” The old man grumbled.

Then he pointed at one of his students and told him to stand in his place behind the furnace, then picked up a thick towel and wiped his hands.

”Before I show it to you, there are some things you need to know.” Magnus said to Lian.

”The same problem you mentioned in the message?”

”We’ll get to that too.” The old man stayed silent for a moment, then walked through the workshop, and the two of them followed him.

”Do you still remember that corpse you gave me?”

”Unholy Rank World Devourer Giant.” Lian answered almost immediately.

Magnus nodded.

”World Devourer Giant.” The old man repeated the name of the species in a serious tone.

”Before I cut that corpse apart myself, I thought the reports written about the bodies of these creatures were a little exaggerated.”

”They weren’t?” Kain looked at him with curiosity.

”No.”

They left the main part of the workshop and entered a narrower hallway.

Unlike the front part, almost no sound of hammers could be heard here, and it seemed that the walls had special protections.

”When people talk about World Devourer Giants, they usually only say one thing; their skin is very tough, this is the simplest and stupidest explanation that has been passed from person to person for a long time.”

Lian listened silently, he had read exactly the same thing in books and on the internet, these giants were creatures that were admired because of their bodies.

Magnus raised his hand and tapped his own forearm with his finger.

”Their skin is only the first layer, the bones, muscles, joints, the tissues between the body parts, even the way their internal organs are placed... everything is built to handle pressure.”

”The whole body is one single fortress.” The old man’s eyes became a little more serious, and he had only just started explaining.

”If a normal monster takes a heavy hit to the chest, all the force is focused there, the skin tears, the bones break, the internal organs are crushed.”

”But a World Devourer Giant is different, the structure of its body spreads part of the force around it; the shoulders, spine, sides, hips, and even the legs...to crush one point of its body, it is like having to fight its entire body.”

”Then there is their body stability, when a World Devourer Giant fixes its weight on the ground, moving it is almost ridiculous, not because of earth magic or something strange; just the structure of its bones and muscles.”

”So it’s like a mountain?” Kain asked thoughtfully.

”Almost.” Magnus gave him a short look and then took a few more steps.

”And the last feature was what caused me the most trouble while making it, not that it was bad, no, on the contrary, what bothered me was that if all monsters had such a feature, could we really stand against monsters?”

”Oh? What? You’re raising my expectations too much.” Lian asked with more interest.

”You should have high expectations, do you even know what kind of masterpiece you’re about to see? Anyway, this feature is Structural Memory.” The old man added and stayed silent for a moment.

Young Vorhelm slightly raised his eyebrows, and it was clear that he expected more explanation.

”The body tissue of that creature hates changing its shape, bend it, press it, even break all of its parts; as long as its structure has not been completely destroyed, it tends to return to its original shape.”

”Does it regenerate?” Kain asked.

”Not exactly, this is not body regeneration, it doesn’t create new tissue, but its structure tries to return anything that has changed back to its original place, you can stop regeneration but you can’t stop this.”

The old man let out a short sigh.

”I thought that when I purified the materials, this feature would mostly disappear, but it didn’t, I tried every method I could, but every time it returns to its original form and nothing can stop it.”

In simple words, it did not matter what happened to the armor, under any condition, it returned to its original state and became completely intact again just like it was at first.

The end of the hallway reached a simple stone wall.

For a moment, Lian thought the path had ended, but Magnus placed his hand on a small metal panel beside the wall.

Mana flowed through the panel, and thin golden lines lit up inside the stone.

Grrrrr...

The stone wall moved backward in two directions, and a staircase going down appeared behind it.

”You have a storage room under the forge?” Kain raised his eyebrows slightly.

”Did you think I would put high-rank equipment next to ordinary swords on the wall?” The old man said sarcastically.

The two entered behind him, and as they went down the stairs, the heat of the workshop slowly decreased.

The space became colder and quieter, every few meters, symbols could be seen on the walls, glowing with a weak light.

They went down almost three floors, and at the end of the stairs, there was a huge gate made of black metal.

This time, even Lian could feel the weak pressure of the protective arrays around it.

Magnus opened three separate locks, one with mana, one with a strange metal key, and the last one with a drop of blood, and finally the gate opened with a heavy sound.

The space behind it no longer looked like a storage room, it looked more like a hall for keeping special items.

A high ceiling and walls made of black stone, several separate platforms, each one inside its own protective field.

On one of them, there was a long sword that still had a weak flow of electricity moving around it even inside the barrier.

On another, there was a broken shield covered with red lines.

But Magnus walked past all of them, and his destination was at the end of the hall, there was a large stone platform inside a multi-layered container made of mana glass.

There was no cloth covering it and no box, and the armor was completely visible inside the protective field, and the moment Lian saw it, his steps became slightly slower.

Black.

That was the first thing that caught his attention, but it was not the blackness of normal metal, instead, the surface of the armor had a color between black and very dark gray, and in some parts, it looked more like polished volcanic rock than metal.

The light from the storage room lamps did not shine on it and instead most of the light seemed to disappear into it.

Very thin silver lines ran along the places where the armor plates connected, looking like natural cracks inside a mountain.

The armor covered the entire body, but unlike what he expected from its main material, it was not bulky.

The chest plates were not too thick, but they were locked together in several layers, creating something that looked like layers of tightly packed rock.

The shoulders were large, but not enough to limit movement, the forearms and lower legs were designed to be thicker.

The joint areas had more flexibility, and almost no exposed and unprotected point could be seen.

There were no horns, no crown, and no useless decorations, it was as simple and minimal as possible.

The armor did not need decorations, its own presence was enough, as if someone had cut a piece of a black mountain and turned it into armor.