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MAZE - Chapter 1082 - Hollow Handle
🕑 Added 2025-07-08 01:00:03 +0000 UTCHera kept staring at the handle, trying to be sure if she was reading things correctly. This wasn't simply a piece of a weapon, but something that seemed to be able to attach to any type of weapon. And if that's what it could do, there was nothing stopping it from also working with her venomous arsenal. In addition, if she could trigger the breaking effect and still cause the explosion, it would be perfect. This could be even more powerful than whatever weapon George was about to make.
George had returned to displaying his blueprint of the chainsword that he was going to give to Hera, but the Empress didn't even hear what he was saying. Her eyes were fixated on the handle. Insomniac tapped her shoulder, causing her to jump back and pull a venomous hand axe from her waist. Only after a beat that she noticed the presence of not just George but Insomniac himself.
"Sorry, I got really distracted and wasn't expecting someone to touch me," Hera replied dismissing the weapon she created.
George had wide eyes, feeling somewhat alarmed by the situation. But Insomniac just nodded with a sadden smile.
"That's okay."
He had seen that kind of reaction before. Usually only with people who had some bad experiences in the dungeons. But right now, it probably meant that despite everything, Hera was still in the mentality that she was during the war. She still had that knee-jerk reaction to something unexpected. Some scars took longer to heal, no matter how well the person who had them seemed to be.
"Is everything okay?" George asked after a long moment of pause.
"Yeah, yeah. Sorry about this."
George looked at the handle and back at Hera, not really understanding her reaction. But she quickly started speaking.
"Can I ask some questions about this?" the Empress gestured with the hollow handle.
"Sure. What's up?"
"When you say that this doesn't break, what if you intentionally make the weapon break? By using a skill or something? Do you mean with [Weapon Break]? Even though if I use one with this, would it work? Would the weapon... the explosion happen?"
George nodded.
"It would, but that's not the best version of the handle for that. If you want to intentionally break the weapon to discharge it, I have a smaller one that works with daggers, and they are generally cheaper. It's one of the ways that a few Crafters like me like to fight. Since we can make weapons pretty much at any moment, we use that kind of thing to be a big attack, you know."
Hera nodded and pointed at the axe in her hand.
"But this is technically a mana construct, not an actual weapon."
George frowned and took a step forward, reaching for the weapon in Hera's hand.
"May I?"
The Empress nodded.
"Sure. Here."
She gave the hand axe to the man.
"But just don't try to use Weapon Break. They only behave as weapons if they are with me. To anyone else, they will function as weapons and have their scaling, but skills don't really work with them. Not something like Weapon Break at least."
George nodded.
"Okay. That's a bit weird, but it's because of the legacy?"
"Yep. I also don't understand why they have that distinction."
Still, he waved the weapon around and examined it with a more discerning eye.
"I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work with the handle, but this one, the one that you're holding, is a simple version. I have a better one… Actually, a couple of better ones that could be more useful to you. The first can teleport back to your hand or specific location that you set up, so it's great for throwing weapons. And the second can pack a bit more of a punch. The explosion will always be elemental as long as that element is coursing through the weapon in the moment of the blast. In the case of this weapon..." he passed the hand axe back to the Empress.
"I believe it would be venom, as it is the type of mana it has. Or it could be of any type of enchantments that you might have put on it. Of course, you can't really control which one will be, so it's a bit of a gamble."
Hera looked back at the handle with wide eyes.
"How much for both of those?"
"Both?"
The Ophidianite nodded, " Yeah. I very much would like to test this first, maybe in a dungeon just so I don't break anything here. But if it works, I want to buy them both. The teleporting one and the one with the elemental explosion."
"There's actually a dungeon in the training hall in this estate. We could go there to test," Insomniac suggested.
"That would be great. Is that okay?"
Hera turned back to George, who nodded.
"Sure. Can I at least finish getting the details with you about the chainsword?"
"Sorry, I just... I was really looking for something like this for a while already."
The Crafter smiled.
"Don't worry about it. I'm just happy my work is being appreciated."
He showed the blueprint that he made using a software on his tablet. In it, there was a chainsword with an electric blue shaft and handle and details in gold. The actual blades were a mixture of those two same colors, alternating between each of the tiny edges. Near the pommel that was the shell of a tortoise acting as the handle guard, and around going down there was the tail of a snake, or more specifically, of that of the black tortoise, going around the handle forming almost like a rapier guard.
By the side, was the expected skills that would be part of the weapon. First the Spirit Claw, but there wasn't anything about it written there. Next, the Elemental Chain, which would let Hera spent a 1% of the cost of an enchantment per second to imbue said element in the chain.
In addition, there were the Vibrating and Three Speed Revving skills. The first was a passive, which allowed the chain to vibrate at a high frequency, increasing the power of the weapon. The second was a skill given by the motor inside.
Basically, a system assisted speed control. It had 3 speeds, plus the option of being turned off. First, it could move at 7 000 rpm, then 12 000 rpm, and the top speed of 50 000 rpm. The last speed was something George advised against prolonged use. It was supposed to be a way to deal one big hit, not to be constantly active. Otherwise, the chains wouldn't hold on and break apart.
All those together would make the chainsword that would belong to Hera.
"The last thing I want to know from you is what extra skill do you want, if any? I managed to get three specific blueprints that I can attach to any equipment. As long as I'm the one that's making them," George explained.
"The first is called Mind Over Matter which lets you change the scaling of the weapons from one attribute to another. You can do that at will with the highest scaling, but it has a cooldown of about 7 days. It's really good for weapons that people want to keep for a long time or for when someone wants to change the weapon they could be using," he tapped on his tablet and showed a small clip.
On it, a person slashed a wooden dummy two times. The second strike had some sort of aftershock that followed the same path as the first attack.
"The other skill is called Chained Attacks, and it's very literal. If you hit something, then that same target will be a little bit stronger, taking some of the damage from the previous hit. But the damage it's a small percentage of the original hit. I recommend this skill for anyone who is more a one-hit wonder kind of fighter. The people who don't attack very often but every attack hits like a truck. According to our conversation, that's not really your case. Although you are a bit of a mix, I do feel like you lean more towards the quantity over quality combat style."
The Empress nodded in agreement.
"Yeah. Even if Livy is a bit more aggressive, the rest of us do tend to lean more on multiple attacks instead of just one big kaboom, so to speak."
"Exactly. Then we have the last one, which I honestly don't know if it would help you at all. I generally don't use this for weapons, but it's called Fury Funnel. This skill basically lets you channel your emotions into the weapon or an item, and that makes your emotions really tamed.. More specifically, all your emotions are turned to one instead of the regular ten. Unless you are a fighter and can literally channel the Fury thing. Even then, they need some specific skills for it to work. Honestly, that's not something that people who ask for weapons generally want."
"You are right, that doesn't sound something people would want in a weapon very often," Hera frowned out of confusion. But her mind was already thinking about the possibilities.
"I use this for other stuff."
"Like what?" the Empress asked.
"Therapy. That's actually my main source of income. A lot of people have problems controlling their emotions and, during the sessions, they might need some help to understand where those emotions come from. But it's kind of hard to understand where something comes from if you are completely lost in that emotion. So the doctors order some versions of this in teddy bears, pillows, stress balls. Stuff like that. When the skill is active, you still know the emotion you're feeling, but it feels like a much weaker version, which generally helps people understand the emotion and cope with the situation."
"Whoa, that's kind of amazing," Hera smiled.
"Thank you. I'm very proud of that one. Even though it's a temporary effect, and it doesn't last for too long. An hour, sure, but it's 1 hour every week, not one hour every day."
Hera had a brief conversation with Daskka and they agreed that this skill might have some interesting effect on her court. Maybe she wouldn't be able to shut down the emotional influence of the weaker blades entirely, but it could be enough to at least hold them back in some situations.
"Yeah, I want that one then."
George frowned and looked at the Empress.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I think it's really going to help me a lot!" Hera replied excitedly.
That caused a bit of a misunderstanding. Both Insomniac and George thought that the Empress was talking about some trauma caused by the war. They looked at her with sad expressions, but Hera was too focused on the chainsword and the hollow handle to realize what was going on. Instead, she could only think how helpful something like that could be.
They ironed out a few more details, such as the engravings that could be in the weapon, more about decoration than enchantments. And the Empress also added that she would have something else to put in the chain blade. It was part of her skill and something she could give to the blade. But she would love to have George's help in figuring out what kind of seal she could place on the chainsword to make it even more powerful. The crafter didn't have any ideas right at the top of his head, but he promised to think about it since it was something that could only happen after the product was finished.
With that done, George allowed Hera to take both of the hollow handles, the better versions, to the dungeon that was on the training grounds. Apparently, the dungeon was, in fact, something that most people who were of a certain level used in this estate. After all, there were skills that were too destructive to be used anywhere else. And not having to worry about the environment during their practice had its benefits, even if it wasn't something they could do all the time.
Insomniac was also going to teach her the ropes inside the dungeon, and they wouldn't really have to worry about completing the quest. It was easy, as those involved only had to go inside a certain cave and kill a giant groundhog-like creature. The creature itself wouldn't move until it was nighttime, and during the day, the entire dungeon was a very peaceful place as long as you didn't step inside anyone's territory. Which Insomniac knew well enough in the area not to allow them to do.
But inside the dungeon, the first thing that Hera did was to test both of the hollow handles. She first created a javelin inside of the teleporting one and threw it at a tree. It was a simple common javelin, and the Empress was using just the [Weapon Break] skill. Not even the full combo. Despite it being only a common weapon, the blast was massive. Reaching almost the power of an uncommon one.
Just as the explosion happened, the handle teleported back into her hand since that was the place she registered as its return point. Unfortunately, she wasn't really expecting the handle to appear there so quickly, and it fell to the ground, as she wasn't ready to catch it. But it was something that she could easily get used to with some practice.
Next came the empowered handle. Since all her weapons already had venomous mana, the Empress decided not to add any more buffs, but this time she did use the full break combo with [Grasshopper Slash], [Weapon Break], and even adding an [All-In] just for kicks.
The moment the hand axe touched the ground, it carved a massive gap on the floor of the dungeon. There was now a triangle-shaped gash on the floor going a good 70 meters away from the Empress. She paused and looked back at the weapon. The handle was still there, but everything else was gone.
Just to test it, she took a few steps to the side and summoned another hand axe. The same type of axe used before, and once more used the break combo for the attack. She knew that [All-In] was already removing some of the power behind the skill. Even then, this new attack barely went beyond the distance of the attack created by the common weapon with the empowered handle. This meant that a common weapon was almost able to match the power of a rare weapon as long as the handle was being used.
Very curious about what the limit of this power was, the Empress asked Insomniac for the direction of the cave where the dungeon boss was located. He showed her and it was somewhat close to where they were, but Hera simply smiled and asked for a couple of hours since she was still under the [All In] debuff.
Once that time was over, she was going to create a legendary weapon using the empowered handle and try to destroy the entire cave with one single strike. Insomniac couldn't help but laugh at the idea, although he really believed that it was possible. After all, he himself had done similar things in the past to test the upper limits of his power.
But since they had some time before she was able to perform such test, they might as well start her training. Since the combat style practice wouldn't be affected by her current lack of attribute.
Comments
Perizou
Lol true, it's been a long time since I thought about that
DrDankness
Lmao this reminds me of a javazon from d2. Just chucking death spears that clear the map
