58. Hephaestus 2.

Hephaestus had Tsubaki head back to her shop and get the manual on growth weapons from her office. Meanwhile Demeter had some of her children unload the gifts and items Hephaestus had brought.

Ryan was incredibly pleased with the dragon slayer equipment, they were all high quality weapons and armor made in different ways. They would surely cost a fortune if sold, but he had no intentions of selling them. He could study them and then probably melt them down and combine them with some of his equipment to make them better.

Tsubaki soon returned with the manual on how to make growth based weapons. Hephaestus didn't really mind trading this as you had to be incredibly skilled as a blacksmith to even attempt it, need an incredible amount of resources and had to have a drop of divine blood.

She easily passed over the manual.

A small portal appeared in front if Ryan after scanning the book and he tucked the manual inside. "A deal is a deal then. I'll explain to you the process of how Anima was made. First off you will need a couple things, a set of armor, a large amount of mana, a captured or crystalized being, and a chunk of your soul." That last part made everyone freeze.

"You used your own soul as part of the creation?" Hephaestus asks in shock.

Ryan waves towards Anima who answers. "My lord has given each of his knights a chunk of his own soul to give us life."

"Do you know how incredibly dangerous it is to mess with ones soul?" Hephaestus asks seriously.

"Of course I do. However, how do you expect to create life without a soul?" Ryan shakes his head. "You think you can only forge metal? You're naive to think that, as a goddess of smithing you should know that everything can be forged, your body, your mind, your soul, you even use monster parts in the creation of weapons, why can't you use a part of your own soul?"

Those words rang like thunder in the ears of Hephaestus. Why had she never thought of that?

"Aren't your bodies made from specialized materials already? Why can't you do the same for a weapon, or piece of armor? Your basically stuffing a part of your soul into a crafted body." Hephaestus felt like an idiot.

"Thank you for your teaching." She says honestly.

"No problem." Ryan smiled before raising his hand. A soft blue glow appeared and Hephaestus felt some soothing relief in her body but didn't know what happened. "A gift, anyway I accept your apology. Now I'm going to go and look over that lovely book you gave me." Ryan says politely dismissing himself.

Hephaestus said a few parting words to Demeter before running off to do some forging of her own, she didn't get to look at the dragoon armor but she feels she had gained something much more important.

As for Ryan he had also gained more than the growth weapon manual. In his hand was a small orb of black writhing mass. A curse that had been placed on Hephaestus by Zues. Ryan had not only sealed it and contained it with his new magic but even healed the eye of Hephaestus it was housed in. Something even the gods were disgusted by intrigued him. His magic was not from this world so it was easily able to over power the curse that inflicted Hephaestus, which was immune to all healing methods of this world.

'Capture.' Ryan thought as a green glow covered the orb and it stopped wriggling in the seal and sat quietly for a second before. 'Morph materia.' The ball turned into a black sphere of materia which Ryan pocketed. "This could probably come in useful at some point."

Reaching into a portal he made, he pulls out the book on the growth weapons and starts to read it as he heads back inside of the kingdom to resume his relaxing day.

It wouldn't be for 5 more days that Hephaestus would come to find out that her eye had been healed of the curse that plagued her for who knows how long.

Of course Ryan would know exactly when that happened because he would be caught unaware mid stride as the world freezes around him and he once more finds himself in the reward area with his patron god.

"You changed the fate of another main character of the story." The god says as 3 golden cards pop up in front of him.

Ryan was utterly confused for a few minutes as the cards started to shift. The first one landed on a man with spikey black hair and a familiar sword on his back.

"Zack, from final fantasy." The voice says as the card explodes.

The next one starts shifting before rolling to a stop on a white haired man and a set of black armor.

"Cecil, from final fantasy." The card explodes.

The the final one starts and soon comes to a halt. This time on a blonde haired man with a ponytail and blue clothes.

"Ramza, from final fantasy." The final card explodes and Ryan finds himself back in the garden with a surprised yet happy look on his face. However he didn't gain too much from the first two. Zack was basically just Cloud with a few more unique summons but same skillset. Cecil was both a dark and a holy knight. Which just improved his skillset and moves which he already had a bit. Ramza was the unique one, he had quite a few skills and new summons, he was however classified as a heavenly knight which had quite a few useful sword based skills and he came with a few unique items for a variety of classes.

"Awesome!" Ryan smiled happily before continuing on his way. He wasn't going to complain about free stuff anyway. His overall strength didn't really recieve much of a boost if any, just getting some more techniques under his belt was fine with him though.