22 The Sword of Heroes

I smiled at her, and stole a kiss. "I was working on the analysis for the Sword of Heroes, among other things." Before she could bog down the conversation by asking for details, I concentrated on the sword and commanded, "Analyze."

Remembering the information, and man was that still weird, I started explaining the sword to Robin. "The sword is made of compressed mana crystal, to the point that nothing can even scratch it. If it ever breaks, the entire world will probably be atomized. I see enchantments, plural, on it that increase its durability to the point of being nigh indestructible, probably for that very reason. There is an enchantment for energy absorption, to absorb energy into its blade and then to the wielder. It loses some energy to enchantment maintenance, but 90% makes it to the wielder. Not bad. The thing is, the sword can dissolve spells cut with the edge, and bounce spells caught with flat. Bounced spells won't provide energy, of course, but dissolved spells will. There is also a magic capacitance chamber in the pommel that will store excess energy absorbed while not being held by its wielder, and wow! It has 2 entire Heroic Measures of energy! Ah, that comes from being in the rock for so long. Wait..."

I walked over to the rock and analyzed it. "The rock is made from enchanted marble. Its spelled for durability and weight, probably so that noone can sneak off with it. Hmm, there is also an auto defense system, set to trigger when vandals spray paint it. It zaps them with lightning from the sky and then self cleans. Cool! And here is the main enchantment. It absorbs magical energy from a mile around at an even faster rate. Looks like half of the energy in the sword was absorbed in the last week! Oh dear. That must mean the demon spawn I wiped out were the weakest we'll encounter. At least we're getting a power boost from the accumulated energy!"

The system set up was actually rather clever. The initial level boost given to the Hero automatically varied based on the mana density, and thus the power of the monsters. I decided to upload scans of the sword and stone to the VMD to play around with later. I scanned the sword and stone together and saved them as swordinthestone_levelscaling.

That's when I noticed Robin was standing before me. She was scowling adorably. One hand was extended before her, and her right foot was tapping the ground. She emanated worry that I would keep the sword, annoyance that I was obviously keeping something from her, and a warm fuzzy feeling that came from just looking at me.

I smiled back at her and handed the sword over. As I watched her hold the sword again and absorb the stored magic, I realized something. Checking our shared energy storage core, my heart sank. She had already absorbed five Measures of energy before when she drew the sword out. If the mana density was this bad, then her village may be the last one left!