14: Hidden dungeon of Thark forest (5)

Kalki sat in the lotus pose and attempted to connect with his artifact. This was the only way to know fully well about your weapon and its ability.

With his eyes closed Kalki tried to enter his mind space and emptied all thought that he was having from his mind.

At the beginning, it seemed impossible for him but he didn't rest and continued his attempt to achieve it. 

Soon hours passed by with him sitting in a meditative stance, feeling the numbness of his limbs, he finally felt a change. 

The dark space he was seeing earlier started to alter and soon change to a landscape that looks like the place in between the Warfield. 

All he could see were corpses of people lying around him. All faces were very detailed but none that he could remember.

As far as Kalki tried to see, the only thing he saw was the remnants of war. 

In the midst of this gruesome scenery he finally noticed the man behind him whose hair and beard were of different colors one being pitch black and other being silvery white, similar to his eyes. 

His face reminded Kalki of Greek gods pictures, noticing his limbs which were fully covered in blood like a bloodsucker he felt a little unease. 

His clothes which were of nobility attire, had stains of blood everywhere on it. 

The man radiated a presence that Kalki had never felt before. Just him standing near him made it uncomfortable for him.

"Have you noticed me finally?" the man spoke. 

Kalki who was flabbergasted by the sudden question from the man and answered with yes in polite manner. 

"Good, it took you a long time to reach here and notice me…

 I was waiting."

"What no, who are you and where are we?" Kalki asked him a question . 

"I am the personification of 'Forgebound' and you are in the spiritual plane of mine" the man spoke in a straight tone without any expression. 

"Haa?.....

 *sigh*

... I know you are Forgebound's personification but my question was what is Forgebound exactly?" 

Kalki reframed his question so that the man can understand clearly. 

" I am Asi, the personification of Forgebound. Right now I don't know much about myself as I came into existence the moment you formed a bond with me. " Asi Replied.

"Understood. So what is forgebound and how should I use it? " On Kalki's question Asi nodded his head and replied. 

"Forgebound is an artifact which in its active state covers the hand of the user in a glove like form. 

While wearing forgebound the user's control over mana increases several folds, to the point that it becomes possible for the user to form weapons out of mana. " 

"That's all?" Kalki inquired as the Forgebound he knew was way overpowered then what current one was. 

"Yup, for now I can only do this much" Asi looked at Kalki's eye and replied to him coldly.

Kalki got baffled with such a cold response and tried to normalize things. 

"Hmm hmm… its okay okay, you will become the strongest artifact alongside me why take tension right now. Isn't it?"

"I am not taking any tension" Asi replied as his body blurred out alongside the scenery where Kalki was present. 

~~~

Kalki opened his eyes and called forgebound, in an instant his hands got covered with black colored liquid solidified in the form of a glove

Standing from his position, Kalki stretched his left arm outwards. Except the middle and ring finger which were closed, other index finger, pinky and thumb were stretched open. 

"Fuuuuu"

Releasing breath from his mouth, Kalki used his right arm to do an action of nock.

The mana came out of gloves and constructed a bow and arrow upon Kalki's hands. 

Releasing the arrow from the right hand, the mana arrow shoots out with immense velocity and hits the wall of the cave creating a crater. 

The moment the arrow got released the bow also dissipated. 

"It's MANA CONSUMING.."

Kalki shouted as he sat back down panting, clearly low on mana once again. 

"For now I need imagination to use it efficiently. Only after gaining high rank will I be able to touch the threshold of what Ambit used to do with this"

Kalki spoke out his inner thoughts as he looked at his gloves one more time before storing them away in star tattoos. 

Moving towards the beast's corpses Kalki spent the next few hours extracting their cores which hold the most value.

After that Kalki went towards the mana stones and with his blade extracted each one of them out. 

The extraction of mana stones took one full day of worth's time in which Kalki chewed on his beef jerky for food, used the water from the pond to clench his thirst. 

After collecting all of the mana stones in one place and creating a big heap of them, Kalki sat next to them with three basketball size monster cores in his lap. 

Although Kalki removed the core easily from those massive monster's bodies, thanks to him knowing a little about the position of them after using his mana art skill.

However, normally it was hard to find them as they were the main weakness and the collection of their strengths. 

One by one Kalki placed his hands on all three cores and after going through the information that flashed out, he pondered what to do with them.