Chapter 6628 Heavenly Punishment Ves did not anticipate that the creation of the Bitter Scimitar would provoke a lightning tribulation. He assumed that while D-arms were more powerful than typical artifacts that red humanity could produce at this time, they shouldn't be too exaggerated, especially given his lack of familiarity and proficiency with Demoncasting. His assumptions turned out to be wrong. Perhaps this may be one of the reasons why Demoncasting had become 'lost'. If it was this easy to provoke the heavens with the creation of D-arms, then those that just started out in this craft would definitely endure a lot of failures! Fortunately, Ves was not a Demoncaster by profession. He was already an accomplished Senior Mech Designer, and Ketis was not bad at her craft either. The Bitter Scimitar should definitely be able to withstand the first handful of strikes without suffering significant damage. The question was what would happen after that. Once the successive lightning strikes ramped up, they may be able to pose a much more serious threat to his second D-arm. Ves made a decision and began to act. He stepped forward while at the same time unfolding a part of his true body. He only grew tall enough to roughly match the Everchanger before using his enlarged hands to grasp the Bitter Scimitar! "What are you doing, Ves?!" "I can handle it!" Ves shouted back as he held the Bitter Scimitar in a sloppy upward-facing guard position. "The D-arm needs to be wielded in order to showcase a greater proportion of its strength. This is also a good opportunity for me to temper my true body and spirit by baptizing it with lightning. I will be hitting two birds with one stone!" CRACK! Another lightning bolt rained down from above! The metallic blue Bitter Scimitar let out a brief cry of pain that shocked Ves' mind at the same time the tribulation lightning coursed through his formidable body. Ves merely grunted in response. This was far from his first encounter with tribulation lightning. The strikes of this magnitude could no longer pose a serious threat to him, but neither did they provide any significant tempering. However, any little bit of progress helped. Even if his phasewater concentration rose by just 0.1 percent, he would become a bit harder to kill than before! Fortunately for him, the lightning tribulation did not grow more powerful due to his intervention. Ves was sure he played by the rules this time. The Bitter Scimitar was meant to be wielded by another person, and few were more suitable than one of its own creators! Ketis meanwhile observed him holding the mech-scaled scimitar in a stance that screamed amateur. His footing was too unstable, his grip was too tight and he lacked the intuition and reaction speed to accurately slice at a lightning bolt that struck down from above. She wished she could be the one to wield the D-arm instead, but when she looked down at her human-scaled arms, she dismissed this silly notion. Size mattered! Her inability to wield any weapons designed for mechs was the reason why nobody took human swordmasters seriously in modern times. The fact that she was unable to do her job due to the size disparity caused her to develop a much greater yearning to pilot a Carmine mech than before. During one of her past talks with Ves during the marathon, her former mentor had outlined the solution he had in mind for mech designers. Ketis had to admit that Polymetal mechs sounded tailor-made for every competent mech designer. The ability to use their expertise to program bonded smart metal into machines of their own design offered unparalleled flexibility and personalization! Such a solution was far superior to a more basic Carmine mech that only offered limited room for customization and personalization. If she had already formed a Blood Pact with a so-called Polymetal mech, then she would have summoned it and used it to move forward and take the scimitar from Ves' unskilled hands! "Next time." Ves had yet to formally begin the development of his Polymetal mechs. His schedule was packed with other projects and he still needed to find the right smart metal solution. In any case, it did not matter whether Ves was an inept swordsman. The D-arm may have crossed a limit, but it had not provoked a response that was as scary as the initial creation of the Elemental Lord. The fact that the response came in the form of a single-modal lightning tribulation signified that while the Bitter Scimitar crossed a line, it had not violated the most severe taboos. This told Ves that while the heavens were hostile towards demons, this should mostly be a standard policy. Demons were inherently negative and could drain the life of an entire galaxy if left unchecked! For this reason, most demons needed to be culled when they managed to get anchored to the material realm for one reason or another. As for the demons that managed to withstand heavenly punishment, perhaps the tempering process was a way to bribe the demon and strengthen the bond of karma. Ves came up with all kinds of theories about this stuff, but right now he needed to keep his head in the game and make sure his creation survived the remaining lightning strikes! CRACK! "Ah!" The seventh strike had already landed. Ves was feeling the pain, but he had suffered much worse in the past. The Bitter Scimitar's mutated form managed to hold up for the most part, but the same could not be said for the demon residing inside. Just as Ves suspected, the Bitter Swordsman was much more susceptible to the harm inflicted by tribulation lightning! Although he was partially able to heal and strengthen himself right afterwards, once the damage had reached a higher threshold, the Middle Demon could outright perish before he could restore himself with the help of creation energy! "Is this the challenge that every serious D-arm must go through? How can Demoncasters possibly keep their products alive?!" Ves was more than confident in the materials and design of the mech weapon, but he was not able to do much about the demon. If he knew that his work would provoke a response from the heavens, then he would have devised a solution that could have shielded the demon against this threat! CRACK! The eight strike struck with around 30 percent greater power than before! While Ves could feel his slightly damaged body and spirit obtaining a little more benefits than before, the demon released a louder cry! That was not all. His eyes widened as he witnessed the beginnings of a more profound transformation to the D-arm. The Bitter Scimitar's physical mutations had begun to reverse! Its blue metallic sheen had grown a little duller, and some of the spikes and sharp angles grew smaller and softer. CRAAACK! The last strike of the first round struck with significantly greater power than before, causing Ves to feel a bit more pain and numbness! His true body had grown a little larger, and his phasewater concentration must have bumped up by a small but noticeable extent. However, Ves no longer cared about advancing his phase lord cultivation and instead grew a lot more concerned about the worsening state of his creation. The Bitter Scimitar had lost even more progress than before! arm." Ves suddenly reali "It is "The tribulation lightning... is purifying the weakening the merger between the demon and the mech weapon. If this continues... even if the Bitter Swordsman is barely able to hold on to his life, he will become completely detached from the masterwork scimitar, thereby causing him to lose his physical anchor. If we don't take action to put him in another shelter, he will be banished from this realm!" Either way, the heavens would get rid of another harmful demon. "Since it is possible to reverse the Demoncasting process, it should also be possible to promote it again." Ketis guessed. "See if you can find a way to restore and reinforce the bond between the demon and the scimitar." Ves rapidly tried to come up with a solution. Time was short. The storm clouds up above grew darker and more energetic. The next 9 lighting strikes were only going to inflict more damage! The intense pressure and his high emotional investment in this project rapidly caused him to come up with series of hasty countermeasures. First, he changed his stance. Instead of offering the blade to the heavens as if he was a supplicant, he reversed its grip so that the curved tip pointed downwards before he started to hunch his back. At the same time, his true body grew even larger, causing his smart clothing to strain even further to cover his dignity! This not only allowed him to withstand damage a little better, but also allowed him to provide full physical cover to the proportionately smaller mech weapon! Once he had reached his slightly improved maximum size, the mech scimitar resembled a curved dagger in his oversized limbs! This made it a lot easier for him to shield the weapon from most angles! CRACK! A golden lightning bolt struck his back and coursed through much of his upper body before finally running through the length of the Bitter Scimitar! Ves attempted to divert a part of the tribulation lightning directly down to his legs and into the soil of the mountaintop, but that did not work. The tribulation lightning did not behave like normal electricity and did not always follow the path of least resistance. The Bitter Scimitar attracted it like a magnetic pole. Once the tribulation lightning had reached the tip, it continued to burst out across the air gap before directly passing through the ground. The demon suffered much more severe damage this time as he had yet to fully recover from the previous strike. What distressed Ves the most was that the Bitter Scimitar lost even more potency duc to the reversing demonization! "Blinky!" "Mrow!" This was the second solution he came up with. His companion spirit quickly went into action and began to disgorge a large amount of E energy from the Blinkyverse! Much of it consisted of a mixture of life-attributed E energy and darkness-attributed E energy. Ves had an affinity in both, so he was able to exert much better control over them. He and Blinky worked together to feed the raw E energies to the demon. He quickly noticed that the different attributes had a different effect on the demon. As a negative energy life form, the demon was easily able to absorb darkness energy. The Bitter Swordsman used it to quickly repair his spiritual injuries and restore his energy reserves. What was also interesting was that the darkness energy was remarkably effective at promoting the demonization process. The Bitter Scimitar had regained a small measure of demonization, causing it to regain a portion of its lost strength! Feeding the Middle Demon with positive E energy did not directly promote the demonization process, but gave the Bitter Swordsman a fairly powerful tonic that promoted his growth and healing more effectively. While the Bitter Swordsman experienced other effects that Ves was not able to detect or analyse, he at least managed to confirm that using Blinky to feed the D-arm with E energy successfully restored it to an extent. However, this was not a sustainable solution! CRACK! The Bitter Swordsman had yet to recover to his peak condition and already got blasted by a more powerful dose of tribulation lightning! Not only did the strike undo the previous restoration effort, but also set the demon back even further! "Damnit! Blinky is not strong enough yet! He can only output so much E energy at a time!" "Ves!" Ketis shouted from the side! "You are not doing this right! Instead of feeding the D-arm with raw E energy, you need to use your power to resist it like a warrior! If you can't fight the storm like a sword practitioner, then at least fight as if you are a phase lord and a qi cultivator!" That... was actually not a bad idea! Ves immediately decided to adopt her advice and tried his best to figure out how to leverage his powers to preserve his D-arm!