Chapter 2542: Reshaping the Blade

"Five hours?"

Shi Feng looked at the system notification, his expression turning grim.

Five hours was neither a lot nor a little. If it were just a matter of reforging an ordinary weapon, it wouldn't be a big deal. But when reforging a weapon of this caliber, a low completion rate would severely impact its attributes — potentially turning a peerless weapon into an unremarkable top-tier one.

And the number of reforging attempts possible within five hours was pitifully small, meaning there were very few chances to make adjustments.

Reforging in the Divine Realm wasn't as complex as crafting. It only involved two processes — reshaping the form and polishing — but since there were no blueprints, the player had to design everything from scratch. On top of that, with the materials being unknown, achieving the desired effect through reforging was far from easy. It required multiple attempts, or it would be nearly impossible to reach the ideal result.

"I suppose I'll have to start by reforging it based on the Abyssal's general shape." Shi Feng looked at the system's countdown timer and took a deep breath before activating the Sage's Hand and beginning the process of reshaping it into the Abyssal's form.

If this task fell to any other player, it would likely be nothing short of a nightmare and a disaster.

But for Shi Feng, who had spent a decade in the Divine Realm, even though he had never performed a single reforging before, he had accumulated a great deal of knowledge on the subject. In fact, many Master Blacksmiths had engaged in extensive discussions about the best approaches to reforging a weapon.

Once the mainstream players in the Divine Realm reached Level 120, reforging weapons became a fairly common affair for the major powers. Many weapons that had originally been epic-grade fragments scattered as dark-gold-grade pieces — once collected, they could be reforged into a single epic-grade weapon.

This was one of the primary ways many independent players obtained epic-grade weapons.

According to the reforging experience established in the Divine Realm, mimicking the original weapon's shape was the best approach.

The reason was that these materials were best suited to the initial form. Even after fusing the materials of two weapons together, a considerable portion would still align with the original shape. After that, what remained was refinement.

Shi Feng had no familiarity whatsoever with the Dark Ruin Blade, but the Abyssal was a different matter entirely. He had held this weapon ever since shortly after entering the Divine Realm, making it the weapon he knew best of all.

In short order, Shi Feng spent only about thirty minutes forging a blade that closely resembled the Abyssal's previous shape. The only difference was that the blade was considerably larger than before — so much so that it no longer resembled a one-handed sword. Instead, it looked more like a two-handed greatsword.

"Inspect!"

Shi Feng looked at the Abyssal, which had now been reshaped, and opened its interface to perform a quality inspection.

The moment he clicked the button, the magic circle inscribed on the blade began to circulate. The surrounding mana flowed uncontrollably toward the blade, and its aura of pressure grew denser and more oppressive with each passing second.

Shi Feng couldn't help but feel a surge of delight. He hadn't expected the very first reshaping attempt to be this successful. Fine-tuning from here on would be considerably easier.

But barely had this thought formed when the system's inspection results left Shi Feng not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

System: Weapon completion rate 40%. Does the player wish to confirm this shape?

A mere 40% completion rate was enough for the blade to effortlessly condense such dense mana, with an aura of pressure so overwhelming it was astonishing. If the completion rate were to exceed 70%, he couldn't even imagine how powerful it would become.

And the Abyssal's shape was essentially the one with the best initial results. Improvements based on this foundation would have very limited returns.

"Could it be that it should primarily be a two-handed weapon based on the Dark Ruin Blade?" The thought gave Shi Feng a headache.

Reforging a weapon didn't restrict it to being either one-handed or two-handed, but reforged weapons did have a natural leaning. If the weapon inherently favored a two-handed form, converting it to a one-handed weapon would be significantly more difficult — and vice versa.