Now inside of the forge room with the piece of himself at his side, Ed prompted the system.
'How do I merge? The forge again?' This time Ed didn't feel as hesitant. Having gone through it once he knew that the pain would pass by rather quickly.
[Yes]
He was also mentally prepared for the affirmative reply. He had merged consciousnesses before and knew very well that the forge was a key part of the process.
Thus, without further ado, Ed grabbed the wisp of himself with a tendril of light and hurled himself at the ethereal white flame.
Immediately, Ed was overcome by that earlier feeling of pain and confusion. That feeling of being burned alive while being simultaneously left out to drown in the deepest ocean imaginable.
Ed could only scream inwardly before eventually losing track of both time and his surroundings. He lost his lucidity and drifted off into sleep. When he next woke up, it was from getting a pleasant feeling.
[5 hp recovered]
'Huh…?' This peculiar message made Ed realize something, the system didn't just deal him damage, it removed his max consciousness hp! It was entirely expected but Ed hadn't thought to worry about it previously.
This ultimately meant that the consciousness split couldn't be abused since skills like thought manifestation relied on the strength of his mind. Ed correlated that strength to the health of his consciousness.
'Argh!' Ed's mind was then painfully jolted awake by a sudden influx of pain. It came from a painful memory.
''AaAaaAaAaaaAh!' It was a memory of him floating in front of a shining white skeleton who wore an ominous robe and whose eyes hid deep darkness. Staring into them felt like staring into the vastness of space. Yet Ed knew who this was, it was himself.
'AaAaaAh!' Perhaps due to being made up of only 5hp, even a decrease of 0.1hp had made Ed's wisp feel unimaginable pain. This skin scratching pain transferred over to Ed once they merged and it had not lessened in the magnitude of feeling.
'Argh… what the hell…' Ed suddenly felt sick which was completely unimaginable. He hadn't fallen ill once since entering this other world!
'Damn I'll never get out of my body if I have to feel like that…' While the dungeon's attack was a short burst, this was a continual piercing pain. The logic was the same as removing tape from one's skin, most would prefer to have it pulled right off.
'Sigh… Let's continue with the drop item experiment' It would soon be time for him to return to his orc body and he couldn't waste a single second inside of the system space.
Ed tossed a new arm into the forge, he had collected this one before entering. The arm started to melt and Ed was forced to reconsider how to go about it.
'I can't give these bones consciousnesses of anything but myself' Now that he learned he would lose 5hp at a minimum though he was very reluctant to continue experimenting with it.
That was when he finally realized that there was no need to stick with his drop item as the benchmark. He could start small, he could start with the anti-skeletons.
Ed quickly hopped out of the system and approached Callow, he was seemingly the least experienced one there while at the same time being decently old among the group of skeletons.
This mattered as Ed didn't want the consciousness to strongly resist the anti-skeleton material. He suspected that the main reason why his bone rejected anything but his consciousness was due to it being recognized as his. The power of the mind over the body was fascinating. A connection had been formed between the two and been deeply ingrained into his body.
'I wonder if this also happens to humans' Ed was inclined to believe that the answer was no as it might otherwise imply that humans were capable of dropping items upon death. Surely the one in charge of dropping items was the dungeon but Ed couldn't discard that it was a natural law of monsters. Some sort of law of conservation of monster.
Putting the silly thoughts aside, Ed kidnapped Callow's mind and body and returned to the system space to throw his body into the furnace. He felt pity for the fellow but Callow and the others were an amalgamation of different consciousnesses, he could always merge Callow with another one.
Ed repeated the chiseling process with Callow's bones as well as those of his own arm. He would put a piece of Callow in both. The two final products seemed to be as different as day and night.
Ed's bone was a resplendent and captivating white while Callow's anti-skeleton bone was a metallic black that reeked of crudeness. Without paying it too much mind, Ed put some Callow in both of them.
After waiting a couple of minutes and seeing no dazzling lights, Ed scanned both pieces.
[Spirit Bone (Material)]
A chiseled dark bone carrying with it hints of personality.
The assessment of Callow's bone gave Ed some hope but he didn't forget to first scan the oth-
[Offerings Received]
Before he could however his bone had combusted and released the dazzling sparks of consciousness. Ed couldn't help but sigh and stare at the only remaining bone intently.
After a good while, nothing happened.
'Success…?' Ed wasn't sure if he was supposed to celebrate this small victory.
On one hand, he had successfully made an alchemy material but on the other, the material was still not a drop item. Ed had made it manually and what he needed was an automatic process.
The problem was how exactly he was supposed to achieve that. It would be easier to create drop items and strap them to the skeletons but Ed knew that it wasn't sustainable in the long term for him to spend all of his system space-time making drop items.
The humans would also get suspicious if some of the skeletons didn't drop anything while others did. It would be simply peculiar.
After some more pondering, Ed realized that as long as it was possible to leave copy of himself working on it 24/7 inside of the system space it wouldn't be impossible to maintain a certain amount of sustainability.
That option was still less attractive than his next thought, however.
'Personality and ingrained thoughts' That was the key to making the drop items. The tests he had performed were not for naught as he had figured out this much. All things considered, that was really all he needed.
'I just need to improve my skeletons' If he could do that then the skeletons' fragmented consciousness would remain attracted to the body and create a natural drop item. This was all speculation but after running through this process a couple of times in his mind Ed felt it was the most likely answer.
He for example always dropped something but as he had been human he had a strong consciousness by default and therefore a strong ability to ingrain thoughts into his body. As he recovered more and more memories and his personality was further developed the potency of the bones would have also likely grown.
'This isn't exactly what I wanted but it should suffice' If he went down this route there would be no spying into the outside world but he also wouldn't permanently lose max hp by sending himself into who knows where and hoping an adventurer would be foolish enough to return to the dungeon without having sold off his consciousness bearing bone.
To perform this task Ed would need to have the person volunteer themself.
'I really need to get myself a human accomplice' But would there be anyone crazy enough to ally himself with a sentient monster? Ed wasn't sure there was.
'Unfortunately, the command sub-skill also won't work on humans' He had yet to even test it out on his skeletons but as he couldn't insert the souls of humans he didn't need to have tested anything to know this much.
The rest of Ed's time was spent entirely in the system space. He would occasionally hop out to kidnap more of his own anti-skeletons. He used parts or Prairie, Pioneer, and even of Iron.
[Iron Spirit Bone (Material)]
A chiseled dark bone carrying with it a will of iron. Ideal for potions pertaining to body constitution or mental stability.
'An effect!' iron's strong spirit had managed to persist even as Ed turned it into a drop item. It was all evidence of the brave endeavors he faced while trying to defend the temple he had left behind.
Though Iron's armor had ended up battered and bruised he was steady and never faltered. Most of Ed's skeletons carried with them this trait as the undead tended to not fear many things but Iron had it down to a science. It was beyond simple instinct. This was something Iron strived to do out of his own volition.
Having created a successful drop item, Ed used the system to help him patch up Iron. His body parts had to come from somewhere after all.
Ed then placed the Iron Spirit bone inside of the hollow armor, he fastened it into the armor.
'If anyone ever kills Iron and waits for his body to disappear they will receive this gift' Ed didn't want Iron to die but on the off chance that he did he would be used until his last second.
He would squeeze dry every single resource he owned all for the sake of… himself.. The dungeon would certainly be proud.