Crusader King-Chapter 133: Beneath the Statue(19)

The drying of the tendons and the magical arteries that shimmered in a weirdly white glint as Cades was testing them by pushing his mana through took a few hours because he only used relatively low heat and had to turn the stuff around multiple times to get it evenly from all sides, but after that it was finally ready, he hung them up on a small spike he had stabbed into the corpse, one of the legs that was standing upwards because it had been angled weirdly, and finally he began the process for drilling all of the holes in all for the stuff he had made, aside from the few intricate things he had already been able to create.

He first had to start by drilling some smaller holes into the parts of the fingers, for the most part upper, middle and the lowest end that he had to carefully connect with the hand itself later on, a task that he was not looking forward to despite being eager to finally hold the result of all this work in his artificing obsessed hands, eager to hold it in his very hand, and then eager to hold it with his very shoulder in a certain way as well.

Each of the intricate parts of the finger took about half a hour to completely be made, including durability enhancements, some mana circuits to be able to push mana into it and perhaps even spread it out, at least allowing him to have primitive magical control in this hand, under the condition that it did succeed, but that was more of a theory of his most likely resulting in nothing but failure and disappointment, something he was however already used to after having been stuck in this realm for an eternity.

After he was finally done with all of the bigger fingers, the only one remaining was perhaps the most important one at all, and the same time one that some decided to not even refer to as a finger, the thump, the bodily part that allowed us to truly grip, to truly hold something, to turn door knobs, a tactic that we would be done for if animals figured out, and so many more things that one could say that the rise of the modern ehetrian only truly happened after the mutation that created the thing in ancient times, causing evolution to take up the idea of the 'thumb'.

While Cades was thinking this he showed a little smile and, lost in thoughts, said a singular word aloud, separated from all of the talks about what to do next, separated from the incoherent mumbling that he couldn't really hear anyways because of the way that this island functioned, because nothing and nobody could be heard on this realm aside from the eternal scream within his head that had now begun to be heard once more despite having been heavily silenced by the restraints of this island that Cades had begun to truly feel at home at despite all of the blood that had probably nurtured these massive trees.

"Thumb" He said with a small, faded smile and tired eyes darkened by the rings under them that had not been alleviated in fat too long, despite him not even feeling tired, tespite him not even realizing that his body was falling apart because he wasn't taking care of it, despite him simply focusing, simply acting, simply not doing anything for his body he smiled with his dry lips that soon began to hurt and cause a miniscule amount of blood to flow into his mouth, something that he didn't even realize as he had long since stopped tasting with his mouth, something his body had been ignoring because of the lack of food, something that had caused him to not even realize that the inside of his mouth was already bleeding.

It was not important, actually it was rather insignificant as he had already finished his work on the thump, something that he decided to simply make that it's only real function was to grab stuff, to close inwards and grip with as much force as he sent mana through the valves he would still have to make out of the various mana stones he had been able to recover, the deep yellow stones that seemed to smell of blood and cadaver, something that Cades found to be quite fitting considering where they came from.

Cades continued on, neither minding his psyche nor his body, and finally he had finished all of the fingers, now starting to drill some more holes into the palm itself, trying to further it a bit more and ease the intended movements of the arm later on, the movements that were in and of itself actually rather simple, consisting of grabbing, movement, turning, curling, to explain it in the easiest way, well, he had already prepared anyways so there wasn't really any need for him to think more about this, but there was a need for the palm to have holes that were a bit wider so that he could actually use his needles that were currently stuck inside the same leg of the beast that was holding hte dried arteries and tendons.

Finally, as the hand itself was finished, only really missing the tendons and arteries that had once belonged to the false spider queen, Cades moved on to the two biggest and yet the two simplest parts, the upper and lower arm.

The lower arm was the simplest, he just had to drill four small holes to be followed and then he was already done, having furthered his previous work on it by filling it with some other bones he had cut to the right size, reducing the entire thing to a half, smoothing it out and cutting four holes into it, each of which would be connected to a mana valve, aside from one, one that he intended to connect to a mana stone he would inscribe with a spell, a telekinesis spell, a spell he would be able to use with this hand if at all, a spell he had inscribed on his very first hand-made wand, a ring, that he had made back when he had slain the first thomiside of them all, shortly before he had battled against the eximimus queen.

Lastly, the upper arm was similar to that with the only real difference being that he had to put in a empty kind of sphere so he could connect it with his shoulder, a part he would have to make later on and one that he had laid extra tendons aside, intending to make sure he wouldn't lose this one.

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