[Fusion Tempering Furnace: Can be placed into a Large Capsule and carried with you.]
'Damn!'
'Why didn't it say so earlier?'
'I almost fell for that damned statue's trick.'
Bzz!
The damned statue immediately became anxious and said, ["How about half price? Just seven hundred and fifty spirit stones."]
Ethan: "Get lost!"
Damned Statue: ["Building that thing takes time. Once the flood comes down, even if there's a way out, I won't be able to lead you out. Why don't you think it over?"]
Ethan couldn't be bothered wasting words with the damned statue. Instead, he quickly left the secret chamber and returned to the Hall of Offerings.
Without another word, he selected [Build].
A flash of golden light and huge Fusion Tempering Furnace was built.
The Fusion Tempering Furnace was about the size of a thirty-square-meter room. It had a domed roof and was entirely black and gold. It looked like an Eskimo igloo made of metal.
On the front of the Fusion Tempering Furnace was a door about two meters tall.
Ethan stepped inside.
There, in the center of the Fusion Tempering Furnace, was a huge balance scale.
On the trays on either side of the scale, a large red exclamation mark appeared on each.
[Fusion Item Placement: Place the equipment or any other items you wish to fuse onto this tray. The Fair Balance will calculate the fusion materials you need.]
Ethan shifted his gaze to the other tray. Beneath it was...
[Material Placement: Place the materials you wish to offer. The higher the value and quality of the materials, the higher the success rate.]
Ethan looked at the instructions on the balance.
He immediately realized that this thing, 'Doesn't it look just like those equipment enhancement systems in games that existed purely to milk players?'
'If you don't give enough benefits (pay up), it will fail outright!'
'And this...'
'The Material Placement area doesn't seem to have any intention of telling what specific materials to use.'
Instead, it expected you to guess for yourself, and the more valuable the materials you offered, the higher the success rate?
'Let's try it!'
Ethan didn't waste words. If there was one thing he wasn't lacking, it was equipment.
He'd just use two unimportant pieces of equipment as a test.
He immediately placed [Goblin Orange Hat] + [Goblin Orange Hat], two identical pieces of equipment, onto the Fusion Item Placement tray.
He was also curious what these two pieces of equipment could fuse into.
The balance immediately crackled with electricity, wrapping the fusion items inside as though it were calculating.
After the golden lightning disappeared, the Material Placement tray began sinking rapidly, as if telling Ethan to add materials.
Ethan thought for a moment.
Then he took out one spirit stone and placed it on the tray.
However... the balance only shook slightly, and the Material Placement tray remained lowered.
Although it was slightly higher than before... it still hadn't reached a balanced state.
'What a vampire!'
Ethan cursed in his mind.
Just as he was about to keep adding weight to the tray.
He saw... a small red exclamation mark appeared on the scale's central dial.
[Required Materials: 2.5 Spirit Stones or 1 Enchanted Ore]
[P.S.: Adding 50% more materials increases the success rate by 50%. Doubling the materials increases the success rate by 100%. Of course, that's only if you know which materials are required. Otherwise, the Fair Balance will usually swindle away materials it doesn't even need.]
'This really is...'
'Fair?'
'Even a Fair Balance is this black-hearted now?'
Ethan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Fortunately, he had the prompt system. Otherwise, who knew how many materials this furnace would have swindled away from him.
After all... if it was ordinary equipment like this, then if it exploded, so be it.
But if he were combining high-grade equipment, like his staff or his two precious swords, and they exploded, Ethan figured he'd be furious enough to explode on the spot.
So, when combining high-grade equipment like that, he'd naturally keep throwing materials into it out of fear that the fusion would fail.
And this Fair Balance was probably taking advantage of people's fear of loss, making them keep feeding it materials until they'd invested far more than was actually required.
At that point, the Fair Balance would make a huge profit.
Fortunately, Ethan had the prompt, 'Heh! Heh! So two and a half spirit stones were enough to start the fusion?'
'I don't even want to give you half a stone more.'
With that, Ethan took out another two spirit stones, then used the Godslayer Sword to split one of them in half.
Crack!
The spirit stone was cut cleanly down the middle.
As long as the spiritual energy inside a spirit stone wasn't drained away, it would remain intact.
It was much more impressive than the batteries from his original world.
After all, Spirit stones had originally been cut from an enormous extraterrestrial object.
The Mist World had simply divided it into roughly equal small pieces to make it more convenient to use, which was why prices were counted by the piece.
Clack!
Ethan tossed two and a half spirit stones onto the Fair Balance's tray.
The tray immediately began wobbling back and forth, but the Fair Balance seemed unwilling to accept it. It kept teetering between almost balanced and balanced.
It seemed to really hope that Ethan would add just a little more weight.
But, these two Goblin helmets weren't worth much to begin with, so Ethan ignored the Fair Balance's request.
After the Fair Balance confirmed that this miser wasn't going to add any more weight, it finally settled into balance. Then countless arcs of electricity flashed out, enveloping the entire balance.