Forging the Painted Gods
By @john1208
Kante never asked to be a hero; he just wanted to fix things. Waking up mysteriously inside the zero-gravity exhaust vents of the floating metropolis Xir-Tollan, he Awakens with the city's lowest-ranked class: [Maintenance Blacksmith]. Unable to forge weapons or fight, he is ruthlessly bullied and dismissed as a glorified junkman. But when Kante uses his repair hammer in a fit of rage on a shattered holographic art-drive, he discovers a terrifying loophole. He isn't just fixing the projector - he's repairing the data-soul of the entity depicted. The restored painting manifests as a living hard-light deity with infinitely scaling stats, eager to protect the boy who gave it a home. With his fierce loyalty and fiery temper, Kante builds a quirky, heartwarming family of forgotten gods. When an orbital kinetic meteor threatens to obliterate the city, Kante unleashes a restored mural of a cosmic serpent to devour the catastrophe. Yet, instead of gratitude, the media brands him a techno-demon wielding forbidden code. Hunted by the society he saved and harboring a bittersweet, unspoken love for a girl whose very existence is unraveling, can Kante forge a future where his makeshift family belongs?
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