Pure Black Desire

Pure Black Desire is a Legend-grade suit of plate armor forged by Lin for Kang Shin. Stored as a bracelet when inactive, it combines exceptional defense with aggressive life-stealing and damage-amplifying abilities, but also exposes its wearer to more critical hits. A demonic curse ultimately destroys the armor, after which its fragments and powers become ingredients in the distinct successor called Steel. (Chapters 199–200, 216, 225, 230, and 319–323)

History

Lin's custom armor

Lin forges Pure Black Desire from materials Shin brings him and produces a result beyond what the ingredients should ordinarily allow. The item is a jet-black bracelet until Shin supplies mana, at which point it becomes engraved black full plate armor. It is bound by an equipment requirement specific to Shin and replaces his Crimson Dragon Scale Armor as his principal defense. In battle, its unusual design rewards direct aggression: charge attacks can drain enemies, attack skills can be amplified by accepting damage, and low health can trigger further life absorption. (Chapters 199–200, 216–217, and 225)

That aggression carries costs. Pure Black Desire raises Shin's chance of dealing critical hits but also makes critical damage against him more likely, a penalty that becomes painful against the Lava King's flames. Shin later leaves the armor with Lin for repair, temporarily climbing without it until he can retrieve it. Its “indestructible” durability protects the shell rather than everything inside: a later blow crushes Shin's arm while the surrounding armor remains visibly intact. (Chapters 230, 232–233, and 261)

Repairs, safekeeping, and preparation

When Shin's body reconstructs after another battle, Pure Black Desire falls away in bracelet form with his other equipment. Licorice retrieves and safeguards it until he can reclaim it. Shin subsequently chooses the armor rather than the self-evolving Chaotic Spear as the target of a reinforcement tool made by Eleine. Lin determines that Pure Black Desire only barely meets the tool's required league and modifies the armor so it will signal after accumulating enough experience protecting its owner. Dortu later gives it a temporary increase to physical defense, magical defense, and mana resistance. (Chapters 276–277 and 300)

Destruction and the forging of Steel

A curse embedded in the blood of elite demons activates while the dungeon's power is suppressed, prevents Shin from removing Pure Black Desire, and forces the supposedly unbreakable armor outside the system that guarantees its durability. It explodes into hundreds of thousands of fragments, injuring its wearer and destroying Pure Black Desire as a functioning item. The fragments nevertheless continue moving and, in a process influenced by Eleine's reinforcement tool, absorb blood, flesh, mana, demonic energy, the enemy's magic formation, and world power. That uncontrolled forging creates a thin metallic substance around Shin that he names Steel. (Chapters 319–322)

Steel incorporates fragments and original power from Pure Black Desire, but it is not merely the old armor repaired or renamed. Pure Black Desire's statistical bonuses and discrete skills disappear, its critical-hit penalty is gone, and only their influence survives in Steel's new authority, Extort. Lin describes the successor as a near-organic object connected to Shin rather than conventional armor. Later comparisons continue to distinguish transformed Steel from the older Pure Black Desire, confirming that the original item's final fate is destruction and material incorporation. (Chapters 322–323 and 339)

Abilities and properties

• Transformation and defense: The inactive item is a black bracelet that becomes engraved full plate armor when Shin supplies mana. It has indestructible durability, 7,500 defense, adds thirty to all statistics, reduces damage from basic attacks by fifty percent, and reduces damage from attack skills by thirty percent. (Chapters 199–200)
• Critical-hit exchange: The armor increases Shin's chance of dealing a critical hit by two hundred percent while increasing his chance of receiving one by fifty percent. This favors overwhelming offense but makes strong enemy hits substantially more dangerous. (Chapters 199 and 230)
• Desire Thorn: Once per day during a charge attack, the armor projects numerous thorns that absorb health equal to half the damage they inflict, effectively causing the targets to suffer additional harm while restoring Shin. (Chapters 199, 216, and 225)
• Sacrifice: Shin can double an attack skill's effect by receiving half of that skill's damage himself. The self-inflicted damage cannot lower him below ten percent health, but the ability still trades safety for immediate power. (Chapters 199 and 216)
• Devourer: Once per day when Shin falls below ten percent health, his attacks can drain health from a selected target. Excessive absorption may mutate his body, and reversing that change requires highest-grade holy magic or an Elixir. (Chapters 199 and 216)
• Limits of indestructibility: The armor can remain undamaged while the body inside is crushed, and its durability guarantee fails once a demonic curse separates it from the dungeon's power. Its later explosion is destruction, while Steel's Extort is a successor authority that reflects attacks and appears to be shaped partly by Pure Black Desire's former life-stealing skills. (Chapters 261 and 319–323)

Ownership and custody