A haggard-looking man stared angrily into the mirror of his 52nd-floor apartment on 423rd Street. Another million dead today, how long before the next? He wouldn’t let that happen again, not without a purpose, not for the gain of the rulers. No not again, he just needed a little more time. The haggard man slammed his fist into the mirror, shattering it and the wall behind it sending glass and debris out into the sky and to the empty streets below letting in the light of the dying sun.
New Landera was once a metropolis. Now it was just an empty shell, a corpse of a once great empire. Trillions had once lived here, now there were barely a hundred billion. Tonight would be both this world's end and its salvation. The haggard man peered inside his soul space and weaved the delicate threads of his core as master of both the forge and the infinite tapestry. Thousands then hundreds of thousands of threads swarmed together in intricate patterns and constructs as if a trillion sewing machines worked faster than light. All of this was just the smallest piece of the final creation of the haggard man. In an instant, the forging stopped and the haggard man once again stared across the corpse of a city. It was done. A golden notification appeared in front of him but he didn’t bother to read it, he knew what it said.
The haggard man raised his hand towards the sky and activated his masterpiece, his calamity. Another display appeared before him, making tears run down his cheeks.
[Entities Marked: 98,834,342,931]
“I’m sorry… It has to end.”
An explosion of perceptual overload brought Kal back to himself, his mana sight had dropped from the sudden experience but instead of utter darkness, he was surrounded by the cascading lights of hundreds of complicated threads. He recognized them immediately, they were the least complicated threads and constructs of the haggard man’s creation. Kal dragged himself into a seated position as quickly as he could, feeling that every moment that passed was inspiration and guidance lost to his unprepared mind.
He was under constant assault from emotions that were not his. Sorrow and anger were at the forefront as images of the billions of lives being snuffed out to force him no, the haggard man to do what needed to be done. What that was escaped Kal but he forced the overwhelming thoughts aside to concentrate on the purpose of the whole experience. Learning what was needed to forge Arcane Hunter’s Mark.
Kal dove now to his core once more to find his birthright in a state of utter chaos. It slammed into its prison at an entirely more aggressive level compared to what it had done before. It was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one affected by the experience but now was not the time to dwell on another man's emotions even if that man may have been the most powerful being Kal had ever seen.
His weaving of the threads and constructs began, almost by itself as each expression of will was already put towards the ultimate goal before he had even consciously thought of it. The complexity of what Kal was weaving together was absolutely nothing compared to what he had witnessed in the vision. It was like comparing a child's finger knitting to the entire world's combined collection of exquisite rugs, but even that wasn’t anywhere near close enough to describe the vast chasm between the two workings. Will, perception, and intellect all wove together to form a dozen tiny constructs each connected in a lattice of will conduits that then lead away from its encasing sphere through his core space and body, and finally into the backs of each of his eyes. The experience of forming conduits behind his eyes was not pleasant in the least and he felt that he likely wouldn’t have attempted it at all if he wasn’t guided by the system's vision.
After the pathway to his eyes was complete, he reached the part that required the most concentration by far and the most complicated construct he had created up until this point. The fear amplification function. How it worked was ultimately a confusing mess in Kal’s mind since the guidance didn’t really explain how it worked, instead simply showing him the construct needed to gain the effect. The construct itself was made up of equal parts will and to his surprise wisdom. Now that he understood how that construct worked, it made slightly more sense. It would draw in a reading of the target's emotions and literally amplify any fear that was present. How it did that exactly was beyond him- wait! he had come across the first problem with simply following the guidance to every pattern. An important strand was missing. He could see the empty space where a tiny strand of mana should run in an intricate path to complete the construct and likely the part that actually amplified the target's fear.
Thinking it would be simple enough to simply replace it with wrath, Kal continued the weaving of the construct before the next problem appeared. His wrath was not at all playing nice with the form of the construct. Like it had done with Wrath Incarnate it quickly began to degrade the surrounding threads of the construct, they simply weren’t strong enough to contain it. He knew that simply leaving it would work for a time, and probably work very well. His wrath was already strongly in tune with powerful emotions, one in particular of course. But if he left it as it was, then it would quickly become another easily breakable gate for his birthright to break in order to get free. With Wrath Incarnate still a moderate problem he certainly didn’t need another. For now, the only way Kal could think to prevent that from happening was to simply increase the amount of will used in the construct, he just hoped that it wouldn’t override the function of it in the process.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Now that he had at least patched that problem he quickly saw the rest of the issues leading from his lack of traditional mana. Almost etched into the walls of the conduit leading from the lattice of constructs and up to the back of his eyes was a void that he immediately understood should have been filled with a mana thread. Since the conduit was mainly will he thought that using wrath in its place this time would be relatively safe but every single one of the tiny constructs worked into the lattice would need to be reworked since they were definitely too fragile to survive his wrath flowing through them. Kal was about to break them down and start again when another flash of memory from the haggard man’s weaving flashed into his mind.
Kal had nearly made a horrible mistake. The constructs were not meant to channel his wrath at all, they were converters or at least something like that. They were designed to change the attunement of the target's mana, allowing it to flow from the skill and into his core. Pumping wrath through them would have likely simply destroyed the skill the moment he activated it. But as it was the constructs would do nothing for him other than fill him full of foreign mana like eating the garghound flesh did. He still needed to use wrath for each of them but not in the way that he used it for Flame of Wrath. The signature had to be there so that the constructs knew what he was looking for, but even then most things didn’t have wrath as a resource so what could he even steal?
The roaring of his birthright raging against his core summoned the answer to his mind. He could use the target’s killing intent. It was something that he could perceive, so surely that meant it could be used for something right? When the thought came to him he noticed his birthright’s rage subtly change before dying down to its normal rhythm. Well, that was concerning, but it made Kal think he was on the right track since it seemed even his birthright was interested in the idea. He wasn’t sure which was worse, his birthright seemingly aware of what he was doing, or the fact it seemed interested in his idea. Since using the target’s killing intent was the best way forward, he went with it for now and started the now completely manual weaving of the next portion of the skill. Now that he had moved away from the guided skill construction the feeling of easy manipulation was completely gone, making the already dreadfully complex changes he had to make seem even harder.
He was forced to resort to willing the function he wanted each thread to have as hard as he could in the hopes it would behave as he wished when he was finally finished. With every movement, he weaved into the wrath threads of the constructs and inscriptions in the walls of the channel leading to his eyes. He willed the killing intent of the target to resonate with his core, fueling his wrath. When he thought he was done he moved on to the last step of skill creation, the linking construct. He perhaps should have worked on this part earlier since now that he had deviated from the system’s guidance he felt nothing at all when he began to work on the linking construct. Unlike his Wrath Incarnate, or Flames of Wrath, this skill wouldn’t cost wrath but it would instead hopefully channel wrath into his core. Meaning it would require a different kind of link. With nothing to base it on other than the links he had already, he decided to simply create a mirror image of his Flames of Wrath linking construct. He was uncertain at first but as he went through the motions he could feel that it was at least doing something.
When the final threads were fused Kal felt the whole skill click into place, almost like it had wanted to be formed. The new sphere immediately began to orbit his core along the same path as Wrath Incarnate. As it came back around again it glowed in pulses of the colors of the attributes and resources used in its making; a core of wrath surrounded by the pale colors of perception, will, and wisdom. Looking at it he could still feel the emotions of the haggard man, the skills the original creator Kal assumed had. What Kal had created was but a shadow of what that man had done but he knew that it would serve him well. Kal turned to his notification log and brought the latest entry.
Slayer’s Intent [Rare] [Soul Forged]
Induce fear upon those you have marked for death and revel in that which empowers you. While this skill is active all active fear effects are greatly amplified against the target of your intent and you will generate a small amount of wrath every second scaling with the target's killing potential and intent.
The description was simple but the wording was clearly influenced by him introducing it to his wrath. He opened up the original skills description to compare.
Arcane Hunter’s Mark [Rare]
Mark your prey for death and steal their mana for yourself. While this skill is active all active fear effects are amplified and you will generate a small amount of mana every second scaling with the target's maximum mana pool.
From the look of it, he had sacrificed the widespread fear amplification of the original skill for a greatly increased effect on a single target. It was a change he was happy with honestly. The next main change was that he would indeed be able to generate wrath with the skill but the best part was that it scaled with the target's killing potential. Which wasn’t exactly what he had tried to achieve when making the skill but it was honestly probably better than what he was trying to do. He would have to do some testing before he could say how powerful the skill was but if it was able to keep up with his other skills expenditures it would probably be his most powerful skill yet.
Before he continued in his serpent hunting, Kal spent some time to just rest and think about the things he had seen during the system’s “guidance”, and tried to remember every detail of the space he could barely comprehend.