Chapter 20 – Life 5 – The Outcast

I told him everything, of course. I feared that having semi-prophetic nightmares would make ME seem mad, but I feared for my life more if I didn’t explain myself. So, it all spilled out. The nightmares of the Life-Stealer, the Blood monsters, the woman shrouded in darkness. The 3rd Emperor stayed silent while I spoke. I spoke of my sword, how I infused it with as much Metal energy as possible, until it became more than just another weapon. Of how I suspected the snake was doing the same thing with its core of sand, infusing an element into one spot. I told the 3rd Emperor exactly what the ill-fated Sand Molder said when he went mad. The man gave me a hard look but said nothing.

I even put words to my most secret thought: that this process of… elemental infusion? Would perhaps be as powerful as combining two elements together. And to infuse a combined element… well, clearly something very important, but highly madness-inducing, would occur. When I finished, the 3rd Emperor asked a simple question: “Who else have you told these thoughts to?” I gulped.

I thought of the bald man, my teacher, and a few people back at my old camp. These people all knew that I had a single sword I used above all else, unlike most Makers who honed their skills by re-creating their weapons each time. If I mentioned this, would the 3rd Emperor imprison them? Kill them? Kill me? I decided to tell the simplest truth I could. “I have not mentioned these thoughts to anyone but you, My Lord.” He nodded. “Good, good… that will continue going forward, tell no-one of this.”

He continued, “You are now removed from the Elite Strike Force, and from your position as Disciple.” I trembled. Those people were the closest things I had to friends in this world. Still, I had already spoken out of turn once, I didn’t want to do so again. “Instead… you will receive a posting at Tian Jin. You will be given an outpost, in which you will be the sole defender. This is similar to the Magma Maker whom you are acquainted with. But instead of your abilities being dangerous to the public, it is your mind. You are to have no contact with the outside world. I will assign to you someone to bring you food, but you are never to speak with them.”

I trembled. This punishment was worse than I could have imagined. “This will allow you to work without distraction.” Wait, what? “You have 3 years to prove your theories. Use this time to infuse your sword with as much Titanium energy as you can muster. Afterward, you will be given the chance to prove the blade’s worth. If you succeed, you will be restored to your previous position. If you fail, or go mad like the others, you will be executed.”

This was a horrifying proposition. I had only given voice to my thoughts to explain myself, but now I was forced to prove them correct or die! Still, I knew that if I went against the 3rd Emperor’s wishes, he would simply move my date of execution up to *today*. So, I simply groveled on the floor until the man who condemned me walked out of the room. Eventually, a woman walked in. I remembered her, the woman from the Strike Force who used the Fog element. I asked if she had been told the situation, and she nodded. Then, she put her finger to her lips. Right, I was not to speak to her. I sighed.

The woman surrounded me in a cloud of Fog that prevented me from seeing anything but her. She led me forward, and I could only follow. We walked for hours, and I could only make out vague sounds in the distance. Eventually, she dropped the veil, and I found myself in the heart of Tian Jin, the Cursed City. My lodgings were simple, presumably created by Earth Molders somewhat recently. There was a single doorway, a bed with a simple straw mattress, and a table extruded outward from the wall. I used the table to get to work.

Every day, I brought my sword out from under my mattress (just like old times) and then proceeded to infuse it with Titanium. The process was quite difficult, much more so than when it was just the undefined metal that all Metal Makers had in common. The blue metal was powerful, but difficult to work with. More than once, I created strange lumps on the sword that had to be removed with a small chisel I made.

Food came to me in clouds of fog. I supposed that the fog woman had also been reassigned from the Elite Strike Force in order to be my jailer. I felt a little bad for her, but at least she would probably be assigned back at the end of the 3 years.

As time passed, I found myself more and more unable to force any more energy into the sword. I had to chisel off lumps 10 days in a row. But while the sword could carve chunks away from the ruined buildings that surrounded my dwelling, surely it couldn’t cause madness just by looking at it. I pondered what to do for some time, until I realized. As a Maker, I needed to fight monsters to be able to make more material in a day. What if… that effect also extended to how much energy I could compress? It was a weak theory, but there was only one way to find out.

The rules of my imprisonment said that I had to be alone, but the Cursed City was large, and mostly uninhabited. Only the perimeter was kept clear of monsters, along with occasional expeditions to ensure no Elites formed. The bulk of the city… was mine to explore. I swiftly got used to listening to the sounds of the city. The *caw* of the Slicing Eagles, the galloping of the Flame-Maned Horses. And most of all… the sound of dirt, stone, and rubble being pushed aside by the giant Tunneling Ants.

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My training in the Elite Strike Force was put to good use. I carved up the eagles that dropped down onto me, I cut off the legs of the horses, and I stabbed through the exoskeletons of the ants. I did sometimes bring materials from the monsters back to my lodging. The horse hide was naturally thick, and through much trial and error I eventually made rudimentary leather armor. The eagle meat I found was actually quite delicious when cooked by a horse’s flames. Thankfully, monsters of different species attacked each other just as often as they attacked humans. The ants I had less use for, but I did figure out that they were attracted to the corpses of their brethren, making them more predictable.

Each and every time I killed a monster, I felt my Qi get just a tiny bit stronger. I restricted myself to only working on my sword after I had killed 10 more monsters than the previous time. It got sharper and sharper, stronger and stronger. Still, while compression got easier, that just meant I could get further before hitting a wall where I couldn’t go any further. By some point, the sword stopped being a simple blue-gray and started being a sort of purple. I could feel… something, when I looked at it, almost like it was a miniature version of the moons that always hovered overhead. Unlike the moons, though, the feeling was much less defined. Still, while I was getting closer, the compressions were taking longer.

I eventually had to switch to killing 20 monsters at a time, then 30, then 50. Compression sessions also started taking hours, during which I could take no breaks, lest the session fail and form lumps of uncompressed metal instead. I knew my sword inside and out, I could feel it like it was a part of myself. The sessions that created lumps almost hurt me, though my simple metal chisel I used to remove them had no chance of damaging the actual sword.

Occasionally, I heard teams of hunters go into the city. They were looking for Elites. However, at this point, I knew the areas where monsters liked to congregate better than any other hunter, and so I got the chance to kill a few Elites myself. These were fresh, nothing that could compare to the giant Sand Pythons, but they still gave a rush of Qi like no other. Eventually, the hunters stopped coming to areas in my vicinity. I suppose I was leaving nothing for them.

One day, my food was delivered in a smaller cloud of fog than normal. I caught a brief glimpse of a young girl, who quickly noticed the direction of my stare and gave out a bit of an *eep*. Curious, I supposed the original woman had left for more exciting work. It was a shame I couldn’t ask anyone. Regardless, I started to make a game of guessing where this new girl was within her cloud of Fog. The little sounds she made when I guessed right were rather cute, giving me something to pass the time with.

One morning, I had a particularly productive battle. A colony of ants had taken up residence in a large area filled with rusted vehicles of the ancients. In the center was a queen covered in a shroud of darkness. I still had vivid nightmares of such creatures, and so risked many injuries to take it down fast. The darkness attempted to invade me, to stab at me, but my sword cut through it like paper. The rest of the colony soon either fell to my blade or fled. I estimated that I had killed at least 100 ants. When I arrived at my lodging, I immediately started my compressions. And this time… things were different.

It took hours longer than usual, long into the night, but I felt something was unusual about this particular session. Several times, I felt my concentration slip, but I fell into a sort of meditation where there was nothing in the world but me, the sword, and my Qi. Every time the Qi tried to veer away from the center, I gently guided it back, and then firmly pressed it back into the core of the sword. And then when the sun began to rise…

The sword had never shifted in color all at once, it had always been gradual. But now, it had gone from its light purple to a deep indigo. An incredible sense of sharpness and invincibility radiated off of it. As if in a trance, I pressed it up close to my chest. A flash of light blinded me, and I was thrown backwards. I laid unconscious for who knows how many days.

I woke up being dragged off by a Tunneling Ant. Keeping them out of my home had long been a struggle of mine. As I came to consciousness I reached for my sword and-

My sword! Where was my sword? Shit, had I left it in the dwelling? I battered at the ant with my fists for a while, but the drone didn’t even seem to notice. I begrudgingly went to create another blade, a simpler blade, as blasphemous as that felt. But to my surprise, something *snapped* inside me, and all of a sudden, I was holding my sword. Not a new one, but MY sword. Indigo, perfectly balanced, incredibly sharp. I cut the ant drone to pieces in no time at all.

Something felt… off. *Very* off, in fact. Where had my sword come from? I had only tried to create a simple, new sword, but somehow found my personal, perfected one instead? After a while of thinking, I tried to force myself to create more Titanium, a simple ingot of the stuff. Instead, the sword I was holding in one hand suddenly crumbled to dust, but before I could be properly horrified at such an event, a brand-new version of it appeared right in front of me. I understood. The sword, and only the sword, was the source of my power. And now my power… was the sword. And ONLY the sword. But while others may bemoan the loss of flexibility, I was happy. For now, I could never lose my sword, never worry about it becoming lost or broken. For the first time in a very long time, I smiled. Grinned, even.

Three months later, a young girl emerged from a cloud of fog and simply said: “The 3rd Emperor requests your presence.” I nodded. It was time to demonstrate what I had learned.