Integration, 15th Year
Uern, Dykriest Region
3 Weeks before System Reset.
For a planet so rich in mana and essence, the underground cities of Dykriest lived far from prosperously. The region’s surface—frigid and uninhabitable—wouldn’t terraform until the 100th layer of its cavernous dungeons were cleared, and so its inhabitants faced a simple choice: Continue until death, or earn their way out.
In the skies far above them a storm raged, passing the region over. A wind more vehement than most whipped past frost-bitten mountain peaks, finding a crooked mountain-side crevice that led deep into the 10th layer. It threw rocks tumbling and snapped icicles, it chilled the cavern walls and sent surface layer monsters or unlucky adventurers hypothermic. It raged ever onwards, unstoppable, its momentum slowed only by time.
Yet, time passed. And by the time it had breached deep into the 10th layer, it was little more than a breeze. It finally died, giving its last breath only to rattle the wooden signboard on a tavern door.
The sign read: No Refugees.
Alex glanced back, frowning when he heard a subtle wooden clank, then faced the artificially-lit streets of Ruin’s Gate, leaving the establishment.
The crazy bitch, he cursed for the hundredth time. Hosting their meeting there of all places… his ilk weren’t appreciated this side of the city and he could only think she’d been screwing with them. The darted looks, the hushed whispers—he was well used to them of course, but it wasn’t the treatment that bothered him now so much as the thought behind it.
“Refugees” they called them. Not slaves, not captives, just refugees. Here, people were jealous of the Integration, and those who received no offers after their world fell to invasion were viewed with envious spite rather than the vengeful hatred more common with war. For having squandered their opportunity, as arrogant as it sounded. This would be the last time he had to put up with it.
No matter how this next job goes…
Alex sighed tiredly. He walked through the windless, cobbled streets with an annoyingly clear head and another man’s arm draped lazily over his shoulders.
“Ah, geez,” Jordan said, teetering slightly. “I think I'm gonna…urr–”
Alex ignored the older man’s bemoaning gags as they walked another several blocks to the lower dwellings. Then, noticing he was still hitched to his side when he reached his doorstep, he stopped.
“Jordan,” he said, somewhat annoyed, "Drop the charade. You don’t need an excuse to talk privately.”
The older man wore a guilty grin as he looked up. Then, as Alex sent a pulse of his aura through the door’s lock mechanism, he stumbled into his home clumsily enough that he thought it might not have been an act after all.
Fair enough, he thought, I’d be drunk right now if I could help it.
Any sane man would be, after sitting an hour across from their client. It gave him shivers just recalling it. Alas, Alex was sober as day right now and it wasn't that he had one of those skills or resistances to alcohol people got to impress women. Just, one day, after far too many bottles, he'd simply lost the ability to get drunk anymore. It was at times like this that he found it unfortunate. Who wouldn’t want to get hammered after signing their own death warrant?
“Warm up by the fire,” he told Jordan.
He sent three pulses of aura through a runic formation installed on the entrance wall. The lights flickered on revealing his home and makeshift smithy, strewn with clutter and half-finished puzzles he’d never solved. The second aura pulse started a soft fire in the forge-turned-hearth, and the third disabled any defenses that could kill his first guest in eons.
If anything here could, at least. Jordan didn’t show his face on the shallower levels nowadays unless he had a job in need of Alex’s talents, crippled as those talents were.
“Thanks,” Jordan grunted, “I needed that.”
He’d found a resting spot on the stone-cold, roughly-chiseled floor and began flexing his fingers by the fire’s heat. Settled in, he summoned a blanket from his inventory and thumbed through a random book from Alex’s clutter titled ‘Pedantic Ponderings of an Apocalyptic Blacksmith’ as if trying to remember how to read.
Right, just make yourself at home, why don’t you.
Alex sighed at the shamelessness and headed upstairs, “I'll go mix a concoction, tomorrow's gonna be enough of a headache for you as is.”
Another grunt was what he got in response.
Alex rifled through his cabinets and cooler for the alchemical ingredients for booze-cure. While he was at it he poured two glasses of his precious Earth-exported orange juice as well. There was no point in saving it anymore.
He came back to find Jordan sifting dust from the anvil, a distant look in his eyes, and appreciated that he didn’t say anything about it and just took the glass he was offered. His orange juice was just a touch more blue than Alex’s own and he gave a sour face as he gulped it down. The effects of the potion he’d mixed in would take a second to start working.
“Well?” Jordan asked, cringing at the taste.
Alex knew what the question beget but he took a second to raise his anti-scrying wards before he answered. Straight to business then.
“No clue,” he put bluntly, “It was hard to get an accurate read on her with my ability. She was half a second from murdering everyone in the establishment and I think that’s just her in her cheery mood. Us too, though it wasn’t directed. She’s a Death Priestess, killing comes as easily to her as breathing. I get the feeling she doesn’t really view us as people.”
Jordan grunted, he probably could’ve deduced that much himself, “But not a direct killing intent, mmh… better than she be outright hostile, I guess,” he stroked his chin, “So, would you say we’ve got fair odds then?”
Alex tried giving that some thought only to find the task pointless. There was nothing stopping their client from slaughtering their whole party once she had what she wanted, but at the same time it was utterly incomprehensible that a higher being would even want anything from a backwater planet like Uern, much less have need for a B-rank party as guides.
“Yeah, that tracks.”
The two of them just shared a silent look for a second, serious expressions on their faces.
Then their masks started to crack. The older man guffawed and started pounding the floor and Alex couldn’t keep his own laughter contained for long. He tried taking a sip too soon only to spit juice all over the floor, “Jesus christ Jordan, you’re totally fucked!”
“I know!” he snorted, wiping a tear from his eye, “I Shouldn’t have made such a good name for myself! But what can I say? No-one knows their way around the low 20s like I do! Hah! Who knows, it might even work out!”
Alex had almost calmed himself before he’d said that last part. It spurred another round of hysterics, only quelled by a deep thud on the cobble to their neighboring wall. His wards only muddled words, it didn’t do much for boisterous laughter.
“No seriously, It actually might.”
“I know,” Alex said, bringing himself back. He wiped sleep from his eyes and settled onto his throw-rug. “I wasn’t lying when I said so. The odds match the gamble in both payoff and absurdity. It’s just… you have to find it at least a little funny. All these years of effort we’ve put in, struggling at it by our own power, and now? It all just comes down to the whim of an Immortal.”
Jordan nodded in good humor, seemingly taking this all in stride. Alex couldn’t help feeling a little bad for him though. Jordan hadn’t given him any details about the delve but he’d expressed the risk as outright as he could. Alex at least had been given a choice in all this, but him? When an Immortal tasks you with putting together a party you simply don’t say no.
The man sighed, “Oh, it’s more hilarious than you think.”
Alex stared blankly.
“No. No shit, how close were you?”
He did the math as he said it. One-hundred Million Essence—that was the price of their freedom. An unachievable one for most people, as every crystal set aside was currency that could’ve been consumed for power leveling instead. But… Jordan was an individual contractor. And his reputation really was that good…
“That’s…that’s the thing,” he said, “I was already there.”
He scratched his head awkwardly, his words stopping Alex’s mind in its tracks.
“You…had enough to retire?”
The man nodded.
“Oh…”
“Then what the hell are you still doing here?” Alex didn’t add.
He sighed internally, taking back what pity he’d given. Not everyone was properly situated to buy out their system contract. Ten years of non-stop work and tight budgeting only saw Alex one-fourth of the way there. If Jordan—god knows how—already had enough, he should’ve cashed it in the instant it happened.
Instead he’d tested fate and just look what happened. The god-damned buffoon had been screwed the second the Immortal had even gotten his contact.
“Hah! Alex– you should see the look on your face right now.”
“I could throttle you Jordan, if only you were stupid enough to keep your riches on your person!”
The man howled, creases lining his laugh until they too eventually made way for another sigh. He lowered his voice, “Though…you’re only half right. Aye, I’ve got enough. Have had enough for a couple years now actually.”
Son of a—
“But I’m not retiring.”
Alex looked in the man’s eyes and his temper faded. He knew that look, had seen it in too many men and women over the years not to recognize its taint. It never leaves you. And you never leave it.
Truth was, they were both too old to retire.
“Fine,” he said, exasperated, “What was your game then?”
“Well, I’ve been thinkin’ lately–”
“That’s never a good thing.”
“Stuff it! I can think when I must,” he chuckled, “Just… over time it wears on me a bit, y’know? Putting all this together, managing it all too… and each year watching as my pool of contacts gets smaller and smaller…”
Alex nodded. A lucky few had found an out over the years and the unlucky ones found a different sort of out, but there were fewer familiar faces regardless.
“I don’t party with people I can’t trust, Alex,” Jordan eventually said.
“I know. It’s… refreshing.”
“Mmh, but see, Alex, there’s a difference between knowing you can trust someone to have your back, and actually trusting them with it. With time, that second lot’s become a dying breed for me. They keep either leaving me behind, or, well…dying. You know I don’t keep you around just cause you’re useful, right?”
Alex’s mouth soured as he saw where this was heading.
“If I’m getting free from this place, things are going to be different this time. The path I take is going to be different. Alex, the reason I keep you around is cause I trust–”
“I wouldn’t do that Jordan,” Alex said, voice terse.
The man stopped– then simply rolled his eyes, “Oh, of course I shouldn’t. Silly me, right? You’ve only saved my life a handful of times.”
“Careful with your words.”
Alex stirred his aura in warning, imperceptible licks of pressure rose off him and sent the fire flickering in its hearth. He owed a great deal to the man, but mockery could only go so far.
“I… look, I know most don’t look kindly on what happened, and they can take the moral high ground all they want but that war wasn’t human. Those of us that still were by its end—we were living everyday like we’d already died the last! Hells—I know what you did was wrong, but you wanna know a secret? It made me feel good Alex—it saved me. From becoming the sort of broken that don’t fix no more.”
Alex felt the urge to refute that but kept his mouth shut. The man didn’t have the slightest clue what he was talking about.
“Okay, fine, let's say I shouldn’t trust you then. There still ain’t anyone around that has lived the life you have, that has seen the things you’ve seen. And I ain’t seen anyone else down here so dedicated to saving for their buyout—but let's be real, you don’t got thirty-forty-whatever more years in you. Not like this you don’t. You act like putting your life at the whim of an immortal is such a bad thing, but if this works out maybe it’ll re-stoke some passion for your craft. We could rise higher—it’d be like we’re defying the fates and all that young talk–”
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Alex held a hand up, signifying the man to stop where he was, “You’re still too drunk Jordan, let me mix you another dose.”
He didn’t wait for a response as he got up to leave. Odds were, they’d die in a few weeks time, but there were still some things he just didn’t want to talk about. No point in opening old wounds just because you see the dagger coming.
If we pull this off… then maybe. But not a moment before.
Still, the secrets Jordan had spilled this night couldn’t be taken lightly. Sharing about one’s wealth was a bold move even if they also happened to share a coffin and it wouldn’t be a proper sleepover if Alex didn’t share a pittance of his own secrets, would it?
He scanned the bare room around him, at odds with the mess downstairs. His study-desk was spare but for instructional books or alchemy materials and looking at his cramped bed it finally sunk in that this would be his last night suffering its embrace. For the next three weeks he would be sleeping on rugged bedrolls in the dungeon caverns, and after that it was either plush yugar-fluffed sheets or six feet under. Demurely, he poured the last of his juice and mixed the second dose of booze-cure to have an extra kick.
Alex’s spirits lifted watching the poor man hack and cough on the ground before him.
“You’re right,” Jordan choked, “My mouth got away from me.”
Alex smiled, “Everyone and their uncle seems to fancy themselves a fate-defier these days.”
“...ain’t that right…”
“But actually defying the fates,” he continued, “Those rare, true instances of brilliance in the face of oppression—they’re always one off. And more often than not, they’re the cause of a slow and painful demise,” he strided over and trailed that same line of dust from the surface of his anvil, blowing it from his finger tip with a frown, “Jordan, if this succeeds, then I won’t choose to be a blacksmith anymore.”
“Really?!” The man went wide-eyed, “That’s a shame… you’ve stopped making them so often, but your original works were something else, Alex. I know it’s been a while but…”
His brows grew together as the rest of what he’d said pierced the booze.
Absentmindedly, Alex’s hand rested on the hilt of his magnum opus—Lys. The Dragonblade was at once both a reminder of what he’d had and the last bastion of pride in his class for him to cling to. He sighed and sent two status displays over to Jordan’s interface, making it easier for the man to comprehend. It wasn’t odd that he considered Alex frugal with his savings. There was little other explanation for it now that Alex was a hundred levels lower than the man and it was always rather convenient to let others believe that he’d planned it that way.
But he hadn’t. He walked over to the forge.
It burned in its pit in front of him and he was tempted to reach his hand in just to be a little closer. He closed his eyes, trying to sense it there, the fire in his core, the path it blazed, resonating in the center of his being like a sun with a passion hot enough to melt any metal.
He opened his eyes. Instead, his soul was stone cold and Jordan was staring at him in abject horror as he read over what he’d sent him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be a blacksmith.
“I can’t anymore,” Alex whispered, “It’s gone.”
[Curse: Orion’s Wrath]
Your Bloodline has been stolen.
Your Affinity to the Fire Aspect has been sealed.
Your Level has been locked at 267 for all craftsman classes. Class cannot be upgraded.
________
This curse cannot be removed.
***
Space cracked around him and Alex suddenly found himself standing outside a stone-laid smithy. Sun beamed on his neck from above, the surrounding overgrowth intruded on the lone building, and the smell of charcoal embraced him even where he stood right outside its entrance, but they weren’t the first things he noticed.
The melodic rhythm of hammer on metal drifted gracefully to his ears and it made all else an afterthought. He closed his eyes.
So that’s how it was.
Nightmare had blacksmiths, in the larger settlements especially, places where you could trade in materials and have them forged into weaponry for a lump sum of Essence. But there’d been something strange, something that he hadn’t even realized was off until years later when he’d walked further along his path. The elites, those near the top of the ranks, sometimes had newly crafted weapons of unparallelled strength. And what he had realized was that none of those blacksmiths he’d seen had been good enough to have made them
Alex gripped the door’s handle with an uncharacteristic amount of hesitance. The clang of metal on metal pierced the wooden door like it wasn’t even there. It sang with the warm, expressive certainty that could only belong to a master at their craft. Someone so skilled that they must have devoted their whole life to blacksmithing. It had to have been their entire world. If Alex met their eyes, he was certain he would find a mountain’s worth of depth in their gaze. Ordinarily, at least.
He pushed past his nerves and opened the door. The sight was as he feared.
A figure of pure bone was hunched over at his work-station, striking at hot iron. He was a large framed man… he assumed. Or at the very least, his frame was larger than average, and it wasn’t hard to imagine there’d once been a lot of muscle on those bones if the ease of their motions said anything. But now he was just a nondescript corpse with a hammer.
The sight felt so wrong that Alex couldn’t even muster up a sigh.
The undead didn’t turn to address him as he just stood there in the entrance. In fact, he seemed largely unbothered by Alex’s arrival, simply continuing his work, so Alex contented himself to just watch the man, swallowing the lump in his throat. The rhythm of his strikes cut straight to his soul.
He noticed another sound now. The heavy clanking of chains as they whipped against the ground. They shackled to manacles around the undead's ankles and wrists and rang out each time he swung. Their metal was imbued with runes so complex that Alex couldn’t begin to guess what they did and they lit up with a light shimmer each time they moved.
Necromancy wasn’t as simple as most people thought. You couldn’t put some boy’s soul in a warrior’s corpse and train them to become a master swordsmen. No, the man before him had once been a true flesh and blood master blacksmith, and he’d been reduced to this. A twisted, fractured, and forgotten soul. A mere slave to the System.
Blacksmith: 10 Nightmare tokens minimum.
It was a tale so familiar to Alex’s ears that he had to remind himself that his circumstances were far different. That he was conflating his hardship with a rag of bones for no reason other than the fact that they were two souls in a place they shouldn’t be.
It wasn’t reason that calmed him, but that un-halting rhythm. Because the truth was Alex had no such talent. He could only dream of reaching the heights that the man before him had. And he could only listen to his strikes for so long before he felt urged to action. The intense urge to find himself an anvil and put a hammer in his hand this very second.
And so Alex whipped out his anvil and hammer.
The anvil landed with a thud on the smithy’s cobbled ground as he dropped it from his inventory. He couldn’t use skills here, so he didn’t bother trying to complete what little smithing work he could before he got summoned. He only had twenty minutes now since, naturally, his survival instincts had seen him eating some Feijoada from that pub before he’d left.
Instead, he simply copied the rhythm of the undead’s strikes with his hammer. Alex’s own were a pathetic mimicry in comparison to the man, their clangs hollow in comparison, but they still echoed somewhere deeper. And he continued searching in those depths, uncertain what he was really looking for.
The man’s strikes reminded him of his Master’s more than anything.
They’d had a similar tone to the ones from all those years ago. Day in day out, the voice of metal on metal had sung to him while he lazed about on the veranda, watching the clouds. He’d been too deaf to listen. Too defeated to think that there was anything within himself worth searching for in himself. Anything left to take pride in after what had already been taken.
Alex continued with a beat of his own, unable to replicate even a fraction of the depth of the undead blacksmith’s. Yet with each swing he felt himself getting closer, and as he did, another urge welled up in him.
I want to Cleanse him.
The man hadn’t looked his way once this entire time. Not when Alex had summoned an anvil from thin air nor even when he summoned his Undeath’s Bane and gave his back a considering look, remembering words spoken to him long ago.
“The difference between an Undead and a living soul is that the living have the capacity to learn, to change. The undead don’t. They are creatures perpetually stuck in the past, forced to strive for what they had in life. But they will never find what they are looking for.
No mortal soul remains intact when torn from its home, and these undead, they will always have something missing. And they will know it too, but they will never understand its significance. They will never be whole without it, and yet they strive anyway.
I bring them rest Alex, because it is a mercy.”
Alex pictured Laura’s loving expression in his mind’s eye and sighed, his attention momentarily taken from the man before him.
He had no doubt that if his blade had been awake she would’ve echoed the same urge he felt, but Alex wasn’t stupid enough to actually cleanse the thing. That constituted an attack and would only see him teleported away to a time out zone like that vampiric bitch, Ann.
Instead, he simply laid the blade out before him. She shimmered a dark purple as the light from the fire flickered across her surface. And above the Shamshir’s midsection, at two-thirds her length, began the splinter of cracks.
He traced them with his fingers, sorrow in his touch.
We are similar in that death was not the end. But that’s it. Alex’s death had made him whole again, rather than see him fractured further. What was more important now was that he faced forwards. He opened the ‘Class’ tab of his interface to see which classes he was currently eligible for.
There were a couple there: Blacksmith, Craftsman, a few other non-combat ones, as well as some low denominator Stealth options that came from leveling the skill to Apprentice with his limited essence slots. As expected, however, splitting his skills so thin between craft, general utility, and physical fighting skills left him with less combat class options than most would have.
But there were a few other Class options that were grayed out—those that he almost, but didn’t quite meet the requirements for—and among them he found what he was looking for.
[Blacksmith Warrior]
Eligibility Margin: 80%
Current Eligibility: 72%
Requirements met: ERROR
Without a skill path manual for the Blacksmith-Warrior class, not that they existed, the System didn’t tell Alex what he needed to do in order to increase his eligibility, or why there was even an error there to begin with. But he of course already knew the answers to both questions.
Upgrading Stealth had been a necessary distraction to meeting his requirements, but to meet minimum eligibility he’d just have to learn one more smithing skill and one more warrior skill and it would be enough. For both of which he had an idea for what he’d need. And as for the error… well, he’d technically already met the class’s requirements. He’d earned most of the Essence for his level up through a sword of his own crafting.
But then that sword had broken. So that error could only mean one thing, that he had to reforge it.
In truth it was hardly that simple.
There was no easy way to fix a blade without seeing it lose its original form, and thus, become an entirely different blade. Sure, he could take her broken pieces and weld her back whole but that would ruin the temper and she’d have weaknesses at her weld lines. And though the System would recognize her as fixed, and he could get his class, she would not be battle capable again.
But what other choice do I have?
Alex brushed her splintered cracks once more. Then he sighed, vanishing her to his inventory, a deep regret burning itself in his soul. An unearned regret perhaps, because the truth was he did have a choice.
If only the very thought of it didn’t send a shiver down his spine.
Your Queue to meet with the Constellations has moved up!
[1/2]
Expected wait time: six minutes.
It was only when Alex moved to close the notification that he realized the clang of metal had stopped.
What the–
The blacksmith suddenly turned to look at him. His gaze was empty where Alex met it and yet there was a tension in the air that made him shiver. Not due to any intensity in his stare, but simply because it felt like the impassive glance of a creature so powerful that it could kill him with just the thought. The feeling lingered so imperceptibly briefly that Alex might’ve thought he’d imagined it if he were the sort of man to doubt his instincts.
But the skeleton didn’t speak, and instead turned to continue his work once more.
…Strange.
He found himself glancing at those clinking chains again and decided it wise he didn’t try to Cleanse the thing.
But as the ringing of metal continued again he found it consuming his attention once more.
It was strange how a pile of bones could give the swinging of metal such a beautiful sound. How such a simple, metronomic rhythm could resonate so deep with a man. And yet there was a profound volume to them, as if a mountain of endless depth was condensed behind a single blow.
Or better yet, the earth beneath one's feet. His strikes carry the depth of a planet itself.
Alex watched with fervor as sparks spit from molten metal. The skeleton put it back in the furnace, heating it some more, and Alex’s attention turned to the fire itself. It burned incredibly hot in the smithy’s heart, white flames flickering at its edges. Alex listened to the melody of those hammer strikes, searching the depths that lied within himself. Until he found what he was looking for. Fire.
When was it, he wondered. When had the fires of regret and the fires of desire become one and the same within him? When had he become so incapable of looking to the future?
Had it been when Earth had fallen? Perhaps it had been even before the apocalypse, when he’d failed to take custody of his sister. Or perhaps, it had been long before even that.
Regardless, that fire blazed strongly. It raged, using it all as tinder and burning him in the process. He was happy to let it. Alex felt something overtake him. His heart suddenly ceased its pulse and his eyes glazed over distantly, as if lost in memory.
Alex walked to the forge, to that fire.
It burned in its pit in front of him, tempting him as it always did. It whispered for him to reach in, to feel its warmth, to be just a little closer. He’d burned himself once, doing that. Third degrees down his arms sometime after Earth’s fall, a hideous wound even with the aid of healing potions.
Enraptured, Alex didn’t give it a second thought now.
Flames licked his hands. Coals seared his wrists. His skin blistered and blackened, it cracked, pussed, and bled. Yet, he accepted the blaze this time. Made way for it as it coursed through him, resonating in the center of his being like a new sun.
It was a new sun.
Your Bloodline has grown.
A new trait has been unlocked.
[Hands of the Sun God]
Your hands are that of the sun itself, Fire is their warmth, and burns are their badges. They will not be harmed by its touch.
An affinity has been awakened:
[Fire]
Alex opened his eyes to a world blurred with orange. Fire suddenly had so many more shades than before, it flickered in colors that shouldn’t have even existed. Yet, it felt so right. Even before Alex had awakened them, his bloodline and affinity had been a part of him. They’d lied at the core of his being, dormant, but always there.
No, not always.
The world’s blur left him as his tears evaporated on his cheeks. These senses had been forgotten to him, stolen. Like a puzzle piece in the woven fabric of his being had somehow disappeared.
Yet its absence left just enough remembrance for him to recognize the wrongness in his existence. To know that something integral to his being was missing, and that he was less than human for it. And it was only now that he could even comprehend just how much he’d lost.
I’ve come back, but Lys is still gone. I’ll never know what she’d been saying…
Delirious, Alex slumped down against the smithy’s wall. He hung his head and watched as the blackened and cracked burns slowly receded from him, leaving hands like dark coals. They curled into tight, smoldering fists, the cracks fuming molten like burgeoning fault lines once more. Then, as the last embers tapered off they went slack.
Later, Alex would have his revenge. For now, he could only mourn.
For himself, for Lys. For his Undeath’s Bane and what couldn’t be. He just sat there, waiting his timer out until there was hardly a minute left. He listened to the melody of the Undead’s strikes, sparing some mourning for him too, the pitiful thing.
Alex looked up. He met the undead blacksmith’s empty gaze, and strangely it wasn’t so empty as it had once been. The runic lights on the chains flickered.
“If you feel such loss,” he said, “Then you should listen closer to her voice.”
“What?”
“Listening to that voice, keeping it intact—that is how a blade is reforged.”
Alex gaped as the skeleton turned back to his metals. He opened his mouth to speak but his words were interrupted before he could reply.
Your wait to meet with the Constellations has ended.
You are being Summoned.