He accepted a long cut across his back as the price of doing business when he dismantled the three assailants coming down from the ceiling as quickly as possible. A well-placed Rippling Sword bisected one of the aerial assailants, but he couldn’t get another one off before the other two were already right on top of him. He accepted the cut on his back as he turned his back on one enemy to prioritize killing the other quickly. That done, he whirled around to deflect another strike from the last of the freshly spawned opponents, trading a second and a third blow with it before he managed to decapitate it.

Then, the others were on him.

The enemies coming from his escape route hit him first, four of the buggers emerging from the bend in the path up ahead and bearing down on him with lightning speed. He made the first move, sending two Rippling Swords right at the frontrunners. Their carapace proved tough enough to take the attacks head on with only minor injuries, but they were slowed down and overtaken by the other two, who bore down on him uninhibited. He strafed to one side, making it so that one monster was in the way of the other as he slid past a couple of preliminary slashes. He managed to stab the monster in front of him right in the eye, before finishing it off as it reeled in pain.

Then, he exerted all his might in a jump that took him directly up in the air, followed that up by kicking off the wall and sailing over the corpse of his first enemy and the head of the second, which was blocked from reaching him by the body of its’ friend. Mid-air, he let off another Spell into one of the vulnerable joints on the living enemy’s back. He landed next to the wall on the other side of the hallway, just behind the two corpses, and didn’t get to catch his breath before the other two living monsters had recovered and were on him.

Exploiting the frontal openings in their armor, created by his earlier Rippling Swords, he managed to bring them both down quickly at the price of another cut across the chest, but not before the monsters chasing him from behind caught up. There were five of them, and this hallway was starting to get cramped, so he made a fighting retreat towards the sixth floor.

They scored several more cuts on him, climbing over their fallen brethren to do so, but he managed to kill off two more as the hallway widened out into a large room with three tunnels leading into it. One of them was the tunnel he came from, the other led to safety. The third had more monsters coming down it. Three more ants were accompanied by two vivid purple moths, exuding their perilous dust.

He managed to finish off a third ant and drink another health potion before they arrived in the room. But that still left him pinned down against four ants and two moths, as the other enemies moved to block his escape. He prioritized the moths, taking a few injuries to bring down one of them, but the newcomer ants managed to distract him enough for the last moth to work its’ magic.

He managed to bring it down, but not before the poison set in and he found himself battling for his life as the remaining ants closed in on him.

He stepped within a cyclone of flashing claws from all sides, turning aside what he couldn’t block and minimizing the damage when he couldn’t defend either. He weaved and sliced, resorting to releasing Rippling Swords with his hands to deflect incoming attacks that would have been lethal. But he did manage to strike back, killing two and relieving the pressure.

Then two more took their place.

Reinforcements were coming in from the other paths and he couldn’t retreat while under attack from so many angles. Blades flashed a millimeter from his throat as he extended himself to open up one of the attackers, but another soon replaced it. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he realized that there would be no end to this before he himself met his end. Not unless something changed. He retreated for one moment, buying himself a few breaths and drinking his second-to-last health potion. Then he did what he did best.

The Sage of the Endless Sword took a quick breath, narrowed his eyes, and fully dove into the fray. He danced within the storm of blades, striking, dodging, and killing with perfectly calculated maneuvers. His focus was perfect as he danced to the song of battle, heedless of his own wounds and cutting down enemies at an extraordinary pace.

He used the corpses of their own dead. He used the still moving bodies of the living. He unleashed point blank Rippling Swords into weak points of enemies he couldn’t see. A bladed arm scratched diagonally across his face, barely missing an eye, but it didn’t even scratch his concentration. The exhaustion of the poison and the activity dimmed his vision, but he wasn’t reliant on his vision. He was reliant on the pure, sweet notes of the music of war.

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He didn’t immediately recognize it when he finished off the last enemy and whirled around to see nothing but an empty room of dissolving bodies. The sudden end of the fight punctured his focus and left him swaying on his feet. He almost passed out right there, which would have been his death with the poison coursing through his veins. However, he managed to gather the last of his focus and chug his last health and physical recovery potions, taken from the pouches in his belt for quick access.

They fought against the damage being done to his body and kept him on his feet, but they were a poor substitute for a proper antidote. He had lost his backpack at some point during the fight, probably cut off, but he didn’t bother looking to retrieve it or the stones that the ants had dropped. He just dragged himself right up the tunnel leading towards the sixth floor.

And right into the vision of a party of 3 War Shadows that had just spawned.

They were surprised by his sudden appearance and watched him warily as he ascended the tunnel right in front of them. Glaring at all three of them, blood tricking from the corner of his mouth, The Sage scraped together what energy he had remaining.

And he went to war again.

…

Hestia watched with anticipation, in the workshop of the greatest smith alive.

Hephaestus had given in, with some misgivings, to making a sword for Tim. He knew she was broke, and thus in theory shouldn’t be able to pay him back for a weapon like that. But she had convinced him that Tim had the potential to become a great warrior, who would then be able to pay him back for the sword. She felt a little bad that she was doing this without Tim’s express permission, but she suspected that he would forgive her once he saw the results.

It was Hephaestus, really, whose generosity she was taking advantage of. She was lucky that he had been looking for something to do. There was no guarantee whatsoever that Tim actually had the potential to pay him back, from his perspective anyways. And even if he did, even Hestia had to admit that there was no guarantee that Tim would even survive too do so. For all she knew, he could have gotten himself killed while she was out here trying to get him a proper weapon.

But she had more faith in him than that. She had seen the records of his fights even so far, and she believed that he would go on to make waves in the world. Which was good, because if he didn’t then the debt of this sword would be hers alone to pay off.

Hephaestus rubbed his hands over the various metals and ores on his workbench, musing aloud for her to hear about the dilemma that she had apparently put him in:

“This is a tricky thing, ye hear? If I make that kid of yours a weapon of awesome power when he is just a beginner, things will get to the point where the weapon swings him around, rather than the other way around. But if I make him something half-assed, then that defeats the purpose of you coming to me, doesn’t it? Even a good beginner weapon would be too crap to bear my personal signature.”

She smiled sweetly as she waited for him to solve the problem, watching with interest to see what he would come up with. He stopped caressing the various metals and picked up one of them, holding it up for her to see while seemingly changing the subject:

“This is Frigid Bronze. An alloy of mithril and various other exotic metals, blended to create a final product of remarkable quality. It conducts mana just as well as mithril, and it possesses remarkable malleability and metaphysical potential.”

The metal was a bright, snow white and it almost shone with an inner light as he held it up for her examination, before turning away from her and towards his forge, which had been heating up this entire time. He placed the ingot of metal into the blazing metalworking facility, seemingly unbothered by the heat, before continuing:

“This will be my answer to your little conundrum. A weapon that will be useful now and in the future. One that will grow as its wielder does.”

She watched with interest as he placed another ingot of the same metal right next to its cousin, grabbed his hammer, then went to work. The greatest smith on Gekai began crafting what would one day be the most powerful weapon to shake the mortal plane.

…

The sun had just begun to set, when the tired adventurer, sitting in the lobby of Babel, laid eyes on one of the sorriest figures that he had ever seen.

This adventurer had been stuck in the lower half of Level 1 for the last three years. He had little hope of making it to Level 2, so he mostly spent his nights drinking and partying, happy to at least make a decent living and enjoy life when he could. But today, he had chosen to forgo his nightly games to just sit in the lobby and feel a bit sorry for himself. Secundus Guildenstern had hoped to one day become a great hero, but now he had stalled out, and he wondered if he should still hold onto his childish dreams.

But as he was sitting there, brooding, he noticed a strange figure shambling out the entrance of the Dungeon. He appeared to be a young man, though his countenance was worn and marked by several cuts. Bags lay under his eyes and his face was extremely pale. His clothes lay in utter tatters, his body a mass of bruises and cuts, some of which looked rather deep. He carried one half of a broken sword, the remaining half marred with jagged scars. A single worn leather gauntlet remained on his sword hand, likely the last remnant of a full set of armor. The only part of his body that didn’t look defeated were his eyes. They gazed forward in stalwart determination as he half dragged himself into Babel’s lobby, swaying on his feet.

Guildenstern, moving almost without thinking, was there to catch the man just before he fell over and passed out. Almost in spite of himself, he was already sprinting to the medical facilities of Babel at high speeds, carrying the unconscious stranger on his shoulders as he did.

“What am I doing?” He wondered idly as he ran, “I don’t even know this guy.”

Deep down within, though, he knew the answer to that question. It was the stranger’s eyes that drew him to help. They were the eyes of a man who didn’t give up, even when the fight was surely lost. The eyes of a man whose body would break before his will would. He admired those eyes. They made him want to keep moving. He couldn’t let their story end here.

It was the least he could do.