When preparing a tewik steak for consumption, it is essential that it be marinated for a minimum of two days in sylvan wine, drained and heat-rinsed, then immediately placed in a pre-heated oven* or pre-frozen storage container. Don’t be scared off by the extensive prep time! Tewik steaks are among the most delicious Orard has to offer.

(See appendix C for more detailed basic recipes, or buy the standalone Deadly Delectables cookbook, available from every good scribery in Pengi.)

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Jair was very surprised to wake up again. Most of the time, falling into darkness was quickly followed by a threat of soul-dissolution and the necessity of reverting time. Collapsing in the center of an angry vylix fury wasn’t the sort of thing he anticipated surviving.

He stared up at the stone ceiling of a familiar cave, glowing caterpillars inching their way across the ceiling to provide a dim yellow-green light.

This wasn’t the battlefield.

For a long moment he stared, unsure if this was real or a dream. Memories of countless nights spent in this place overlapped and blurred together, making him question his memory. Had he dreamed about fighting the vylix fury? Or dreamed all of it?

He sat bolt upright in a burst of sudden panic.

“Soulblade, manifest.”

Maelstrom appeared, and Jair gripped it tight, racing heart beginning to calm. This was real. He looked down at the red scars sliced across his arms, testament to the vylix fight’s violent conclusion.

“How…?”

“You may be an idiot but at least you don’t hesitate to follow instructions,” Eythron grumbled. He sat on a chair carved of stone, elbows on his knees, hands interlaced between them as he leaned forward. “You don’t know how tempting it was to stand back and let you die.”

“I can imagine.” Jair leaned back against his pillows with a groan. “You don’t have any healing spells, how did you do this?”

Eythron didn’t answer verbally, only gave a casual shrug.

“You didn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“But that was your last resort. What if you need it—?”

“Pointless,” Eythron cut him off. “You’re planning to break the universe anyway. What’s the point in hoarding onto something that can help?”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

From a certain perspective, it made sense that everyone’s absolute priority should be ensuring Jair’s personal survival, no matter the cost. If the alternative was their entire world’s annihilation, any sacrifice to protect him would be worth it.

“Still don’t think there’s a chance the universe will go on without me?”

“It’s easier to believe temporality is being twisted in on itself than that entire universes are created every time. Soulspells are insanely powerful, but creating a whole universe? That’s definitely outside the scope of possibility.”

They looked at one another for a long moment. Then Jair closed his eyes. “I’m having a rest. Wake me when something interesting happens.”

“Wake up, idiot.”

Jair peeked one eye at him. “I haven’t even fallen asleep yet.”

“And did you bother to look at that sparkly pile of garbage you’ve summoned?”

Jair’s heart skipped a beat and he stared down at Maelstrom’s inspect details.

─ Maelstrom

─ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form)

─ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 13%)

Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of *****?

After ***?, this blade now contains traces of *? and *? and will *?

─ Class Requirement: Mageblade

─ Bound to Jair Welburne

This time, the physical change was obvious. Across the back of the blade, where it had been dulled and misshapen by Jair’s body falling on it at its ascension, eighteen tiny barbs had begun to stick up instead. It wasn’t a full vylix-tail serration, but he could see the potential.

“It does matter.” He stared down at the sword, not even sure how to react to this revelation. “The nature of the creature matters.”

“Of course it does.”

“But the greater vylix are strong enough it added two percent from the one.”

“Two. I took out the other one for you.”

Jair looked up sharply. “I thought you said it was my sword and my responsibility?”

Eythron grunted. “It is. But I’m not the sort to throw away the chance to play with a legendary weapon.”

“Is that how it is?”

“That was your interesting thing. Go back to sleep.”

“How do you expect me to sleep now?” The last thing on his mind was rest.

He needed to find more creatures, figure out what each one could offer, and decide what he wanted to rebuild Maelstrom’s soul from.

Changes on this level were permanent, barring extreme damage. Once he filled in the missing pieces of its soul, the weapon would be stable and unchanging.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

What kind of changes could he expect from the various creatures here? What else could he go hunting? Would the blade also be able to absorb the soul of something bigger? He’d not gotten anything from his many times stabbing Ryenzo, so it clearly wasn’t just a matter of stabbing. Probably needed to be a killing strike.

“I still don’t know the point of what the venix’s soul added.” Jair looked at the different-colored strike wound around the hilt, thin as a thread, then at the serrations on the back of the blade. “But is it really a good idea to keep testing randomly? I’ve only got eighty-seven percents left to work with. We should come up with a strategic plan.”

“It’s your soul, I’m not going to tell you what to put in it.”

“You regularly do.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re a terrible mentor.”

“Then you’re welcome to leave at any time.”

“You’re also the best choice I have, so I’m afraid I’m stuck with you.”

“I can send you away if it’ll make it easier.”

Jair chuckled. “You’ve already tipped your hand. All I need to do is threaten to revert until you give in and you’ll have no choice.”

“You won’t convince me to change my mind no matter how many times you revert.”

“I’m not changing your mind. I’m demonstrating that I know what you’re up to.”

Eythron grunted. “Sleep, idiot. You just got four fifths murdered out there. Your recovery needs time to work.”

Jair couldn’t stop thinking, though. “My biggest obstacle is a poison dragon. So which creatures are best suited to killing a poison dragon? There has to be something that can hurt it.”

“Rest now. We can discuss it in the morning.”

“Poison dragons are vulnerable to cold. I need some frost creatures. Nuprima. We need to go to Nuprima.”

“I will come over there and choke you out myself if you don’t relax for once.”

Jair had been denying and ignoring the burning in his eyes, the throbbing in his head, and the tremulous weakness running through his limbs, but as he reached the answer he’d been grasping for, it all came rushing in.

He closed his eyes and was asleep before he had time to take a breath.

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The next Nuprima passage wouldn’t be until the 24th of next month, almost eight weeks away. There would be a Dark Night and Terlunia right after one another in two weeks, but Jair wasn’t sure if they’d be any use.

Nuprima’s frozen and mana-rich atmosphere made for the perfect breeding ground of things that could pose a proper threat to a poison dragon like Ryenzo. Terluna and Zelura, though, were considerably softer and less helpful for this purpose.

“Would there be any point in hunting a brobeg at this point?” Jair asked, when Eythron seemed fully inclined to simply continue their hunting trip the moment Jair had recovered from his brush with death.

“Yes. Information. And you’re still in the assessment period.”

“I practically died. Isn’t that enough to tell you where I’m at?”

“Against a fury of vylix, sure. Brobeg is a different sort of fight.”

“And one which I’m under-equipped for in my current state.”

“Monsters don’t wait for you to put on your best outfits and show up ready to dance.”

Jair chuckled. “You say that when we’re the aggressors barging into its home to kill it? We’ve got plenty of time to practice dancing.”

“If you’re so confident you don’t need the brobeg, we can skip straight to the star hydra. I know there’s one around the Nusier border. We could probably get a solid bounty for taking it out, too. It’s been eating the locals.”

“Nope, brobeg sounds great. Let’s hunt some frog-drakes.”

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The hunt took just over a week, during which they crossed through another vylix fury’s territory and dealt with more aggressive plantlife and incidental predators like octides and gelawings than was worth keeping track of.

By the time they tracked the monster to its lair, Jair had confirmed that the only relatively common monster to provide anything to Maelstrom's improvement was the greater vylix. Though even that felt dangerously simple with a weapon as ridiculous as Maelstrom.

Their next target wasn't nearly as commonplace. They could tell they were getting close when they walked for nearly an hour without meeting any other living creature.

Solitary hunters who were as likely to eat their mates as follow through to childbearing, the brobeg was a violent master predator of its lonely haunts.

Much like snakes, brobegs could consume their prey whole and retreat for a time to rest and digest. Unlike snakes, they tended to go eating in broader rampages rather than being satisfied with a single morsel. It wasn't uncommon for a rampaging brobeg to clear out an entire farmstead before retreating. They had no teeth, but that was little comfort with a tongue to strangle and claws to tear you apart.

The biggest danger of the brobeg to people like Jair and Eythron was the antimagical nature provided by its distant draconic ancestry. Manifested attacks could hurt it to some extent, but direct magical effects slid right off it, and any secondary spell effects in the immediate vicinity tended to fail very quickly.

If Jair had an ordinary soulsword and his current imprints, facing a brobeg would have been a very questionable move. He’d be severely limited in his magical maneuverability and his usual weapon-amplifying spells would be of limited effectiveness.

Maelstrom wasn’t an ordinary soulsword, however, so his strategy for defeating the creature was incredibly simple.

Eythron stayed back, ostensibly watching but from what Jair saw he was slumped against a fallen tree sound asleep.

Jair crept forward, wearing simple wooden armor Eythron had provided in place of his destroyed Veori steel. Neither would provide sufficient protection against the Oriad’s many dangers, but it’d mitigate incidental bites from things like strangler pods’ hungry vines and the omnipresent insects.

Jair spotted the brobeg before it saw him. It lay stretched out on a branch, foreclaws gripping the tree, bulbous yellow-green head staring downward with intense focus.

This particular brobeg was small for its species, only a little over twice as long as Jair was tall. Its body was currently deflated to barely a third of its potential width, making its head and oversized foreclaws appear disproportionately large compared to its tadpole-like body and tail.

Despite its smaller size, it did have the frilled gliding wings common to older members of its species, allowing it to silently swoop down on its prey with a high degree of adaptability. You couldn’t outrun a hunting brobeg or escape it through clever evasions. They’d follow relentlessly once they decided you were on the menu.

And this one looked desperate enough to put anything and everything on the menu.

Jair crouched down and shuffled forward in an ungainly hop, keeping his body as small and condensed as possible. He’d left Maelstrom on the ground by Eythron’s lookout spot for now, but it could be back in his hand at a thought.

Right now, he needed to look non-threatening and highly edible.

It didn’t take long for the hungry hunter to notice him. The branch creaked softly as the brobeg shifted its claws, raising its body and shaking out its wings. The movement cast shifting shadows across the ground in front of Jair, the nearly-translucent membrane of its wings allowing light through like thin leaves, the rest of its body was a dark silhouette.

Jair looked up, jumped in shock—with the assistance of Lift—and the monster launched itself straight at him with its oversized mouth wide open. Its tongue snapped out ahead of it, wrapped itself around Jair twice over, and yanked him straight into its eager maw.

It was a picture-perfect capture, one any brobeg’s parents would be proud of.

But in the last instant before the mouth snapped shut over him, Jair recalled Maelstrom and did what it did best, stabbing up deep into the attacking monster with its own momentum against it.

The inside of a brobeg's mouth was not as vulnerable and sensitive as many other creatures' mouths were, highly damage resistant to accommodate the number of spiky, shelled, alive and clawing, and otherwise pointy creatures that brobegs preyed on regularly.

But resistance is not the same as immunity, and Jair’s weapon didn’t rely on magical effects to be deadly.

The brobeg let out a strangled croak as Maelstrom stabbed right through its reinforced mouth and up into its skull.

Its tongue immediately started tightening, hoping to crush the life out of whatever was stabbing it.

Jair’s armor creaked but didn’t break. Eythron’s craftsmanship may not be his highest specialty, but he knew his way around the Oriad like few others and this outfit was specifically tailored to this fight.

He stabbed upward a few more times, downward for good measure, and down the back of its throat to sever the tongue. Without its primary inner weapon, it couldn’t do anything but growl in frustration.

It really did feel unfair sometimes, how much Maelstrom unbalanced the normal scale of such conflicts.

What would normally be a twenty-minute confrontation with a lot of close calls was instead over in less than a minute. Slicing his way free of the dead monster’s mouth was more time-consuming than the actual fight had been.

Inexplicably, by the time Jair got himself clear of the carcass, Eythron was already standing two paces away. He stared intently at Jair.

Jair chuckled and held up Maelstrom. “No need to look far this time.” Before even inspecting it, he could see the change.

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