Thelsa froze when she saw the achievements. Creating a legend? She was… confused. Hadn’t she performed many feats that should be considered legendary? For instance, one of her first actions as the Saint of Shadows was defending the first floor’s crystal spire from the council, preventing Fyor from being cut off from the rest of the world.
Petra had also created many legends herself, becoming the first-ranked Dungeon Master in the first dungeon war, a highly respected adventurer and the daughter of one of the Greater Pantheon. Did none of that count as a legend by the system’s standards?
Thelsa furrowed her brow, focusing on this legend. As she did, a new window appeared before her.
The Saint of Shadows
A powerful legend created by the holder of the World’s Shadow, Thelsa Whitefallow. The Saint of Shadows controls not only the World’s Shadow, but all shadows in their vicinity with their power, using them to attack or defend.
Thelsa blinked in confusion as she saw that summary. This sounds… almost like a title? However, there is no title benefit, and I can’t equip it.
At times like this, Thelsa really had no idea what to do. She had never heard of such a legend within the system. Now that the Black Iron Goats were dead, their bodies dissolving, she was able to pull out her terminal to look up the relevant information. She searched online, looking for any details related to system-approved legends.
There was… nothing credible. Most of what she saw was the work of fiction, discussing titles, or threads where people were requesting systems from the Keeper. Nothing concrete about established systems. Thelsa wasn’t naive enough to think that she was the first person to achieve a feat like this, but would rather believe that the information was either never made public or had been lost in the deluge of internet traffic.
That left her only one other option, though she was loath to take it. She did not enjoy bothering the Greater Pantheon, but was perhaps one of the few people who could ask questions of them if something truly called for it. And this… she couldn’t understand it, and she wanted to make sure that it wasn’t going to do any harm to her connection with her shadows.
Lady Ashley, may I have a word? She whispered into her mind, sending the prayer off to the one member of the Greater Pantheon that she had a solid connection to.
Thelsa? Well, this is new. What can I do for you?
----------------------------------------
I let out a sigh, returning back to my Host after leaving Balu’s Admin Room. I had come to an understanding with Bellarose, and as long as nobody came forward with a far more tempting proposal, I would be sending a beta version of the game to him at the end of the month when we issued the ‘attack’. “Hey, dad.” Scarlet smiled, sitting on the couch when she saw me come into the living room.
“I see that the world didn’t end while I was gone.” I chuckled, moving over to sit next to Scarlet. She shook her head, leaning over against me.
“No world-ending monsters today.” She said in a happy tone, legs swinging in front of herself. At the same time, the door of the room opened, and Ashley walked in with a troubled expression.
“Everything okay, Ash?” I asked, looking over at her. “Run into a problem with the new game or something?”
“Huh, no. Actually, the game’s going fine. I came here to look for you.” Ashley shook her head as she said that. “I saw you came back, and Thelsa had a question for me. I didn’t really know how to answer, so I came to you.”
“Thelsa? Does it have something to do with the World’s Shadow?” I leaned forward, looking at Ashley in interest.
“Yes and no? I’m not really sure. She said that the system told her that she had created a legend about her World’s Shadow, but she didn’t know what it meant. She was afraid it might change her shadows, so she asked me to help her confirm the details.”
“Oh, that’s not a problem.” Surprisingly, the answer came from Scarlet, who shook her head with a smile. “A legend won’t negatively change anything like that. If anything, it will only help her reproduce the action that established the legend in the first place.”
“Scarlet, explain?” I glanced over at her, and Scarlet nodded her head.
“I guess it hasn’t come up much lately, but Tsubaki should have something similar. Or… maybe not, now that I think about it? It depends on her progress. Either way, there is a ‘soft cap’ on levels in the system. In order to break that cap, you need to achieve a ‘legend’ in something related to that class. This legend isn’t a monumental feat like you might think, but refers to a highly advanced technique.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You can’t pass level five hundred in any class without this legend, so it’s sort of like a system test?” Scarlet shrugged at that, but this was enough for me to recall certain details. There was a Legendary Class section of the market. Each legendary class could only be held by a single person at a time, but that person could teach their skills to others. The False Divinity class was one among those.
“Right…” I nodded my head, starting to get a handle on the situation. “What was your legend, by the way? And is there another level limit after establishing it?”
“First Blood.” Scarlet answered, smiling. “It was a legend based on how I used martial ki. I took control of the other party’s blood and ripped it out of their body, achieving ‘first blood’. When the system gave me that legend, I decided that I liked the title, and began using it myself.”
“As for another level limit… not one that I’ve hit, and I’m just over level six hundred as a Martial Spirit. There might be another one at a thousand, though.”
That was both a relief and worrying at the same time. I closed my eyes, thinking. There were different tests to level up at different benchmarks, I was well aware of that. However, something like this, something that even Thelsa is just now getting… This will really limit the number of people that manage to exceed five hundred in any class.
Given that only one person can hold a Legendary Class, it’s likely that only one person can hold the same legend, so nobody else will be able to have Scarlet’s First Blood unless Scarlet is killed. Given that she has been turned into a Companion, this was unlikely.
So, anyone over level five hundred in a class has to innovate the class in some way. Is this a way for the system to ensure that people continue to develop without purely relying on the knowledge of those that came before them?
Shaking my head, I looked over at Ashley. “You can tell Thelsa not to worry, it seems. I’m curious what classes her legend helped her open up, but I’ll be able to find that out before too long.”
Ashley gave a small nod, sighing as she closed her eyes. Scarlet looked up at me, eyes wide and clearly looking for praise. I simply chuckled, bringing a hand up to stroke her hair. It almost felt normal, the ancient empress of Bloodhaven starting to act more and more like a normal girl around me. Like she were trying to make up for the childhood she never really had.
I wasn’t about to turn her away, either. She worked so hard to take care of her people, she deserved to be spoiled by someone else a little bit. “Do you know anyone else that has a legend like that?” I asked Scarlet, who smiled while having her head pat.
“I know that the main World Spirits all have their own legends. At least, the ones for Fyor, Deckan, Earth, and Desbar. I haven’t spoken with the ones from Lorek or Spica before. Aside from them…I don’t really know anyone personally that has reached that point. Creating a legend isn’t as simple as making a new energy, you have to use an energy beyond its original intention, do something that wasn’t designed to be a part of the original process. You’re not creating a legend for the world, but for the system. Something to make it remember you.”
“Take Deckan’s World Spirit as an example. Her legend revolves around those blank cards she hands out to conduct her deals, earning her the legend of Nature’s Hand. From what she told me, Earth’s World Spirit created a complex searching method with Natural Energy a long time ago, so that she could sweep through the entire realm at once.”
“Right. I don’t think I particularly have to worry about establishing my own legend yet, since none of my classes are anywhere near five hundred. Still, it will be good to keep it in mind for the future, once I decide what class I want to focus primarily on.”
Scarlet gave a small nod at that decision. “That makes sense. You’re the Keeper, after all. If you’re given enough time, you can create legends for all the different classes, but that means that you;ll need to take… quite a long time.”
“That’s right.” I nodded in agreement. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin with some classes, like Noble or Leader, and some are just not possible for me, such as Knight or Maid. Both of those require me to pledge myself to another entity to serve, which I can’t really do with my identity. The ones that I would be interested in making a legend for, at least at the moment, would be… Mage, Monk, and Archer.”
“I… get the first two, but why Archer?” Scarlet asked in confusion, but I simply shrugged.
“Although I haven’t had much chance to use it, I did learn archery from Accalia, and have a divine bow created by Tubrock. I was even considering using the bow for my third Martial Will, once I had formed the Intent of my other two.”
Scarlet nodded her head quickly, understanding my answer. “How are you coming with your Martial Intent, by the way?”
I couldn’t help but let out a small sigh. “I feel like I’m almost there with my guns, but my fist… I don’t know how long that one is going to take. What about you? How many Intents have you mastered?”
Scarlet glanced off to the side, clearing her throat. “W-well… I am the Goddess of Ki, after all. And… technically, I’m the creator of Martial Will in the first place.”
“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” I narrowed my eyes down at her, and she shrank into herself.
“I… can essentially master any type of Martial Will that I want, and upgrade it to an Intent with just a bit of focus…” She answered in an almost meek tone, drawing yet another sigh from me. Slowly, she started to perk up as an idea came to her. “If you want, I can help you train? Having me there to demonstrate the different Intents should make it easier for you to comprehend them.”
I thought about that for a long moment, before nodding my head in agreement. She was right, after all. Even if our understanding of a Martial Intent was different from one another, seeing the completed form of what I wanted to train might be able to help inspire me.