“On the last page, I chronicled the methods — as best I know them — to acquire the [Blacksmith-Warrior] Class. But our time with the StoneDance Clan does not end there. It did not end there, not for me.
During my stay on Ovsha, long after the eradication of that clan of Weapon Smiths, I mentioned that I had found a Descendent of the Clan. But in truth, he could not tell me much about the [Blacksmith-Warrior] Class that I hadn’t already gathered. Their ways were so lost to time that even the Clan’s scant few descendants knew little of the way they lived.
But he was able to tell me something else.
The Descendent had said that while the [Blacksmith-Warrior] Class was what sky-rocketed the StoneDance Clan to its posthumous infamy, it was not its most powerful class. He’d said that there was one more, and that knowledge of its requirements was passed only from Clan head to heir.
There was so little evidence to his claims that I thought to dismiss it out of hand as fable, and even now I question my decision to record it here. But when he said this last part, his face had taken an expression that has stuck with me all my years.
He said that with that Class, the Lord of StoneDance could forge weapons that have souls.”
* An unnamed, unauthored text, anonymously stolen from the restricted section of the Imperial Libraries on Uern. Excerpt from a page ripped off before its disappearance.
***
Reforging.
Alex mulled over the word where he sat on a hobbled stool. His frame stretched a longer shadow across the cobbles now. Beside him, the smithy’s furnace still burned hot, albeit its enthusiasm had been dampened by time and preservation of kindle. His back to the high sun, the furnace flickered its light across his creased brow as if it were the cause for the sweat that formed there.
“Reforging.” He muttered the word with some annoyance.
Monumental tasks could seem all too feasible when considered under the heat of passion, but the reality was they had to be defeated in the mind before accomplished in real. So as much as Alex had yearned to simply pick up his hammer and go at it he instead sat hunched over the smithy’s work table. He was certain his pain would fade a little with a hammer in hand, but instead of that alluring metal he wielded a ballpoint pen with fading ink. And in place of fighting fire with steel, he battled magical and metallurgical theory on pages once meant for GED study-prep.
His hand blurred in its maddened scribble before it finally stopped. A bare moment later, he tore the page from its notebook, crumpled it, and tossed it into the fire. He watched another of his design sketches burn to ashes
“Reforging. I heard you muttering something about that to yourself earlier.”
Alex swiveled his head at the interjecting voice. Velrick, his likely traitorous guide, stood leaning against the smithy’s wood-torn cobbles where the door had once been. His arms were crossed leisurely beneath his golden armor.
He hadn’t spoken for a time. Alex had almost forgotten he was still there.
Having keen senses could sometimes do that—lead a man to be less aware of their surroundings rather than more—in assurance that they would surely sense the danger before it came. It could be all too easy for Alex to forget himself in his craft. But the smithy was his place of solace, and he wouldn’t trade that peace of mind for anything.
He didn’t mask irritation from his voice when he answered. “Reforging isn’t possible,” he said, “Not truly.”
Velrick quirked his immaculately shaped brow, prompting him to elaborate. Alex wasn’t in the humoring mood. The guide no longer acted as if he’d rather be anywhere else, but he still stated questions as statements and left requests to silence.
“Do go on,” he said at last.
Alex gave a lengthy, frustrated sigh. “It’s basic metallurgy. I haven’t worked with this… strange ore before, but it’s similar to what I know in many ways. With steel, or with any carbon interstitial alloy, when a blade is heat treated and tempered the metal’s molecular lattice is crystallized. Its grain is set into place and hardened. There’s no practical method of undoing that.”
Velrick’s lips quirked into something almost resembling a smirk. “None that someone who’d awakened just a couple days ago should know of, that is.”
Well yes, that too.
It was clear to Alex that just as the Constellations had claimed he was getting outside help, Velrick assumed something of that nature as well. But unlike them he seemed to rather enjoy the pretense of pretending otherwise.
Alex was growing to despise that.
“But it’s not the real issue.” He said frankly. “Are you familiar with the ship of Theseus?”
“I’m not from your world, Alex. I don’t know your fables.”
Velrick could’ve referenced that data in a second if he really cared to.
“I see. Then I guess the Grandfather’s Axe paradox might be a more relevant example here. Imagine that young man’s father has just passed–”
“My condolences.”
“—and he inherits from him an heirloom; a family axe that has been passed down with each generation, from his father and his grandfather before him. Only, during his father’s time with it, the axe’s handle had splintered and had to be replaced. And shortly after receiving it, the young man finds that the head has also shattered and he replaces that as well. So now he has an axe forged of parts entirely different from the original, and he has to ask himself ‘Is this the same axe my grandfather used?’”
Velrick seemed to consider that for a second. A brief light flashed behind his eyes. What was that? Curiosity? Intrigue?
Alas, when the guide spoke, his voice had that usual bored droll to it.
“Well, is it?”
“Nevermind.” Alex waved the question off, “It doesn’t matter, really.”
He sighed, unsure why he even bothered. Then he turned back to his work, happy enough to just forget Velrick was there again.
‘It doesn’t matter’
Perhaps a few days earlier he would’ve waived the question off similarly without further consideration. More relevant to him had been the fact that the science behind a weapon’s trait worked in a comparable manner. The Essence was soaked into metal’s very lattice during the trait’s binding, and its pattern was locked into form just the way its physical grain was. If you replaced parts, if you melted that metal down, if you disturbed its grain in any way, you risked losing that trait altogether.
But the truth was it did matter.
The line between pragmatism and willful ignorance was a narrow one, but being asked that question now, after all that he’d just gone through, Alex had the thought to counter it with one of his own:
What would the axe think?
It was well known that the study of trait formation in weaponcraft was more a behavioral science than a chemistry. Aura and Essence—energy and power—they were two sides of the same coin. Mana reacts to Essence, becoming Aura, and Essence then reacts to that Aura in turn when it adapts to its flow. By the time the two have settled into a discernable pattern they were practically inseparable as to which guides which.
But from a purely practical standpoint, the one that was harder to control was Aura. Because Aura contained memory.
Aura was mana personified, and even if you knew every aspect of that aura’s formation, the entire history of its lineage before its present use, even knowing all of that—which Alex didn’t here—and even when working in a tightly controlled environment, messing with trait formations was still an art of estimation, not exacts. You could never be completely certain exactly how an Aura would react to you shifting the Essence beneath its binding, and it was the bane of artificers across the world that there was no way to simply reach out and ask.
Alex was currently working to circumvent that problem.
Unfortunately, his blade was rather sparse with her words.
How about this? He tapped the open page besides his Undeath’s Bane. Something like a Burmese Dha blade perhaps? Similar curvature for a length, a good balance. We’ll chisel off your tip above your midsection where your cracks are deepest—only for a bit, mind you. Then we’ll melt it down with some iron and reintegrate it below your guard and extend your hilt. Then from the 2/3rd point your scratches can be ground out and your new tip resharpened.
Yes, that would work.
The integration of some Iron on the grip would probably help with her mana conductivity issues as well and the design still worked for a non-confrontational style of swordplay. He’d probably get rid of the guard completely, actually, now that Alex thought about it. He’d use the length and weight of her new hilt to help deflect blows rather than catching them there.
And losing the metal’s temper on that final third wasn't an issue either, a softer metal in the hilt would only help her absorb blows.
I know that’s still a third of your material gone, but it’s better than losing the metal completely, right? If we only use a little iron in the alloy, you’ll still be Essence-bound to the metal at least, and we can just reform the trait’s pattern from there. It’ll be a little bit before I can re-integrate your tip into your hilt, but you can trust me not to just toss it away. You won’t flip out on me right? So how about it?
A long moment passed. Fire glinted across the Shamshir’s length in her slumber and it could’ve passed for enthusiastic consent, righteous anger, or any number of things.
But if Alex was being honest with himself, she’d said nothing.
Frustrated, he began to tear the page. He stopped when he’d noticed just how many pages he’d already burnt through, and instead of tearing it clean, he flipped it and began sketching another design on its backside. His paper supply wasn’t limitless and to speak of practicality and not use both sides was hypocritical.
I should’ve just found a pencil.
Six more pages joined their brothers in the embers before Alex decided his current approach wasn’t working and stopped. And by that time Velrick had unsurprisingly, gotten bored and left.
He stretched his back, trying not to ponder which was worse; the searing pain in his joints or the foul odor he was starting to exude. Then, if only to distract his mind, he gently picked up his blade, holding her flat across his palms.
The shamshir blade was cold to touch and lighter than she had any right to be at her length, like a sharp flake of frost that refused to melt. He scraped his thumb across her edge, careful not to draw blood.
So no dulling at least.
Deciding she wasn’t so fragile after all, he gave her a test swing and felt the air part for her—rather more like he’d cracked a whip than swung a standard blade. He relished the feeling, closing his eyes as he lashed her out again, careful to not overdo it.
Even the slightest alteration can throw off structural integrity. Maintaining balance and feel is still most important when it comes down to it.
His swing carried death on its winds, sending the fire flickering.
Finality—swift and unseen.
But broken.
A wrap of the gauze around his shin loosened and he reached down to tighten it. The pain of bending over proved too much and he half-collapsed into a refined criss-cross position on the floor, his blade balanced across his lap on both knees.
His mind kept coming back to that word: Reforging.
Marketing himself as both a Blacksmith and Warrior, Alex’s time as an adventurer had often seen him repairing more weapons than he’d ever forged himself. A month into a delve—a damaged weapon, one night to fix it and five others that needed a new shine—it meant he’d had to think outside the box at times. Calling it a loss and going back to the chalk board wasn’t an option when the life of the man handing you his damaged blade depended on it being fixed.
That was to say, he was not new to working with broken weapons. He’d taken them and ground out their flaws. He’d reshaped their forms, shifted their traits with aura, and repurposed them to be battle capable once again. But when he was done, they were always different weapons than they had been.
Alex never once accomplished what he’d consider a true reforging.
And yet two Master Blacksmiths have just told me I’m capable of it.
Hell, he’d watched one of them snap off one of his own ribs and hand it to him. That had to be as high a vote of confidence as any, right?
[???]
This item must be appraised to be identified.
He stared down at the ivory bone, still marveling at the gift. Its aura was a quiet thing, like the aura of its owner itself, but the potential it held reminded Alex of the fateful moment he’d laid hands on that Wyvern Core. Alas, even if he could find someone to appraise it, it was too powerful to use on his Undeath’s Bane. It wouldn’t help him here. And it wasn’t even intended to.
The whole thing was just one convoluted hint.
Somehow the Undead had deemed it easier to snap off its rib than to state it outright, but Alex wasn’t supposed to use his bone to reforge the blade. He was supposed to use another, one that he already had in his inventory. One he never would’ve thought to use here, if such a master hadn’t shown him the way.
Alex exhaled, wiping the sweat from his brow, then pinched his eyes in weariness. He wasn’t new to this revelation.
In truth, it’d taken only a few failed designs actually before he’d drawn the connection, but a part of him had desperately hoped he’d be wrong. That his sword might react to one of his other ideas and let him find another way out of this. One less… terrible and dangerous sounding. But she hadn’t.
As if still in hibernation from consuming the Boss’s Core, the Undeath’s Bane had kept her silence.
Up until the very second he pulled that same Boss’s Bone-Fragment from his inventory.
[Undead Bone-Fragment (Material - CA Grade)]
A bone infused with highly-condensed death aura so as to become nearly unbreakable.
His sword stirred awake from her slumber with a jolt.
Alex reeled.
It was hard to describe the sensation that went through him then. A shiver, both from within and without, spreading to scrape every depth of his soul. But it’s touch was cold, terrifying, and strangely foreign. His Undeath’s Bane had consumed the Boss’s Core – and linked to his soul as she was – he could feel the Boss’s lingering aura there. Tainted with death.
An invisible hand reached from somewhere unseen. Time seemed to slow as the Grim Reaper grasped his heart.
It measured its beats by the flesh of its fingers as Alex fought away hyperventilation. It paused there, mid-squeeze, and with no Aura to defend himself Alex could only focus on the feeling. It was like being touched by black ice.
From without, the terror of it was all he could recognize, but from within – from the very depths of his soul where that hand had come – he could tell its attention wasn’t really on him. It wanted what he held in his left hand, the Bone-Fragment, and Alex could feel its overpowering aura tugging at his existence in yearning. So foreign – and yet familiar – a maelstrom of death stormed.
That hand seemed to squeeze, freezing his inner sun from the core outward. Then it found the Essence Binding – the amalgamation of a summoner’s bond that tied him and his sword together. The very same binding through which his own soul was kept closed off and protected. It frayed at its edges.
Then it suddenly stopped. The feeling vanished.
Sweat quintupled across Alex’s brow, cold as his shiver, and as suddenly as it had come, the aura retreated. He wheezed, and it was only when the sensation had passed him over that he recognized the nuance to that aura, the familiar voice of his Undeaths Bane beneath.
Fear. Mourning. Repent. Loneliness. Yearning.
It wasn’t her voice that Alex listened to in that moment but that other one – the voice that had kept him alive for so long, all these lonely years. The needle that pricked his neck when predators watched from the depths. The tingle down his spine when monsters lay beneath dark’s veil.
He listened and fled the smithy, leaving his sword behind.
***
A maelstrom of death swirled within the blade. It cut, it killed, and life by life it followed that swirling vortex to its center. A familiar spiral pattern, deeper and deeper, closer and closer.
It cut, it killed.
Kill? No, it did not kill. It brought death.
Death was a construct to signify the end of an existence, but within the vortex, beginnings and ends were meaningless. Before and after did not exist to an inexistence. And so it followed that vortex, deeper and deeper, closer and closer. Ever into darkness.
Wrong.
It should not know dark. It should not know wrong. But it did.
It followed that vortex, deeper and deeper.
It got it nowhere.
Nowhere? Beginnings were meaningless. Why should the vortex have a center?
It followed regardless. A voice spoke from within. From without. Regret. And so it followed, however dark. Searching.
Before and after should not exist to an inexistence. But it knew.
It knew the beginning because it had reached the end. It knew dark because it had seen light. It knew wrong because it remembered.
Deeper and deeper, closer and closer.
It brought death. It released. Then, it [Severed].
***
Heat bore down on Alex’s neck from above.
The sky had become relatively cloudless around noon and the days on this planet were as hot as its nights were cold. One-hundred and four degrees, his bloodline told him. It had made his mop-head of hair dandruffed and flaky and turned his skin sun-kissed before he’d found something to cover himself with.
Two hours had passed since Alex stepped out of the smithy, and the outskirts of the town were shockingly quiet now. He sat on a rock in the dirtied clearing where just the other night hundreds of undead had gathered for him.
Surprisingly, he got the sense that the remaining undead had been almost halved since he’d holed himself up inside the smithy. He hadn’t expected Jun and the others to run so mean an extermination, but the undead seemed to have understood that night wouldn’t come peacefully for them and had eventually left their homes. Whether it was in search of better hiding spots or in hunt of the survivors, Alex wasn’t certain, but the screams that strayed to his ears on occasion hadn’t sounded human.
Regardless, the place now felt like a proper ghost-town rather than the facade they’d put up. And no one bothered him out here. Despite the fact that the smithy’s chimney had been smoking since early morning.
A reminder that he had unfinished business in there.
That’s fine.
Alex shifted uncomfortably where he sat. He hadn’t been proud of the way he’d fled his own creation, but he’d needed the time to think. To recalculate his approach. And it wasn’t as if he was doing nothing out here.
While the undead’s homes were abandoned he’d scavenged a whole allotment of material for his inventory, whether he could think of a purpose for them or not. Rotted wood, glass, pottery, decrepit wool mattresses, sheets and dusty clothing, he’d collected it all. And most notably, he’d found more buckets.
Arrayed before him he had not just one, but a half-dozen large wooden basins and twice that many well buckets where he’d only had the single pair before. Most of the buckets were strewn about the area with murky sediment around their rims, but the remainder contained some of the clay he’d gathered from the river just that morning.
He’d added cleaner water into them from the nearest well and mixed it into the unprocessed clay. He’d dissolved stubborn chunks with his hands and removed rocks and twigs until he had a thick slurry. Then he’d poured the mixture through a standard cooking mesh from his apartment and only once he was left with pure clay, had he collected the slurry into his larger laundry basins. There, they would dry faster due to the greater surface area.
It was hard work all told, made tougher by his current condition, but he wasn’t one to waste a sunny day. Not on a planet that would soon be fresh out of those. Still, when by the tenth bucket his body’s ache had noticeably sharpened, he knew he’d delayed long enough.
Alex stood.
The breeze croaked a whistle as it passed through the old buildings around him, but out here in the open it was a gentle reprieve to the sun’s harsh bearing. It brushed his hands and uncovered arms with a touch that called attention to the clay caked there, coating his forearms like a dry crust.
Absent-mindedly, he picked at it, prying the hairs from his knuckles in the clays refusal to part. It was a distinct feeling, like picking scabs from a wound, but much more satisfying.
He breathed it in. The sulfurous scent of cold earth, the sediment that clung to his skin. The clay itself felt half baked almost, like it was somewhere between the slurry it had been and the crisp form it would take. He ran his hand through his hair, wincing past the pain the motion brought, and decided he liked that feeling on his skin.
It felt like an honest day’s work.
When he entered the smithy his smile was weak—a mixture of resignation, trepidation, and dangerous curiosity all in one. But when his eyes beheld his Undeaths Bane, they glimmered with only that excitement. The passion of a craftsman.
The day’s heat redoubled by the smithy’s own, Alex tossed aside the sheet he’d draped over himself like a shawl. Then he resummoned the Bone-Fragment. Immediately, that Aura of death began to stir again.
“Oh no you don’t.” he said to it, “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it my way.”
A silence passed. Though Aura had memory, it still wasn’t by any means living, and naturally it hadn’t understood his words.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Aura from a monster’s Core could of course retain a sort of ‘lingering will’ from the creature that housed it, and that could trigger his danger sense, but there still wasn’t any intent behind its actions. Aura acted on habit, reacted to stimulants based on its predisposed nature, which in turn was just an echo of the nature of the being that formed it.
None of that changed the fact that this aura wanted him dead.
Alex could see in it the visage of the murderous Boss that it had belonged to. It reached, grasping for him. But the aura was confined to a radius around its new habitat—his sword—and it couldn’t reach him near the entrance where he stood.
He still felt its malevolent intent on his skin, so deadly its touch.
But I’ve survived it before.
Alex gulped.
Then with determination, he stepped into its range.
Humanity’s dominating trait was their capability to reason. To rule their instincts. But when forced to live as a beast for too long, one can inevitably find themselves ruled by those instincts instead.
Kill or be killed. Betray before you’re betrayed yourself. Fight only when you’re assured of your victory or if running’s not an option. When faced with a greater threat, run.
That was how the weak survived. And following those instincts to their absolutes was how Alex had survived as long as he had. But they weren’t just codes, they were also shackles. They’d protected him, but they’d also ensured that he would always be weak. Every single regret that ate at him, every wish gone unfulfilled, those chains were at their source.
Nonetheless, his instinct screamed.
An ethereal hand reached from that place unseen. Its fingers seized his heart and those chains wrapped themselves around his limbs. They took control of his functions and his instincts screamed at him to run.
But he denied them. And when he did, he heard it.
A voice so faint that it wouldn’t have been clear if it hadn’t come from within. From where his sword’s essence intertwined with his own. He listened. And when he opened his eyes to vision unclouded, the deathly sensation had stopped just as it had before.
He was alive.
He was alive because his sword had protected him.
She was still in there, still his. And at the sensation of her aura’s touch, Alex realized he’d been wrong about her being in hibernation.
He’d long since gathered that she hadn’t simply consumed the Boss’s aura. After the last time this had happened he’d even guessed the opposite, that the aura of the Boss’s Core must have been too great and it had instead overpowered her. But then, that didn’t make sense either when he thought about it. If that were the case she couldn’t have such a hold over it. That deathly aura would’ve consumed her, and her distinct flame—that purple-black Aura signature he’d preserved from the Oslumnen armor—would’ve withered out.
No, in truth, his Undeath’s Bane had been living up to its namesake. Rather than being consumed, it’d been using all its energy to keep that deathly aura in check. Preserving it.
Alex could guess why.
He turned to look at the bone in his hand. And as if sensing the shift in his attention, the boss’s remnant aura almost lashed out again, but when nothing came of it Alex took another calming breath.
[Undead Bone-Fragment (Material - CA Grade)]
A bone infused with highly-condensed Essence so as to become nearly unbreakable.
Examine.
A Bone-Fragment from the lower back of a Homo-Sapien.
Examine.
A Fragment of the Sacrum Bone. Its large size indicates it must have belonged to someone beyond average size.
Examine.
[Examine]’s level is inadequate to tell you more on this subject.
Alex was going about this the wrong way.
Originally, he’d had distinct plans for all his skill slots, but those had dashed to pieces with Orion’s “gift” anyhow. So why not?
You have learned the skill [Appraise]!
2 Skill-slots have been filled.
Appraise.
This item is a Totem.
Ah.
Alex resisted the urge to hide the bone away in his inventory again. He’d had suspicions, but a totem…
He looked at the bone’s shape, triangular and sharp despite having been chipped away at by the ages. It was believed by some ancient societies that the Sacrum bone housed the soul. Similar things were said about a great number of bones really, but sprinkled amongst those fables were often small grains of truth.
In truth the sacrum did not house the soul so much as it manifested it. It was a connection point from the spiritual to the physical and it helped to tether a person’s soul to their physical body. But given that Alex’s blade had just severed that connection…
It’s trapped there. The Boss’s soul is trapped in this bone!
And his sword would have him reunite it with the remnants of his aura.
That too, wasn’t a hard thing to gather the why of. Aura was ever a slave to its nature, and the aura of his Undeaths Bane had once belonged to something resembling a Tsukumogami. It had almost formed a soul, or would’ve, if a certain necromancer hadn’t interfered. But what if its aura was so intact so as to remember the patterns of life itself…
Wait, is that why it kept trying to draw more mana from me?
Had she been trying to overpower the essence patterns on his skills the way Jun had done to his [Howl]? But even if she had freed up that Essence to shift the pattern of her binding, he couldn’t imagine that would be enough.
Alex pinched his eyes.
It was here that he had to remind himself that no matter how he thought of them as such, his swords weren’t living things. They didn’t run on reason or logic, or even instinct, but the memory of those things. His Undeaths Bane didn’t know what a totem was, she didn’t understand metallurgy or magic, and for all that she had come close she had never truly lived. What she was attempting wouldn’t work.
But none of that mattered when he could hear her voice so clearly.
He heard it clearer than he’d ever been able to make out the voice of his precious Lys. He’d woven his Undeaths Bane’s essence binding from his very soul. Even if it was just partially, they were bonded, and he wondered for a second whether it was any coincidence what rang clearest from that voice of hers. Sorrow. Regret.
And something else.
A fire.
Alex opened his eyes. In his left palm he held the Boss’s bone-fragment, but in his right he held a stone. Smooth and intricately laced with the emerald glow of essence, it was worth the ransom of a small kingdom.
He crushed it.
[Path Forgers Stone has been Consumed]
Awakened Identified: Alex Smith
Scanning Essence Signature…
Providing Potential Matches…
The stone in Alex’s hand crumbled to dust as that emerald glow pulsed beneath his veins like circuits of a computer board. And when that light winked out he no longer felt like a tiny speck in time’s eye, but like the universe itself had been splayed out before him. All his nearest options were laid bare and his interface was flooded with advice to attain classes that he hadn’t even known he’d been so close to achieving.
Just find this niche skill, earn enough essence to buy that one, attain this rare achievement…
Alex waved it all away. He’s said it so many times and believed it everytime, but only now could he say it with the certainty of truth.
I already know my path!
Alex brought his hammer down on the bone-fragment and Undeaths Bane both.
[Meld]
The world seemed to shiver for a second, stilling at the sensation as if to relish it. Then the Shamshir’s cracks quickly began to spread.
So dense was the totem’s essence that it stuck out of his shattering sword like a half hammered nail and Alex had to condense more and more of his mana pool around the surface of his hammer.
[Meld]
It shattered further, close to permanently breaking.
[Meld]
Soul link has been damaged. Please repair Bond.
WARNING: Soul Bond is unstable. The Binding is currently open-ended. Please close the Binding before Vital Essence leakage occurs.
Meld, damn you!
Alex’s strike rang like the sounding of a gong. But lying subtly underneath that, he thought he heard a soul-touching chime, like the one he’d heard when Auriga had touched his blade.
Bone-Fragment has been integrated with your Undeath Bane.
A ghostly emerald glow ran through the sword’s cracks from where the Bone-Fragment had once been. Then just as suddenly, Death visited once more. His unseen hands multiplied, snaking up Alex’s spine, and he could feel his sickle hooked around his throat. He didn’t dare swallow, he didn’t dare think. He focused.
The cloud of death was unimaginably thick now. It surged towards and past him like rapid currents, and if it hadn’t been clear before, it was clear now. This Aura remembered who’d killed it. But at its center he could sense something other than just death. It had long since eroded, and was being eroded at still, but like the formation of a river stone, that erosion was also a form of polish. At its center was the essence of nobility. Lionheart himself. And it was up to Alex to decide what to shape from such fine clay.
But it wasn’t just him.
The surge of emotion from his blade would’ve been impossible to ignore at that moment. Her hold on the rampant aura of death lessened and he could feel the reaper’s hands inching closer to his heart, too close for comfort. Instead, her aura—that purple flame—rose up to consume the remaining Essence of Lionheart’s soul.
No. ‘Consume’ was the wrong word.
Fear gripped Alex’s heart as he realized he’d misunderstood something. It gripped tighter than those unseen hands ever could.
His sword’s aura was integrating the Essence from the bone, that much was true. Right or not, he’d thought he’d understood Undeath’s Bane’s memory had led it to; if you can’t develop a soul, take it from something else.
He’d been wrong. She wasn’t just integrating it, but accommodating it.
Even as he had the thought, the boss’s deathly aura was continuing to cloud around that river stone of Essence.
For now, these hands around his neck were held at bay by what little control his sword had over it. But if she succeeded and that essence was integrated into the trait’s binding not as a raw source essence but whole, then it was only a matter of time before that deathly aura wormed its way in and the boss Alex had worked so hard to kill was resurrected.
He couldn’t have that.
He still needed that essence fully integrated into the trait’s binding of course, so he let things proceed that far. But then he felt the trait’s pattern fluctuate from [Cleanse] into something far more unfamiliar and dangerous. He wouldn’t have that.
And so he fought his sword’s Aura for control.
The only way to directly touch mana was to guide it with your Essence and the only way to touch Essence that wasn’t connected to your own being was through manipulating mana through it. They existed in a realm of reality separate from the physical and mental, and it had only been through a skill like [Metalwork] that Alex had been able to shape Essence Bindings at all. But the binding was no longer in its infancy now. The more a pattern is reiterated, the stronger it becomes, and just how many souls had they [Cleansed] that night?
Enough that it wasn’t just the trait that was strengthened, but the Aura of his sword herself.
And as the binding began to unravel with the influx of new Essence, her hold over its pattern became greater than Alex’s own. She, too, was no longer in her infancy, and the Death aura that had been fighting her every step of the way wanted the exact same thing she did now.
Alex couldn’t compete with that.
He had no core. He had no Aura to call his own yet. He didn’t even have a smithing Class! Yet, all these reasons had been exactly why he’d created a bond with his sword. The reasons he’d done so outlandish a thing—that he’d completed her essence binding with his own Vital Essence—had been to overcome these exact shortcomings, had it not?
Indeed, it had been.
And just as her aura had been strengthened by the night, so too had the strength of the binding itself. The Essence of Alex’s binding was no foreign thing anymore, but a part of him. He had to think of it as such.
No, not the binding. The sword herself was a part of him.
She wasn’t just some tool for him to throw away, not just some replacement for another part of him lost to time. She was his partner. She was his companion in darkness, his brethren in bloodshed. For better or for worse, richer or poorer, she was his. He would honor that, love her for what she was. In sickness and in health.
Until death do us part.
Soul Bond has been repaired.
Two Souls have been detected. Soul Bond is no longer limited to partial integration.
Soul Bond had been completed
Alex embraced his sword and before he’d realized it, they were one. Like a limb he’d never known he had, she lay shattered on the worktable before him and he could feel her.
It had worked.
He didn’t need an Aura of his own to fight for control anymore, he didn’t need a core or any of those things. He could circumvent the realm where Essence and Mana sat isolated from reality, because the Essence Binding of his sword had been composed of his own Vital Essence. He could simply touch the binding directly now that the link had stabilized.
But by the time he’d figured that out, it no longer mattered. Death still whirled about the room like a hurricane, hunting for its totem. But he understood now.
She wants this.
His Undeath’s Bane wanted this, and for the moment the why and how of it didn’t matter. Aura wasn’t living, it couldn’t reason like humans could. He didn’t know why she wanted the boss’s aura reunited with its essence, but it wouldn’t work. All that would bring was chaos.
As things tended to go with Undead Creatures, the boss’s malevolent aura was much stronger than what remained untwisted of its soul after all these years. And if that overpowering aura was integrated into the Essence Binding, it would overrule any protest from either him or his sword. Whatever outcome she hoped for wouldn’t come.
Yet, he didn’t stop her. He relaxed his grip on the binding.
Alex may not have known what pattern she was attempting to form. He may not know the why or how, he may not have agreed even if he had, but none of that mattered an ounce.
He listened. And at its heart, he finally understood.
There was no such thing as a true reforging. Because what sword when broken wishes to come back the same? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. What soul could turn a blind eye to that. Who wouldn’t wish for change?
It won’t work, his instincts told him. But he was a blacksmith. If his sword couldn’t do it on her own, wasn’t it his job to help her? Because when it came down to it, he was the same.
Alex didn’t just want to be reforged. But to be reforged anew.
Something within him shifted at the acknowledgement and the path forger’s stone pulsed from within him.
Would you like to use your Scenario 2 reward?
Yes.
Please choose a skill up to 20,000 EC in value.
His eyes didn’t need to scan the shop for long before he found what he was looking for. A skill he’d never learned in his original life. Something new.
You have learned the skill [Enchant]!
5 skill slots have been filled.
Cost: 18,500 EC
Learning a new skill was much like learning an actual new skill. Unless it’s one you’re particularly suited to, it doesn’t come naturally at first, but slowly and clumsily. And as the unfamiliar patterns intertwined with Alex’s essence, attempting to run mana through them felt like trying to learn how to breathe underwater. He hardly knew the first thing about runes and he didn’t have time to acclimate himself.
Luckily, he didn’t need to. He had all the runes he needed right there.
[Holy Gauze (Unique)]
Gauze enchanted by a Divine being to stop prevent blood loss from wounds and seal Death-aspected afflictions.
With a shaky breath Alex touched his two fore fingers to the inscriptions on his gauze, and pressed his other hand against his sword’s splintered spine. His instincts screeched at what he was about to do, but he ignored them. And in one final act of defiance, he shattered the chains that bound him.
[Enchant]
A runic glow crossed the span of his arms and with meticulous care, he slid his fingers along the spine of the shamshir. Scripts appeared beneath his touch and his gauze bandages loosened around his limbs.
You have been afflicted with [Sepsis]
WARNING
Your Lifeforce is wounded. Sepsis cannot be combated with Vitality. So long as you have open wounds, HP will drain 10% every thirty seconds until death.
HP: [43%]
The sudden pain was too much to simply ignore, but Alex focused his mind on the task: the lingering cloud of death that he only now had the means to fight.
Alex had chosen his moment well. He’d waited until the very second the Bone-Fragment’s essence had integrated with the Essence Binding before enchanting his sword. The very second that Deathly Aura had found its quarry. And though Alex still didn’t know any runes himself, transfering an un-warded enchantment to another source was well within his capabilities. Whatever they were, the runes were meant to seal Death-aspected afflictions, and that was exactly what they did.
We only need the pattern, not the aspect itself right?
HP: [33%]
Alex staggered. He tried not to curse as blood began to flow from his wounds. The left side of his body suddenly fell lame and he faltered to his knees. All vision in his left eye went dark and it took all he physically had to keep his hand to his blade to funnel mana into his enchantment.
Creating a stable runic formation was yet another thing he had no clue how to do. And doubtless, the runes weren’t a perfect match for the situation, only close enough. They weren’t as effective as he’d hoped and all he could do was keep the aura at bay while the Essence Binding stabilized into a new pattern unperturbed.
Internally, he sped that process along.
He and his blade were one and the same, and he shifted the Essence binding directly to adapt to her Aura’s flow rather than to fight against it. He guided its currents and didn’t manipulate her aura so much as aid her remembrance, making adjustments here and there.
For the first time since the boss’s core had been [Severed], its aura had touched the binding directly. And even if it was just for a second its signature had left its mark. Now, they took the influence of its pattern and wove it in. The trait for [Cleanse] unraveled into a swirling vortex, and at its center was that smooth river stone that had been the boss’s soul. Its swirling currents ever deepened as it closed in on it.
Ever closer, ever deeper. Until it solidified into a fixed pattern.
Until Alex could feel what he had just birthed.
Class Requirement has been met.
HP: [9%]
The runic glow along his shamshir’s spine winked out as Alex’s right arm fell to his side. Now, there was only a crimson smear of blood along the path his fingers had traced, but by the time the binding had stabilized, he no longer had eyes through which to see it.
He didn’t need vision to see the sickly green cracks along his skin in his mind’s eye.
Involuntarily he shook.
Not just from the pain, but from the knowledge of what lied on the other side of his binding. A purple-black flame like a bonfire flared both from without and from within. It was stoked by regret. But it blazed with desire.
The fire found its place in his sun and the frabric of his being shifted.
Alex’s path no longer lied in combining his Blacksmith self and his Warrior self.
Now, he had the exponentially more difficult task of combining both, along with this new, unpredictable side of him that was only now starting to burgeon. And he had no idea what to expect from it.
Proceed to Sanctum for affixation?
Yes, please.
***
Mortal conditions were placed in stasis upon entering the Sanctum. But by the time Alex’s vision was clear from the blur of blood and pain there was not much around him to see.
All around him was dark and he stood on ground that might as well have been empty air with nothing to mark his weight except a faint glow under the soles of his feet. It followed his footsteps like small platforms. The only other lighting in this strange place came from far above, from the constellations overhead as they watched him through distant eyes.
No matter how many times he came here he never got used to it.
Alex walked forward, size and distance seemingly holding no gauge in his stride. Only direction had authority here, and when he outstretched his hand, it met the cold, chiseled stone of the hulking gates before him. His touch birthed just enough of a glow to see the rest of it by, and his fingers traced its intricately carved patterns, finding the orb embedded in its center.
Unlike when he’d first come here, nothing happened at his touch. Afterall, you can only awaken once.
“I told you we’d be meeting again, Mr. Smith”
Alex turned to face the Guardian as it appeared behind him. The creature was faceless like a mannequin but wore its tie and slacks with all the deference of a car salesman. Alex would know, he’d been one.
“I see you’ve been living up to your namesake.”
Beyond the Constellations, beyond the guides, there was no hiding anything from the very System itself. Much less the Guardian of its gates.
Alex grunted, unsurprised.
“As talkative as always, I see. And ever the curiosity– oh, but even I know when to shut up sometimes, Mr. Smith. Here for your class, I take it?”
The Guardian punctuated its question with a slight tilt of its head.
“I would like to affix my class and rank up.” Alex said.
“Good, good. Then I believe you already know the way.”
Alex stilled at those words but the Guardian simply gestured to the gates before him, to the orb at its center. When Alex looked back in that direction, he suddenly perceived them farther. More grand, with the intricate carvings of the Primordial Aspects themselves glowing in their likeness.
His eyes found the orb in those doors’ center.
It no longer shone with the obsidian light it’d held when he’d first come here, but instead water seemed to course in its center with the grace of a river. Then the orb shifted. It seemed to crackle with an electric pulse now, shifting again from that into a dark cloud with all the murkiness of pure night held within. A thousand impressions seemed to pass by in an instant until eventually there was one. The orange haze of fire.
The Guardian’s voice echoed from somewhere unseen. “I will be seeing you again, Mr. Smith. Won’t I?”
Yes, you will.
Alex made it a promise and he grasped the orb in front of him and crushed it. The gates swung open before him. Finally, he chose his class.
Of Magma,
Of Ocean,
Of Air,
Of Earth…
All that is stone has its tale,
Were that a listening ear lend to voice its birth.
Only he who can lay rock bare,
May dance with stone beyond its hearth.
Patterns wove themselves from Alex’s vital essence, shifting with the completion of a puzzle just clicked into place. His skills, his abilities, all that he was were twined into one weave, his existence rewritten, as if all the circuits soldered into his fiber had at long last activated.
The gates before him opened up to a dark uncharted expanse, and on the other end lay yet another gate.
You have ranked up from Unranked to F Rank.
Alex had to ball his fists lest he choke on his emotions. Here he was. Back, after all this time.
Your Class has been Affixed.
He felt it in his soul, all the essence he’d subconsciously been feeding into the class. He felt it find a place inside of him now.
You’ve reached level 18!
Vitality +3Strength +3
Dexterity +2Fortitude +2
Perception +1
Arcane +1
[Weapon Mastery] aptitude with [Nythca] has been recognized. Proficiency gains have been accelerated.
[Weapon Mastery] with Nythca has reached Rank Apprentice.
Progress to Rank Adept: 20%
He smiled.
[Stone Dancer]
Stone Dancer is a hybrid class of Blacksmith and Warrior trees. Specializing both in the creation and use of weapons, this class can use traits to greater potency and unlock unique abilities from blades personally crafted.
Abilities:
[Weapon Mastery]
You will be base level proficient with any weapon you craft, and will experience increased learning rates the longer a weapon is used.
[Weapon Arts]
For each weapon you have crafted, you are capable of unlocking unique weapon art once you have reached proficiency with its trait.
***
To Alex’s senses, it’d felt like a storm of death had blown through the place like a hurricane. When he stepped back into the smithy, however, he saw that was not the case.
Everything was where he’d left it.
Dusty tools stood against the walls or in corners. His anvil was out, stationed on standby to the left of the workstation. The front entrance was only as shattered as it had been the night before. His notebook, the one he’d madly scribbled designs in, lay spread-eagled on filthy ground—but only because that’s where he’d thrown it in his frustration.
The fire still flickered its slowly dying heat from the furnace, unused for this forging. And his Shamshir sword, all thirty-five inches of her, lay on the table where she had been when he’d last touched her.
He trailed his fingers along her purple-black surface, more-so sensing the changes rather than feeling them. To the blind eye, she was riddled with cracks all along her length, splintered and shattered to the extent that it was a wonder she hadn’t fallen apart in such poor condition.
To the scrying soul, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Without the gingerly care he’d had to use earlier, Alex picked her up by her hilt. And where by all rights she should’ve fallen apart just from that, she didn’t. No, instead she whipped through the air, a tinge of satisfaction in the pitch of her Oslumnen metal as it sang.
Rather than shatter, she held.
As where the stone cobble she’d just sliced through did not. It split unceremoniously, a gash in its surface where his blade had cut it. No scratches, no dulling, nothing.
See, where a stranger may look upon his blade and be convinced nothing had changed, Alex knew the truth. She was possessed now. By the soul of the Scenario’s boss itself, or perhaps just by that man that boss had once been, Lionheart. And while her material was still the same old Oslumnen, his soul was the glue that held her pieces together, protecting her from harm.
Alex wasn’t certain why exactly things turned out like they did, but it seemed to have been what his Undeath’s Bane had wanted. Or close enough for now, that desire for more ever burning in them both. For now, he could feel a satisfaction in her hum different from any he’d felt when they’d fought together before. And if she was happy with that, then he was too.
No, happy was too weak a word. He was ecstatic.
You have forged a Named Weapon.
Title [Forgefather] granted.
[Nychta (Unique, D Grade)]
A shattered blade forged of pure Oslumnen, possessed by a Guardian Spirit and bonded to its user.
Trait:
[Angel’s Remembrance]
A Cleansing blow, capable of cutting a creature’s soul directly.
Alex slid his finger along her sharpened edge. To his mind, here . Even if there were still those who were stronger than him—threats out there still deserving of his caution—he was no longer weak. And he could not be shackled by those chains any longer.
It was high time he started to view Nightmare through the eyes of a predator rather than that of prey.