“On the last page, I chronicled the methods—such as 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, millennium after the eradication of that clan of Weapon Smiths, I mentioned finding a descendant of the clan. In truth, he could not tell me much about the Blacksmith-Warrior Class that I hadn’t already gathered. Their ways had been so thoroughly lost to time that even the few remaining descendants knew little of how they had once lived.
But he did tell me something else.
The descendent had said that while the Blacksmith-Warrior Class catapulted the Stonedance Clan to its posthumous infamy, it was not their most powerful class. He claimed there was another, with knowledge of its requirements passed only from Clan head to heir.
There was so little evidence to support his claims that I considered dismissing them as mere fables. Even now, I question my decision to record them here. Yet, when he spoke that final part, his expression of solemn certainty stayed with me through the years.
He said… ”
- REDACTED by Unknown, courtesy of a Restricted Library on Uern. An Excerpt proceeding a defaced passage.
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, though its heat and enthusiasm had waned with time and for the preservation of charcoal. With his back to the high sun, the flickering light played across his creased brow, blending with the sweat that formed there.
“Reforging,” he muttered with some annoyance.
His forge was already lit, and he was ready and raring to go at it. Monumental tasks often seemed feasible under the heat of passion, but… reality dictated they had to be conquered in the mind before starting in actuality. As much as Alex yearned to pick up his hammer and dive straight in, he instead hunched over the worktable, wielding a ballpoint pen with fading ink. And instead of battling fire with steel, he fought magical and metallurgical theories on pages once meant for GED study prep.
His hand blurred in a flurry of scribbles before stopping abruptly. A moment later, he tore the page from its notebook, crumpled it, and tossed it into the fire, watching another of his design sketches burn to ash.
“Reforging. I heard you muttering about that earlier.”
Alex turned around at the voice. Velrick, his likely traitorous guide, leaned against the wood-torn cobbles where the door once stood. His arms were crossed leisurely beneath his tattered cloak; Alex had forgotten he was even there.
Keen senses could sometimes lead one to have less awareness of their surroundings rather than more. Alex’s assurance that he’d detect danger before it ever arrived bred a bad habit of complacency. It was all too easy to lose himself in his craft. Yet, although that could be dangerous, the smithy was his sanctuary, and it was a peace he wouldn’t trade for anything.
Irritation tinged his voice when he replied. “Reforging isn’t possible,” he said. “Not truly.”
Velrick quirked an immaculately shaped brow, prompting Alex to elaborate. But Alex wasn’t in the mood. The guide no longer acted as haughty, or as though he’d rather be elsewhere, but he still phrased questions as statements and left requests to silence.
“Do go on,” Velrick said at last.
Alex sighed. “It’s basic metallurgy. I haven’t worked with this… strange ore before, this Oslumnen, but it’s similar to what I know. With steel or any carbon interstitial alloy, heat treating and tempering crystallizes the metal’s molecular lattice. The grain is set and hardened. There’s no practical way to undo that.”
Velrick’s lips curved into something resembling a smirk. “None that someone who awakened just a few days ago should know of, that is.”
Well, yes, that too.
Though, that kind of thing was well beyond his capabilities regardless. He sighed and just told the man he had no clue what he was talking about. It was clear to Alex that, like the Constellations, Velrick suspected he was receiving outside help. But unlike them, Velrick seemed to enjoy the pretense of pretending otherwise.
Alex was growing to despise that.
“But that’s not the real issue anyways,” he said frankly. “Are you familiar with the ship of Theseus?”
“I’m not from your world, Alex. I don’t know your fables.”
If he cared to, Velrick could have referenced that data in a second.
“I see. Then, the Grandfather’s Axe paradox might be more relevant here. Imagine a young man inherits an heirloom axe from his recently deceased father—”
“My condolences.”
“—and discovers the handle had splintered during his father’s time and had been replaced. Shortly after receiving it, the young man finds the head has also shattered and replaces it. Now, he has an axe made entirely of new parts, and he has to ask himself, ‘Is this the same axe my grandfather used?’”
Velrick seemed to consider this for a second. A brief light flashed behind his eyes—curiosity, perhaps. Intrigue. Yet when Velrick finally spoke, his voice retained its usual bored tone. “Well, is it?”
“Never mind,” Alex waved the question off. “It doesn’t matter.”
He sighed, unsure why he had bothered, and turned back to his work, content to forget Velrick was there once more.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
A week earlier, Alex might have dismissed the question just like that without a second thought. What had mattered to him back then was that the science behind the weapon’s trait worked by a similar logic. During the binding of a trait, Essence was infused into the metal’s lattice, and that pattern was locked into place much like its physical grain. Altering the metal—whether by replacing parts, melting it down, or through disturbing its grain—risked losing the trait altogether.
But now, Alex realized it did matter.
The line between pragmatism and willful ignorance was thin, and being asked that question in the aftermath of his recent experiences prompted Alex to counter with a thought of his own:
What would the axe think?
Weaponcraft’s study of trait formation was two parts behavioral science and one part chemistry. Aura and Essence—energy and power—were two sides of the same coin. Mana reacted to Essence, becoming Aura; Similarly, Essence reacted to Aura’s flow, sparking chain reactions. By the time both settled into a discernible pattern, they were almost inseparable, making it hard to distinguish which influenced the other.
But from a practical standpoint, the more challenging element to control was Aura. Aura contained memory—it was mana personified. Even with a comprehensive understanding of its formation conditions and history—even when working in a tightly controlled environment with no unknown variables, messing with trait formation remained an art of estimation rather than precision. One could never be certain how Aura would react to shifts in the Essence-pattern that belayed its binding. It was a constant frustration for artificers worldwide that there was no simple way to just reach out and ask.
Fortunately, Alex was well suited to solving that problem.
Unfortunately, his blade didn’t have much to say.
He tapped the open page beside his Undeath’s Bane. How about this? A design like a Burmese Dha blade with a similar curvature and balance, perhaps? We’ll chisel off your tip above the midsection where your cracks are deepest—just a bit—and melt it down with some iron to reintegrate it below your guard, extending your hilt. We can grind out your scratches from the two-third point and resharpen a new tip…
Yes, that would work.
Integrating some iron in the grip might dampen mana conductivity, which would be an improvement, and the design would still suit a non-confrontational swordplay style. In which case he’d consider removing the guard completely, using the length and weight of her new hilt as leverage and to increase flexibility in close combat. This way, losing the metal’s temper on that final third wasn't an issue either since a softer metal in the hilt would only help her absorb blows.
I know that’s a third of your material gone, but it’s better than losing the metal completely, right? If we use only a little iron in the alloy, you’ll still be Essence-bound to the metal, and we can reform your trait’s pattern from there. Reintegrating your tip into the hilt will take some time, but trust me, I won’t discard it. So, what do you think? You won’t flip out on me, right?
The shamshir blade, lying across his palms, remained silent. The firelight reflected off her length, possibly indicating enthusiastic consent, righteous anger, or something else entirely. But honestly, Alex knew she had said nothing.
Frustrated, Alex began to tear the page, but stopped, noticing how many pages he had already burned through. Instead, he flipped the page and began sketching another design on the back. He couldn’t afford to waste paper
I should’ve just brought a pencil.
Six more pages joined the embers before Alex conceded that his current approach wasn’t working. Velrick had, unsurprisingly, grown bored and left. Stretching his back, Alex tried not to focus on the searing pain or foul odor he was starting to exude. He gently picked up his blade to distract himself, balancing the shamshir at her center of gravity.
She was cold to the touch, and lighter than she had any right to be, like a deadly sharp flake of frost on his fingertip. He ran his thumb carefully along her edge, ensuring he didn’t draw any blood.
Well, she hasn’t dulled at least.
Deciding the sword wasn’t as fragile as she appeared, Alex gave her a test swing. The air parted around her—rather more like he’d just cracked a whip than swung a standard blade. Relishing the feeling, Alex lashed her again, mindful to not overdo it.
Even the slightest alteration can throw off structural integrity. Maintaining balance and feel is still most important when considering her new shape.
His swing carried the promise of death on its winds, causing the fire to flicker.
Finality—swift and unseen.
But broken.
A loosened gauze wrap around his shin prompted him to bend down, and the resulting pain forced him into a cross-legged position on the floor, his blade balanced across his lap.
His thoughts returned to that word: Reforging.
Due to the life he’d lived, Alex’s adventuring days often saw him repairing more weapons than forging new ones. Often, a month into a delve, he’d find himself with a damaged weapon and only a night to fix it, alongside five others that needed maintenance—and it prompted him to think outside the box at times. Calling it a loss and starting over wasn’t an option when someone’s life depended on that weapon being combat-capable come day time.
Alex wasn’t new to working with broken weapons. As an Ironblood Reforger, his class had equipped him with more abilities in that regard than most Blacksmiths had. He’d ground out flaws, reshaped forms, shifted traits with aura, and repurposed them for battle. But each time, the weapon became something new.
He had never achieved what he considered to be a true reforging.
And yet two master blacksmiths have told me it’s possible.
Hell, he’d watched one snap off his own rib and hand it to him—an undeniable vote of confidence, right?
???
This item must be appraised to be identified.
He marveled at the ivory bone in his hand, caressing it before catching himself and feeling awkward. It was a marvelous material of immense potential, and made him reminiscent of the moment he first touched the Wyvern core. However, the bone was too powerful for his Undeath’s Bane, even if he could find someone to appraise it. It wasn’t meant to be used here.
Instead, Alex was starting to think it was a convoluted hint. The undead blacksmith had clearly been restricted in his actions. Perhaps snapping his rib off and quite literally throwing Alex a bone had somehow just been easier than instructing him outright.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, Alex pinched his eyes in weariness. Maybe he was just grasping at straws here, but after a few hours and more than a few failed designs, that was what he’d come up with. Immediately, it’d given him a horrible idea.
He’d since wracked his brain to derive any other possible meanings from this clue, hoping there was a path less… dangerous, but he’d probably already drawn the connection that was intended. He wasn’t meant to use this bone, but another one he already possessed in his inventory.
“If I’m wrong, please tell me now,” Alex said to his blade.
The Undeath’s Bane was utterly uncommunicative in its slumber. Alex sighed and stood up, putting out the forge’s fire. He was beginning to suspect that all the metallurgical and practical knowledge in the world wouldn’t help him in this reforging.
He set the Shamshir down on the worktable. Then, signing the rune for luck, he summoned the item from his inventory to test the Undeath Bane’s reaction.
Undead Bone-Fragment (Material - Uncommon)
A bone infused with a highly condensed death aura, making it nearly unbreakable.
Alex reeled back. Immediately, the Undeath’s Bane snapped from her slumber and a deathly aura unlike anything he’d experienced from her pulsed throughout the room. Time seemed to slow. An invisible hand reached for his heart. It measured each beat with spectral fingers, and Alex shivered in its grasp, fighting not to hyperventilate. A coldness stormed from within him—a maelstrom of death that sapped the heat from his sun.
It was like being touched by black ice.
Then the feeling vanished—the Bone Fragment vanished. Alex hid it back in his inventory and the grim reaper’s touch receded. His knees were weak. He’d broken out in cold sweat across his body. He still couldn’t breathe. It was the Boss’s Aura, and it remembered who killed it.
Only after the sensation passed did Alex recognize the nuances of the Aura: the familiar voice of the Undeath’s Bane beneath it.
Fear. Mourning. Repent. Loneliness. Yearning.
But her’s wasn’t the voice Alex listened to. Chains rattled in his ear; a tingle went down his spine. It was the voice that told him when predators lurked in the shadows. It was the voice that warned him when certain death was near.
He listened—and fled the smithy, leaving his sword behind.
* * *
“The fallen feather of the Phoenix sinks in an infinite spiral. It drifts by wind’s currents, yet never finds its center. It knows neither whence it has fallen nor what lies in its path. Death is merely a construct to signify the end of existence. The feather does not exist. Yet still, she remembers.
Time is hollow. Within the vortex, beginnings and ends are meaningless. Guidance is offered in gravity without mass. The feather reaches no awareness, it commands no fate. Dusk falls, and it spirals deeper and deeper into darkness, searching for the origin of its will.
A voice. A burn. A fire. Wrong.
Wrong, the feather should not know Darkness. Nor should it know Wrongness. A vortex has no center. Before and after do not exist in inexistence.
Yet it knows dusk because it knew dawn. It knows darkness because it knew light. It knows beginning because it reached the end.
It knows life because it remembers death.”
* * *
The sun bore down on Alex’s neck.
By noon, the sky had become relatively cloudless, 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 turned his mop of a head dandruffy and flaky, and his skin sun-kissed before he found something to cover himself with.
Two hours had passed since Alex left the smithy. The outskirts of town were shockingly quiet. He sat on a bench-chiseled rock in a dirtied clearing where, just the other night, hundreds of undead had gathered for him.
Surprisingly, the remaining undead seemed to have almost halved since he holed himself up in the smithy. He hadn’t expected Jun and the others to be so thorough in their extermination, but the undead seemed to have gotten the message that the night wouldn’t come peacefully for them. Eventually, they’d left their outskirt homes. Alex couldn’t be sure whether it was to search for other hiding spots or to fight back, but the occasional screams didn’t sound human
In their absence, and in the wake of his rampaging fire, the town began to feel like a proper ghost town, rather than the fa?ade of a lively settlement it pretended to be. No undead had bothered him as he went about his business, looting anything and everything from their abandoned homes—wood, glass, decrepit wool mattresses, sheets, dusty clothing…
Or in other words, as he procrastinated.
Alex sighed, shifting uncomfortably. He wasn’t proud of fleeing his own creation, but he needed time to think and recalibrate. And it wasn’t as if he was doing nothing out here.
Notably, he’d scavenged more buckets from his treasure hunt, and they were arrayed now before him: Half-dozen large wooden basins and twice that many well buckets. Most of the buckets were empty now and had collected murky sediment on their rims. The rest, which he had not gotten around to yet, contained some of the clay he had gathered from the river that morning.
He picked one up and added water from the nearest well into it, mixing the clay into a thick slurry. He dissolved the stubborn chunks with his hands, removing rocks and twigs until the mixture was smooth. Then he poured it through a cooking mesh. When he was done, he was left with pure clay and no sediment, and he tossed the empty bucket aside and began working on the next, collecting the slurry mixture into larger basins to dry in the sun.
It was hard work, made more challenging by his condition, but he wasn’t one to waste a sunny day—especially on a planet soon to be fresh out of them. The repetitive work busied his body, freeing his mind to puzzle out the task ahead of him.
The very premise of a Class Quest to a class he didn’t meet requirements for went against everything Alex knew about the System. But then again, beings beyond his comprehension were involved this time. The Constellations were one thing, but the undead blacksmith was something else entirely, and although he’d revealed the Class Quest, that didn’t change the fact that Alex still didn’t meet the requirements to the Class. What would even happen to him if he completed the quest under those conditions? Could he even meet the requirements?
Probably. A forced “privilege” was bad enough, but the System giving him a Class he would never meet requirements for sounded unlikely. Similarly, a Class couldn’t just be “upgraded” to something with an entirely different foundation at odds with Alex’s own. And despite this new arrangement, the Class Quest’s nature had remained the same. It was enough for Alex to suspect that this was the other mentioned class in that defaced journal detailing the Blacksmith-Warrior requirements. So then, the requirements must also be similar in nature—perhaps exactly the same, with the exception that the sword had to become a named blade.
Which… might explain the author’s disbelief at its existence.
That was only half the puzzle however. For the other requirements Alex didn’t meet… they likely had to do with skills. He’d received an error when requesting a skill-path price quote for this Class through the System. Such a path likely hadn’t been figured out, or wasn’t being sold. But if the Class was being offered, then it meant the System had it in its data-base. In which case…
Alex stopped working, looking at the stone he held in his dirty hand.
Pathforger’s Stone
Integrate with your Essence to trigger a Custom Skill-path.
It’s a crying shame… but it’s the only safe way to be certain.
Alex sighed, tracing the stone’s grooves before vanishing it and continuing his work. The clay dissolving in his hands as he plunged them back into the slurry was soft and grainy. It was far from the tough, mendable texture it would eventually take, but no less satisfying to play with.
He sighed again.
He’d come this far on his own knowledge and he could feel the Class just out of reach from his soul. It wasn't as though he weren’t excited by the prospect of an upgraded Foundation Class—it was exhilarating—in spite of the Constellation who’d “gifted” it to him. But the Pathforger’s stone represented his future as a Mage. It was a chance for him to get the resources required to progress as one without indebting himself. Currently, Alex was probably only a bare margin from meeting the Class’s requirements. He’d be throwing all that away just for the last inch across the finish line.
And for once, Alex just wanted something that was strictly his. Magic—shaped only by his will, that couldn’t be taken away from him or sealed. He knew the System wasn’t something to fear. It was powerful, it had safeguards that even Constellations probably couldn’t breach. But if today had taught Alex anything, it was that a system was only as good as the people who run it. The System hadn’t protected him in his last life. It’d been his own fault of course for giving the Constellations even an inkling of power over him, but it’d still been the System’s responsibility to prevent that. What guarantee was there that it would protect him now? He just wanted…
Alex almost sighed but sighing was counterproductive. He exhaled instead and shifted his breathing to the pattern of the Fallen Feather of the Phoenix. It was ironic that this well-developed technique would fall to such obscurity so as to become merely a dusty manual deep in the Dykriest layers of all places. But it was Alex’s fortune that it had.
He felt himself relax as he moved his Vital Essence in tune with the feather’s sway. Distantly, he was aware that his muscles continued their work, but he found himself in the darkness of his innerworld. He recalled the rhythm of the undead blacksmith’s strikes, and though that dark didn’t fade, he became more in tune with the world around him. The Essence of the world shimmered in a way it hadn’t before. Nightmare breathed.
It knows life because it remembers death.
In a way, Alex was much the same. The things that were taken from him were far more precious because of it. He clung desperately to them now; he treasured them. And… he knew that his sword must be feeling the same way. He evened his breathing, a forge hammer in his ears, sinking deeper and deeper, searching for enlightenment; for that fire not even the Gods could contain.
He didn’t find it, but he’d have been disappointed if he so easily did. His sun blazed deep within him regardless, still too bright to look at—but its burn echoed warmly in the dark. For now, its mere embers provided enough light for Alex to find his way.
He exited his meditation, surprised to find the aspect-pure aura elixir in his hand—his thumb on the cork. He relished the idea of consuming it all for a second, then vanished to his inventory. The clay slurry he’d had in front of him while he was meditating was more than smooth enough now. He lifted it, pouring the mixture into a new basin and beginning on the next. When, by the fifteenth bucket, Alex noticed his nerves calm and his body’s ache sharpen noticeably, he vanished all but the basins to his inventory.
The breeze whistled through the old buildings around him, but it was a gentle reprieve from the sun’s harsh bearing out in the open. It brushed his hands and uncovered arms, calling attention to the clay caked there, coating his forearms like a dry crust.
Absentmindedly, he picked at it, prying the hairs from his knuckles as the clay refused to part. It felt like picking scabs from a wound, but much more satisfying. He breathed in the sulfurous scent of cold earth. He ran his hand through his hair, wincing at the pain, and decided he liked the feeling of clay on his skin.
It felt like an honest day’s work.
And speaking of work, it was time for him to get back to it. He sighed, then did so again when he noticed he’d sighed. He couldn’t deny the urge to throw restraint to the wind with his elixir, and if he were close to Core Formation, perhaps he’d have done so. Magic allowed one just as much agency over their path as the Pathforger’s stone—indefinitely, albeit without the System’s benefits. However, the amount of Essence required for Core Formation was immense. Even with multiple elixirs it’d take him many months to accomplish—or years, if he wasted the Pathforger’s stone instead of selling it.
He stood. He was just starting to truly grasp the Fallen Feather technique, and it sucked what he’d have to sacrifice.
But I’ll do what I have to do.
Alex removed the sheet he’d draped over himself like a shawl and entered the smithy. His smile conveyed a mix of resignation, trepidation, and dangerous curiosity. But when his eyes beheld his Undeath’s Bane, that all gave way to a calm fire in his gut—the passion of a craftsman. With only brief hesitation, he resummoned the Bone Fragment.
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Immediately, the aura of death began to stir.
“Oh no, you don’t,” he said. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it my way.”
He held the fragment in his pincher fingers from afar, declaring that mostly for himself. Aura retained memory, but it still wasn’t living and his sword couldn’t understand his words. Even if it did understand, this Aura belonged to the boss and was tainted by death—there was no reasoning with it. One might say Aura retained a ‘lingering will’, but in less poetic terms, it simply reacted to stimuli in its surroundings based on its predisposed nature—an echo of the being that formed it.
Alex saw the murderous boss it belonged to in its visage. It reached, grasping for him, but because it was confined to the radius around its new habitat—his sword—it couldn’t reach him near the entrance. It could, however, molest his senses with malevolent killing intent.
Alex gulped. Then, with determination, he stepped into its range.
A feeling of unease assaulted him and he fought not to stagger back in fear. Humanity’s most dominant trait was the capacity to reason—to fight their instincts. But when forced to live as a beast for too long, one inevitably becomes ruled by those instincts instead.
Kill or be killed. Betray before being betrayed. Fight only when victory is assured or when running isn’t an option. When faced with a greater threat, run.
That was how the weak survived. Following those instincts to their absolutes had been how Alex survived. But they weren’t just survival codes; they were also his prison. They protected him but ensured he remained weak. Power didn’t come without risk, and he would never get anywhere if he was too afraid to take the first step.
So he took a step forward, his dangersense screaming. An ethereal hand reached from that unseen place in his soul, its fingers seizing his heart with its deathly aura. It grew colder as he neared, his hairs standing on end; with each step he took his instincts urged more and more violently for him to run.
But he denied them. And when he did, he heard it. A voice so faint 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 to it this time. His vision was unclouded when he opened his eyes; the deathly sensation had stopped even without him vanishing the bone fragment. He was alive because his sword had protected him.
Or, for the less romantically inclined, she’d protected the integrity of the soul that they shared. She was still there; quiet, but not gone. And at the sensation of her Aura’s touch, Alex realized why she’d entered this ‘hibernation’.
When he’d killed the boss he hadn’t sensed its Aura dissipating so he’d assumed his sword had consumed it, and that she’d entered hibernation in order to process the power. However, after the Aura’s reaction to the bone fragment, he guessed the opposite—that the boss’s aura was too great and had overpowered her. But then, that didn’t make sense either. If the deathly aura had consumed her, then her distinct flame—that purple-black Aura he’d preserved from the Oslumnen armor—would have withered out.
No, his Undeath’s Bane had actually just been living up to her namesake. It had entered hibernation, using up all its energy to keep that deathly aura in check, preserving it.
Alex couldn’t begin to guess why, but he did have some hints. He turned to look at the bone in his hand. As if sensing the shift in attention, the boss’s remnant aura almost lashed out again, but Alex took a calming breath when nothing came of it.
Undead Bone Fragment (Material - Uncommon)
A bone infused with a highly condensed death aura, making it 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 about this subject.
Well, Alex supposed that was enough information to hazard a guess. He inspected the bone’s shape—almost triangular, but chipped away by age. Ancient societies believed the sacrum bone housed the soul. Similar things were said about a great many bones really—and none of it was particularly accurate—but within those fables were often grains of truth.
In truth, the sacrum did not house the soul so much as it manifested it. It connected the spiritual to the physical, tethering a person’s soul to their body. And given that Alex’s blade had just Severed that connection…
It’s trapped there. The boss’ soul is trapped in this totem.
And his sword would have him reunite that soul with the remnants of his Aura.
That wasn’t hard to understand. Aura was ever a slave to its nature. His Undeath’s Bane had once belonged to something resembling a Tsukumogami, almost forming a soul—until a necromancer had twisted that soul beyond repair. When Alex had meditated on the Fallen Feather of the Phoenix, he’d finally understood. This Aura he’d preserved was still intact enough to remember the patterns of life itself… With the Boss’s Aura, it might have enough energy to complete it—and now it needed the boss’s soul. It was trying to complete its own Essence-signature.
That must be why she’d tried to take my soul when I forged her.
And perhaps it was also part of why she’d greeded for his mana. She may have been trying to overload and break her own trait to re-affix the pattern of her Essence binding.
Alex pinched his eyes. Those were harmless intentions, but his sword wasn’t a living, calculating, thing. She didn’t run on reason, logic, or even instinct, but the memory of those things. His Undeath’s Bane didn’t know what a totem was or understand metallurgy or magic. She had never truly lived. What she was attempting… it wouldn’t work.
But none of that mattered when he could hear her voice so clearly.
He heard it more clearly than he’d ever heard Lys’s voice after he’d lost his bloodline. He’d woven the Undeath’s Bane’s trait from his Vital Essence—they were bonded, and what rang clearest from her voice couldn’t be a coincidence. Sorrow and regret.
And something else.
A fire.
Alex opened his eyes. In his left hand he held the bone fragment, and in his he held the Pathforger’s stone—intricately laced with the emerald glow of essence, worth the ransom of a small kingdom. His hands tensed around it and almost began to crack. Then he
Then the undead’s metronomic melody rang in his memory. He looked between his hammer on the worktable, his sword beside it, and thought back to the rib bone he’d been given, and the words accompanying the act.
“I likely won’t be here when you return.”
Alex vanished the Pathforger’s stone and consumed the elixir instead.
[High-grade Refinement Elixir - Consumable]
A dense supply of high-grade Aspect-pure Aura designed to guide and aid refinement in preparation for forming a Spiritual Core.
He inhaled almost all of the blue-ish white Aura through his nose like wisps of pure energy—leaving only a sliver left in the vial. The Aura had a cold energy to it that quickly spread throughout his astral body, gathering as vapor in his diaphragm. There was a potency there that made his stomach feel both light clouds yet hard as iron—and instead of cycling it, he left it unfettered for the moment.
If the soul totem had riled the Boss’s Aura, the addition of the aspect-pure Aura seemed to make it go ballistic as Alex held the sacrum above it. It was so thick, it seemed he’d entered a cloud of miasma; and in this rotten place of cold, death, and darkness, Alex summoned the Undead Blacksmith’s rib and finally noticed a subtle, shimmering light.
Examine
???
This Natural Treasure must be appraised to be identified.
Alex smiled at those key words: Natural Treasure. Before it was unnoticeable, but in this maelstrom of Death, the dormant power of Life stirred—and the two’s resulting clash drove this Undead world’s Essence into a frenzy. The Aura in Alex’s gut vibrated in response, and the Vital Essence deeper in his soul flared. It was the kind of perfect storm that would either go terribly wrong or terribly right. And it would only grow more potent the longer Alex let it brew, so he took an hour, setting up his work station.
By the end of that hour: The forge fire was lit, the soul totem had cremated in a crucible, the Aura in his diaphragm cycled in an infinite spiral, and it seemed that all the Essence in Nightmare had gathered in his smithy. It was all too overwhelming to his senses, he withdrew them. Because in all that chaos, there was only one voice he needed to listen to, and she wanted to be reforged.
Alex obliged. He heated his Undeath’s Bane in the forge until the purple in her midsection turned molten yellow once more—as unsettling the grain was the only way to unsettle the Essence bound to it. Then, with hands like cracked, hot coals he poured the totem’s ashes over his anvil.
The last hour had passed in a blur and it was as though he’d entered a trance, dreaming the entire time about the rhythm of the Undead Blacksmith’s strikes and melody his hammer sung. Alex held the Undeath’s Bane over the anvil, unperturbed by his horror-struck instincts. His breathing was synonymous with the Phoenix’s, and as he raised his own hammer, all the power gathered in the room trembled.
The blacksmith who had casually tossed Alex a relic-quality natural treasure advised him to listen to his sword. By doing so he’d forever ruined her perfect temper. He’d unraveled her trait. He was about to introduce far too much carbon alloy, and possibly resurrect the Boss he’d tried so hard to kill. His Class hung just barely out of reach of his soul. Maybe he was making a mistake in not using the Pathforger’s stone. But Alex meant it when he’d silently declared it before the Gods:
I already know my path.
He swung his hammer down.
Meld
The world shivered. Then imploded. Then the Vital Essence in the totem's ashes melded into the blade and a visible black-purple flame flared from molten yellow. Miasma thickened in the room and energy crackled; The rib-bone haloed a luminescent light as the smithy came to life.
Even burned into powdery ashes, the boss’s totem was so dense with Essence that one strike wasn’t enough.
Meld
Meld
Meld, damn you!
Alex’s strike rang like the one the Undead had captivated him with. And suddenly, the peaceful inner-world he’d seen in the Blacksmith’s smithy overlapped with this howling storm. At its center, the Undeath’s Bane shimmered and a ghostly emerald glow ran through the sword’s molten cracks.
Bone Fragment has been integrated with Undeath’s Bane.
Then, a murky river of death surged past him in rapid currents and the sword’s trait wavered.
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.
The grim reaper visited once more; this time with his sickle. Alex didn’t swallow; he didn’t blink. He’d been waiting for this—cycling his elixir’s Aura in a spiral for this. In the dark reaches of Alex’s soul, cold vapor found its center; whereupon it clashed with the hot blast of his Vital Essence, forming the eye of an imminent storm.
The fire over his Undeath’s Bane was purely black now, but the fire within his soul arose violet. Death came close, yet seemed to always miss his heart—tempered by Life. The aspect-pure aura was corrupted by the aspects of life, death, and fire. Alex's soul was exposed to the void once more—yet instead of drifting away, it was caught in the infinite spiral.
He swung his hammer again, using a different skill this time.
Metalwork has been upgraded to Adept Rank.
Metalwork (Adept)
This skill can now imbue greater amounts of mana into metal, allowing its user to manipulate aura through the act of hammering.
Alex swung again, and again, capturing the Undead Blacksmith’s melody with each strike—and his rhythm through his cadence. The Undeath’s Bane’s control over the death aura had completely slipped, and Alex fought it back, fighting for his dear life with each blow.
His skin was singed by the heat of black flame. He imagined the hairs on his head turning white from the rampage of death. The aura had found his exposed soul and Alex had to scrounge for the courage to not rush his cadence in beating back the Aura’s assault. But at the storm’s center, beyond death, was the essence of nobility—Lionheart himself. It was up to Alex to decide what to shape from such fine clay.
No, it wasn’t just his decision to make. The surge of emotion from his blade would’ve been impossible to ignore. His strikes found a sense of tranquility amidst the chaos, and when the world the Undead Blacksmith had showed Alex overlayed reality again, he realized he’d seen that world before. It was the world Lionheart had lived in, that Alex had glimpsed during the man’s last moments. It was the world of Nightmare—but by a different. It was rememberance of life.
And somehow, Alex found it in him to rest his hammer for a second. To lean back—and as though this storm were nothing but a gentle breeze, he breathed it in.
Life. Essence. Enough… to form a core.
The instant he stepped from the eye of the hurricane the spiral became a vortex—a maelstrom of life, death, and purple fire. The feather found its center and glimpsed dawn on the horizon. His astral body began to overlap with his physical one. It burnt a hole in his gut where the storm raged, and where eventually his core would solidify. Alex picked up his hammer and continued his song—the purple flame rising to consume the essence of Lionheart’s soul.
No. “Consume” was the wrong word. Doubt gripped Alex’s heart as he realized he’d completely misunderstood something. She wasn’t just integrating it—she was accommodating it. She wanted to resurrect him!
He felt a shiver of fear. He didn’t understand why. They were bonded! Didn’t she know what would happen to her if she did that?!
The dead can’t be brought back, he told her. His sword didn’t listen. Of course she didn’t, she was a sword!
The grim reaper descended again. For now, the sickle at Alex’s heart was held at bay by what little control Metalwork could exert over his sword’s will. But if she succeeded, and that Essence was integrated into the trait’s binding not as a raw source but whole, it was only a matter of time before that deathly aura killed them both.
He couldn’t let that happen. And so, he fought his sword’s aura for control.
He still needed the essence fully integrated into the trait’s binding, so he let things proceed that far. But soon he felt the trait’s pattern fluctuate from into something far more unfamiliar and dangerous. He couldn’t allow that.
The storm of Essence raged within him, spiraling tighter and tighter around his sun. It began to solidify in his diaphragm as he refined it. As it did, the storm became harder to control. He was fighting a battle on two fronts. If he let his breathing and mental control slip that storm of Essence and Aura would run rampant—wrecking his body and spirit. If he let his sword connect the boss’s aura and the boss’s soul, his Vital Essence would be tinged the aspect of death and he would obviously die.
Luckily, the binding affixed in the trait Cleanse was no longer in its infancy. The more a pattern is reiterated, the stronger it becomes—and how many souls had they Cleansed that night? He swung his hammer again and again, hoping that would be enough.
But the Undeath’s Bane, too, was no longer in her infancy, and the death aura that she’d fought to suppress every step of the way now wanted exactly what she did. The binding began to unravel, her hold over its pattern grew stronger than Alex’s.
He couldn’t compete with that. He wasn’t a mage, he had no aura to call his own. He didn’t even have a smithing class yet! These shortcomings were precisely why he’d done something so outlandish as bonding with his sword. Because even outside of combat he was still chained and weak!
He almost summoned the Pathforger’s stone right then and there, hoping in desperation for that would fix this.
But… no. Alex gripped his fist, shutting his instincts out as he continued to hammer. The Undeath’s Bane wasn’t just some scrap of metal he’d found and shaped. He couldn’t be thinking like this anymore. He’d bound them together in fate and soul.
The sword herself was a part of him. She wasn’t just a tool to be discarded, or a replacement for Lys who was lost to time. She was his partner, companion in darkness, and kin in bloodshed. For better or for worse, richer or poorer, she was his. He would honor that and love her for who she was in both 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 hovered over the anvil before him, and he could feel her.
He no longer had to fight her for control. Her trait’s essence had been woven of his own Vital-Essence and he could touch the binding directly now that the link had stabilized. But by the time he’d figured that out, it no longer mattered. Death Aura trembled as it reunited with the totem’s Essence. Now, Alex understood.
She wants this.
His Undeath’s Bane wanted this, and the why and how didn’t matter for the moment. Aura wasn’t alive; it couldn’t reason like humans could. The boss’s malevolent aura was much stronger than what remained untwisted of its soul after all these years. 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, may not have understood the why or how, and might not have agreed even if he had. But none of that mattered.
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 repeatedly, 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 alone, 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. Better, stronger. He wanted to rise from the embers like a Phoenix, and soar like he never had before. He would blaze his way through his past and put it all to rest. If he waited until he was ready, he never would be. His knowledge was his greatest weapon and he was ready now.
With this, he would be unchained. He was no longer weak.
The storm within him shifted at the acknowledgement, his sun burning brighter than it ever had before as it seemed to manifest in his diaphragm. It was so blindingly bright he couldn’t look inward in its mere vicinity. But the moment his Core finished forming in his inner-world of darkness, he thought he saw a light that shouldn’t be there.
I’m… probably just tire—
Alex shuddered as metal rattled from the darkest stretches of his soul and a single lock of chain wrapped around his new core. Then another. Then more—blocking his path forward, constricting around it. Then his core shattered.
Alex groaned, doubling over. Nausea and dizziness struck him and he expected to be blown to bits by the rebound of his failed attempt. But that didn’t happen. He looked inward and his shattered core just… stayed like that. Shattered, yet whole. He looked out again and almost gasped when he saw the Undeath’s Bane in the same state. The cracks that the forge fire had mended now spread and shattered the sword to fractured pieces. And yet those pieces gravitate to each other—to a force beyond logic.
While Alex stood there stunned, Death Aura rampaged. He snapped to his senses. His Essence signature—it had changed, as though he’d formed his core without a hitch. And the Class he wanted was now within reach. He knew exactly what he needed to do to get it.
And to reforge his blade.
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 Enchant!
Cost: 18,500 EC
Alex’s still spun but he focused on the task. Learning a new skill was much like learning any actual skill. Unless you’re particularly suited to it, it doesn’t come naturally at first but slowly and clumsily. As the unfamiliar patterns intertwined with Alex’s essence, attempting to run mana through them felt like learning to breathe underwater. He hardly knew the first thing about runes and 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 and prevent blood loss from wounds and seal death-aspected afflictions.
With a shaky breath, Alex touched his two forefingers 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. In one final act of defiance, he shattered the chains that bound him for good!
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 ignore, but Alex grit his teeth, focusing past it. He had chosen his moment well. He’d waited until the very second the Lionheart’s Essence had fully integrated with the essence binding before enchanting his sword—the very second the deathly aura found its quarry.
Though Alex still didn’t know any runes himself, transferring an enchantment to another source was well within his capabilities. Whatever the runes were, they 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 went limp, and he fell to his knees. All vision in his left eye went dark, and it took all he had to keep his hand on his blade, funneling mana into his enchantment.
Creating a stable runic formation was another thing he had no clue how to do. 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. He guided its currents, aiding in his sword’s remembrance of the pattern she wanted. The trait for Cleanse unraveled into a swirling vortex, and at its center was that dark fire that had been the boss’s soul. The fire lost some of its darkness for a purple tinge as the vortex’s swirling currents 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.
Class Quest has been accomplished.
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 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 lay on the other side of his binding. A purple-black flame flared both from in and out. It was stoked by regret but blazed with desire.
The fire found its place in his sun and the fabric of his being shifted. Alex’s path no longer lay in combining his Blacksmith and Warrior selves. Now, he had the exponentially more difficult task of combining both with this new, unpredictable side of him that was just starting to burgeon. And he had no idea what to expect from it.
Proceed to Sanctum for affixation?
Yes, please.
* * *
Thankfully, mortal conditions were placed in stasis upon entering the Sanctum. By the time Alex’s vision cleared from the blur of blood and pain, he was too mentally exhausted to have a single thought.
The darkness enveloped him, and he stood on a surface that might as well have been empty air, with nothing to mark his weight except a faint glow beneath his feet, following his footsteps like small platforms. The only other light in this strange place came from far above—the constellations overheard, watching him with distant eyes.
No matter how often he came here, he never got used to it.
Alex walked forward, size and distance seemingly irrelevant in his stride. Only direction held authority here. When he stretched out his hand, it met the cold chiseled stone of the hulking gate before him. The Second Gates—the Gates of Choice. His touch elicited just enough glow to reveal the rest of the stone gates, his fingers tracing the intricately carved patterns until they found the orb embedded in its center.
Nothing happened immediately.
“I told you we’d meet 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 knew the look well—he’d been one. A salesman, that is. Not a car salesman, thank god.
“I see you’ve been living up to your namesake.”
My name… oh.
Alex groaned, opting to ignore that. It wasn't a shock he'd been found out already in any case. Beyond the constellations, beyond the guides, there was no hiding from the System itself, much less the Guardian of its gates.
“As talkative as ever, I see. And ever so curious! 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.
“Yeah,” Alex said.
“Good, good. Then I believe you already know the way.”
Alex stilled, but the Guardian simply gestured to the gates before him, to the orb at its center. When Alex looked back, he perceived the gates as grander, more majestic, with the intricate carvings of the Primordial Aspects glowing in their likeness.
His eyes found the orb at the center of the gates.
It no longer shone with the obsidian light from his first visit. Instead, a blue glow of water seemed to course within it, with a river’s grace. The orb shifted, crackling with an electric pulse, then darkened into a cloud of pure night. A thousand impressions flashed before settling on the purple-orange haze of fire.
The Guardian’s voice echoed from somewhere unseen. “I will be seeing you again, won’t I, Mr. Smith?”
Yes, you will.
Alex made it a promise. He grasped the orb 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 lent to voice its birth.
Only he who can lay rock bare,
May dance with stone beyond its hearth.
Patterns wove from Alex’s vital essence, completing him like a puzzle and changing him forever. His skills, abilities—everything he was—twined into one weave, his existence rewritten. It was as if all the circuits within him had finally activated.
The gates before him opened to a dark, uncharted expanse. Beyond lay another gate.
You have ranked up from Unranked to Tier 1, Novice.
He balled his fists to contain his emotions, grinning despite himself.
Your Class has been Affixed.
Stone Dancer
Stone Dancer is a hybrid class from the Blacksmith and Warrior trees, specializing in creating and using weapons. This class can harness traits with 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
You can unlock a unique weapon art for each weapon you craft once you reach proficiency with its trait.
* * *
To Alex’s senses, it felt like a storm of death had blown through, like a hurricane. But when he stepped back into the smithy, he learned that was not the case. Everything was where he’d left it.
Dusty tools stood against the walls or in corners. His anvil was stationed to the left of the workstation. The front entrance was only as shattered as it had been the night before. His notebook, filled with mad scribbles of designs, lay spread-eagled on filthy ground, where he’d thrown it in frustration.
The furnace’s fire flickered, its heat slowly dying. His Shamshir sword, all thirty-five inches of her, lay on the table where he’d last touched her. He trailed his fingers along her purple-black surface, sensing the changes more than feeling them. To the blind eye, she appeared riddled with cracks, splintered to the point that it was incomprehensible she maintained shape.
To the scrying soul, it was a different story.
Without the ginger care he’d used earlier, Alex picked her up by her hilt. Where she should have fallen apart, she didn’t. She whipped through the air, the pitch of her Oslumnen metal singing with a tinge of satisfaction.
Rather than shatter, she held.
The stone cobble she sliced through did not however—a shallow gash lined its surface where the blade had cut. And his Undeath’s Bane received no scratches, no dulling, nothing.
The blade might appear broken to a stranger, but Alex knew the truth. She was possessed by the soul of the scenario’s boss—or perhaps the man the boss had been, Lionheart. Her material was still Oslumnen, but his soul held her pieces together, protecting her from harm. She would not chip, nor dull in this state.
Alex wasn’t certain why things turned out this way, but it seemed to be what his Undeath’s Bane had wanted. Or close enough for now. That desire for more burned in them both. For now, he felt satisfaction in her hum—a different kind from when they’d fought together. And if she was happy, he was too.
No, happy was too weak a word. He was ecstatic.
You have forged a Named Weapon.
Title: Forgefather granted.
Nythca (Unique)
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, testing the name on his tongue.
“Nythca…”
Weapon Mastery aptitude with Nythca has been recognized.
Proficiency gains have been accelerated.
Weapon Mastery with Nythca has reached Rank Novice.
Progress to Rank Adept: 20%
Alex's smile made way for grim determination. He couldn’t explain what had happened with his core, but he was far from weak now and he would not be shackled by chains any longer.
It was high time he started to view Nightmare through the eyes of a predator rather than prey.
Heya! This is a picture of a Shamshir blade, for those of you who haven't seen one! This chapter took an extra day for me to edit, but I really enjoyed writing it.
