B3 Chapter 282: Re:Depths, pt. 3

If there was one good thing about retelling his story, it was the consistently stupefied expression he got when he shared he had a complete legacy.

He knew it was a shocking reveal, but he suspected that a big chunk of the reason Kenva was looking at him like he’d laid an egg was that it was so blatantly just the beginning of his experiences.

Giving the ranger a wry smile, he waited for her to process his words. Slowly her jaw closed, and she blinked.

“A complete legacy?” she asked in disbelief. “As in, ten skills merged into your first slot, then nine into your second, and so on?”

“Yep,” he replied lamely, his lip popping on the final syllable. “I’ll even throw in some hidden knowledge of my own—if you cap a completed legacy, your final skill receives a free evolution.”

With that, Kenva fell silent again—her eyes boring into his own. She swallowed thickly.

“Continue.”

Kaius nodded, readjusting his seating as one of the many pictograms carved into the soft stone started to dig into his back. He took a another swig from their waterskin.

“It is a good legacy, and although my father was wracked by weakness—one I now know involved soul damage that limited his stats and general skills, and utterly prevented his use of his class skills—he still was more than capable enough to help me fully cap everything during my unclassed period, though it would have been a squeeze with how dangerous my resistance skill was to merge.”

He had the room now, even Porkchop and Ianmus who had heard the story before were listening intently.

“My sixth skill was a merged rune mastery skill—a particularly flexible one, that many in my family had leveraged to master the art. Father had used it to become a runesmith—a really fucking good one at that. He’s who did the legwork to devise what would eventually become this.”

He held up his hand, showing the scrawling black of jagged lines and pointy runes that wrapped around the back of his handss and stretched up his wrists. Turning his hand, he showed her the sigil on his palm—a blade, held suspended beneath a sun.

“I saw before, but there was never a good time to ask,” Kenva said, staring intently at his glyphs. He knew she was seeing more than what was just on the surface. “They’re three dimensional—your father truly pioneered such an invention.”

Kaius gave her a sad smile and shook his head. “No, that came with the class—even with all of his skill, knowledge, and power, my father could only devise a pale imitation of what I now possess. The hope was that if it worked, the feat would be enough that the system would grant me a class that would do most of the leg work for further development. He was right, and the discovery of a third branch of spellcasting netted me an Honour.”

“Why go through all that effort?” the ranger asked.

Ianmus chuckled, “Because he’s an idiot who likes punching things.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Porkchop huffed in amusement.

Kaius smiled too. “He’s not exactly wrong. I always wanted to cast and fight up close—you can’t really do that when you have to channel. My original glyph was our attempt to get around it, locking down my mana into prepared spells that I could activate at will. As for the rest of my skills? Well—”

He dived into his legacy. Rapid Adaptation and how it promised to make him resistant to almost anything, given time and exposure. Warforged, and its successor Liturgical Bladeform, forming the backbone of his fighting style. Explorer’s Toolkit, allowing him to spot danger, see weakness, navigate, and survive in the harshest environments. Adamant Body, and later Tempered by Dissonance, shoring up his weaknesses—making him as tough as iron, in body and in armour. Truesight, an ocular skill similar to her own, but more focused on distance and the reveal of what was hidden. Runic Lexicon, which taught him runes, and later Tonal Weaving, which let him inscribe his glyphs directly into his flesh. Mana Manipulation, which became Resonance Amplification—improving his internal mana control and empowering his spells with additional destructive force. Lesser Regeneration, which made him as persistent as a hydra, and Uncanny Dodge, which made him as slippery as an eel.

With each skill, Kenva’s shock grew. She stared at him with new eyes, and a new understanding of his strength.

“That is…phenomenal. To not only be complete, but so broad and flexible as a base to build on? Your clan must have been well established indeed. What of your final skill?” she whispered

“I’ll save it for later in the story, when it becomes most relevant. As for my family, I know little about them—only that they were from somewhere far from the frontier, and were about as ancient as a Dynasty could be. In all honesty, I was hoping you’d recognise the name — like I said, I am the final scion. They were wiped out when I was a baby, my father said we were the only survivors.” Kaius said, melancholy cloaking him in a heavy embrace.

They were bittersweet memories.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Kenva paused, before shaking her head, “I’m sorry — I’ve never heard the name of Unterstern ever. Your clan must have been a secretive one, because I would expect a litany of famous feats to match the greatest of Vaastivarian dynasties.”

He gave her a small smile, it had been a long shot anyway — Ianmus was a trained scholar and even he hadn’t heard of his family before. He continued with his tale.

“Despite our remote location, my relatively peaceful life of training wasn’t meant to be. Before I could finish my third skill, we were ambushed—by men backed by the same group standing behind Old Yon, the Onyx. I suspect that as a group they are rather fragmented and isolated, otherwise there is no way I would have been kept under such light guard.”

Kaius paused, leaning forward to stir the vegetables that sizzled in the pan in front of him. He waved his hands, some soaked beans hitting the pan with a flash of steam.