B3 Chapter 346: Entrance, pt. 5

Kaius blinked away the notification of his changed blade, smiling deeply. Silver veins still pulsed within its glassy depths, twining around the faintly glowing glyphs and runes that hung suspended in the base of his fuller.

A change, but not the change.

There was still more to come. Silver blood beat faster in time with his rising anticipation.

As if it could read his emotions — sympathised with his plight — Kaius felt A Father’s Gift pulse. Power flared from the sigil branded on his sword, a wave of force that shot through the metaphysical that linked it to his soul.

Fires wavered in his centre, a wind of change roaring forth, only to rebound and redouble as it turned and surged back down the link.

Prickling heat built in his hand, and Kaius saw the blade and sun on his palm start to glow. Incessant need and pressure wafted off his blade in waves, the sigil that bound them growing brighter by the second.

It reached a fever pitch — the transformation was upon him.

Strong and omnipresent in the crucible, atmospheric mana gathered in great streams — a multicoloured collection of motley affinities swirling into a tight vortex that was drawn implacably down into the grasp of his sword.

That same hunger reached towards him — into his soul. Kaius didn’t flinch, knowing that it wouldn’t claw at his essence with the same avariciousness. Their bond was total — complete.

He could already feel what it needed. Soulfire.

Spinning a thread of burning gold, he guided a wisp of his innermost being into the pulsing link that bound them together. It was out of his grasp the second it crossed the threshold, leashed to his blade’s whims to be used for a process he could only half perceive.

A quenching in his essence, and a release of all the bound potential it had squirrelled away from every material he had fed it.

**Ding! Growth Weapon – A Father’s Gift is ready to advance! Proceed?**

Once again, he accepted the prompt without hesitation.

The vortex of mana it pulled into its depths grew — so dense that he could almost feel the energy against his skin. A latent charge, ready to erupt at the slightest notice.

More soulfire poured from his centre, seeping deep into the emblem on its fuller — a blade suspended point-down beneath a burning sun. Burning light spread, creeping out through metallic vasculature that beat in time with his heart, spreading further along its reaches with every pulse.

Every moment, the sword drank more from the well of power it had gathered — until Kaius couldn’t help but gasp at the sheer volume of energy it had bound and compressed within itself. Pure mutagenic potential, tightly corralled and directed — enough, that were it to be loosed for even a heartbeat, Kaius feared he wouldn’t survive the resulting detonation.

One by one, the runes that burned within its fuller unspooled to become a tangled mess of lines. Magic and meaning, held in an unformed stasis by sheer pressure alone.

They spun and twisted, floating in place, until Kaius watched power flow out of his blade’s sigil in a steady wall of force. A maelstrom of energy made of multiple sources. Life and crystal from the Spent Forgeheart, and blood and metal from Elder Blood mixed with the dominant power of severance and apotheosis that had been contained in the Waters of Zabriel.

He peered in, enraptured — only to notice a fourth power. His own. Essence from his soul, threaded through the potential that his gifted materials had bequeathed his blade.

The long-stored power suffused his weapon utterly — morphing ruins as it shifted physical material with equal ease. His blade burned like the stars, and flowed like water.

The blade of his weapon stretched — growing a little longer. Not by much — not so that it would become unwieldy — but enough to give him a reach he had previously lacked. Three fingerwidths and a hair more at most. The edge spread wide, crystal flowing like pure water into a sharp concave edge. It thinned the blade — almost impossibly so. It was an edge impossible to achieve on a mortal weapon of war — so thin it looked like the crystal should shatter from a simple breath.

With the exaggerated bevel came a widening of his blade — at most by half a fingerwidth. Enough that Kaius could tell the sword would cleave better than any headsman’s axe.

As the light within his sword grew, Kaius knew that without Truesight he would have long since been blinded, left unable to witness the change that happened before him.

Tangled once-runes started to shift, lengthening and reweaving themselves into new forms — dense and tightly knotted, with a depth to them he had never expected to see suspended in glass. Yet they seemed caught in motion — never resting to settle into a final shape.

The original Ykkardian sigils had been washed away, replaced by system-runes in truth. Three tightly woven formations, made up of dozens of runes that seemed to pulse and shift to a new form whenever he tried to pull apart their secrets. The new enchantments were larger and more complex — stretching halfway up the blade, compared to its earlier fifth.

As his sword’s inscriptions seemed to finalise, the glow slowly started to recede — revealing fine details that had been hidden beneath the radiance.

The banded black and grey of the remaining layered steel on his blade had been replaced by a metal of purest silver — the banding only visible as a hazy shimmer when it caught the light. The similarly pure veins that ran through the crystal portions of his sword now pulsed with a faint light, peaking with every heartbeat. It wasn’t mana, and yet…he didn’t see it with his physical eyes. Only the revealing nature of Truesight could see that faint radiance — a force he had no name for.

As for the silver fluid itself — it had grown ephemeral and ghostly, as if it only existed a half-step into this realm.

While the crystal of his blade edge had remained as clear as it had been before, the warping had grown stronger. The scales of his armour that he could see through its depths wavered like a mirage — and shimmered like they had been coated in a thin layer of oil.

The guard and grip of his blade was the final change. Finely wrought filigree gleamed like it had been polished for a century, the same silver as the metal banding on his blade — while the woven leather wrapping on his grip had shifted to a red the colour of blood, glossy and almost liquid.

Kaius sat and stared, stuck in mute awe as the final vestiges of power were consumed.

A system notification thrust itself upon him a moment later.

**Ding! Growth Weapon – A Father’s Gift has advanced to Epic (Tier I)! Steep your weapon in its purpose to unlock further advancement!**

He was on his feet in an instant, A Father’s Gift almost leaping into his hand.

Kaius felt the changes instantly. First, and most prominent, was its weight. His sword had always been a heavy one at four pounds — over a quarter-stoneweight — to maximise the advantage he held with his strength and height.

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At his current stats, it had been as light as a feather; so much so that if he’d gotten any stronger, he’d have started to struggle with actually transferring the force of his swings appropriately.

That problem was gone now. He couldn’t exactly measure the thing, but his sword had heft. Enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if it was four stoneweight or more!

It would have been a horrible weapon for an unclassed — even most first tier melee combatants. Even ignoring the simple strength it would require, the inertia would be almost impossible to control, encouraging overextension and hampering parrying.

In his hands? It felt right — like he could finally leverage the full might of his empowered body. If A Father’s Gift had felt like a feather before, now it felt substantial — just like a blade should.

Snapping into a high-guard, Kaius shifted his weight onto his back heel and pivoted through his wrist. A twist of his wrists sent his blade whirling into a viscous downwards cut.

Silver pulsed in time with his racing heart, a visible declaration of the hot joy that coursed through his own veins. He raced through his stances, feeling the new shape of his blade.

It was perfect — utterly moulded to his hand and stature.

When he’d first received the blade, it had been a little large for him. An intentional choice, he assumed. He’d been fifteen then, and not fully through his growth-spurt. By the time he’d reached his current stature, it had been almost perfect — as close as anyone could really expect a commissioned blade to be.