Runeblade-Chapter 282B3 : 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 UncannyDodge, 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.

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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.

“Regardless, we were ambushed, and my father forced me to flee while he held them off.”

His listeners were silent. He focused on stirring in the beans—keeping himself distracted from the painful images of Father’s concerned eyes, and their final words spoken together.

“Did you manage to escape?” Kenva asked, her voice a quiet whisper.

Kaius gave her a grin that was only partially forced—after their most recent flight, he’d been looking forward to this.

“In a sense—we were living on a plateau at the time, close to the Wildguard mountains that split the outer Arboreal Sea from the deep Sea. They chased me straight off a waterfall; I only avoided death by drowning because I brushed up against a portal to the Great Depths.”

Kenva sat bolt upright. “Wait! That’s why you all laughed!” she shook her head. “By the mountain winds, that’s some divine irony isn’t it?”

To his left, Porkchop chuckled. “Your gods definitely have it out for Kaius, but I think it’s worked out for him.”

“I can tell,” she gave his brother a smile, before turning back to him. “You survived the Depths unclassed? How?”

“Carefully, very carefully. It was an experience that made me far more confident in our chances now. Thankfully, it was only the second layer; any higher, and I likely would have died, let alone saw the kinds of successes I did. Regardless, I was slow and careful—took measured risks, to improve my skills, gear, and abilities.” he explained, leaning back from the pan to rest against the pillar behind him.

He had Kenva by the horns now. The ranger was fully engrossed in his tale, listening intently as the firelight flickered over her pale blue-white skin.

Continuing with his story, Kaius shared his first few weeks in the glowing blue underground forest that was his home for so long. How he had almost been done in during his first encounter with the spiders, how he had tussled with his first Champion, unaware of its strength—and almost paid the price. He grimaced when he shared the experience that had made him so leery of large cats, and smiled when he mentioned the intense smell that had wafted from the cave—his own avariciousness leading him to his second Champion encounter with the bear, and his lucky find of a natural treasure that had led to him becoming Observed.

Leaning over to scratch his brother behind the ears, he shared how they met—how Porkchop, after crossing the Wildguard mountains, had also run afoul of the same group that had pursued him, and in a twist of fate, had been chased over the waterfall himself. Warm comfort washed over him as he spoke of the deep bond they forged during their trials, as they slew Champion after Champion.

When he mentioned their discovery of Honours due to their exemplary achievements for unclassed, Kenva leaned in—immensely curious to learn more about the System’s rewards. Soloing champions, together and as a group, and discovering glyph binding.

“So that’s how you gathered so many,” she whispered. “To think they could be earned so early—I'm surprised more haven’t attempted them.”

Kaius shrugged. With the knowledge he held now, it seemed like a worthwhile risk — for the group honours, at least. For especially prepared trios, it wouldn’t even be too risky if it was approached correctly — like he had suggested to Yanmi do in Dawntown. However, they had lain unknown, and without the knowledge of that reward, there was little reason to send promising scions into the death-pit that was the Depths. Even in the relatively safe first layer.

“It must have done wonders for your class, I assume you stayed down there gathering them until both of your class selections had come to pass?” Kenva continued.

“Not quite,” Kaius shook his head. “With the fate of my father weighing on me, I could not bear to spend an extra second confined, not when I could be spending my time trying to learn his fate. When Porkchop shared a secret of his own people, a skill that created a bond of equals, and our completed legacies evolved the skill, I knew it was time. We were already fully capped, after all.”

“You didn't.” she gasped.

“We did.”

Their return to the goblin-infested dwarven city—where he had first forged his glyph, and received his first honour—was glossed over quickly. As everyone leaned in, he spoke of the Honour he had received for spending a year in the depths, and how he and his brother had slaughtered their way up the city's streets, racing for the ogre that waited at its peak.

When his story reached the moment of their final battle with the siege ogre, Kenva had her knees in a white knuckle grip as she listened to his description of its might. How it had shattered statues with a swing—and how close his brother had come to death, before he had made his last gambit and consumed the Psychokiller tonic.

“After that…we received more Honours. One was a Grand Honour, Kingslayer, for killing a Guardian unclassed—plus fifteen all, instead of eight. That led to…several more unexpected developments.” he finished, pausing slightly as he thought on how to word his final moments in the Depths.

It was a grand secret—likely more dangerous than even his legacy—and care had to be taken so that he did not come across as flippant about his hand in the changing fate of the world.

So he spoke, slowly and haltingly, of his distorted memories of time stretching into infinity as the system broadcast a message they had never seen before. How the world changed, and they unlocked their classes early. How they were abducted, a god of unknowable power plucking them from where they stood, blood still caking their bodies, and sent them sliding through the world. He still got shivers thinking about it—how direction had become meaningless as indescribable sights flashed passed his eyes.

By the time he shared Ekum’s warnings—that the world was doomed unless someone took the reins to progress the integration—Kenva had grown pale. She did, at least, look relieved as he shared the tips they had gotten; about how best to reach the next stage, and how to search for aspects.

“And then we returned—now knowing that the only way to stem the bleed was to progress the integration as fast as possible, and that we were among those best positioned to do so. I have no illusions that Ekum spoke to us out of kindness; he was clear it was out of mutual benefit. A simple desire for a quicker escape, and additional rewards if we should manage our task,” Kaius finished, letting the words trail off as he looked at Kenva across from him.

His words seemed to have broken her—shocked her beyond anything she could have anticipated.

She sat mute, blue-white skin even more pallid than normal, and stiff as a board.

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