Fate Weaver’s Legacy

#082 – And that’s how I met my beloved weapon

Once I got my daily required dose of Jeoff trolling and recovered a little, I went ahead and opened the big boss chest, my flaming glove lighting the way.

Four items greeted me inside. A pile of crystalline scales, a small ring, a new type of system ticket I hadn’t seen before, and–

I gasped in delight.

“Chat! Look at this beauty!”

I didn’t hesitate and snagged the large war-axe into my hands and looked it over.

The main shaft seemed to be made out of the same cyan crystal as everything else in this dungeon, only smoother and more pleasant to the touch. The blade itself seemed to be a combination of the crystal and some kind of black material at the edge, smoothly transitioning from one material to the other – which made me wonder how the hell this would have even been made.

It was also surprisingly light. I would probably have trouble holding it with just one hand, but with both of them, I could swing it fairly easily.

How much did this thing weigh? Was it just naturally light or had I gotten stronger than I thought?

Eh, irrelevant.

“Well, that’s perfect! I was looking for a weapon to use! I don’t even know what it does, but this is definitely going to be my third Soulbind Item when I get that upgrade.”

Jeofffff: bruh at least wait to appraise it

I rolled my eyes.

“Of course I’m gonna appraise it first. It’s not like I’m gonna get all the nineteen skill points I need for Triumvirate before the cooldown is up.”

Still, even without Appraisal, I could do a pseudo-appraisal by poking and prodding it with my Ether just to see if it had any hidden functions like most magical weapons I’d used.

Sure enough, there seemed to be two distinct sets of pathways for Ether inside this thing.

What was with this dungeon’s rewards and them having two modes of function?

Anywho, I tried carefully pouring Ether into one of them and the edge suddenly got even darker in the already oppressive darkness. I had to squint and shine my flaming glove from a different angle to better see what was happening.

The war-axe’s edge seemed to be covered in a thin layer of the same black flames the boss had used. When I poured a bit more Ether into it, the flames got larger and seemed to consume the surrounding light just like the sparks.

Huh, neat.

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Hold up. Didn’t that mean that I could now use pretty much every attack the boss had used? Fire Breath, a psychic attack, black sparks from the glove, and now the black flames?

Heh. Classic video game design. Stealing the boss’s stick after defeating it. Although it would have been nice if I could get that psychic attack on an item as well, rather than relying on Rend.

Anywho, since chat kept insisting, I tried lifting the axe, pouring a bit more Ether into it, and then horizontally swinging it.

I almost accidentally launched it into the darkness since I wasn’t used to swinging it yet, but I managed to hold onto it. In the meantime, the black flames left a sort of afterimage of the cut I’d made through air. There was no fancy cut-shaped projectile, unfortunately, but this was still pretty cool.

Of course, I still didn’t really know what the black fire could actually do, but if it really was the same stuff the boss had used, then it could at least annihilate the crystal shards from my gun. So that was something.

With that experiment done, I pulled my Ether back and then poured it into the other set of pathways.

The edge turned from black to cyan, making the whole weapon monocolored.

Neat, but… it didn’t really do anything at the moment. Not even when I tried swinging it through the air like before. I was a bit confused as to what I was missing and tried to feel around it a bit more with my Ether.

Upon closer inspection, the Ether at its edge seemed ready to burst out, but it almost felt like it was missing some kind of trigger. Pouring even more Ether into it just made it accumulate more, but didn’t actually let it burst out.

I grunted in annoyance as I couldn’t quite figure it out. But then, just as I read one comment about perhaps needing to hit something with it, I accidentally let the edge touch the ground.

The resulting explosion of crystal knocked me straight back into the chest and completely scattered the pile of scales inside.

“Gah! Ow, dammit… Okay, I guess we figured out what that does,” I said as I wryly looked at the crystalline hedgehog structure the axe had left on the ground next to the chest.

It was actually quite the powerful attack. I just had to become strong enough to handle the recoil… Or just use less Either, I guess.

“Anywho! This axe is awesome! A bit bulky to carry around all the time, but if I can soulbind it, then I can just put it into my Soul Pocket and then bring it out at any time! It’s perfect!”

It was also probably the most powerful melee weapon I’d gotten from a dungeon so far. The lightning sword was pretty good too, but it couldn’t compare to this.

It was a bit strange, but also kind of made sense. The sword had been from a B-rank dungeon, but I didn’t really have to do anything to get it. Whereas this thing was from a D-rank dungeon, but it was the reward from the final – presumably – boss.

Well, regardless… There was still more loot to be had.

I shoved the axe into my backpack – which was awkward enough that I had to shrug my backpack off and carefully put it in so the edge didn’t damage anything – and then took a look at the rest.

I grimaced at the mess I’d made when I’d knocked myself back and began re-gathering the crystalline scales. Since I’d learned from last time, though, I first made sure they weren’t razor sharp for no good reason – which they weren’t – before beginning to stuff them into my backpack.

“Hmm, these look like some pretty good material…” I mused as I looked at one from up close.

They seemed to be quite durable from what I could tell. Maybe I could fuse them with my clothes for even more defense? Or maybe they had some other use. They could be a potion ingredient or something.

Well, it was hard to tell much of anything for the time being since I didn’t have Appraisal, so for now, I just stored them all.

Next was the ring.

I had no idea what it did and didn’t want to risk it being cursed, so I threw it into my backpack as well for now.

Finally, the system ticket.

Unlike every other ticket I’d seen so far, this one had a background with two colors – a gradient of red and light blue. Its only other feature was some kind of symbol that looked vaguely like three fourths of a clock.

“Well… I have no idea what this does, but it looks cool, I guess?”

There were already dozens of theories in chat as to what it could do, but before I could begin to theorize along with them, a system window appeared in front of me.

Instant cooldown ticket
A system consumable that resets the equip cooldown for all your skills and titles.

I blinked as I automatically read the text.

“Huh. Neat… Wait. Why can I see this? I don’t even have Appraisal equipped! Did I transcend the system and am able to use Appraisal even without having it equipped now?!”

My eyes immediately snapped to my glove instead and I wished really hard to appraise it, even trying to pull at the mental switch just like usual.

That switch just wasn’t there, though, and no system window appeared.

I frowned.

Eclipsoon: system items can probably be appraised by anyone
Eclipsoon: to make it fair for other races

“Hmm… I guess that would make sense… Yeah, actually. How would races without Appraisal even know what the system stuff does? Still weird, though…” I shook my head. “Anyway! This thing sounds really useful! Now I won’t have to worry about being caught with my pants down. I could have really used this for that boss so I could swap Rend in…”

Actually. Was that the reason why I’d gotten this ticket as a reward? Was the dungeon mocking me?

Jeofffff: yoooo you can safely try that title now

“Title?” I blinked. “Oh! You mean the fire thing I got in the water park? Hmm…”

I quickly went and opened up its description.

Immolator:
You killed over 500 living beings or dungeon monsters using fire, and you killed 100 or more living beings or dungeon monsters in the span of ten seconds or less using fire.
Having this title equipped grants the wielder major fire resistance, and increases the power of all fire-based attacks by 50%.

[INNATE] skill: Immolate - Use a variable amount of Ether to immolate any target you or your weapon is touching from the inside.

“Ooo, right. I completely forgot about this thing… Why did I call it useless again? Right, because swapping titles has a month long cooldown and I didn’t want to risk getting rid of my phoenix skills…”

But now I could swap to it and if I really needed to, I could use the instant cooldown ticket to swap back. It would be a waste of the ticket, but…

Well, in the first place, back then, I hadn’t wanted to swap to it because the phoenix skills had been my main source of fighting power, right? But nowadays, I had my gun, my clothes, my new axe… I didn’t necessarily need the phoenix skills that much. Sure, it was nice to have them, but… Immolator also gave me a potentially useful Innate skill and I still had the flamethrower in my gun self, which combined could maybe replace the phoenix skills.

And this was all assuming that the phoenix skills would just get disabled once I switched the titles. Some chatters theorized that only equipping the skills would become impossible, but any phoenix skills I already had would be good to go.

Hmm…

I could totally experiment with that.

…Probably not right now, though. I’d already screwed up once by getting a skill upgrade with uncertain effects in the middle of a dungeon. I wasn’t about to do that again in a dungeon where I knew monsters could actually respawn.

“Okay! This warrants some more investigation at some point. Later, though.”

I shoved it into my backpack with the rest of the loot, hopped off the chest, and as the chest vanished into smoke, I lit up my hand on fire to use as a torch again.

I looked around the pitch black darkness and… realized that I had no idea which way I’d come from. The fight must have taken me further down the hole, and because of the gravity shenanigans, I couldn’t even tell which way the ground was inclined. If it even was inclined at all at this point.

I huffed.

“Chat? Which way did I come from? I kinda wanna look around a little more… See if there’s any secret rooms and whatnot.”

Too bad I’d lost my map. That would have been super useful in this place. Oh well.