Shammus remembered another speech he’d listened to from the ancient king of King Forsivo VI, or to be King, still prince. The prince always seemed to have a handle on the situation, even during the war which could never be called such a deed.
It was a slaughter, and Shammus still hated himself for it. And he wondered if the prince ever felt the same. His answer came in the form of another time he was drawn into the general’s office.
“Eurylochus, splendid to see you here once more.” The prince wore a mask, the true face of the man who went by Odysseus, for they were the one that pulled the strings. There were five of them though.
“Of course I’d come at your call, General Odysseus.” Shammus knew he was talking to the origin of these odd names of Greek origin, the Prince of the Night. And he didn’t let that show, for the four other Odysseus tried to hide that they even existed.
The Prince of the Night looked in Shammus’s eyes, and the eyes thinned out of spite. “So, I’m certain you know of what I wish to tell you?” The prince already had the proper aura to be a king, just wasn’t in the position just yet.
“Of course, Odysseus. I am to work with Medusa in taking out the Prince of Lirdsuania, while Daedalus works on figuring out the ruins over 1,000 kilometres north of here.” Shammus didn’t dare sit, and when the prince nodded beneath the mask, he leaned forward on the desk.
“Do you feel bad over killing our enemy?” The question was amplified by the mask, Shammus was sure of it, but it still felt wrong to answer. For he did, but it was also a scenario that could lead Shammus to an early retirement.
“No, sir.” He lied, and he felt his own Magic Stat strain against the weight of his lies. The effort of allowing the lie to slip felt wrong. And the effort felt sharp as well. And Odysseus’s eyes crinkled beneath the mask.
Whether in disgust or joy, he couldn’t know.
66 - Legendary [I]
The party all hit claim at the same moment, and the skill levels went exactly not where the Shammus wanted, he saw all five of his class skills hit Level 99 in a singular instant, which shocked him for a second to feel all of them reach the pinnacle at the push of a button.
[Void Immunity -> 99]
[Void Star -> 99]
[Void Tear -> 99]
[Sight of the Abyss -> 99]
[God of Void - Descension -> 99]
It was clear he was not the only one to feel such a fundamental change in one moment, with his party also staggering about. Bariton groaned a little bit as he clutched at his head, and Shamms noticed he didn’t just see the void where it was hidden now.
[Legendary Skills, Items, and Traits are loading…]
It was visible everywhere, and it was outlining every single person in the room, and the whispers were ever present. He could understand them now too, which was also just wrong feeling, as something tore at his insides alongside the whispers.
“Save yourself.”
That line ate at Shammus’s mind between all the whispers as his translation skill activated for a split second, which worked better fundamentally than it ever had beforehand. It gave him the base meaning rather than just giving him the same wording in Common or Draconic if that language were closer. And that’s when the first of the two Legendary Traits finished loading.
[Legendary Trait Acquired; Translator’s Grand Debut]
Shammus blinked for a few seconds as the base meaning of the whispers all came to him in a singular moment. There were hundreds of meanings all hitting him at once, yet he could capture them all at once and internalized them to filter through them.
“Watch as the world falls from your gaze.” One of the whispers dragged through his flesh like sand, or at least it felt like it had. It was a terrible feeling, but his skin felt fine after the whisper passed by. The other whispers kept up. “Watch yourself.”
Some whispers asked of Shammus the impossible, to never trust anything. But then some whispers broke through. “The souls of the lost watch over you, Shammus.” It was the voice of Shadowing Voices, however it was missing the very divinity that let it roll over plains in the first place.
“We watch over you, as they watched over me.” Shammus looks worried at his party, but they all seemed busy seeing a new aspect of the world as well, especially how Clara’s gaze seemed to meet up with Shammus’s at the six that were focused on by the crowd.
The six had the largest connection to not just the void, but something more than the void. The void was a source of divinity, Shammus could see that now. And Shadowing Voices was in his head now, without too much to say. Shammus looks up at the wonderful chandelier, the golden light from the amber and flame within having a connection to the void as well.
Everything was connected through the void, and he could sense it all. Sight of the Abyss was a bit of a misleading name, he felt the weight of death with every movement he made, not as something he fought through but rather as something that fought through him.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” The voice of Shadowing whisked into his ear, his Translation Trait automatically taking care of the meaning. “It took me a while to understand the Abyss that is my- now your divinity.”
And Shammus was grateful to have someone else on his side on this. Bariton looked all over the place, and everywhere Bariton’s gaze lingered, Shammus saw more of the void, just a thin whisper of it.
A thin whisper was behind everything however, nothing seemed notable about where Bariton looked. However, where Pallad’s gaze lingered, a large portion of the void stood behind what was being stared upon. He almost didn’t notice the next thing loading in as the void spiked as two people began fighting.
[Legendary Item Spawned; Concealed Sword of Abyssal Avoidance]
[Stat Requirements: 500 AGILITY, 750 POWER]
[Durability: Infinity]
[Description: A sword forged from a glass shard born of the void, concealed within a cane forged from Voidsteel.]
[Capabilities:
Deals Extremely High Damage
Cuts through the Void to deal lasting damage.
Grants Temporary Intangibility upon successful parry.
Absorbs weight to stay tangible.]
It was a really good sword, and he felt his cane grow heavier in his palm, as he had to hold it up ever so slightly. The metal banding seemed to split slightly, not enough to be too visible, but the way the void itself seemed to seep out of the thin line made it obvious to Shammus.
He freed the sword, and the shape was interesting enough. It was jagged, although forged from a glass shard, and the void seeped out of the blade. The metal of the sheath; acting as a cane stayed light as the blade absorbed more and more weight.
The blade felt drawn towards particularly heavy groupings of void, and Shammus summoned his [Void Star] to see a small star of void appear in front of him. It slowly increased in mass as it absorbed parts of reality, absorbed the void from the surroundings, and he slashed at the void star and saw it split into two.
It was a clean cut, one that was hardly even visible similar to magically made metal parts; ‘zero-tolerance’ they called it when they wanted absurdly tight fitting parts. Shammus was confused at what it was any good for, but being capable of it felt great.
The star made from the abyss was bleeding out void faster than it could absorb it, and it slowly died off as the mass absorbed went into his sword. He placed it in the sheath, which he noticed now that the void bleeding out wasn’t just exiting the sword and turning to wisps for no reason.
The sword quickly returned to its original weight as the cane returned to a similar weight. The weight seemed to return to the world as the void returned where it naturally stayed afterwards as well, making Shammus doubt the ‘lasting injury’ claim.
The other party members wandered off to test off their new toys as well, so Shammus was left alone to test in this crowd of people. Of course, he couldn’t test every little detail of it as the next notification opened up.
[Legendary Equipment Created; Cape of Abyssal Consumption]
[Stat Requirement: 1000 MAGIC]
[Durability: Infinity]
[Description: A red and black cape held up with a pin of silver dragon.]
[Capabilities: Grants a secondary inventory that can store anything the user can place within.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Grants flight for 12 hours per day.
Grants Void Affinity]
Now his shoulder and sash felt heavier than before. This time, he could see something beneath the red velvet of his cape, and it looked like it parted every few moments to contain something else. Shammus tested the capabilities by grabbing a random bone he picked up over his journey.
When he threw in the bone, it passed through the velvet like a loose curtain, parting to show a miniature dimension of stars. It looked beautiful for the few moments Shammus could see within it, and the weight of the cape inevitably stopped being felt.
Then, it felt lighter than before, more merged with him as he got more attuned to the equipment the system was giving out for the quest reward. And of course, the system let him know it wasn’t just yet done being ‘generous’.
[Quest Rewards Remaining: 5 Legendary Tier Skills, 1 Legendary Tier Trait, 3 Legendary Tier Equipment]
Shammus looked at his party members, and it seemed they were getting their own equipment as the crowd merged back together, the six no longer available to the party so clearly. However that’s when he picked up a small detail regarding the void surrounding his team members and himself.
It was thinner yet it was more dense. The void was clearly darker, and the strings of void connecting them was also far more like a rope compared to the strings connecting the other people of this world to the void.
The void used to be visible as though little particles in this world, little pockets of the abyss populating his vision, but now it’s more clearly a filament behind another filament of matter and reality.
It’s a more underlying nature, always shifting with time and yet also never changing all the same. It was a contradiction, something to never change yet always do so with time. And then it didn’t help that the next notification hit him like a sack of bricks.
[Legendary Skill Acquired: Contradicting Reality]
Shammus desperately wanted to test it, but settled for dealing with not exactly knowing what to do, as he heard of it before. It attacked the narrative of someone, which was why it was a Legendary skill.
Other Epic Skills reached into the narrative, but the risk was that sometimes the Narrative fought back. Legendary skills didn’t have that caveat, but it was likely to kill whoever he placed it upon.
He placed it upon his sword of Justice, and saw that it flickered. The status went from Legendary to Epic to Rare back to Legendary, whether it’s durability was infinite or not, whether it’s condition was pristine or not was flickering all the same.
And Shammus simply took a step back as it flew into his cape. He felt a connection die out, as the void began to claim the blade. The knife was called back out by Shammus’s hand, and he felt a decent chunk of his mana was used to do this.
But cracks started to form in it, and these cracks were nearly invisible to himself, only being able to see them due to his absurdly high Sight of the Void level. These holes in the knife were clearly visible only to him and him alone as people stepped back.
Then, almost as fast as it’d switched back to pristine condition, parts of it collapsed inward, and all Shammus was holding was dust. He couldn’t even track what was happening within the narrative of the weapon as he had no knowledge of Animancy.
Shammus let out a dry laugh as he thought of what that meant, Animancy being one of his tools that he couldn’t even understand. Until another system notification loaded, just in the nick of time.
That’s when Shammus realized the System was capable of bestowing truly theoretical information via traits. It felt unfair then, that a majority of the traits physically enhanced people without properly telling them how to use it most effectively, only stating the effects.
[Legendary Trait Acquired; Animancy Scholar of Ages Past]
Shammus staggered back as the knowledge hit him, causing the crowd to disperse around him further. He was certain he looked insane in all of their eyes, but now… he understood precisely what he watched his mana do.
It was still more effective to let the system do it for him, as the System optimized it to such a fine degree that even the mana loss of converting it was accounted for; and used ambient mana to help make up for it, potentially using it’s own mana as well…
But now he saw how the patterns formed, what precisely changed in the narrative of his knife. The narrative’s first contradiction was a pretty major one, but it was light enough, it followed along the story that the narrative’s first instinct was to embed it.
The pattern was one of constant use, and even a memory of the original blade was implanted. The copy tried to meld it into it’s own story, but due to the time gap between the start of this clone’s existence, it tried to fix it’s rarity; turning Common for a split second, but then it thought it was the original.
When it tried to call upon more memories of the original, it noticed that everything was off and tried to revert the changes, making wild guesses of how powerful it was, even slipping into Mythical for a split moment.
Since it’s narrative was more empty, when the knife slipped into Legendary again, it tried to pass it’s own mana storage, increasing the tier to Mythical for a split second as the cracks started to form. It decided to attack the memories implanted as it tried to fix itself, splitting the narrative again.
The narrative then had three versions, one where it was itself, another with the contradiction implanted perfectly, then finally a third which was the real one, where it just vastly destroyed itself.
The narrative couldn’t decide between the three, causing the collapse into nothingness, the narrative reverting to zero instead, which usually would do percentage based damage; unfortunately any percent of infinity according to one of the narratives, is still an infinite amount.
And so it broke. It was more simplistic then he ever thought possible, how something as light and lack of loadbearing as implanting a memory of the original would cause such catastrophic damage.
It terrified him. Legendary skills had more precision than his bare fists, such was the way the System optimized them from whoever first made the technique, every use of them adding to the collective narrative of the system.
And that was also why he couldn’t target the system with the skill. Even when he tried to replicate it, it risked the narrative snapping back its own memories and merging with his own; causing more catastrophic damage to him than the original target.
He noticed he was getting distracted from his goal, now that he’d gotten used to some of his toys he’d find his party again. Nothing better to do after all. So he followed his rope in the void, avoiding the small strings of the void entwined around something invisible connecting every other person in this ballroom.
[Legendary Skill Acquired; Thirst of a Drought]
Shammus rolled his eyes as he muttered a thanks to the system, for the idea of such a skill, probably also a skill still enticed him but did not help him find his party. He eventually sighed in giving up in finding his team, for the system was very adamant on him testing his abilities.
He gripped his other dagger, Agony. The two daggers were worthless now that he was being pushed into a more one handed swordsman style by the system, and he activated his skill. He saw his mana leave his body, and attune to Hydromancy at the skill’s activation.
He then saw the mana violently tear at the water, which was majorly in the handle as that turned to dust. The water was absorbed into Shammus’s body, and was merged with Biomancy to ‘heal’ him.
Since he required no healing, it did nothing but splash against his body harmlessly. He saw the biomancy attempt then let go of the water. It was an odd site, and now his suit was slightly wet.
He collected the water himself with his own hydromancy and placed it in an empty cup nearby on a table, presuming that would case the least damage. He gripped the cane tightly as he felt the cooldowns of those abilities were long.
He was just about to take mental note on how many things he had left to acquire before the system kept track for him, with a little notification. Maybe it was more a notification for whatever pulled the strings were Judine’s theory to fall correct.
[Quest Rewards Remaining: 3 Legendary Tier Skills, 3 Legendary Tier Equipment]
He awaited in patience the other equipment pieces and skills, only getting a new answer as he felt a weight tug at his ears then vanish. He lifted up his hand to his earrings, and found two notifications, one for each earring.
[Legendary Equipment Created; Left Dragon Wing of the Void]
[Stat Requirement: 1000 CONSTITUTION]
[Durability: Infinity]
[Description: A small silver wing, with small rubies dotting the edges.]
[Capabilities:
Grants flight for user 12 hours a day.
Allows the user to spend 100,000 Mana to send an ally or themselves into the void for 18 seconds.
Allows the user to take half damage dealt to themselves or an ally to the void for a mana cost proportionate to damage deal.
Part of set [Dragon of the Abyss]]
[Legendary Equipment Created; Right Dragon Wing of the Void]
[Stat Requirement: 1000 CONSTITUTION]
[Durability: Infinity]
[Description: A small silver wing, with small rubies dotting the edges.]
[Capabilities:
Grants flight for user 12 hours a day.
Allows the user to absorb 10% of all damage dealt from as health.
Allows the user to deal 1.5x more damage from Void Based Attacks.
Part of set [Dragon of the Abyss]]
To be completely honest, Shammus felt a little overwhelmed seeing these rewards, and feeling the effects of them as well. Shammus now felt a little weightless as both his earrings and his cape offered him flight for such a constant amount of the day that it was pointless to not.
The freedom allotted from the feeling of weightlessness also helped him fly up to look for his party members, when suddenly the last equipment piece weighed him right back down. The floor didn’t crack against his sudden acceleration downward.
[Legendary Equipment Created; Boots of Infinite Mass]
[Stat Requirement: 750 AGILITY, 250 CONSTITUTION]
[Durability: Infinity]
[Description: Black Leather boots with the air molding around them.]
[Capabilities:
+12 to Evasion
Doubles Gravity every 2 seconds active.]
Shammus groans as he disables the boots to stand back up, he looks back at the system notification showing that he still wasn’t done growing, and he was getting a little tired of the constant growth, all from hitting claim on a quest ability.
He was worried, but then the whisper of Shadowing reentered his mind. “Yes, the system is probably preparing you for something, but it’s not coming any time soon, I can confirm that personally.”
The whisper hardly did anything to comfort Shammus, but he just had to take the previously a god’s word for it. Even if they killed him much easier than they had merely survived Heavenly.
[Quest Rewards Remaining: 3 Legendary Tier Skills]
Shammus looked forward and went back to flying, allowing the air around him to mold to keep him at the altitude he wanted to be at, the equipment using itself up to manipulate the mana, but keeping in pristine state.
The clock on the landing of the stairs tick ever so slowly, as Shammus’s next skill was acquired, quite self explanatory too.
[Legendary Skill Acquired; Time Stop]
He didn’t have to test this one, which allowed him to patiently wait the final two with open arms. When they didn’t arrive yet he let a frown replace his neutral expression, and then they both hit at the exact same instant.
[Legendary Skill Acquired; Destroyer’s Mana]
[Legendary Skill Acquired; Envious Ignorance]
Well, those two drew Shammus’s eye, but now that he had everything he was going to find his party again to talk to the sins…
******
