I scratched at a stubborn stain in the shape of a curving arc on the ground, one of the few that still remained across the floor after a repetition of the laborious effort. This was supposed to instill a sense of discipline in my developing brain and teach me the real work behind being a real blacksmith.

  It worked with mild efficiency.

  I was in part focused on the earlier conversation with Belfray, my mind occupied with the general strokes of the plan that involved, but not limited to, taking this whole kingdom. It sounded, to my amazement, like a piece of cake, but that was only possible since there at the helm stood Celestial figures.

  My part was to play the prince.

  As Belfray said, there was no need for me to involve myself in the process. The Palark Kingdom had already prepared the foundation and supplied a generous amount of justification to anyone who mildly entertained the thought of having a go at the throne. The people were desperate. The class difference was too steep. Labour depended solely on the slave population, or citizens of the Kingdom who were hardly different than slaves themselves.

  Enter the long-lost prince, the so-called bastard son who would bring with him the winds of change. So long, slavery. No more disparity between certain castes of the public. Bye-bye big houses.

  It sounded like a socialist revolution.

  Well, not really.

  “You’re taking your time with that one,” Hardel’s voice echoed in the archaic blacksmith, bouncing back from the hard walls with a probing edge. “Do you believe removing that stain is the best way to use your time?”

  “You told me to clean the place,” I muttered. “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “You do whatever people tell you to do, then, is it?” Hardel asked, stepping around the anvil and approaching me with his eyes gleaming. He pointed a finger down at that stubborn stain. “There’s merit for certain people to be blind in their faith, to do as they are told without questioning the task handed to them, for those who are conditioned with directions can only prove themselves useful when there’s a whip motivating them. I’m not that cruel of a Master. Leave it.”

  “But I—”

  “That’s not a stain,” Hardel said, shaking his head. “I nicked it this morning with a sword.”

  I stared at him, then glanced back at the so-called stain, not really believing him, before I found my fingers scraping against the edges of the floor worn by whatever nicked it. I was left speechless.

  “A man must learn when to speak for himself, even if he must do it against his betters. Get up.” Hardel turned and reached for a small sack sitting beside the left wall, picking it up with ease as something shingled inside. “Bring your sword.”

  I’d left Beatrice in her sheath by the door, which I picked quickly after having been instructed to do so, hesitating for a second whether this was another test or not, but ultimately deciding that I was being a touch paranoid.

  “Bring it out,” Hardel said, and I obliged, removing Beatrice from her shell and letting her breathe the air of the dusty room. “Place it down.”

  I placed the sword gently on the workbench, still not sure where we were going with this. It couldn’t be that this stinky Master had finally decided to grant me some real insights, could it?

  Elves were hard people to please, and there was never an indication of pride, nor an acceptance, from this odd man who was here for a singular purpose.

  “Working on a sword is a dull, boring, tedious process for those who are deaf to the steel’s intent. It’s just manual labor. A dull repetition of the same effort until a manageable outcome is achieved. Anyone can do it. Craft the same exact product to satisfy the ever-demanding greed of a nation’s army. There’s no shame in that.”

  “But we’re not going to do that,” I said when Hardel gave me a look that basically meant he was expecting some sort of an answer.

  He nodded slightly, after which he opened the small sack and pulled out a handful of gleaming dust from inside. They shone like mini gold pieces in the dreary room, sparkling gently across his palm, but it wasn’t their beauty that tugged at my interest. There was something about them, a sense of gravity, a feeling of power that made me inch closer.

  “This is Corax Dust, made from the bones of a Corax ground into fine dust, strictly from its ribcage. Do you know what a Corax is?” Hardel asked.

  I searched my memories and tried to squeeze something from the lessons I got from Belfray, but there was nothing.

  “A Corax is often a Herald Beast. A magnificent creature of nature, born from the purest of silver in a plane where laws of nature were twisted as such that for every Herald who dared to roam its reaches and lost their life in the process, the laws allow the birth of a Corax in response. They carry the lingering lifeblood of the deceased Herald in their bones.”

  I blinked down at the gleaming dust on Hardel’s palm, amazed at the fact that there were planes out in the Planar System with such twisted laws, horrified that what he held in his hand might be the remains of a Herald who once lived and probably ruled a world of his own.

  “Once captured, a Corax is placed in a tight cage and left to rot on its own terms, for even a single tear in its bone structure will spoil its richness, which is why only an able hunter would attempt to catch a prey as delicate as this one,” Hardel said as I studied the fine dust.

  It looked amazing.

  “Depending on the particular beast, it can take two to three years for it to shed its entire flesh, after which its bones will be ground into fine dust in a vacuumed space. It would then be presented to a blacksmith to be forged into armor or a weapon. There will be no pay, for every hunter capable of hunting a Corax would surely be aware how great a gift it is for a blacksmith to be granted the opportunity to work with such a material.”

  “And you’re telling me all this because?” I asked. He did tell me to be more active, after all.

  “Because while Corax dust makes for fine weapons or armor, its potential carries a different meaning for a Runesmith. Not only is it more durable, its ability to house soul energy is infinitely better than a magical leather of the same quality,” Hardel said, leaning close and letting some of the fine dust spill into my palm which I opened right away. “This one’s a rare specimen. A Golden Rank Corax. You will use this to inscribe your sword.”

  “I’m going to do what?” I thought my eyes would bulge out of their sockets. “You’re letting me…”

  I paused.

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  Something was not right here.

  During my blacksmith lessons, I would get an occasional chance to be part of the forging process, usually playing the laborer by dutifully carrying out every single order I’d been given.

  On rare occasions, I would get my turn with the hammer, but those never lasted too long.

  Why the sudden change, then?

  “You’ve got your task. It’s up to you how you want to carry on with it. You have one week,” Hardel said, gave me a hard glance, then turned and made for the exit. I was about to protest when before he left the blacksmith, he pulled something out of his ring and slung it toward the wall. A metallic ring echoed as that something thudded on the ground.

  I watched the odd blacksmith vanish into the corridor before I actually went on to get a look at it, frowning slightly when I saw how tightly it was wrapped by a thick cloth. My breath hitched as expectation built up, but calming myself, I first retrieved the sack of Corax dust and placed back the amount Hardel spilled into my palm. I was back at the door a second after.

  Untying the wrapped cloth, I found myself looking at a silver sword. It had a basic handle, covered in quality leather that crunched softly when I took it in my hands. The blade itself was lightly curved, its smooth body broken only by the circular shape etched into its surface, made entirely from what appeared to be a million particles of fine dust.

  A sudden cold crept swiftly across my fingers when I risked a touch, my back prickling with the sensation, my heart thumping in my chest. I felt, at that moment, the unmistakable presence of soul energy, colder than ice, devious like a snake, but familiar in a way that made me giddy like a little kid.

  Without waiting, I poured my own soul energy into the dust-like jewel pieces, watching them with pure focus as golden lights sparkled across their surface. They wavered like a dreamy haze before settling on a fixed shape, like letters from a ghostly book materializing before me. Before I knew it, I was looking at a string of words placed neatly inside that circular patch upon the sword.

  Born from silver. Strength of the blood. Devours the unjust and drinks upon their soul.

  I stepped wearily back when the cold crept further into my spine, barely managing to place the sword back into the cloth as my fingers began cramping uncontrollably. The Undying was fast at work in spreading a gentle warmth across my body, but it took a heavy moment for me to get myself back together.

  Shrugging my shoulders and cracking my neck, I glanced back at the sword with my back still prickly with the earlier sensation. The circular patch upon the weapon had already turned into its former gleaming self, looking like a fancy adornment meant to give an edge to this otherwise plain sword.

  And yet I was now painfully aware that the patch hid a series of Runes inside of it. Or rather, a long Rune that was Practical in nature. Not only that, it still carried bits of soul energy belonging to the former owner who last used this sword.

  It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in this life.

  That night, after my daily heart training—Radek insisted on using the word “heart” for his lessons—and the long, boring session of history with Belfray, I was supposed to practice my Runes. That was my current curriculum. Then I would sleep and wake up in the morning, and repeat.

  Instead, I’d sneaked into the night with two swords clasped tightly in my arms. One was wrapped by that thick cloth, as I didn’t want that soul energy to creep slowly through my innards. Its cold was the most insidious thing in the world, and such was its potency that a touch lasting more than a minute could freeze my whole body solid.

  In comparison, my soul energy was like a wind facing a raging blizzard. Sure, it could put a bit of a cold into a Bronze Knight’s body, but that was about it. It couldn’t make a Runed Knight like me shiver senseless before an active hearth.

  So while I could carry it by the handle and keep myself safe as long as I refrained from managing a bond between that Practical Rune and my soul energy, I decided to err on the side of caution. Belfray would be proud. He was probably watching me from somewhere in the mansion, anyway.

  I mumbled the string of words that belonged to what I suspected was a higher-grade Rune to myself on the way, searching for a place where I could find a healthy supply of live beings. The runic letters used on the sword were archaic in nature, not dissimilar to the alphabet Gerard had so kindly recorded for me, but different in a way that there was a certain strangeness to their composition. It looked like someone really old wrote it.

  Still, though, the meaning was quite on the nose.

  Born from silver should mean the origin of the Corax whose bones were used in inscribing the Rune. After all, those creatures were literally born from silver. Strength of blood should be obvious, too. The following sequences were… well, I was about to find out.

  My search brought me near one of our ponds, where I quickly spotted a school of fish floating lazily across the surface. Activating General Muffle, I inched closer to the pond and reached down with the slyness of a predator as the fish remained undisturbed by the corner. At the last second, I switched to a Soft Anchor and scooped one of them swiftly, the poor creature wriggling aimlessly even as my skin plastered itself across its body.

  I waited just enough for its struggles to cease, then I dragged myself back from the pond, into an opening. The fish was not completely dead yet, but it wasn’t far from its inevitable fate. I placed it down on the ground before pulling out the abomination of a sword Hardel had given me.

  Its curved tip shone under the moonlight as it squelched into the fish’s small head, ending its life in one smooth motion. Blood began trickling out the wound, spilling slowly down the ground, its faint stench not entirely enough to mask the fishy smell permeating into my nose.

  For a second, all was silent.

  I frowned, thinking whether the Rune sequence was being too literal in its meaning, but that didn’t really make sense. Even if the intent behind this Practical Rune was to regard first whether the opponent killed by the sword was unjust or not before actually sucking its blood, there were just too many inconsistencies and questions involved in the process.

  Of those, the most obvious one was for whom should the opponent be unjust? There was not a universal law to abide by when deciding what was unjust or not. A cold-blooded killer who thought of the act of murder as a simple hobby might feel that being chased around by police was an unjust response. Similarly, an overly zealous priest might think a religious cleansing of the unfaithful was justified by the very codes he’d been raised with.

  Then there was I. I didn’t think for a second that this fish was being unjust against me by simply existing. No, I just thought the “unjust” part of the Rune was that, a fairly common code shared by righteous Knight Houses across the Planar System that couldn’t possibly hold a particular weight in a Rune sequence.

  I’d heard way bigger and fancier codes from Belfray, who, to his credit, knew much about Path of Glory than possibly every single person in this mansion.

  Anyway, you couldn’t put such a mechanism behind a Rune. It just wasn’t realistic.

  As expected, the bloody trickle oozing from the wound saw a change soon after. It paused in mid-air, its tip forked into smaller streams that looked like thin, red strings. Then they drifted upward to the sword, where the Rune patch showed signs of activation through a sprinkle of lights.

  It was like watching a thousand red ants crawl upon a steely mountain. Drops of blood got sucked further up across the sword, into the Rune sequence, where they dissolved and vanished out of sight. I could feel faint tremors around the handle of the sword, nothing big that I couldn’t manage, but they were still signs that showed the Rune sequence was indeed drawing power from the fish.

  I would’ve found it disappointing had the fish not jerked upward and begun floating in the air. Its eyes bulged out, entirely lifeless, and not long afte,r its whole body was covered in a yellowish membrane that looked like a fish-shaped bubble.

  It was at that moment that I realized I’d unwittingly activated my soul vision and thus could see the soul membrane of the fish. Or rather, the soul energy resting inside that little body.

  Under my widening eyes, it popped from a point and streaked into a yellow stream that poured directly into the Rune sequence.

  The same cold sensation appeared around the tips of my fingers clasping the handle, but this time, since I wasn’t touching the Rune directly, it remained as an uncomfortable sensation as the sword sucked in the remainder of the fish’s soul.

  Once the process was over, I gave the sword a look over, finding it hard to put my feelings into words.

  In short, this thing was a menace. A complete cheat that could feed itself as long as it could find enough foes to kill off. More importantly, it was essentially made for people who lacked enough soul energy to manage a Practical Rune.

  It certainly was an inspiration. Until now, I was thinking of making Beatrice as durable as she could be by granting her a Grade 2 Endurance and Strength Rune, not really considering I could make use of Practical Runes in my sword, as well.

  Wait…

  Was that why Hardel gave this thing to me? Was the whole reason he even bothered to bring this sword to inspire me to become more creative? Where did he get it from, anyway? He couldn’t have crafted it by himself, right?

  Yeah.

  There was no way.

  He must’ve just thought a runed sword could help me when inscribing Beatrice.

  ……