Forged Legacy

Chapter 126 - Legacy's Redoubt

As if answering his declaration, the gargoyles sitting atop the bell towers in each neighborhood began screeching in alarm as every bell tolled in unison.

“What’s going on?” Harvey asked as his family instinctually pushed away from the table.

“Another battle is starting,” his father exclaimed. “Heaven’s armies are conjured in temples at the heart of the city, so they sound the alarm to warn us to take shelter whenever they’re passing through.”

“Perfect. Help me put on my armor, and we’ll join them,” Harvey said. He had to shout over the blaring alarm, and the sound of steel clattering onto the kitchen table was barely audible.

“No! We need to get to the basement!” his mom shrieked.

“You need to see what’s really happening out there. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe!” Harvey encouraged.

“You’re not going either!”

“Yes, I am. I won’t force any of you to join me, but I’m not going to wait around praying the angels find a way to win this war. Now help me strap this on!”

Harvey didn’t wait for a response, quickly pulling on his padded underclothes while his family stuttered between helping and running to the supposed basement. Tears were streaming down his mother’s face, causing a tremor in his heart, but he wouldn’t relent. He’d seen what happened to people who waited to be saved. In his last trial, almost all of them died.

He wasn’t willing to let them meet the same fate.

Bringing them to an active battlefield obviously had risks, but he was confident that he could keep them alive as long as he found a Loom before the fighting began.

He hadn’t been sure what to do with his Level 45 Class skill, but learning he’d be training his family to fight for the next few months helped him decide.

“Eleanor! Help your brother put on his armor,” Steve commanded.

“Dad, are you crazy? I’m not going out there!”

“That’s fine. You can stay with Max and your mother! Just help him, please?”

“Steven Thorne! You are not leaving this house! Not while those monsters are out there!” his mother wailed.

“For months, we’ve thought we lost our son, but the Lord brought him back. Stronger than ever. I’m not going to let him walk out there alone.”

“Then don’t let him leave!”

“We both know I couldn’t stop him,” his father laughed. “I trust him, and if he says we’re not prepared, what kind of father would I be to put the burden of protecting us on his shoulders?”

“Come on, Mom! At least let us see for ourselves!” Tyler pleaded.

She stood rooted in place, tears openly streaming down her face as Max clung to her waist. Harvey couldn’t tell if she wanted to scream or sob as her knuckles turned white.

“I’ll bring them home,” Harvey urged. “I promise.”

“Fine!” she relented. “If you don’t, I’ll beat you till you’re blue!”

Harvey nodded while Eleanor cinched the final buckle tight. Once his mother, brother, and sister finally darted out of view, an array of guns and magazines he’d looted appeared on the table.

“Be careful, I don’t know enough about the materials here yet to know if these are strong enough to hurt you,” Harvey explained.

“I’ll be fine, I have my rifle-shooting merit badge,” his brother joked.

“I don’t think Brother Duncan owned any angel guns,” Harvey laughed.

They both picked up a rifle, and he put the rest back in his ring and dashed outside. “Where’s the Loom?”

“The what?” his brother shouted over the blaring alarm. “California didn’t turn you British, did it?”

“Not the Loo. The LOOM!” Harvey screamed, emphasizing the M. “Big wooden thing with spools of thread that you use to make skills!”

“It’s in the church! Follow me!” his dad explained before dashing across the lawn. The building was nestled in the heart of the neighborhood, only a few blocks away, and Harvey was relieved to see it wasn’t locked. He hadn’t seen any sign of the army marching by that his mother described, but loud roars in the distance signalled they were close. Inside, a pair of porcelain-skinned angels were discussing the afternoon lectures. They were shocked to see three humans barge through the front doors, and proceeded to scold them as his father pushed towards a set of double doors.

“Excuse us! You’re supposed to be sheltering in place!” a female called after them. Harvey didn’t answer, choosing to flare his aura instead. It was the easiest way to communicate that he wasn’t one of their typical students.

“You’re going to create a skill?” Tyler asked eagerly.

“Yep. My Class hit Level 45 this morning,” Harvey explained.

“Awesome! I’ve seen it a few times when the chosen join the army, but never up close.”

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Harvey paused, his mind blanking out for a second. “Wait, you haven’t used it yourself?”

“Not yet, the instructors said it’s best to find our path before wasting the extra slots we get from starting at G Grade,” Steve added.

[Damn, they really are holding them back.]

“You’re kidding me! So you don’t have a single skill yet?”

“Nope,” Tyler complained.

“And what do you mean by extra slots? Cash mentioned something similar, but there were so many things I wanted to ask him.”

“Only newly integrated species start at the G Grade. They say it’s one of the ways the System balances out the Integration. We gain skills every 5 levels in the G Grade and every 10 in the F Grade, so by the time we reach the E Grade, we have 10 in both our Class and Profession. People born under the System only get a skill every 15 levels,” Tyler explained.

“But they have other advantages. Their weaves resonate with their race from birth. Combine that with knowledge to create Classes and Professions well-suited for their race, and every skill they create is pretty powerful. That’s why they want us to take the time to learn before we use up our slots.”

[I guess that kind of makes sense.]

He mulled it over, and some of his apprehension towards their teaching methods disappeared. His own skill set was strong and versatile, but each was born of necessity. Gaining five extra skill slots afforded the flexibility to try and cover every base, but the angels couldn’t do the same if they’d only be getting their third by the time they reached his level.

It does if you have the time to train a specialized army. I don’t think we do.

“Well, I hope you two are fine with a hybrid approach. I’ve done ok on my own, but I’ll admit you’re better off combining their knowledge with my experience.”

The Loom rested under the pulpit inside a chapel. Rows and rows of padded pews lined either side of carpeted walkways leading down towards the front. It was just like in Veils End, although this church wasn’t the dusty, rotting skeleton of a once beautiful house of worship. The air was cold and clean, and rays of color shone through intricately designed stained glass windows.

Instinctually, his voice lowered to a whisper as he moved towards the crystal orb. Whether it was the chapel or the Loom itself, the room demanded reverence. Seeing the tool used to commune with the System in the same place where one tried to commune with the heavens drew an interesting parallel, but the subtle sound of the alarm outside reminded him he didn’t have time to think about it.

Carefully removing his gauntlets, Harvey placed his hands on the orb. Warm mist exuded from within, sealing him away from the outside world as a sea of visions appeared around him.

So far, his Forgefire Arsenalist Class had focused on creating or empowering his weapons. Conjuring fireballs, grenades that turned drops of ink into eruptions of energy, and spectral projections of his equipment. But an arsenal was more than the weapons it housed. It was the place that protected them until they were needed.

Harvey wasn’t sure it mattered, but figured having his skills resonate with the words the System used to describe his Class couldn’t hurt. He wanted his Skill to create a bunker of sorts. A place where he and his allies could be protected while unloading his array of weapons onto the battlefield. Lightning bombs and fireballs wouldn’t help much if you died before you could detonate them.

First, Harvey found the memory of intercepting the Thanefire Drake's fireballs with a shield conjured by Innovator’s Arsenal. Each one would have sucked the life from dozens of Veilstriders, but a single well-placed barrier displaced their energy before they reached the ground.

Next, he added his work helping Elena and her students inscribe the walls around the Hell Hotel. Their inscriptions both reinforced and added lethal traps to the barrier, repelling the Ossari with a combination of durability and a promise of retribution against anyone who attacked their home. Instead of adding the same lightning burst arrays his armor and the defensive wall used, he hoped the System would take his final three ingredients into account when deciding how the skill would function.

He also added the final battle against the Undead, hoping to infuse his skill with the countless attacks his armor had endured without breaking. In a way, his armor was a bunker for his body, and now he was adding a second layer both for himself and his allies.

The Loom already surged with the memories alone, but adding his three Imprints turned his budding skill into a brilliant star. Copies of each tattoo peeled from his skin before joining the memories floating between him and the Loom. He hoped that including them in the creation process would help him to slightly change the Skill’s effect depending on what aspects of his legacy he infused into it.

The Guardian of the GIlded Return would strengthen the barrier while hopefully adding a healing effect for the people within. The bunker would act like the fortress walls depicted by the tattoo, protecting the golden tree hiding within.

Tempered Heart would add the strength of his conviction to the defense, along with a healthy dose of forgefire spat in the face of anyone who dared poke a hole in his remolded heart.

The Architect of the Veils End would allow him to turn the bunker into a weapon, fulfilling the aspect of his legacy that let him choose whether his creations were tools of life or death. He envisioned an effect similar to Fangbreaker, where the bunker released a final burst of destruction when it looked like the bunker would be overwhelmed, turning it into a frag grenade that sent shrapnel in all directions.

There was no sound or sensation inside the haze to provide hints about his new skill, only light. Satisfied, Harvey gave his assent to the unfathomable power hiding inside the polished wood and spools of thread, and steely gray, shimmering gold, and fiery red threads tumbled down to be woven into his new sigil. In seconds, the image of a steel dome took shape. Forgefire leaked from scars on the metal, and rays of golden light exuded from small windows. Lifting off the Loom, the sigil floated towards Harvey’s back. Searing pain erupted between his shoulder blades as his weave adjusted to connect it to his essence conduits.

Even without seeing it, Harvey could tell the sigil was large. Significantly larger than his other skills, and hungry for vast amounts of essence.

[Expensive, but the description sounds like it’s exactly what you were looking for.]

“That was incredible!” Tyler exclaimed.

“Were those really your memories we saw?” his dad added with a giddy tone Harvey had never heard from him before.

“They were,” Harvey nodded.

“You really did fight a dragon,” Tyler beamed. “What does the skill do?”

“See for yourself!” Harvey smiled.

Legacy’s Redoubt | F Grade | Epic:

Legacies are forged and forgotten every day. It is the survivors who etch their own into the Tapestry of existence. Conjure a fortified bunker around yourself that shelters any allies within. The Redoubt may be altered by infusing different aspects of your Legacy, adding or modifying its effects. The durability of the structure and potency of any infusion effects scale with Endurance and Willpower.