Forged Legacy

Chapter 151 - Consecrated Curveball

The group passed more than one crumbling church on their way back to Heaven, but opted not to use one of their looms. Cash explained that the System provided objects couldn’t easily be destroyed, but they wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any surprises showing up mid-creation.

Angels still manned the silver walls, so they made Cash take the lead with his wings spread wide. His feathers served as proof of their allegiance, helping them avoid any unlucky sniper shots. The heavy weight of all the fighting they’d faced that day began to lift once they returned to the daylight and vanished completely once they were safely inside the gate. Muscles held tight, ready to fight at any moment, melted into pure exhaustion. Harvey yawned, stretching his arms wide.

“Only four more days until we get a break,” Cash laughed.

“Never thought I’d be so excited for Sunday,” Tyler agreed.

“Should we bring Cassie and the others along to see our new skills?” Steve asked. Harvey pointed to the gaping hole in his armor and the splatters of blood covering theirs. Cash rushed to hand each a bottle of Cleansing Gel that they tipped over their heads, reminded how out of place they looked when a toddler walking with her mother started pointing at them from across the road. It dealt with the blood and dirt, but all it had done for his destroyed armor was make it shiny.

“Good point,” his father said.

Instead of heading to the chapel at the heart of their own neighborhood, they entered the one next door. They weren’t exactly hiding from Cassandra, but wanted to avoid accidentally running into her if at all possible. Class was in session, with almost all of Heaven’s humans sitting in a church, slowly leveling their professions as angels taught them about the Father, the System, and their future paths. Only the kids too young to sit still all day were out playing.

The chapel holding the Loom was reserved for typical sabbath services, so they didn’t have a problem getting inside. Harvey half-expected Tyler to dive straight for the orb resting atop the pedestal, but was relieved to see him turn towards Cash.

“I’ve got some ideas, but I want to hear what you guys think.”

“Shoot,” Harvey smiled.

“I thought about what you said, Cash, about hitting the brimfiend's fireball out of the air. It’s definitely different, but that’s something I’ve been practicing all my life. Is there a way I could use that? Like hitting skills back at people?” Tyler asked.

“Anything is possible. I don’t know what kind of resonances a skill like that would use, but there are plenty of examples of shields that reflect attacks back at the enemy. Something like what you're describing would probably be a lot stronger since it would be much harder to use.”

“I think it’s a great idea. I don’t know how much you guys saw, but that demon I fought was able to use my own skills against me, and it was really powerful. I think he had to take the hit for his skill to work, but you’d be safe as long as you’re fast enough to intercept it,” Harvey offered.

Tyler turned to his father, who just shrugged. “Any excuse for the thousands of dollars we spent on baseball to be worth it sounds great to me.”

“Hey! You loved watching me play,” Tyler grumbled.

Steve smiled heartily, clapping a hand on his son's shoulder and pulling him close. “I know, but I like giving you a hard time about it.”

“So that covers the first one, and I’m thinking the second should be some sort of projectile. No offense, Harvey, but I don’t want to rely on you to make those grenades for me all the time.”

“None taken,” Harvey smiled. “I was going to suggest it if you hadn’t.”

“Be careful trying to replicate those grenades,” Cash warned. “I suspect the only reason Harvey is able to make so many of them is that most of the power comes from the ink he’s adding manually. If you aim for something similar, you’ll only be able to make a few before you run out of essence.”

“That’s fine. I wasn’t planning on grenades anyway,” they all paused, Tyler’s impish grin clearly begging one of them to ask what he was going to do.

“I’ll bite,” Harvey finally said. “What are you gonna do?”

“You’ll see,” Tyler replied, overly casual as he sauntered towards the orb. Before anyone could say anything, he placed both hands on the crystal, letting the rainbow haze cut him off from the outside world.

“Diva,” Harvey chuckled.

With a plan already in place, it didn’t take long for the memories to start appearing in the space between. First came his fight with the brimfiends, where Tyler’s silver mace batted away a fireball. Then came an image of Harvey’s shield intercepting the infernal dragon’s flames. It wasn’t his brightest moment, considering the attack still sent him blasting away like Team Rocket, eventually crashing through the ceiling of a little girl’s bedroom, but he could see why Tyler included it. In a way, this skill was more like a specialized shield than an attack. It needed to intercept an attack and redirect the momentum, holding the projectile together just long enough that it could find a different target. Rounding off the combination were various memories of batting cages, practice drills, and a particularly long at-bat where Tyler managed to battle through eight foul tips before hitting a walk-off homerun. The only reason Harvey recognized it was because Tyler hadn’t stopped talking about it for weeks.

Visions sank into the Loom, spurring the brown, black, and gold spools to life. The image of a wooden bat, complete with the logo of Tyler’s favorite brand, surrounded by a shimmering golden barrier, took shape. Lifting off the frame, it floated towards Tyler’s right arm, searing itself onto the top of his forearm. Harvey watched him grimace in pain, flexing his fingers as he massaged the newly formed tattoo.

“Down for a little batting practice?” Tyler asked, looking at Harvey.

“Depends. Bullet or Fireball?”

“Neither!” Steve scolded.

“Oh come on!” They both complained in unison.

“It’s batting practice,” Tyler added. “He’s not gonna aim right at me.”

“You never know,” Harvey shrugged. “Didn’t you have a practice one time where your coach made you stand in the batter’s box until you got hit 10 times? Something about learning to wear it for the walk?”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from NovelBin. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Harvey,” Steve warned. “You can’t shoot your brother.”

“Oh my hell,” Cash sighed, the words sounding weird coming from the young, almost surfer-looking angel. Not being able to swear or take the lord’s name in vain made him sound like Harvey’s grandma. “Can you just show us the description already?”

Contact Hitter | G Grade | Rare:

Sometimes, the best you can do is get the bat to the ball. You can’t strike out if you always make contact! Coat your weapon in holy essence, manifesting a broad, radiant shield along the path of your swing. This shield stabilizes and redirects incoming projectiles based on your angle of impact. Its integrity depends on the quality of your swing and may fail against sufficiently powerful attacks. Size and durability scale with Willpower and Endurance.

“Your coaches always liked that you could battle at the plate,” Steve smiled. “It’s the main reason they let you keep hitting even though most pitchers don’t.”

“Let’s go test it,” Tyler beamed.

“Finish your other skill first,” Harvey rejected. “We’ll need to leave the walls again before we try anything.

Tyler rolled his eyes before darting back to the Loom. This time, he hesitated a bit, adding and removing memories while he struggled to find the right combination. Two components never changed, one showing him drill the brimfiend with one of Harvey’s orbs and the other showing him and his father raining heavenly wrath on the Cleo-shaped succubus while Harvey gawked at her.

Steve and Tyler were both growing fast, but they really didn’t have much combat experience yet. They’d reached level 15 in a handful of fights, while Harvey had killed dozens of creatures by the time he was working on his third Class skill. Their speed was a double-edged sword, forcing them to include more vague memories than he had.

Eventually, he settled on 3 more visions pulled from his illustrious pitching career. Everything sank into the loom, and Harvey watched as silver and gold thread stitched into the form of a baseball. Instead of white with red stitching, his was silver with criss-crossing lines of gold. The sigil seared into the back of Tyler's right hand, the bat and ball combo making his arm look like something a five-year-old with dreams of making it to the big leagues would get temporarily tattooed on himself at the end-of-season pizza party.

“Alright! Come on!” Tyler called, walking out of the chapel before anyone could complain. Steve still had two skills of his own to make, but they both knew it’d be better to let him get this out of his system first.

The four walked back to the gate, only moving a couple of hundred yards away to an empty baseball diamond surrounded by smoldering debris. Harvey took his place on the mound, laughing as Tyler drew lines in the batter's box and tapped the plate with his mace. It was a lot shorter than a baseball bat, but that didn’t stop him from taking his normal stance. The spiked head circled slowly as his leg muscles tensed.

“Ready?” Harvey asked.

Tyler nodded. Using as little essence as he could without the skill failing altogether, he summoned a fireball. He’d always been protected from the heat, but he could feel that his resistance to the resonance was improving.

Hopefully, I’m getting close to another Mark, he thought.

Winding up, Harvey lobbed the fireball towards home plate. The mace began to glow, a golden projection twice the size of the actual weapon appearing around the weapon and tearing through the air. Even so, the shaft swung right over the fireball, missing completely.

“It only works if you hit it!” Harvey mocked.

“That throw was terrible! Even a blind umpire would’ve called that a ball!” Tyler complained.

“Doesn’t matter! You swung!” Harvey laughed. He knew it was a bad throw, flying low over the plate, but he’d never admit it. Winding up again, he tossed the second a little higher. Tyler’s mace glowed once more, cutting through the air and making perfect contact with the orb. Harvey’s eyes went wide when it shot right back, getting larger and larger in his vision before exploding against his helmet.

“Ahh!” Harvey yowled, falling onto his back while desperately patting out the flames.

“Harvey!” Tyler yelped, dropping the mace and sprinting towards him. His right fist glowed gold courtesy of his movement skill, and he lightly punched the ground before kneeling over him.

In moments, the fire dissipated, leaving Harvey a little more tanned than before. Fireball was one of his only skills that remained in G-Grade, and he’d made sure to use his weakest one, so the attack surprised him more than anything. His burgeoning affinity for forgefire made it all look much worse than it felt.

“Are you ok?” Tyler fussed as Steve and Cash walked over. Part of him wanted to milk this, but he couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

“That was crazy!” He hollered.

“Gosh, you scared me!” Tyler sighed, pushing to his feet before extending a hand to pull him up.

“Does it always shoot them back like that?” Harvey asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tyler answered. “You just lobbed it in there, and I couldn’t help myself.”

He was quickly proved right when other attempts led to the fireballs flying all over the place. Somehow, the skill made them act just like a normal baseball would, with glancing contact sending them flying high and behind the plate, while solid contact sent them shooting into the outfield. It meant the skill would be mostly defensive unless they were fighting on a large-scale battlefield or Tyler got better at controlling his swing. Even professional baseball players couldn’t exactly pick where the ball ended up, but maybe superhuman stats could make the difference.

After 2 dozen fireballs, the brothers traded places.

“What do you want me to do?” Harvey asked.

“Just stand on home plate with your shield up,” Tyler called back as the ball appeared in his right hand. Harvey complied, holding his shield in front of his body. Tyler’s windup looked strange without a glove, but it didn’t seem to impede his accuracy. The silver ball clanged loudly off the shield, sending Harvey staggering back as the fastball struck true. Bending over to pick up a ball, he was surprised to feel it wasn’t as heavy as he expected. The ball wasn’t actually made of pure metal, but instead had a similar weight to what he remembered from his little league days.

“I’m gonna throw a few, I need to test some things,” Tyler said.

This time, the golden threads flared mid-flight, adding a burst of speed while seemingly increasing the ball’s weight. Picking it up confirmed it had gotten noticeably heavier, putting even more power behind the attack.

Next, Tyler moved to his curveball. The first flew like normal, but the second curved more than was humanly possible. It took a few more tries, but Tyler eventually managed to throw a ball out wide that curved around Harvey’s shield before hitting him in the side.

“What’s going on?” Harvey asked.

They all gathered at the pitcher's mound, where Tyler finally showed them the description.

Consecrated Curveball | G Grade | Uncommon:

In life, you need the right blend of foreign and familiar. For example, taking a simple object and making it wildly unpredictable. Conjure a silver baseball that can be redirected mid-flight as long as it remains within your aura. Activating this effect can speed up, slow down, curve, or otherwise change the ball’s trajectory, and will increase its weight without affecting its flight. Power and precision scale with Strength and Dexterity.