Forged Legacy

Chapter 156 - Adaptive Inscription

The ground beneath his back rumbled as the rest of the angel army caught up. His whole body ached, but it seemed their desperate escape had saved them from the worst of it. Looking up at the angels, he saw white robes half burned away, the rest stained black with ash and mud. Their faces were the same, and the smell of burnt hair covered the battlefield. The templars and sentinels clad in silver seemed relatively unscathed thanks to their shield skills, but he could see the look of utter exhaustion on their faces from trying to defend against the demons' constant bombardment.

“Get up! I think we’re out of range, but I’d rather not gamble on that,” Cash said, pulling Harvey to his feet. Steve and Tyler were already stumbling back towards the gates, and Harvey ran to catch up. His brand new armor was already dented to hell, even with his fortification arrays. He was glad he’d found the self-repair arrays when he did. Otherwise, he’d have a whole day's worth of repairs to do after a few minutes of fighting.

“Fall back! Fall back!” an armored angel woman shouted. Harvey had never seen her before, but Cash obviously recognized her. She reminded him of a Valkyrie, one of the female warrior spirits from Norse mythology. Strong and beautiful, with a long blonde braid stretching down her back.

“Celeste,” Cash gasped. “Are we regrouping with our army or retreating behind the gates?”

“Retreat. We don’t have the tools to break their siege.”

Cash nodded and pulled them forward. Ahead, their own army of creatures summoned with divine essence in the foundries of Elysium was also retreating. Sparing a glance behind, he saw no more fireballs lighting up the sky. Black smoke hid the city from sight, but it appeared Hell was content letting them retreat.

“We’re not going to fight?” Tyler asked through heaving breaths.

“No,” Cash answered. “Not unless they advance, but I don’t think they will.”

They all gathered just inside the wall, groups of harried angels speaking in low whispers. Celeste, the Captain in charge of this section of Heaven, walked back and forth, directing the healers towards the most injured. Despite their hasty retreat, very few had actually died in the bombardment. The angels were all higher level than the goats and brimfiends launching those fireballs and could survive an attack or two.

“What are we going to do? We can’t just sit here,” Harvey asked.

“I think that’s exactly what we’ll do. Those pigs sealed off the entire city, and I doubt we killed enough to leave us any openings,” Cash replied.

“I couldn’t make a dent in those things,” Tyler complained.

“Most can’t. Hell almost never uses them since they’re expensive and slow. They’re basically useless on an open battlefield, but not even killing them will help us now that the wall’s in place.”

Harvey thought back to the hog he’d killed and how it had toppled into its neighbor. Just two buried side by side had created an impassable wall of fat. He imagined that by now the roads were completely covered, making the only way into the city either through a building or by climbing over a wall of pigs. Neither option was very good with an army of brimfiends and devil-goats waiting to shoot anything that moved.

“Why would they send those if they can’t actually attack us with them? They already have the advantage, so why give us a day off?” Steve asked.

“So they can build a bigger army,” Harvey sighed. “Almost all the summoned creatures we’ve seen died the day they were created, but we already know they don’t have to. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need to hunt the stragglers that retreated into the city.”

“I don’t get it,” Tyler said.

“Right now, their advantage lets them hurt us, but it’s not enough to finish the job. But, if they can keep us away from their army, the odds will keep stacking against us,” Harvey explained.

“Exactly, they want to stall long enough to build an army big enough to wipe us out,” Cash agreed.

“So then let’s get back out there and stop it!” Tyler exclaimed.

“We can’t even get close without getting torn apart. The creatures we summoned can’t break through. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” Cash said.

“Yeah, and by then they’ll have the counter for that army, and we’ll need to wait again. Hell’s been two steps ahead this whole time!” Harvey complained, ripping his helmet off and running his hand through his hair as he started pacing.

Cash let out an angry sigh, folding his arms in front of his chest. “What do you want me to say? Tell me how to win this war, Harvey.”

“I’m not saying I have all the answers. Doesn’t mean I can’t be frustrated!” He could feel his face getting hot, and he had to fight to keep his temper in check. His whole body felt like a spring that had nowhere to go. Normally, he’d take it out on the closest demon, but the fight he’d spent the last night frantically preparing for had been stolen from him.

“We’re all frustrated. We’re all scared. We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve got,” Cash exclaimed just as the screaming gargoyles and tolling bells finally stopped. It seemed the angels were confident that the day’s battle was done, at least for the moment.

“Be ready!” Celeste shouted. “You may be summoned back here at any time.”

The crowd began to disperse, most moving towards the portals buried inside the many bunkers lining the inside of the wall. Their group pulled away from the crowd, once again choosing to walk home.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“I’m sorry,” Harvey sighed. “I’m not mad at you, but I hate feeling stuck like this.”

“I know,” Cash nodded. “So do I. I know it’s not much, but hopefully tomorrow will be better.”

Harvey shook his head. “I’m not ready to give up on today. I’ve got a new Profession skill waiting for me at the loom, and I want to see if I can make something to help us out.

He’d pondered his options while hammering away the night before. His repertoire of blacksmithing and inscription skills was already starting to cover most of the bases, something that was only possible thanks to the extra slots that came with starting as a newly integrated G-Grade. He knew there were probably holes in his metaphorical toolbox, given the wide gaps in his knowledge of what was possible under the System, but that was okay. He’d fill those when they came up.

For now, he wanted his Profession skill to add another layer of adaptability to his creations.

The ability to layer multiple inscriptions with Modular Array and conjure replicas of his crafted items with Echo Forge already made him much more versatile than most, but he could take it a step further. Varek had shown him just how powerful skills could be when they used resonant items as a base, and Inkbound Ordnance had shown how just a few drops of ink could create very powerful short-term effects.

His plan was to combine the two concepts, creating a skill that let him turn a few drops of ink into a working array mid-battle without needing to whip out a brush. As long as he had the ink ready, he could take almost anything – be it sword, shield, or siege machine – and modify it to fit the needs of the moment. The inscriptions would be weaker than a proper weapon like Rupture or his bullets, and he needed to actually understand the array’s design for it to work, so he’d still need to forge most things the right way. Still, a skill like this would be great for making prototypes and mid-fight adjustments.

Plans for some kind of siege machine to let him bombard the demons right back were already forming, but he pushed them away as the rainbow haze seeped out of the Loom.

First, he found the vision of the battle at the Hell Hotel. It was his first time using Inkbound Ordnance, and it demonstrated just how versatile the concept was since he’d used it both to firebomb his enemies and spread healing mist amongst his allies. His enthusiasm waned when he saw a Veilstrider go down with an arrow in their neck just before his healing orb arrived. Over and over again, he watched the memory, waiting for the Veilstrider to move. They never did.

He hadn’t even noticed the person when it happened, too consumed with his own fight for survival. Their back was turned, and he couldn’t see their face. Had it been someone he knew? Someone from Veils End? So many people had died that day. All so he could be here, desperately trying to save his own family from suffering the same fate.

In his periphery, another memory caught his eye. It wasn’t anything special, just one of the many conversations he, Elena, Julian, and Hannah had while eating dinner together in the smithy. Without thinking, he snatched it up and moved it beside the first vision. The glow indicating the power of his potential skill noticeably dimmed, but he barely noticed as he watched the short vision repeating over and over again.

The world inside the Loom was quiet. Serene. Nobody outside could touch him here.

[Harvey,] Julius warned. Loving, but firm.

Looking back, everything seems so simple.

[You know it was anything but. You were all terrified, just like you are now. And when this new trial has passed, you’ll look back at days like today and think it was all so simple.]

Why is that? Why does today always feel harder than yesterday?

[Because pain fades. Wounds heal. Now you can’t sit in here all day. Your family needs you to get back to work.]

Harvey nodded, letting the simple memory fade back into the haze. With a thought, the vision of him forging his first four inscribed bullets rose to the surface. Adding it to the mix had the opposite effect, greatly increasing the luster of his burgeoning skill. It perfectly embodied his desire to bend essence and resonance to his will, using his profession to create the perfect weapon.

Next, he added a memory that was only a few hours old. Inscribing Tyler’s bat with the holy reinforcement array. His recent forging efforts had been consumed by the need to jam as much holy resonance into his creations as possible, both as a defense against hell’s nature and a weapon to overcome it. For now, he could afford to tailor his equipment because he knew what he’d be fighting in advance. If he ever made it back to Earth, he couldn’t afford to rely on a single resonance. This skill would be the key to making every matchup a good one.

Finally, he added his two fights against the tortured souls. In the first, his brand-new gun was utterly ineffective. Lacking the proper inscriptions, he could barely touch the things. In the second, his new Heaven’s Wrath bullets burned through them like dead leaves in a fire. This was the perfect example of how important this new skill was, and he prayed the Loom understood his intentions.

With a thought, all five memories sank into the loom. To his surprise, almost every spool of thread started turning. Slowly at first, then faster as a sigil depicting an empty ink bottle began to fill with the myriad concepts stored within the Loom. Combining everything under the sun into a single bottle wouldn’t do him much good since using the skill needed real ink to work, but he was ecstatic to see it wouldn’t be limited to his current understanding.

The bottle glowed faintly as it floated towards him, the ink inside appearing to swirl around even though he knew it was still. It seared itself into the skin just below his right palm, the same hand he normally held his brush with. With that, the rainbow haze faded away, and the others crowded in to get a look at the tattoo.

“You need to be careful. Plenty of angels have gone crazy sifting through their old memories,” Cash warned.

Harvey turned to him with a sad smile. “I believe it.”

“Let’s see it,” Steve said, gently squeezing Harvey’s shoulder as he pulled Harvey’s arm up for them all to see.

Harvey swallowed, flexing his hand as the ink settled in. The screen appeared before them, and he checked to see if he’d managed to create the tool he needed.

Adaptive Inscription | F Grade | Rare:

They say those who fail to plan, plan to fail, but no plan has ever survived the battlefield. Only those who can adapt will endure. Use small amounts of ink to inscribe unstable, temporary arrays on your equipment. Both the ink and equipment must be made by you, and you must ensure the arrays are functional. Failure to add proper inscriptions may result in lasting damage to the equipment. The power of inscribed arrays scales with the quality of both the ink and equipment, and your Wisdom and Willpower.