Chapter 224: What Remains [BONUS]

This time, Encrid did laugh.

It came out as a short, cracked sound, and his ribs punished him for it immediately. He lay there with his eyes shut, wheezing, until the pain faded enough for him to breathe.

’Free drinks.’

The old title had given him a discount, and he did not have much chance to use it.

Somehow the system had decided that saving eight thousand people was worth exactly one step up from that.

He opened his main menu to see the whole of it at once.

«« Main Menu »»

[ ? Status ]

[ ? Skills ]

[ ? Narrative Quests ]

[ ? Inventory ]

[ ? ─────── (Locked) ]

[ ? Narrative Relevance: 8.46% ]

Eight point four six.

He looked at the number for a while.

Two hours ago it had been one point two six, and he had felt the floor of the world tilting under him. Now it was the highest it had ever been.

He knew he should be happy.

But he was too tired to do anything at all. So he did what he always did. He moved on to the next thing that needed doing.

But the next thing was not the new slot.

He had woken in a strange bed, in a body that would not answer him, eleven days after the worst night of his life. Before he touched anything new, he wanted to know exactly what he had left.

So he opened his status.

«« Status »»

[ Name: Encrid Gannon ]

[ Age: 24 ]

[ Realm: Apex ]

[ Star Level: One Star - Azure Star (Apex) ]

[ Star Ability: None ]

[ Star Connection: None ]

[ Familiar: Unnamed (Reflective Dragon) ]

[ Condition: Severe channel damage. Star energy cannot be safely drawn. ]

[ Titles: ??? ??????? | Fourth Son of the Gannon Family | The Watcher | The One Who Slew the Elder | Dragon Tamer | The Wall of One | Shepherd of the Riven | Eminence’s Shadow ]

He read down the lines slowly.

His name. His age. Then the third line, and he stopped.

Apex.

He read it again. It did not change

’Apex?’

Before the incident at the Span, he had been at Ascendant realm.

The token had dragged his Star all the way up to Absolute for one minute, and then the minute had ended, and he had felt the power go out of him like a tide going out. He had expected to fall back to where he started.

He had not expected to land one step higher.

He reached inward for his Star, very carefully, the way a man puts weight on a leg he suspects is broken.

The pain answered first. Every torn channel in his body flared at once, and the edges of the room went white. He let go immediately and lay there breathing through his teeth until it passed.

The condition line had told the truth.

It seemed he would not be able to draw out star energy for a while.

So he could not check. He did not know whether the word was a gift or a mistake, and he could not afford to find out the hard way.

He looked at the line below it instead.

Familiar: Reflective Dragon.

That one he believed even less. But it sat there between his Star and his condition as plainly as his own name.

Then the titles. There were eight of them now. The scrambled one at the front, unreadable as it had been since the first day. Fourth Son of the Gannon Family. And then six names, every one of them earned in the space of a single night, most of them while he lay unconscious.

The Scoundrel of the North was gone.

He found he did not miss it.

? ? ?

«« Skills »»

[ Gannon Family Swordsmanship « ★★★★★★ » - D (0%) ]

[ Appraisal « ★★★★★ » - D (0%) - Sealed (30 days) ]

[ Master Negotiator « ★★ » - D (12%) ]

[ Horsemanship « ★★ » - E (52%) ]

[ Noble Etiquette « ★★ » - C (2%) ]

[ Alcohol Tolerance « ★★★ » - A (0%) ]

He went to the first line, as he always did.

Gannon Family Swordsmanship. D.

On the morning before the battle at the Span, it had been E, forty-seven percent. He had trained for a year and a half, practicing twenty thousand swings in the dark behind the granary, just to bring it that far.

For sixty seconds on the bridge, the same skill had reached SS.

He had held the swordsmanship of nine generations in his hands. He had seen the movements of its greatest masters and used a form that no one in his family had performed for generations.

He had cut space itself.

Then the token had expired, and the borrowed mastery had disappeared.

He had expected that. The token had given him power for a minute. It had never promised to make that power his own.

But it had not taken everything away.

He remembered the seventh form. He remembered how the sword had moved, where the weight had shifted, and how the technique had worked. The memory was faint, like the shape of a lamp that remained in his eyes after he closed them, but it was still there.

And the system had counted it.

His skill had advanced by one full level because of that single minute.

Encrid did not know whether to laugh or feel bitter about it. Eighteen months of training had brought him to the middle of E. One minute of borrowed mastery had carried him to D.

He would take the improvement. He was not in a position to refuse anything that might help him survive.

Below it, Appraisal had a new word beside its name.

Sealed.

The skill itself had not changed, but he would not be able to use it for another thirty days.

He moved on.

Master Negotiator. Horsemanship. Noble Etiquette.

And Alcohol Tolerance, still the highest-ranked skill he owned. It had been a bad joke for two years, and it was not getting any funnier.

He closed the window and opened his quests.

«« Narrative Quests »»

[ THE SWORD BEFORE ITS LEGEND « ★★★★★★★ » Quest Progress - 16% ]

[ THE KING BEFORE HIS CROWN « ★★★★★★★ » Quest Progress - 41% ]

«« Hidden Quests »»

[ THE ONE WHO LIGHTS THE WAY « ★★★★★★★ » Quest Objective - 1 / 3 ]

[ ? Objective 2: Help five hundred people progress in their cultivation. (213 / 500) ]

« Quest Rewards - Unused »

[ None ]

Two Narrative Quests.

The Sword Before Its Legend. Sixteen percent.

Somewhere in the south, a boy with a sword too big for him was probably practicing in a yard, waiting for an answer to a letter that ended with Please come back.

The King Before His Crown. Forty-one percent.

Rael had walked onto the Span with his burned hand strapped to his chest and told Encrid to come back in one piece.

And between them sat the hidden quest.

The quest had made progress. One objective was complete, and the second now showed a number he had never seen before.

Two hundred and thirteen.

Two hundred and thirteen people had advanced in their cultivation because of what he had taught them.

The School. The Gleaning. Gus. Hask. The children who had copied his figures onto slates in the Shambles.

He remembered the faces of some of them. Others he knew only by name.

He did not know how many were still alive.

That thought stayed with him longer than he wanted it to.

At the bottom of the window, the unused rewards section held a single word.

None.

For a year and a half, there had been two lines there. Two tokens he had saved for the worst possible moment. They had been his last resort, the cards he kept hidden in his hand when every other plan failed.

He had spent them both on the Span.

There was nothing left to save for later.

Whatever came next, he would have to face it with what he had.

And right now, that was not much.

? ? ?