The silence within the throne room was absolutely deafening. The king, queen, general, and ministers stared at the now broken roof, all unable to utter a single word. Finally, the silence was broken as one of the ministers fell to his knees and muttered: “No, it cannot be… it was meant to be a legend…. how?”
This was the very same minister who only days before, claimed that the rumors going around were simply just that: rumors. But who could blame him? Who could possibly believe that such preposterous stories could be true? Who would ever believe in this silly tale that in the many different kingdoms, even in the one empire, this very same figure had appeared? A masked man wearing all black clothes suddenly showing up out of nowhere without any warning, wielding a bow in the middle of the throne room. Sometimes even in the middle of festivals or other large gatherings with many powerful people. It all sounded so incredibly silly.
In fact, the minister’s theory had been that the other factions had made up this mystical figure to excuse some grand magic ritual they were working on. Many had observed the pillars of energy shooting up where each “attack” happened, but who would believe all of this was due to some person firing an arrow into the air with enough power to slay the most powerful person in the realm?
Well… perhaps they should have believed.
“Your… your majesty… should we follow or-“ the general began to utter.
“No!” the king quickly yelled to shut down the notion. “No… we cannot risk angering such an entity further. Even without provocation, it attacked us within your heartlands.”
“I wonder,” the queen muttered. “Why did he speak as if we assisted him?”
The king shook his head. “Who are we to try and understand such a being? Who is to say it even possesses logic similar to ours?”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a human?” the queen questioned further.
“Impossible,” the king said as he suppressed a shiver. “I met the eyes of that thing before it delivered its message of destruction. That was no man.”No one else spoke for several more seconds before someone finally raised a hand. “Should we… you know… find someone to fix the ceiling?”
A good idea… sadly for the kingdom, all the craftsmen who specialized in building castles were already busy repairing the roofs of other royal buildings throughout the land, even if some held back on repairing, fearing the entity would return.
Alas, he never did… but the legend of the mythical Roofbreaker would live on for generations to come.
--
“Submitting two Creations at once, I see,” Nevermore – the Architect – said right as Jake entered her room.
“I figured I would shake things up a bit,” Jake smiled. “Why, isn’t it allowed?”
“No rules state if you can submit more than one Creation at a time. Even if you couldn’t, what would stop you from submitting them one after another, having to merely exit and enter a few times? That simply sounds like wasted time for both of us,” the Architect answered. “Also, it isn’t uncommon for people to submit all ten Creations at once. Likely to ensure they have ten they are satisfied with before locking themselves into any of the Creations, considered a submission cannot be taken back.”
“Wait, should I have done that?” Jake wondered out loud.
“You could have, but in your instance, I doubt it would have benefitted you much. Based on my observations, your creation process is very sporadic, and I doubt your methods are very compatible with a carefully laid-out plan,” the Bound God commented.
“I feel very called out right now, and I get the feeling you peeked at my very comprehensive list of planned Creations I made,” Jake muttered. “And, in my defense, it isn’t like I haven’t stuck to it for the most part. Besides, the best plans and strategies aren’t those set in stone, but those fluid enough to always adapt to take advantage of any situation.”
“In that case, you truly are an expert strategist,” the Architect definitely called him out, but before Jake could further respond, she cut the conversation short. “Now, let us skip these pleasantries. Please proceed with your submissions.”
“Alright, alright,” Jake agreed as he decided to submit the Creations in the order he made them, naturally starting with the Grimoire.
Jake had made sure to keep the Grimoire in his spatial storage at all times when in the common areas where the gods who had a watch party could observe. He had a strong feeling that just revealing the cover of the book wouldn’t be a good idea, as his Path of a Heretic-Chosen could be seen as… well, heretical. Especially factions like the Holy Church wouldn’t like the thought of Jake being able to spread professions and classes related to being a Heretic-Blessed.
Hence why Jake kept it stored away until it was submission time. The Architect had promised to keep anything he submitted hidden so the Grimoire wouldn’t leak and be revealed to the outside world. Jake was fully aware his Path would be revealed one day, but C-grade was probably a bit too early to do that.
Submitting the Grimoire, the Architect took it and actually had a comment.
“I can understand why you asked about keeping your submissions hidden. This little tome could cause quite the uproar if I leaked its properties,” the Architect said with a smile.
“Which has to add to its value, right? People love forbidden things,” Jake said in a cheeky tone.
“Perhaps,” the Bound God answered as the Grimoire disappeared. “Now, what is your next submission?”
“I thought you already knew,” Jake muttered.
“I do, but I need you to vocalize it to make the submission official.”
“Fair enough. So, how do I submit a skill I improved? Also, will anything happen to the skill?” Jake questioned.
“Nothing will happen. As for how you submit it… simply say what you are submitting,” the Architect explained.
“Alright,” Jake said. “I want to submit the skill-improvement of Arcane Stealth evolving into Unseen Arcane Hunter. The entire journey from when I began to improve it till now.”
The Architect’s eyes flashed golden for a second before she gave him a smile. “Submission complete. Now, did you have anything more to submit?”
“No, tha-“
Before Jake could finish, he was thrown out of the room again, finding himself standing outside the door.
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“-t’s it… damn, Ms. Architect really doesn’t like spending time with me,” Jake shrugged, not really feeling bad about it. Alright, he felt a little bad, but that was trumped by the happiness he felt from his newly improved stealth skill. He was also confident it was a damn good submission, especially when you considered he improved it all the way from rare to legendary in less than a year. Jake really was a genius if he had to say so himself.
Now, when it came to the stealth skill itself, Jake was more than happy with its effects. Did the thought of trying to upgrade it to mythical rarity strike him? Sure, but Jake had a feeling he would be thrown out of Nevermore from running out of time before that would happen. Even an upgrade still staying within the legendary rarity would likely take long enough to piss off Jake’s party members due to Jake taking years in excess doing the Challenge Dungeons. So, yeah, Legendary had to be good enough. Besides, Jake believed it was a pretty good legendary skill.
Moreover, considering he had upgraded it himself and not simply picked it during a skill selection, the skill already suited him incredibly well, and he had a high level of innate understanding. Of course, there was still plenty of room to improve, but Jake was definitely satisfied for now.
Opening up his system menu, he admired the description of the skill one more time.
[Unseen Arcane Hunter (Legendary)] – As the leaves rustle and your ears perk up, you cannot help but wonder: was it merely the wind, or has the Unseen Arcane Hunter chosen you as his next prey? Allows the Hunter to blend into the environment, making you unseen even to the eyes of some of the most alert predators as your form escapes the very realm they are capable of perceiving. A layer of stable arcane energy covers your body, suppressing all energy and aura emanating from your body, making you near-undetectable to anyone who cannot notice your physical form. The arcane mana perfectly seals in any inner energy released, allowing some skills to be used. When standing still, this stable layer can be expanded, sealing the Hunter within a small area, allowing you to conceal all traces of your existence within. All effects of Unseen Arcane Hunter are determined by Perception and Wisdom.
It had a nice and long description and even a bit of fun flavor text in the beginning. The effects were exactly what Jake wanted, and the only thing he had ”lost” were some of the now-useless stat scaling and the ability to make himself look like a rock. Instead, he could create a stealth field where no one could see or feel any of his energy within. Only while stationary, though, but that was already pretty damn awesome.
Of course, the biggest benefit of all was that it was now a skill at all, meaning system assistance had set in. Before, Jake had to dedicate some mental energy to make sure the skill didn’t lose its effect, while now, everything was on auto-pilot. He didn’t have to think about anything but could just let the system do its thing.
When it came to upkeep, the cost was also nearly non-existent. The skill did require an upfront investment that was quite steep to create the arcane layer and ”shift” Jake’s entire being on the visual spectrum. It also took a good ten seconds to activate the skill fully, meaning it wasn’t exactly made for quick mid-combat re-stealths.
Anyway, the first thing Jake did after coming back from the Architect was to give Temlat a good jumpscare. His little student was improving nicely even while Jake was busy with his stealthy escapades and was rapidly approaching evolution time. He still had a few more levels to go, though.
[Half-elf – lvl 195]
Jake wasn’t overly worried if he would get good evolutions, either. His improvement speed was high, and Jake was nearly done nurturing his curse of hatred with his own Sin Curse. Temlat’s curse wouldn’t evolve into a Sin Curse of Wrath quite yet, but Jake would bet good money it would either shortly before or after the C-grade evolution.
Resistance training was undoubtedly Jake’s trump card in his training regiment. Its effects were far more than merely being able to resist someone at a higher grade; but also helped Temlat handle energies that were usually too powerful for him and tempered his mind to stay calm even when under pressure. Jake wouldn’t quite say it made the Willpower stat better, but it definitely did help his power of will.
With Temlat not needing any help, Jake was left to figure out what to do next. He needed to make five more Creations, assuming Temlat would be one, and he wasn’t quite certain what those would be. He did know one of them had to heavily involve his Bloodline, though, and he definitely wanted to throw a little bit of the already limited Jake Juice he had into a Creation. Far from enough to do something like help birth a new True Royal or perpetually hungry space worm, but enough to give him a good submission.
Referring back to the list he had kind of stuck to recently, Jake considered his next move. Taking out the small notebook he had made it in originally, he quickly made some edits and nodded at the slightly changed list.
1. A classic poison.
2. Something transmutation-based.
3. Use Teachings of the Heretic-Chosen for something – work in progress with Temlat.
4. Skill-related thing. Based on magic and mana.
5. Origin-related Creation. This may be done during one of the prior Creations.
6. Something weird Bloodline-related?
7. Ritual stuff.
Jake had removed the things he had already done and promptly removed the elixir one. Jake had a good feeling he couldn’t make a good elixir that would match up to any prior creations, so he shelved that semi-indefinitely. The skill had upgraded in rarity during his time in Nevermore, and he had crafted quite a few elixirs, which was also why he knew he had kind of plateaued in his improvement speed.
About fifteen minutes passed as Jake wracked his brain to find future plans, and after much deliberation, Jake knew his next three projects.
One of them would be a ritual. What kind of ritual? Well, the kind Villy really liked to talk about. Kind of, at least. While researching and creating a planetary sacrifice did sound a little fun, Jake wanted to make something he could actually use.
Sacrificial rituals used sacrifices as fuel to accomplish something, and Jake wanted to do something similar, just not with people. The core part of the ritual was that one could force unwilling entities to have their energies absorbed by the ritual to power it, and that was something Jake viewed as interesting. Not necessarily to use living things as sacrifices but to help subdue certain natural treasures and non-intelligent beings with an innate nature to resist being part of any ritual.
He had also been a bit inspired by the Dark Witch and how she had tapped into the energy in the World Core – something that was notoriously difficult to influence using any rituals. Jake wanted to do something similar by simply becoming able to make a circle that could be forcibly ”linked” with certain objects even if they resisted, allowing Jake to draw or send energy into the object. What’s more, Jake already had a good idea of how to do this from some instances on prior floors, so it shouldn’t take overly long. Of course, even if he took inspiration from other places, he still wanted to mix in a bit of that Primal Hunter flavor to help suppress any entity that refused to back down. Plus, adding his new flavor would give it some bonus points for uniqueness.
The second project Jake wanted to get started was to transmute something. What exactly he wanted to transmute, Jake wasn’t clear on yet, but he did have an idea that may or may not prove feasible. If it was feasible, it would be great and even something he could use in conjunction with the aforementioned ritual down the line.
Thirdly was the most boring of the bunch. Jake wanted to just make a damn good poison. This was chosen partly out of necessity as he realized he would need to craft a lot anyway to make sure he had enough Merit Points to do everything else he wanted.
A ritual circle would not net any items he could sell back, while the transmutation experimentation he wanted to do wasn’t the type to yield anything to return either. In fact, he would be surprised if there was anything left to return most of the time.
Also, it wasn’t like it was a bad idea to submit something that was just a good classic poison with any curse or soul mumbo-jumbo. Just a mixture of extremely deadly toxins found in the wild mixed together to create an even more toxic substance that would do some serious damage.
Alright… Jake had another reason he wanted to make this poison. After being done with the Challenge Dungeons in just a few more years, Jake would have spent forty years in Nevermore. While Jake had done plenty of alchemy during this time, it was very varied alchemy. He had been the supplier of potions for his party, worked on a lot of rituals where needed, had to craft poisons for everyday use, and, oh yeah, also been the sole supplier of Elixirs to make sure everyone always had all the bonus stats they could get from consuming those. To add on, Jake often had to just craft with whatever they found on the floors as they were constantly on the move to try and get a good time for a potential achievement or to complete a bonus objective.
This meant he hadn’t had time to just sit down on focus solely on improving his craft. To not need to produce something useable for a good while. However, in this House of the Architect, things were different, and even if the poison Jake made wouldn’t be the best submission, he would make it anyway.
To summarize, Jake just really wanted to make a poison, so he would make a poison.