Chapter 90: Grimoire II
Laxin was making an unholy noise somewhere between a sob, a laugh, and a deflating bagpipe.
"I have... never... done anything... correctly before this moment," he gasped, clutching his own face like it might escape from joy overload.
The fused skeleton straightened, runes pulsing like twin heartbeats. It rotated its wrists experimentally—blade flashing, wand humming—and then set its feet in a stance that screamed ready to ruin someone’s day with artistic precision.
Fenric regarded it with the same enthusiasm a glacier has for seasonal holidays.
"...Acceptable."
Aria almost burst. Laxin actually did, a squeaky squeal escaping.
"He said it! The A-word! That’s basically praise!"
"Do not celebrate," Fenric said, cleaving their joy in half like a well-managed budget cut.
"This construct is stable in theory. You will now prove it in practice."
Aria blinked. "Practice... how?"
The floor glyphs around the training hall flared to life—sharp, cold, geometric—and began rearranging themselves like a very aggressive puzzle.
The ground trembled.
"Live-combat assessment," Fenric said.
"...Like, pretend-live or actually-live?" Laxin squeaked.
"Live," Fenric said simply, like gravity announcing it will continue existing.
The runes snapped into place.
And then the arena rose.
Stone walls erupted from the floor, reconfiguring into jagged platforms, shadowed alcoves, and hovering pillars. The training hall became a labyrinth of kill zones.
And from the far end... came the sound of chains breaking.
A skeletal knight lurched forward—larger than any before, plated in scorched black armor, eyes burning molten orange.
Then another.
And another.
Three of them, each dragging massive cleaver-like swords behind them, sparks shrieking from the stone.
"Elite Knight-class," Fenric said, as if reading a grocery list.
"Objective: survive. Duration: five minutes. Secondary objective: impress me."
"That last part feels impossible," Laxin whispered.
"Correct," Fenric said.
The fused skeleton—Aria dubbed it "Vex" on the spot because it looked like it had opinions—stepped forward. Its green-violet flames flared like twin storms gearing up for a performance review.
"Vex, suppression fire," Aria commanded.
"Vex, don’t explode," Laxin added helpfully.
Vex blurred into motion—blade sweeping out in a crescent of green fire while its wand spat violet runes like angry fireworks. The first elite knight raised its cleaver—
—and Vex’s blade caught it mid-swing, locking the impact with a crack of shattering air.
The wand flared.
A rune detonated point-blank in the knight’s face.
Its helmet spun off like a rejected business proposal.
"YES!" Laxin screamed, then immediately ducked as another knight’s cleaver demolished the stone where he’d been standing.
"Vex—disengage!" Aria barked.
Vex flipped backwards, cloak of bone fragments flaring. Runes spiraled around its feet, slowing its landing like a ghost doing parkour. The knights thundered after it, cleavers tearing furrows in the stone.
"Suppress left, bait right!" Aria called.
"Bait?" Laxin yelped. "We’re the bait!"
"Exactly," Aria said, and sprinted right.
Vex followed, launching a salvo of crackling green bolts into the leftmost knight’s legs. Armor shattered like sugar glass. It stumbled—and Veil’s half-memory of grace surged through Vex’s motions as it vaulted off a wall, came down like a falling star, and bisected the knight cleanly.
The corpse dissolved to dust.
"Down one!" Aria shouted.
"Two more! And I’m out of emotional stability!" Laxin shrieked.
The remaining knights closed from both flanks, cleavers swinging like very angry deadlines.
"Barrier pivot!" Aria commanded.
Vex slammed its wand down. A half-dome of violet force erupted—one cleaver rebounded off it with a thunderclap. The other cleaver broke through, splintering the barrier like it owed it money.
Vex twisted under the blow and counter-slashed, carving a glowing spiral into the knight’s breastplate. Sparks and ash exploded outward.
The third knight lunged straight for Aria.
She froze for half a heartbeat—
—and Vex teleported.
One blink it was mid-slash.
Next blink it was between her and death, blade locking the cleaver an inch from her skull. Its runes flared incandescent white from overstrain.
Laxin screamed incoherently and threw a mana surge down the link like someone trying to restart a heart with a car battery.
Vex exploded.
Green-violet fire engulfed the knight. When it cleared, nothing remained but molten cleaver fragments.
The last knight stood alone.
Vex stood opposite, trembling, flames guttering low but defiant.
"Final strike," Aria whispered.
"Go bankrupt or go home," Laxin agreed shakily.
Vex straightened. It raised its blade and wand together.
Twin circles spun into existence at its feet, rotating opposite directions. Runes roared to life around its arms. The air itself warped.
The knight charged.
Vex moved.
A single slash.
A single rune.
The entire far wall disintegrated in a flash of colorless light.
When the dust cleared, the knight was gone.
Silence.
Vex turned, swaying, and planted its blade into the floor like a banner.
Its flames flickered weak but proud.
Laxin fell on his butt.
Aria was shaking, grinning like a lunatic.
"...It worked."
Fenric stared at the smoking ruin of his training hall, then at them.
"Marginally impressive," he said, which was basically a love sonnet coming from him.
Laxin burst into tears. "We’re... ALIVE..."
"Barely," Fenric said, already turning away. "Tomorrow: endurance testing."
"Endurance?" Aria echoed.
"Yes," Fenric said. "We will see if your creation can survive twelve continuous hours of combat."
Laxin let out a soft, resigned squeak like a sad balloon losing air.
"...We’re going to die."
Aria’s grin just widened, wild and bright.
"Then let’s make it historic."
Vex raised its blade in salute, eye-flames flaring—
—and promptly fell over sideways.
Vex hit the stone floor with a bone-rattling clonk, like a chandelier made of regrets. Its limbs twitched once, then went completely slack—eye flames sputtering out with the sad little sound of a candle giving up on life.
Laxin shrieked like someone had stepped on his soul.
"VEX! Nooo—don’t you dare emotionally traumatize me after impressing me!!"
Aria crouched, pressing her hand to its ribcage, then frowned.
"...He’s not dead."
"Not dead?! It’s lying like a tragic novel cover!" Laxin wailed.
"It’s... recharging," Aria said slowly. She could feel faint embers of mana pulsing through Vex’s runes, like tired little heartbeats.
"Drained its entire core."
Fenric didn’t even look back from the ruined wall he was inspecting like a disappointed architect.
"Correct. You overextended its channels. If you attempt another overload without reinforcement, it will implode."
"Implode?!" Laxin squeaked. "Like... ’poof’ implode or ’tactical funeral’ implode?!"
"Yes," Fenric said. Which somehow covered both options.
They spent the rest of the day dragging Vex’s lifeless-but-sassy-looking body back to their workshop, its limbs flopping like it was auditioning to be laundry. Aria reinforced its mana runes, carefully weaving new channels along its arms and chest like glowing stitchwork. Laxin brought snacks, emotional support, and exactly zero useful skills.
Occasionally he whispered, "Please don’t die, you smug skeleton" while feeding Vex’s still-closed jaw tiny crumbs of mana crystal. They just bounced off its teeth.
By nightfall, its flames flickered back to life.
"...Status?" Aria asked, wary.
Vex’s jaw clicked open... then closed. It raised one finger, pointed to the ceiling, and wrote in glowing runes:
"NAP = GOOD. WORLD = BAD."
Laxin clutched his chest. "It’s developing priorities!"
Fenric, from the corner, didn’t even glance up from his paperwork.
"Side effect of complex mana matrices. Ignore it."
Vex wrote:
"RUDE."
The next morning, the "endurance trial" began.
Fenric simply dropped them into the arena again, now twice as large and crawling with a rotating assortment of skeleton mages, axe-wielders, spear-duelists, and one horrifying creature that looked like three skeletons pretending to be a horse.
Vex stared at the horde, eye-flames narrowing like a burned-out office worker seeing their inbox.
Laxin adjusted his robes with the grim seriousness of a man who knew he was about to be emotionally suplexed.
"Twelve hours. Easy. We can survive that. Probably."
"Statistically not," Fenric said.
Then he flicked a rune.
The wave began.
The first hour went well.
Vex danced through the enemy ranks, blade sweeping like calligraphy made of doom, wand firing precise bursts that decapitated anything bold enough to have a head.
Aria and Laxin supported from the rear, repairing cracks in its runes between waves.
By hour three, Vex was humming a strange little jingle with every swing, like a battle-mad ice cream truck.
Aria ignored it.
Laxin started quietly harmonizing.
By hour five, it had begun... trash talking.
Every rune slash left glowing graffiti:
"TOO SLOW."
"NICE TRY, BONES."
"I AM BETTER LEGS."
Laxin cackled like a dying kettle.
"IT’S GETTING AN EGO!"
"It’s getting brain rot," Aria muttered, even as she was trying not to laugh.
By hour seven, it started fighting with flair.
Vex vaulted off enemies, pirouetted midair, and landed bowing like a skeletal ballerina of destruction.
One mage lobbed a fireball at it—
Vex casually headbutted it back like a soccer champion.
The mage exploded.
Laxin openly applauded.
Fenric did not.
By hour nine... things were getting weird.
Vex had begun naming its kills.
"Goodbye, Carl," it wrote as it bisected a shield-bearer.
"Farewell, Susan," as it dropkicked a spear-user into a pillar.
"Who are Susan and Carl?!" Aria demanded.
"Victims," Fenric replied, sipping tea from nowhere.
By hour eleven, Vex’s flames were flickering erratically. Its motions were wild, almost drunken—yet somehow still lethally precise. It was giggling. Giggling.
Aria’s heart was in her throat.
Laxin had accepted the heat death of the universe and was just lying on the floor, throwing it mana like peanuts.
And then... the final hour struck.
The arena disgorged a colossal undead juggernaut—ten feet tall, plated in golden bone, wielding a tower shield the size of a carriage. It roared like an avalanche gargling thunder.
Vex raised its blade.
Then, with deliberate slowness, wrote in the air:
"BOSS FIGHT. TIME TO BE COOL."
And charged.