(Note, my wife wrote this chapter. It’s a pretty good chapter, if I do say so myself. She doesn’t ramble quite as much as I do, so you’ll probably find the writing better than normal, and I apologize for the superior quality. And her favorite thing to tell was how she got her sword. That rusted, miserable thing…)
Hello, reader. If my husband called my sword a rusted, miserable thing, I’m going to smack him over the back of the head. Not with the sword, though. I do still love him too much to end him that way.
But speaking of rusted, miserable things, let’s talk about weapons. Let’s talk about equipment. Let’s talk about the term “Diamond in the Rough.” Well, I got a new term I like to call “From Rough to Diamond.” Sometimes you want to look for the rough instead of the diamonds. The papers, town criers, and gossipers always proclaim some crafter to be a great genius for making a new Master-Tier diamond, blah blah blah blah blah. Yes, it’s very impressive. Yes, adamantium weapons are very hard to make. Yes, adamantium armor practically makes you a walking fortress against anyone who isn’t a Master Pathbearer or higher. I’m not saying don’t get good equipment if you can afford it, or if you have the opportunity to obtain it from a Quest. What I am saying, however, is don’t look away from potential.
My rusted, miserable slab of a sword started out as just a rusted slab. Grandpa left it for me. Only good thing I can really say about the bastard. You see, I was a street rat. A street rat with big dreams, a nasty, early Physicality Skill Evolution, and no money. By the time I managed to qualify for an Academy against all odds, I was already used to swinging some very big, very heavy, and very, very unwieldy weapons. And so, none of those dainty little noble swords were for me. Couldn’t afford them either. So. What did I do?
Take the biggest, hardest hunk of metal I had and have it reforged.
Thing is, Rusty was a hard piece to reforge, so it was still Initiate-Tier when I was an Adept. It barely had room for one Enchantment. And the Enchantment I put on it? Self-mending, of course. But one thing about my rusted hunk of metal is that it's a raw hunk of unrefined adamantine. No idea how Gramps got his hands on it. As I told you, if you’re not Heroic, you’re not cutting through adamantine. You’re not even chipping it. Hell, I had a hard time swinging Rusty at the start.
So, while my noble enemies were prancing around, waving their gleaming little sticks, I would walk up, and I would hit them once with my hunk of raw adamantine, and they’d go plough through a wall. And eventually, I won enough to get Rusty reforged over again.
Today, Rusty is an intelligent, talking, Heroic-Tier weapon, and he’s my best friend—don’t tell my husband I said that. I’ll tell you this much, though. You treat a weapon right, you keep pouring your love and appreciation into it and hold onto it, and eventually, it might just save your life in more ways than one. It might even stop you from murdering your own father and get you a noblewoman’s title…
-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage (Special Chapter)
58 (I)
Unbroken
Shiv made sure his descent to the underside of Weave was as slow and controlled as possible. Uva wasn’t his main concern here. She was ironically the hardier one next to the automaton. As Shiv held on to the crippled bot, he felt just how hard and brittle its chassis was at the same time. Can Hu definitely was adamantium, but it was compromised on a level Shiv couldn’t fathom. Brittle was the word that kept coming back to Shiv’s mind. Brittle. Like one rough touch could end the Penitent Chassis for good.
“Do not worry,” Can Hu said. “I can endure more than you expect. You may go faster.”
“Yeah, sure,” Shiv said uncertainly. “But you know what I’m doing is not actually flying, right? It’s a bit harder to adjust my speed.”
“Correct,” Can Hu replied. “You are manipulating a localized field of gravity, a field you extend to other people through tactile contact.”
Shiv blinked. Uva's eyes were wide as well.
Can Hu continued. “I have encountered one like you before. A dragon in a place once called East Europe. He was a grappler, much like you. A skill-fused one.”
Shiv’s disbelief only grew. “You can even tell I have a Skill Fusion?”
Can Hu hummed with amusement. “Gravitic Wrestler demands a Skill Fusion. And the way your field works, at least the way my sensors perceive it, resembles the Gravitic Wrestlers I have fought and killed in the past.”
“Killed?” Shiv said. It was hard to believe the machine he was currently holding could kill anything.
“Yes. They are difficult adversaries, but with the right tools and the right munitions, they can be brought down. At least, most of them. You, I suspect, would have been harder. Very few of the humanoid races have Adamantine Adaption.”
“Okay,” Shiv muttered. “How? How are you doing this?”
“My eyes see much. My experiences tell me much more. You are very strange for a human, Deathless.”
And there was the creepiness of the Foreshadowing Skill again. It was already pretty creepy when he got information from it, and it was even creepier when someone else used it to get information on him.
“Divination is bullshit,” Shiv muttered.
“Indeed,” Can Hu agreed. “Those who can obtain intelligence through asymmetrical means are often quite useful. Does your squad have a Diviner?”
Shiv paused. “Not really, but we do have Adam. He’s got a Heroic-Tier Awareness Skill that lets him cast his senses—”
“Seer of Horizons?” Can Hu interrupted with a question.
Both Uva and Shiv’s mouths were slightly open.
Shiv let out a breath. “Okay, Can Hu, you’re starting to scare me a little bit. Are you a Diviner too?”
“It is the natural guess,” Can Hu replied. “It is also sacrilege, depending on who you ask. Primal elves from certain hostile dimensions… They deem it sacrilegious for someone that is not of their blood to possess this skill.” Then, the bot spasmed and twitched. “Apologies. My system sometimes glitches from lingering damage. I a-apologize.”
And then there was that fragility again. There was history packed into this broken machine. A lot of history. A lot of… a lot of everything. Suddenly, Shiv felt even more nervous about moving with Can Hu in his hands. It was like he was moving around with an ancient relic rather than a piece of scrap.
“Do not worry,” Can Hu said. “I have more centuries left in me yet. You will not break me. I trust you. The System has guided us together for a reason.”
“The System moves in vulgar and subtle ways,” Uva commented.
Shiv looked down at her and sent a telepathic question. “So how do you know Can Hu?”
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She considered his question. “I wouldn’t say I truly know it,” she replied. “But it is an interesting figure, and it frequents many of the same museums I do. It goes there, sometimes, to paint new works or to fashion new sculptures. It is surprisingly good, despite its condition.”
“Are you two communicating telepathically?” Can Hu asked, tilting its head back at an odd angle to regard the two.
Shiv and Uva paused. “Yes,” Shiv said. “We weren't saying anything rude or mocking you.”
Can Hu’s head whirred as it looked forward. “That is fine. I understand if you would consider me an oddity.”
It then pointed at a patch of land with an industrial limb and declared: “There. My home approaches.”
They landed near a particularly sparse neighborhood at the bottom of Weave, with more grace than his last landing, thankfully. Shiv looked around and saw dust, filth, and dilapidation everywhere. The walls, however, were well-painted in this place, in that style that decorated Can Hu’s armor as well. They were covered in murals depicting grand landscapes and specific figures of many different races and species. But most of the figures were animals. Animals bearing specific wounds. Spiders weaving their web to coat the stumps of severed limbs. Spiders with their minds burning, clutching at their skulls as others tried to help them.
Through broken windows, Shiv sensed the heat of small flames with his feeble Pyromancy. Groups of weavers were standing around burning barrels, warming their hands as they held close to the fire.
This far down in the city, the world felt cold, quite the opposite from the realm of Gate Theborn. But there was a similar feeling of desolation.
“Here.” Can Hu pointed again, and Shiv found himself staring at a warehouse. It seemed rough—a massive thing of concrete and wood along the outside—but the windows were colorful: broken pieces of glass reforged and knit back together with what seemed to be golden enamel in between. Outside the front of the house, there were rows of tables bearing empty bowls of food and empty jugs of water. A few weavers were gathered there. One of them saw Can Hu.
“Can Hu,” a weaver said, struggling to walk on unsteady and deformed limbs.
Uva took a defensive step backward.
“Is he a plague-bearer?” Shiv asked, frowning at her odd reaction.
“No, not that I can sense. But do be careful. Weavers are… The System is not kind to everyone. And even without the plague, there are many other diseases that we struggle against. We do not have enough Biomancers. And scarcity… scarcity makes an ugly sight of so many,” Uva replied over their link.
Within her head, however, there was a lingering feeling that she kept trying to suppress: a feeling of doubt and heretical uncertainty. She wasn’t sure why the Composer didn’t just help them all. She knew her goddess was not perfect. But still, she should have been capable of this much.
“Can Hu! We came to thank you,” the weaver said. “We have something, for your generosity.”
The other weavers walked forward and began to pool their money from foul-smelling sacks attached to their ragged robes, producing a few gleaming shards that glittered in the dim illumination.
“Put that away,” Can Hu ordered. “Put it away before you enrage me and I banish you from the premises.”
The weavers paused. “But—”
“I told you,” Can Hu continued, “this is charity. This is a demonstration of my spirit. Do not offend me this way.”
“But how will we thank you,” the weaver asked, “if you’ve given us so much, fed us when no one else will, regarded us with kindness when few others dare to look upon us—avoid us, even?”
One of the weavers looked at Uva, and she almost flinched in shame, but she was still defensive. Shiv knew she faced feral weavers before—they even had to set up a quarantine outside Fel’s store the first time they went there.
Can Hu continued addressing the weavers. “To aid you is my choice. You may thank me by living better lives of your own. Be strong for yourselves. Even though you might be Pathless, even if you are lame and damaged by the System, do not succumb to bitterness or despair. It demands strife, but we can demand strength from ourselves, even if it feels unreasonable. That is the only thing we might find salvation in sometimes.”
The weavers stared at him, and they offered him a gesture that was usually only reserved for the Composer.
“That was borderline heretical,”
Uva said. “At least, for some. Many Weaveresses would not allow this in their sight.”“Oh, well,” Shiv muttered. “I’m not exactly a Weaveress. Are you?”
He looked at her. She met his eyes, then shook her head. “I am not. And sometimes I am thankful for the fact.”
As the weavers left, Can Hu led his guests through the front entrance. The door was rusted, beaten, battered. It looked like it was repurposed from pieces of metal welded back together. But it opened just fine as Can Hu turned his key.
“Seems like a pretty unsophisticated security system,” Shiv said. “Just a lock, huh?”
“I don’t see the point in adding any further measures,” Can Hu replied. “No one seeks me. Not truly. I was a celebrity for a time, a minor one. Then, I was a curiosity, an oddity. Now, I wander through the streets and the museum, and sometimes people gaze at me. I suppose I am a walking relic by this point.” Then, Can Hu regarded Uva with a low chuckle. “Sometimes, a single person repeatedly crosses my path, and they become an interesting acquaintance rather than just another leering stranger.”
She gave him a respectful nod, and they entered the warehouse that Can Hu called home.
As soon as they went inside, Shiv felt something—saw a surge of movement. In the air, there were small drones with spinning blades on their backs. They flew through the air, carrying different things, placing blocks from place to place. The inside was a playground of color. Everything was painted: more murals, more animals in various stages of injury and decay. But they were always striving, always trying to climb up a certain mountain or cross a raging river.
Shiv looked up to the left corner of the room and saw a small army of spider-like bots painting in Can Hu’s stead. They completed the final strokes of a rising wave about to crash down on what seemed like a town, but the town had constructed a small wooden wall. The wooden wall wouldn’t stand before the wave, but the people were building still, even as the wave was coming.
“Your art… is full of symbolism.” Shiv found himself briefly awed. Even he could understand the running theme of the artworks.
“I am not that good of a painter unassisted,” Can Hu said, his hand shaking slightly, “but I still try, and I can still build, and with help from my assistants, I can paint, and I can create. Did you know that a crafting skill is harder to obtain for an automated model like me?”
“No,” Shiv said. “I assumed most automata had a crafting skill, considering… You know, the parts and everything.”
“Not for my kind, not for my model. I had Repair. It was my strongest skill for a time, despite me walking the Path of the Artillerist. My siblings—they were all envious, and they came to me. One time, I had to entirely rebuild the armor of one of my comrades to prevent them from fully… from dying. I earned my crafting skill. I became a Blacksmith, a Weaponsmith, and then an Inventor, and the Second Resurrection deemed these skills to be a direct boon rather than a threat. These were the skills that remained untouched when I broke my ‘contract,’ and I shattered myself.”
“Second Resurrection?” Shiv asked.
“It is what most people call the Legacy Empire in Forbidden Africa.” The bot paused. “It is who I used to fight for—my masters, my pilots, and wielders.”
A few more spider-like drones pulled a table into the room. These were larger than the other drones and had four human-like arms. They worked together and even made chittering noises. Shiv realized they were communicating.
The table they brought into the middle of the vast open warehouse was nice, well-cut, but there were oddities to it. The edges were far too neat, and the legs were all of different materials. Some were nightglass, others alloy, one was even a stump of bone. Shiv could feel that with his Biomancy.
“Did you build everything in here?”
“Yes,” Can Hu replied, then paused. “No.”
“No?” Shiv asked.
“Do I build anything? Sometimes I wonder that. I recreate, I reforge, I repair, and I wonder how different repairing is from actually building. The System… It gives these things separate names, sorts them into separate skills, but are they?”
Shiv blinked. He was not used to dealing with a philosopher, let alone a philosopher robot, but he just let Can Hu continue talking.
Can Hu sighed. “Regardless, I—pardon me—sometimes I get carried away by my musings.” Another small drone came by, its blades spinning as it dropped what seemed to be a particularly large tea kettle on the table. A loud bang sounded through the warehouse. Then Can Hu turned to glare at the drone. It beeped and flew away in fright. “Forgive that one. It is new. It will learn.”
“What do you mean, it will learn? Is it awakened by the System?” Shiv stared more intently at the various machines around him, trying to—
Skill Gained: Analyze 1 (Initiate)