Runeblade

Kaius blinked away the notification of his changed blade, smiling deeply. Silver veins still pulsed within its glassy depths, twining around the faintly glowing glyphs and runes that hung suspended in the base of his fuller.

A change, but not the change.

There was still more to come. Silver blood beat faster in time with his rising anticipation.

As if it could read his emotions — sympathised with his plight — Kaius felt A Father's Gift pulse. Power flared from the sigil branded on his sword, a wave of force that shot through the metaphysical that linked it to his soul.

Fires wavered in his centre, a wind of change roaring forth, only to rebound and redouble as it turned and surged back down the link.

Prickling heat built in his hand, and Kaius saw the blade and sun on his palm start to glow. Incessant need and pressure wafted off his blade in waves, the sigil that bound them growing brighter by the second.

It reached a fever pitch — the transformation was upon him.

Strong and omnipresent in the crucible, atmospheric mana gathered in great streams — a multicoloured collection of motley affinities swirling into a tight vortex that was drawn implacably down into the grasp of his sword.

That same hunger reached towards him — into his soul. Kaius didn't flinch, knowing that it wouldn't claw at his essence with the same avariciousness. Their bond was total — complete.

He could already feel what it needed. Soulfire.

Spinning a thread of burning gold, he guided a wisp of his innermost being into the pulsing link that bound them together. It was out of his grasp the second it crossed the threshold, leashed to his blade's whims to be used for a process he could only half perceive.

A quenching in his essence, and a release of all the bound potential it had squirrelled away from every material he had fed it.

**Ding! Growth Weapon - A Father's Gift is ready to advance! Proceed?**

Once again, he accepted the prompt without hesitation.

The vortex of mana it pulled into its depths grew — so dense that he could almost feel the energy against his skin. A latent charge, ready to erupt at the slightest notice.

More soulfire poured from his centre, seeping deep into the emblem on its fuller — a blade suspended point-down beneath a burning sun. Burning light spread, creeping out through metallic vasculature that beat in time with his heart, spreading further along its reaches with every pulse.

Every moment, the sword drank more from the well of power it had gathered — until Kaius couldn't help but gasp at the sheer volume of energy it had bound and compressed within itself. Pure mutagenic potential, tightly corralled and directed — enough, that were it to be loosed for even a heartbeat, Kaius feared he wouldn't survive the resulting detonation.

One by one, the runes that burned within its fuller unspooled to become a tangled mess of lines. Magic and meaning, held in an unformed stasis by sheer pressure alone.

They spun and twisted, floating in place, until Kaius watched power flow out of his blade's sigil in a steady wall of force. A maelstrom of energy made of multiple sources. Life and crystal from the Spent Forgeheart, and blood and metal from Elder Blood mixed with the dominant power of severance and apotheosis that had been contained in the Waters of Zabriel.

He peered in, enraptured — only to notice a fourth power. His own. Essence from his soul, threaded through the potential that his gifted materials had bequeathed his blade.

The long-stored power suffused his weapon utterly — morphing ruins as it shifted physical material with equal ease. His blade burned like the stars, and flowed like water.

The blade of his weapon stretched — growing a little longer. Not by much — not so that it would become unwieldy — but enough to give him a reach he had previously lacked. Three fingerwidths and a hair more at most. The edge spread wide, crystal flowing like pure water into a sharp concave edge. It thinned the blade — almost impossibly so. It was an edge impossible to achieve on a mortal weapon of war — so thin it looked like the crystal should shatter from a simple breath.

With the exaggerated bevel came a widening of his blade — at most by half a fingerwidth. Enough that Kaius could tell the sword would cleave better than any headsman's axe.

As the light within his sword grew, Kaius knew that without Truesight he would have long since been blinded, left unable to witness the change that happened before him.

Tangled once-runes started to shift, lengthening and reweaving themselves into new forms — dense and tightly knotted, with a depth to them he had never expected to see suspended in glass. Yet they seemed caught in motion — never resting to settle into a final shape.

The original Ykkardian sigils had been washed away, replaced by system-runes in truth. Three tightly woven formations, made up of dozens of runes that seemed to pulse and shift to a new form whenever he tried to pull apart their secrets. The new enchantments were larger and more complex — stretching halfway up the blade, compared to its earlier fifth.

As his sword's inscriptions seemed to finalise, the glow slowly started to recede — revealing fine details that had been hidden beneath the radiance.

The banded black and grey of the remaining layered steel on his blade had been replaced by a metal of purest silver — the banding only visible as a hazy shimmer when it caught the light. The similarly pure veins that ran through the crystal portions of his sword now pulsed with a faint light, peaking with every heartbeat. It wasn't mana, and yet…he didn't see it with his physical eyes. Only the revealing nature of Truesight could see that faint radiance — a force he had no name for.

As for the silver fluid itself — it had grown ephemeral and ghostly, as if it only existed a half-step into this realm.

While the crystal of his blade edge had remained as clear as it had been before, the warping had grown stronger. The scales of his armour that he could see through its depths wavered like a mirage — and shimmered like they had been coated in a thin layer of oil.

The guard and grip of his blade was the final change. Finely wrought filigree gleamed like it had been polished for a century, the same silver as the metal banding on his blade — while the woven leather wrapping on his grip had shifted to a red the colour of blood, glossy and almost liquid.

Kaius sat and stared, stuck in mute awe as the final vestiges of power were consumed.

A system notification thrust itself upon him a moment later.

**Ding! Growth Weapon - A Father's Gift has advanced to Epic (Tier I)! Steep your weapon in its purpose to unlock further advancement!**

He was on his feet in an instant, A Father's Gift almost leaping into his hand.

Kaius felt the changes instantly. First, and most prominent, was its weight. His sword had always been a heavy one at four pounds — over a quarter-stoneweight — to maximise the advantage he held with his strength and height.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

At his current stats, it had been as light as a feather; so much so that if he'd gotten any stronger, he'd have started to struggle with actually transferring the force of his swings appropriately.

That problem was gone now. He couldn't exactly measure the thing, but his sword had heft. Enough that he wouldn't be surprised if it was four stoneweight or more!

It would have been a horrible weapon for an unclassed — even most first tier melee combatants. Even ignoring the simple strength it would require, the inertia would be almost impossible to control, encouraging overextension and hampering parrying.

In his hands? It felt right — like he could finally leverage the full might of his empowered body. If A Father's Gift had felt like a feather before, now it felt substantial — just like a blade should.

Snapping into a high-guard, Kaius shifted his weight onto his back heel and pivoted through his wrist. A twist of his wrists sent his blade whirling into a viscous downwards cut.

Silver pulsed in time with his racing heart, a visible declaration of the hot joy that coursed through his own veins. He raced through his stances, feeling the new shape of his blade.

It was perfect — utterly moulded to his hand and stature.

When he'd first received the blade, it had been a little large for him. An intentional choice, he assumed. He'd been fifteen then, and not fully through his growth-spurt. By the time he'd reached his current stature, it had been almost perfect — as close as anyone could really expect a commissioned blade to be.

The slight adjustment to its length and width utterly changed his opinion of what good even meant. Now, more than ever, he could wield his sword like an extension of himself — a whirling dervish of flashing steel and crystalline blur.

His drill revealed more. In motion, the transparent crystal of his blade became more than a decorative warping — it seemed to bleed into the surrounding air. Most of his blade edge became little more than an indistinct shimmer, difficult to track.

If he didn't know better, he'd have thought that the looping band of silver metal between his edge and fuller was the blade. It would be a fatal mistake if his enemies assumed the same.

After all, his blade point extended by another handspan, and was all but invisible when in motion.

His chest heaving as he came to a slow stop, Kaius stopped with his blade outstretched. He smiled widely, staring at it reverently — pleased beyond his wildest hopes at the changes it had undergone.

Sure — it hadn't reached the second tier, but this was the foundation. A start to his blade that would determine everything that came after.

He'd managed to make it Epic! Break the tier cap on an item that would grow with him for the rest of his days!

Unable to restrain himself any longer, Kaius pulled up its description once more — eager to see what had changed with his weapon's advancement.

A Father's Gift:

Epic - Tier I

Forged in the dying days of Unterstern. Quenched in the fading light of prosperity. The final work of a master. Birthright of the last Scion.

Baptised in fire, blood, and water. Born to caring hands stained in passion and conquest. A final testament; an oath of vengeance.

A two-handed longsword that's potential has sprouted. Possessing a blade and fuller of crystalised livingwater, a face of folded ursteel, and veins of purified haemocite, this sword is almost impossible to track in motion. Weighty and strong, it can stand up to even the toughest abuse and crack even the hardest of armour.

At the height of what is possible for the first tier, its enchantments are potent: they allow it to move with spiritual grace, cutting even the intangible, and grant it a fire that will never extinguish. Even fragmented, it will burn anew — brighter and more resilient than before. Quenched in the blood of one, only those acknowledged by right may see its true depths.

Initial Material:

Meteoric Iron, Orichalchum, Deep Essence, Craexia Shard

Tier I:

Spent Forgeheart, Elder Blood, Waters of Zabriel

Artisan-wrought Artefact

Growth Item:

Further tempering required to advance!

Bound & Linked

Longsword

Ghost of Severance I, Spirit of Forgefire I, Bloodline Veil XII

Kaius shot straight to the sword's new enchantments. As he'd expected they'd changed utterly — and were potent by the looks of it. For the weight and power of an Epic artefact to be consumed by two first stage inscriptions? They would be weighty — strong in a way that would go beyond what he could expect even by a highly developed Honing or Durability enchantment.

From the looks of things, the new inscriptions had been impacted by his choice of materials just as much as the actual physical construction had been.

Ghost of Severance had most likely come from a combination of both Elder Blood and Waters of Zabriel — and had almost certainly subsumed Honed. It would have been what made the edge of his blade so hard to track while it had been moving.

He couldn't wait to see how it affected how his blade cut, and just what it meant by 'severing the incorporeal'. Even if it was limited to unsubstantiated enemies, that was an amazing addition — they were amongst the most dangerous monsters without a way to actually hit them.

Spirit of Forgefire was almost definitely thanks to his Forgeheart, and seemed to be a more direct advancement of both Self Repair and Durability — though to what extent, only time would tell.

Bloodline Veil had gotten its own boosts — thank the bloody gods. He did not like his chances if someone had managed to pierce the veiling and found out he not only possessed a growth item, but an Epic one.

Not even the guild would be able to shield him from the shitstorm that would create.

Still, its description didn't answer every question he had.

Namely, how in the benevolent heavens was he supposed to advance it further? Neither tempering, nor 'steeping it in its purpose' explained much of anything.

Nor did it tell him what he actually needed. A second tier material? Three, like he had gathered for the first awakening? More?!

Xenanra broke him from his musings.

"Congratulations — a fantastic result for a first awakening. Breaking the tier cap is no small thing."

Kaius looked up, before he respectfully inclined his head, "What even let it do that? And why is there a cap? I've only seen a wyvern bone break it before."

"It is a soft limitation, more than a restriction." Xenanra replied softly. "Most things, objects or living, simply cannot contain more than a Heroic level of strength in the first or second tier — even if they reach a point where they 'should' have it."

The ascendant gave him a grave look, "Be warned — for such a thing as your blade, reaching Epic is as much of a challenge as it is a reward."

Kaius paused, tilting his head in confusion. Gods' scorn, what could she mean by that?

"Having such an auspicious start carries its own burdens — your sword will be a gluttonous beast. Developing a weapon requires using it for its purpose, and yours will require much more feeding compared to a lesser blade. Even when it reaches the point of advancement, it will only be more demanding."

"What do you mean?" Kaius asked, slow and trepidation.

The ascendant gave him a fanged smile,"Do you think a blade like that will accept anything less than a material of equal rarity?"

His stomach dropped as he looked down worriedly at the sharpened length of steel and crystal in his hand.

"Considering Heroic is still the cap of the second tier, I'm sure you can see the potential difficulties."