Book 9. Chapter 24: The Covenant Armory
Jake stood in the center of the Refuge’s armory, carefully guiding a thread of golden Hearthflame along the polished surface of his new armor. He let out a slow breath, sealing the final demonic rune into the matrix.
“You really don't realize what you’ve managed to accomplish, do you?”
Jake blinked, pulling his focus away from the glowing metal. Nessa was leaning against a weapon rack a few paces away. Her arms were crossed beneath her chest, her snake tail coiled comfortably beneath her, and a look of profound, loving disbelief was plastered across her face.
“I just finished the last of my armor’s Covenants,” Jake said, tilting his head. “Is the resonance off?”
“The resonance is terrifyingly perfect,” Nessa laughed, shaking her head. “Jake, in the Core Sectors, they teach that Runic Covenants of this complexity are strictly restricted to the Third Tier and above. Absolute laws carry a massive metaphysical weight. Standard runic ink literally boils and evaporates if you try to bind it with the kind of restrictions you just wrote. And…don’t get me started about how you’ve managed to do it not fully leaning on the Nords.”
Jake frowned, looking down at the Mythic Champion Vestments in his hands. He couldn’t fully upgrade the item as he wished yet, but he had managed to tie the core gem into his new Resonant States. “But it held.”
“Because you aren't using standard ink, along with Mythic-grade materials supplied by your goddess.” Nessa said, gliding forward to inspect the armor. She traced a finger inches above the glowing runes. “You are etching directly with your Void-Divine Hearthflames. You combined that with the absolute highest quality monster cores and materials our entire guild has farmed across four different worlds. I couldn't even warn you about the ink limitations because the Framework restricts sharing higher-tier crafting secrets. But you just organically bypassed the bottleneck.”
Jake rubbed the back of his neck, a bit sheepish but undeniably proud. “Yiming and Amara helped me understand that I was achieving something special a long time ago. Still, I’m glad we can talk about this a bit more now. It almost felt like you were avoiding me.”
Nessa chuckled at that. “Well, now you know just about as much as I do when it comes to the enchantments, so it is much easier for me to speak freely.”