Chapter 47: Long enough
But after a while, Baines didn’t overthink it.
One of those said gods had recently appeared on his list. If he were destined to stand against the gods in the future, he might as well begin by arming himself with their weapons. That was only fair.
For the second time that day, he reached inward, opening his heart’s core. A stream of Ashenfall energy surged from within him, and the violent torrent of power poured out like a wave of water.
He then directed and poured it into the armband shackled around his arm.
The band was made of blackened steel laced with mysterious, archaic runes and connected by twin chains running from wrist to shoulder.
The metal trembled the moment the energy touched it. The armband pulsed hungrily and began devouring the Ashenfall, swallowing it like a ravenous beast.
It drank deeply, far beyond what Baines expected. His eyes widened in disbelief.
Even Wick, the powerful lich who had once used him as a catalyst to break through, hadn’t taken twice as much. Yet this artifact consumed even more. It startled him. The quantity of Ashenfall within him was enormous, almost monstrous in scale, but the artifact nearly emptied it.
After absorbing his energy, the shackles trembled and awakened. In that moment, Baines understood its function instinctively, as if the artifact whispered secrets to him.
The shackle had two primary forms. First, there was the physical chain, which could conjure iron-like chains at will, countless in number and unlimited in size. This alone was astonishing. The sheer quantity, the length, and the density, everything about them could be molded depending on the user’s strength and will.
Then came the second form, the ethereal chain, far more mysterious and dangerous. Unlike the physical chains that could bind the body, these were chains of the soul. They latched onto the soul itself, restraining one’s will, and dragged the soul into the strange realm he had previously been.