Forged Legacy

Harvey’s weave entered the inkwell alongside his blood, and he kept bleeding himself until he started to feel lightheaded. Being forced to use your own blood as the base for any ink created a natural limit to how much ink an inscriber could make, and Harvey was dancing along the edge as he began his second large batch of the day. This time, instead of crushing the core outside the cauldron, he plopped the entire cloudy gray diamond into the cauldron.

Immediately, the will of the elemental rose to face him. Instead of a trickle of power raging against his mind, it felt like the real thing had been resurrected inside his own aura. Panic overcame him as his weave was assaulted once more, but this time he didn’t have his armor to protect him. Echoes of the pain he’d endured when the first F Grade destroyed his Soul Forged armor made his brain short-circuit, leaving him utterly defenseless.

Luckily, the latent will of the creature was nothing compared to its iron body. Instead of devastating punches, its fists were reduced to obnoxious tapping on the threads of his weave. Harvey’s soul mustered the force of 195 points in Willpower, engulfing the elemental like the shadows of the Moonshade Stalker trying to choke him. Instinctively, he ground down the core, removing the rage, hope, and desire animating the resonances hidden deep within. Piece by piece, the vision of the metal man in his mind was destroyed, leaving only a mess of components ready to be sifted through.

Harvey watched in amazement as the crystal crumbled apart, leaving only sand and steely blue light caged inside the cauldron. His aura could never destroy an object like that in the real world, but the glowing runes of the inkwell turned the struggle from a physical battle to a spiritual one. The latent will was subdued, and he stripped away every aspect until the essence was nothing more than a means of storing energy. The remaining core sand inside the bowl began to disintegrate, wafting out of the cauldron before dispersing into pure essence.

He hadn’t noticed this phase of the reaction refining the light ink because there were no competing resonances to strip away. Campfire coals were designed for light, so almost all of the material could be absorbed into the ink. Stripping away everything that made an elemental core the heart of a beast until all that was left was the energy storage meant discarding much of the unrelated essence.

I guess the purity of the material is going to be important after all.

Elena must already know all of this, but hadn’t taken the time to teach him much about it. That made sense, though. Until a few days ago, she thought all the ink he used would have to come from her. They hadn’t even been sure that integrating inscriptions into his Profession was possible until he evolved.

With only the essence of kinetic energy storage remaining, his massive pool of Willpower effortlessly infused it into his blood. Like charging a battery, he only had to guide the light into the waiting arms of his blood cells, each drinking in the essence as their nature was rewritten. Once all the essence found a home, the inkwell gently expelled his weave as the runes went dark.

You have created | Kinetic Ink | F Grade | Uncommon. Essence Gained

Inspecting it, he reviewed the changes now that he’d properly infused enough energy for the System to grade it as Uncommon.