Forged Legacy

“So now the family has a baseball knight and a great dad. My gosh, I can’t believe I just said that out loud,” Eleanor chuckled. “What kind of magic powers does that give you?”

“Umm,” they both hummed awkwardly, looking back and forth between each other and the rest of the group.

“Nothing yet,” Harvey interjected, receiving a grateful smile.

“Your Class is the framework that the System uses when creating all your other skills down the line. They won’t even get their first stat increases until they fight a few monsters tomorrow,” Cash explained.

“So they’re going in empty-handed?” Cassandra asked.

“Nope, because tonight we’re going to start forging our armor,” Harvey smiled.

The family left the chapel and walked back into the pristine neighborhood. The army of teenage boys Harvey saw, armed with lawn care equipment, had done a great job yesterday, leaving everything looking like a freshly built master-planned community.

“I’m not much use in a Smithy,” Cash waved as he started walking back into the church where the teleporter waited. “My wings always end up knocking things over. I’ll come grab you guys tomorrow the second our scouts see anything coming from Hell.”

“Wait, before you leave,” Harvey interjected. “Do you want to see my new gun?”

“It’s already finished?” Cash asked, surprised.

Harvey just smiled, beckoning for the angel to follow. His fingers were itching by the time they reached the driveway, eager to test out the arrays he’d added since firing it the first time. As with any son excited to try something dangerous, his mother just had to dump a bucket of cold water on his head once she saw the sketchy glint in his eye.

“You’re not going to shoot that tree again, are you?” Cassandra asked.

“What else am I supposed to shoot?” Harvey complained. “Here, Tyler. Go balance this apple on your head.”

“NOPE! No, no, no! Don’t even joke about that!” she squealed, straining to snatch the fruit Harvey had pulled from his spatial ring.

When the rest of the family finished laughing after his father gently pulled Cassandra away, Cash offered a slightly better alternative. “Why don’t you test it out on your bunker? It should hold up, and if it doesn’t, we know there are bigger problems for us to worry about.”

“Ooh, great idea,” Harvey replied. Moving to an empty patch of grass in the shade of the tree that had a sizable chunk of its trunk torn apart, Harvey channeled the massive amount of essence required to conjure Legacy’s Redoubt. It was only his second time using the skill, and he was starting to get a feel for the time it would take to activate in battle. He’d have to set up the bunker preemptively. If an attack was already coming his way, it was too late.

The light grew dark as steel walls sprang up around him, and he spun the heavy wheel that secured the only door outside. Despite the weight, the mechanism moved easily, and the expected creak of metal he expected never arrived when the door swung open. Harvey ran back towards his family to make some distance, but froze when he saw his mother and sister’s faces hanging open.

“What?” he asked.

“Where did that thing come from?!” Eleanor asked.

“My sick back tattoo,” Harvey joked, doing his best California surfer impression.

“Mommy. Can I play?” Max asked, pointing to the structure that could be mistaken for a jungle gym if you were a 12 year old that didn’t understand the concept of war.

“Not right now, buddy. Cover your ears, this thing is pretty loud,” Harvey instructed as the gleaming aethersteel revolver appeared in his hand. A subtle golden aura surrounded the weapon, where the sunlight reflected off the thin golden veins stretching across the metal. The cylinder was already loaded, only one chamber containing an empty casing.

“You ready?” Harvey asked.

Once his family had all plugged their ears as best they could, his father answered. “Go for it!”

BANG!

Sparks flashed where the bullet slammed into the bunker, and smoke rose from the barrel. A single ring of his kinetic absorption array hummed with barely constrained power. He’d aimed at the flattest part of the bunker he could find, doing his best to ensure the bullet wouldn’t ricochet back at them.

“Holy heck, that was loud!” Steve exclaimed, unable to hide a giddy smile.

“Can I shoot it?” Tyler begged. “You have to make me one.”

“You don’t want to go anywhere near that thing until you’ve got a couple more levels under your belt,” Cash laughed.

“Why not? Earth already had .50 Cal revolvers before the integration.”

“Yeah, but not one shooting bullets packed with Hellfeather Dust. That gunpowder is mixed with literal demon feathers,” Cash explained.

“Come on, I can take it,” Tyler pleaded.

“As funny as it would be to watch you break your own hand, I still won’t let you shoot it. Not yet, at least,” Harvey said, walking up to the bunker to inspect the damage. There was a noticeable depression where the now deformed bullet sat smoldering in the grass had hit it, but overall his skill held up well.

“What’s that array on the barrel?” Cash asked.

“Kinetic absorption. It traps all the recoil so I can use it to power the other half of the array. Here, everyone stand back a bit.”

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Harvey returned to his family’s side, taking aim at the same spot before pulling the trigger again. The flame burst array was triggered by a contact rune on the hammer, and a condensed stream of fire burst into the chamber, combining with the feather-infused gunpowder to send the bullet rocketing from the barrel even faster than before. This time, instead of simple smoke leaking from the barrel, a gout of flame made the gun look like a miniature dragon.

[Oh my god, what a missed opportunity,] Julius said.

To decorate the barrel to look like a dragon’s head? I was thinking the same thing.

Nobody said a word, but the looks on their faces were all Harvey needed.

“Cool right?” he smiled, his heart racing a beat faster as they all nodded enthusiastically. “Wait til you see this!”

Harvey fired the last three rounds in quick succession, keeping the absorption arrays under lock and key until all three rings were glowing like the revolver was some sort of futuristic laser weapon. Pushing the cylinder, it smoothly hinged outwards to let him dump the spent brass casings on the ground before loading one final round. With a flick of his wrist, the cylinder snapped back into place, and he carefully spun the round into place.

His confidence was through the roof, fed by his pride and his family’s awe at his ability to create such a magnificent weapon. Taking aim, he pulled the trigger one last time.

BOOM!

“Ow!” Harvey yelped, dropping the gun just as molten metal trickled out of the cylinder down onto his bare hands. The grass at his feet ignited instantly, rapidly spreading through the lawn.

“Fire!” Steve shouted, pulling his wife and son back before dashing into the house.

“God damn it!” Harvey swore as he desperately tried removing the molten metal from his hand, each glob taking a sheet of skin with it.

“Harvey!” his mother chastised

“I’m literally on fire!” he yelled, not caring what she thought of his outburst. Cash snatched his arm, using the same healing light he’d used to deal with his own bullet wounds to cause new flesh to push away the charred. It felt like his hand was being dunked in a tub of aloe vera, a soothing chill quickly pushing away the sweltering heat.

Steve returned with a fire extinguisher, covering the lawn, gun, and both Harvey and Cash’s lower halves in white foam. The angel didn’t look happy about having his robes caked with liquid, but he bit his tongue.

“What happened?” Steve asked.

Harvey bent down and dug his hand through the mess until he found the gun, gingerly picking it up and pushing the cylinder aside to get a clearer view of the barrel. “I think the brass melted.”

Looking towards the bunker, a small hole in the wall proved the bullet had blown through just fine. The cylinder was a different story, covered in brittle chunks of metal after being overwhelmed by the full power flame burst and then rapidly cooled by the fire extinguisher.

“Your arrays are too powerful for their own good,” Cash said. “Can I see it?”

[Bet you’re glad I made you inscribe the reinforcement array first, now aren’t you?] Julius mocked.

Harvey handed Cash the gun, carefully picking the last flecks of metal from his flesh while Cash wiped the aethersteel on his sleeve. Harvey flexed his hand, feeling pins and needles as newly regenerated nerves reconnected.

“I’m no inscriptionist, but your design looks impressive. Most angels use the more artistic form of inscriptions, but I’m not seeing any sort of self-repair arrays. Am I missing something?” Cash asked.

“Self-repair? That’s a thing?” Harvey asked.

“You’re joking, right?” Cash asked. “Where did you even learn to do this? Self-repair is one of the most common arrays in the multiverse.”

“From one of John’s guides,” Harvey said defensively. “It didn’t mention anything about self-repair inscriptions. I was just hoping that a reinforcement array using Dragon’s Fortitude Ink would be enough for me not to have to repair the thing all the time.”

“Dragon ink is perfect for self-repair arrays. I’ll take you guys to a proper inscriptionist once your armor is ready and he can teach you,” Cash said, handing the gun back. “For now, don’t shoot any more brass bullets. You’ll need to make your own with a stronger metal.”

“I was already planning on making my own,” Harvey sulked. The offer to take him to a proper inscriptionist stung. Even after all his hard work figuring things out on his own, he wasn’t a proper inscriptionist?

“At least the problem is that it works too well,” Steve encouraged.

“You know what? You’re right. Thanks, Dad!”

Steve hesitated at the edge of the pool of foam before decidedly walking in and wrapping his son in a hug. “You did good, kid. Now, can we get started on our stuff? Tyler and I are going to need some help if we’re going to get any levels tomorrow.”

His demonstration clearly over, Cash left for home while his family settled in for the evening. Max made a beeline for the bunker, using it as a fort until it cracked and the essence holding it together dissipated. Cassandra tried calling them in for dinner, but the boys refused, opting to pick at plates they brought into the garage while they got to work on their new equipment.

Silver was usually a poor alternative to steel, especially when it came to armor. For one, it was much more expensive, but that wasn’t a problem with the seemingly endless supply the angels had brought with them into the trial. The real problem was how much softer the metal was. Harvey had asked both Cash and the Blacksmith they bought the metal from why almost all of Heaven’s soldiers used the metal and learned it was about the resonance within.

Apparently, silver naturally contained large amounts of holy resonance, similarly to how the infused iron Harvey looted from the elementals back in his trial contained traces of the lightning resonance he used to create his arc charges. That made any weapons or armor made from the metal extremely effective against demons, as the resonance within would interfere with the infernal essence that almost all of their skills and weapons used. The same was true in reverse, though, meaning that both resonances would destabilize the other as those using them struggled for control. Harvey had asked why they didn’t just use other materials for their weapons, but learned that the natural attunement of angelic weaves to the holy resonance made using anything else a significant downgrade.

In the end, both sides were fighting fire with fire, relying on overwhelming force to make the difference as holy and infernal essence kept each other in check. Victory came down to the purity of the resonance and the quality of the skills, arrays, and weapons wielded by the warriors relying on it. Tyler and Steve would both face a similar problem since their Classes incorporated Heavenly paths, but Harvey could experiment with other ways to get around Hell’s infernal aspects.

He’d use their holy armor, but his weapons would exploit the gaps in their affinities.

Before long, Harvey had slipped back into the frantic pace he’d kept when forging armor for the rest of Veils End before their quest to decide the final Outpost had ended. His father and brother tried to help where they could, but neither had the strength or expertise to do much more than slow him down. Instead, Harvey coiled metal wire into springs that they cut, weaved, and riveted together in what would eventually be chainmail protecting the more vulnerable areas, like where the helmet met the breastplate.

They worked long into the night, the constant hammering never abating even after his mother, sister, and Max had all fallen asleep. Normally, his family would’ve barged in demanding he keep the noise down hours ago, but nobody complained now that they’d seen the battlefield firsthand. Around midnight, Harvey sent the others to bed. They needed their sleep if they were going to stay sharp. He kept working, with only Julius there to keep him company as he endured the sweltering heat.

[You know, you could do with a nap too.]

I’m fine. You know how it is, the higher level you get, the less you need to sleep.

[True, but less isn’t the same as none.]

Their classes aren’t the kind to hide in a bunker and shoot things, Harvey argued. It’s my job to keep them safe, and there’s no chance in Hell I’m letting them leave that bunker without this armor.

[Alright, then let’s get to work.]

What does it look like I’ve been doing the last 9 hours? Sometimes I swear you say things just because you think it sounds cool.

[Pshh. You’re just jealous that everything I say sounds cool.]