Forged Legacy

Harvey worked into the early morning, only taking a few fitful naps with his head on the workbench in between rounds of tempering the silver armor. Julius couldn’t sense anything while Harvey slept, but maintained enough awareness to act as an extremely shoddy alarm clock.

It’s barely been 20 minutes! Harvey complained.

[I’m basically guessing here. Do you really expect me to count the seconds until you wake up!] Julius shot back. Normally, his own conscience would go dormant inside the cognition matrix, but he was forcefully keeping himself awake so they could keep an eye on the silver.

Groggy and disoriented, Harvey nearly fell backward off the stool before catching himself. Shaking himself awake, he moved the various pieces away from the heat before closing the forge doors and letting the fire burn down. Harvey desperately wanted to crawl up the stairs and collapse into his bed, but he knew he could only push his mother’s limits so far. If he got in bed without showering all the sweat and soot off first, he’d never hear the end of it. So, he waddled back to the stool and lay his head back on the dusty table, falling asleep before his head hit the makeshift pillow that was his ratty old robe.

“Harvey?” a distant voice muttered.

Hannah, is that you? He dreamed.

“Harvey!” Eleanor said, gently shaking his shoulder.

“Hmm? What! I’m awake,” he stumbled, nearly falling off the stool once more.

“Did you sleep out here?” she asked, crinkling her nose at the soot that his flailing stirred up. Sunlight streaming through the window glinted off the specks as they danced through the air.

“What does it look like?” he groaned, laying his head back down.

“It’s time to get up. Cash is here.”

“Already? What time is it?” Harvey asked.

“8:30.”

“God damn it,” he muttered, standing up and following her towards the door. His legs and back ached from lying in such an awkward position, but the pain vanished as soon as he got moving.

“Oh!” his mom yelped, rounding the corner with a laundry basket in hand. “You look terrible.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Harvey sneered.

“Go wash your hands.”

Harvey ignored her, instead moving towards the front door where Cash was talking with Steve and Tyler.

“Morning,” Harvey said.

“You look like you had a fun night,” Cash laughed.

“Are we heading out to Elysium? Can they tag along? I need a leatherworker to help finish fitting their armor.”

“Sure. Is it already done?” Cash asked, surprised.

“I wouldn’t call them works of art like the fancy decorated stuff you guys wear, but it will keep them alive,” Harvey replied matter-of-factly.

“Awesome. Yeah, we can get going as soon as you’re ready.”

Harvey grabbed all the pieces scattered around the garage before joining the trio outside. Cash handed him a bottle of the same cleansing jelly he’d used after their first fight together. Tipping it over his head, he felt the goo ooze over every inch of his body, destroying the filth and grime before evaporating, leaving him completely clean.

“Thanks!” Harvey said.

“No problem! Did finishing those up get you another level? The boost for your first set of Silver armor should’ve been pretty good, right?” Cash asked.

Harvey hadn’t really thought about it, but the gain from making two sets of armor from a new material should’ve been enough after the inscriptions for his gun hadn’t pushed him over the edge. Checking his status screen, he saw his Profession had indeed reached Level 43, pushing his Race to 44. He added his free points to Dexterity before closing the screen.

“Huh. I did, but I don’t remember feeling it. Must’ve happened once the tempering finished while I was asleep.”

His father and brother both gawked when they stepped through the teleporter to Elysium, clogging up the busy teleporter just like he had when he first came to Heaven’s capital city. Angry muttering soon broke their stupor, and they ducked sheepishly out of the way. The market was even more alive than his first visit, with shopkeepers hawking potions, weapons, and ammunition to the horde of angels walking by.

“Why is it so busy today?” Harvey shouted up to Cash as they weaved through the crowd.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“The day of rest is over. People are gearing up for another week of fighting!” Cash shouted back.

Before long, they stumbled into a tannery where a well-built female angel was busy haggling with a slightly shorter warrior who had a massive sniper rifle slung over one shoulder.

“Please, Bee. I need an upgrade. Things are getting rough out there,” the sniper pleaded.

“I know they are, which is exactly why I can’t help you. The Commander has made it perfectly clear that all our Ox leather needs to go to the warriors fighting on the front lines!”

“I am on the front lines!”

The angel tsked, reaching over to pull on the rifle strapped to the smaller woman’s back. “If you’re ever close enough that a set of new leather armor would help, you’ve got bigger problems.”

The women fought for another minute before the sniper huffed and stormed out of the store. Bee watched her leave, a mix of annoyance and sadness clear on her face. Eventually, she turned to Cash before looking down at the much shorter humans with surprise.

“Now what are you doing bringing a Gilded and two of the Faithful into my shop?”

“We need your help fitting some armor for them,” Cash explained.

“If I can’t help a fellow angel, what makes you think I’m going to waste a set of good Ox leather on these three?” she scoffed.

Harvey scowled as Tyler and Steve took a step towards the door. Was Cash the only decent angel around?

“We just need a few straps and buckles. I already made the rest,” Harvey said, a silver chestplate appearing in his hands.

“Oh,” she replied, her indignant face softening just a little. “I can do that. As long as you’re ok using some of the cheaper stuff.”

“That’s fine,” Cash blurted before Harvey could respond. “As long as it will hold up under the weight.”

The woman worked fast, fitting both sets of armor in less than half an hour. Her profession skills made attaching the various straps and belts seamless, magically gluing the materials in place rather than using the crude methods Harvey’s own set relied on. She didn’t even charge them anything, taking the body of the Nahashim that had bitten into his father as payment.

Next, Cash led them to an inscriber who added powerful fortification and self-repair arrays in exchange for a quarter of Harvey’s remaining dragon bones. Harvey still had barely any merit after his spending spree, but the angel seemed more than happy to be paid in ink materials.

Like Cash said the night before, the angel used the more artistic style of inscriptions Elena preferred, but was more than happy to demonstrate the runic version of a self-repair array once Harvey explained he preferred that particular style. It turned out that Harvey already had all the pieces he’d need to recreate the effect. The guide already included all the components, but he’d never thought to combine them that way since the thought of metal growing back seemed utterly impossible.

“It’s like the array creates a blueprint of the object at the moment of inscription. Whenever the object's state changes, it does its best to return to the blueprint. That also means any mistakes or imperfections will return, so you won’t be able to improve the item without breaking the inscription first,” the inscriber explained while putting the finishing touches on Tyler’s helmet.

Harvey was running out of room on his revolver, and his inscriptions were already pushing the limits of the aethersteel’s essence conductivity. Still, he couldn’t afford not to include a self-repair array since the gun relied on so many small, moving parts to work. Using another batch of Thanefire Drake bones, Harvey refined a new batch of ink that traded the fortitude resonance for renewal. Then, he followed along as the inscriber taught him to combine the existing reinforcement array with a simple self-repair function. It worked much more slowly than a standard array, but ensured Harvey didn’t accidentally overload the aethersteel's capacity.

“This should be enough,” he said. “Especially since the reinforcement array is already doing the heavy lifting.”

Finally, the inscriber dipped each piece of inscribed armor in a vat of liquid Harvey had never seen before. When he pulled it out, a thin film sank into the silver.

“What was that?” Harvey asked.

“This? It’s called mordant. Coating your creations in this helps push the ink deeper into the material, making the inscriptions harder to break if the equipment gets damaged.”

Harvey didn’t even know something like that existed, and traded another quarter of his bones for a barrel of the stuff. Seeing as his gun was finally finished, he dipped it inside the barrel before inspecting the finished product.

Item: Rupture | F Grade | Epic

A five-chambered .50 Cal revolver forged and inscribed by Harvey Thorne to fire each shot harder than the last. Like the man who made it, this weapon transforms pressure into explosive force that rips holes wherever the barrel points.

Soul Forge: +5 Vitality, +5 Endurance, +5 Wisdom

Just like Aftershock, inscribing his weapon had changed its name and description. He wasn’t sure how the System decided what they should be, but assumed the praise in the description meant the System was a fan of his work.

Finally, they visited the same blacksmith that Harvey and Cash visited the last time. He was busy repairing various weapons that had been damaged during their last battle with the dragon, and pointed their group towards a box of ownerless weapons that had been taken from the battlefield once Cash explained what they needed. Steve and Tyler would need something to use until Harvey had time to finish their gear, and after rummaging around various crates, they left with a spiked mace for Tyler and a dented tower shield and sword for his father. Harvey had plenty of extra slipsacks from before he looted his ring, and had given them each one to put their stuff in.

“This is sweet,” Tyler said, swinging the mace through the air to test his range of motion before inspecting the gleaming silver covering his arms.

“It fits perfectly!” Steve said. They’d bought simple gambesons, the padded clothing worn underneath plate armor, from another shop before strapping both of them in. Both Harvey and Bee had skills that let them measure their clients perfectly, and they’d left just the right amount of room for undergarments and a future set of chainmail.

Just as they returned to the bustling street, the stone gargoyles perched on the stone city walls high above their heads all began shrieking in unison. In an instant, the river of bodies walking along the street turned into a tsunami that carried their small group towards the teleporter whether they liked it or not. Every single store was soon locked up tight as their owners joined the procession.

“What’s going on?” Tyler shouted over the constant blaring of bells and bellows.

“The enemy army’s been spotted! You’ll get to test out those new weapons sooner than we thought!” Cash replied.

“Wait! Shouldn’t we spend some time getting used to our gear first?” Steve asked.

“Soldiers don’t get a say for when the fighting starts!” Harvey replied. “Looks like you’re getting baptized by fire!”