Chronicles Of The Crafting Hero [REMASTERED]

The sun had drifted further across the wide blue sky, settling into the slow crawl of afternoon. From somewhere beyond the rooftops, the distant noise of the town carried through the air, voices layering over each other, the shuffle of crowds already gathering for the celebration. None of it reached the abandoned street below. Up here, the silence felt almost deliberate.

Tyler sat on the raised ledge at the roof's edge, the cracked surface beneath him warm from the afternoon sun, a surprised and confused expression still fixed on his face as he stared at James. James sat beside him, his gaze lowered to the cracked rooftop at his feet. The small black ant that had emerged from one of the fissures in the stone disappeared back into it, carrying two others smaller than itself.

James looked up at Tyler, expecting him to say something. Tyler's mouth was slightly open, his brow drawn together, but no words came. After a moment, he lowered his eyes to the cracked surface beneath him as well.

"This is just..."

"A lot?" James interjected.

"Yes." Tyler nodded slowly. "I mean... everything you've told me. That you're the son of the greatest hero, and how you ended up here. I never would have guessed it. Yet somehow it all makes sense."

He turned his gaze back to James. "But what about that village? It sounded like things were going well there. How did you end up in Veridia?"

"It's a bit complicated," James said, "but to put it simply, the farm was confiscated. I can't quite remember all the details, because a lot has happened since then. But if I remember correctly, it was a debt the old woman owed to the baron. Lisa was given a small sum of money after it was taken, but it wasn't much. From there, we started moving, village to village, town to town, always looking for somewhere cheaper. Somewhere that fit what we needed. Lisa wanted to sell, and I wanted to hunt. Veridia was almost the perfect place for both." He exhaled slowly. "But we're leaving soon."

"Why? Wouldn't it be better to stay?"

"Not really." James shifted his weight, his forearms resting on his knees. "Lisa and I had a plan, save enough money, leave Veridia, buy a farm of our own. That's what all of it has been for. But now..." He reached up and pressed a hand against his forehead, staring down at the cracked stone. "Now we have a problem."

"Heather," Tyler said quietly.

"Yeah." James looked up at him. "I always had my suspicions. But I told myself it wouldn't happen that because I wasn't like my father, wasn't like my sister, maybe Heather would be the same. Maybe she'd just be like the rest of us." He paused. "But that isn't the case at all. It's exactly as I feared."

"She's leveling up fast," Tyler said, the weight of the surprise still sitting in his voice. He looked at James. "She's C-rank. And she's only three years old."

"Yes." James stood up from the ledge.

"I was certain... I was certain she was just like me. Or at least like her mother. Two whole years passed and nothing happened." He was quiet for a moment. "Strangely, it all started shortly after we met."

Tyler's eyes widened slightly as James looked at him.

"I'm not saying it has anything to do with you. But that's when things started happening. She would exert bursts of strength out of nowhere, lift things no child her age should be able to lift. I found out a little late, but she almost melted a spoon once." He let that sit for a second. "Which means she might even have a passive skill."

"Wait," Tyler straightened up. "Didn't you say a passive skill has to come from a parent? Melting a spoon, that should require some kind of fire skill, shouldn't it?"

"Well, yes," James said. "Her mother is a fire mage, after all."

Tyler's breath caught. "Lisa is a mage?"

"Yes," James said, as though it hadn't occurred to him that Tyler wouldn't already know. "Right, you didn't know. Lisa is a low-level fire mage. She doesn't really use her skills since she never relied on them."

"Oh." Tyler processed that. "But then what kind of skill would Heather have?"

"That's just it, I don't know. The only skills Lisa has are a mild heat resistance and a fireball cast. But what Heather's doing..." He shook his head slowly. "It's like her hands can radiate heat on their own. An absurd amount of it. Whatever she has, it must have come from that."

As James said it, Tyler's hand drifted instinctively to his forearm. His fingers ran over the small, branching scar left there by Heather's grip, the faint red pattern pressed into his skin from nothing more than her holding on. He remembered the heat she had produced in that moment, the way her tiny hands had glowed a deep, aggressive red, like embers buried at the heart of a fire.

"And she'll only continue to grow," James said with a sigh. "It's going to be a struggle. Raising a child with that kind of strength." His voice faded as he said it, drifting somewhere distant, as though he was already watching it unfold in his mind. Tyler frowned and rose slowly from the raised edge of the ledge.

"I actually thought I could hide it from her. Take my past to the grave."

"What? You weren't going to tell her?"

"Yes," James said, simply. "It's going to be harder for her, growing up knowing that she could be living in the kingdom, amongst royalty, surrounded by servants and nobles, with an easier life. As long as she exposes herself."

"I can imagine," Tyler said. "But why won't you just go back? Why didn't you go back?"

"I wanted to. I had planned to return once I had mastered the skill to a certain extent. But as I got used to the village, and as time went on, I found myself actually quite satisfied with how I lived." He paused. "And it was also because I fell in love with Lisa."

James reached back and grabbed the back of his neck. "The thing with nobility is that they only allow marriage amongst themselves, amongst people of higher status. If they saw me with Lisa, they could have rejected it outright, especially with my father's blood running through my veins. They could have arranged a marriage between me and a royal member instead. I know that was the plan. I overheard it once."

"Huh," Tyler nodded slowly. *So in the end, he chose this instead.* He understood it, but a small smile caught the corner of his lips at the irony of it, that compared to him, who had spent his life in his original world struggling financially, wanting something more, James had been handed everything and had chosen to walk away from it.

They had wanted the exact opposite of each other. Though somewhere beneath that thought, Tyler knew that what he was after had never really been money or status. It was something he couldn't fully name yet. Purpose, maybe. And somewhere in this world, he had the quiet certainty that he could reach it.

"Now you know why I wasn't telling you any of this. I couldn't trust anyone with it. Not even you."

"Yeah, I get it."

A brief silence settled between them. Then a small chuckle escaped James's lips.

"What?" Tyler said.

"It's just... I keep thinking about the first time we met. It was very strange." Tyler remembered it too. how James had refused to believe a single thing he said, yet somehow, out of sheer pity, had helped him anyway.

"It was kind of the same for me," James said, one hand resting on his waist as he tilted his face up toward the blue sky. "After hearing you say you were an F-rank, I just couldn't believe it. I refused to believe there was someone out there who was just like me. But then you showed up, in a situation almost identical to mine, and I decided to help you, the same way Lisa helped me." He lowered his gaze back to Tyler, a small smile settling on his lips. "I couldn't trust you at first. But you earned it."

Tyler felt the warmth of it before he could stop himself, heat creeping up the back of his neck and into his cheeks. He cleared his throat and let the question that had been pressing at the back of his mind finally surface.

"But why is it that you can't level up? Even without the hero's blessing, you should still be able to level up like anyone else. But you're not." He paused. "I actually noticed it after you helped me take down the Crimson Alpha. You killed a lot of wolves that day and didn't level up once," Tyler said, his voice rising slightly with concern.

James stared at him for a moment, then shifted his gaze forward to the stretch of buildings spread wide before them. "I told you, I don't know. They never found out why. Even when I trained to the point where even an ordinary person would have risen several levels, nothing happened." He paused. "But sometimes things would change."

He looked back at Tyler, who held his silence and waited. "One time, while I was hunting, I killed a low-level slime monster. Something like that should have done nothing. But I leveled up four times from it."

"What?" Tyler said.

"Yes." James nodded. "I don't know how it happened. It should have been impossible. But after that, that kind of luck never came back. To level up even once, I'd have to kill an excruciating number of monsters."

"It still doesn't make any sense," Tyler muttered.

"Don't think about it. I've been trying to figure it out since I was born. I never could. It's just the way things are."

Tyler opened his mouth, then stopped himself.

James spoke first. "That's why I want to quit hunting."

"Wait, you're quitting?" Tyler said, the surprise sharp in his voice.

"Yeah," James said, staring down at his hand, a look of deep regret settled into his face. "There's something I haven't been honest about."

"Huh?" Tyler said.

James looked at him. "Do you remember when I told you about getting a skill?"

"Yeah," Tyler nodded.

"The truth is, I didn't. I became C-rank, but I never acquired a new skill." Tyler shook his head slowly, turning that over. "Wait, but that slash, it was bigger than anything you'd done before."

"It wasn't another skill, and it wasn't an evolved version of the one I have. As I've said before, the skill is unlike any other. It isn't fixed the way most skills are. It's more flexible. I channeled a large amount of mana and pushed my focus into manipulating the air and space around the blade. That was what caused it." He exhaled. "But that isn't all of it. After it happened, I could barely stand. And that isn't something that should happen."

"Yeah," Tyler said. "I was surprised when I saw that. It looked like you had nothing left."

"I did. But it wasn't the first time." James's jaw tightened slightly. "These days, the more I use my skill, the more exhausted I get. And it isn't just the fatigue, I feel slower than I used to be. Before you say anything, this has nothing to do with age."

"I wasn't thinking that. But... why do you think it's happening?"

"That I also don't know. It might be tied to the same thing that keeps me from leveling up the way other people do. Maybe it's come to a stop. Maybe I was just..." His voice dropped. "Never meant to hunt."

Tyler felt the weight of it settle over him. It was as though the world had quietly, persistently worked against James at every turn, as though something in it had decided from the beginning that he would never be allowed to grow stronger. Tyler had the system. Tyler was currently the strongest he had ever been, and somewhere beneath the discomfort of admitting it, he was fairly certain he was now stronger than the older man standing beside him. But he felt no satisfaction in it. Only a dull, quiet pity he didn't know what to do with.

"So what do you plan to do after this?"

A small smile returned to James's face. "Like I said, we're going to buy a farm. I'll go back to farming. I was already used to it." He looked out at the rooftops ahead of them. "I actually quite enjoy it. It's... more peaceful."

Tyler caught the genuine smile on James's face, the kind that carried the weight of something remembered rather than imagined. "If it makes you happy, you should go for it," Tyler said.

"I will." James said. "Now, we should probably go back before Lisa gets worried." He turned and headed toward the stone stairs running along the side of the building. Tyler followed behind him.

"Oh, right, you mentioned your instructor taught you that skill. That was the slash, right? But what about the other one?"

"What other one?" James stopped as soon as his boots met the cobblestone street below.

"The thrust. That skill you use when you drive your sword forward."

"That's not a separate skill. It's just another application of the same one, only instead of cutting, I'm using it to pierce."

"Huh. The system actually labeled it thrust, so I figured it was something different."

"No... that system of yours. Is that the other reason why you keep calling it slash?"

"Yeah, it called it slash, so I went with that."

"Well, I gave it that name because of how similar it was to the knight slash skill. But Benedict never told me what it was actually called."

James stepped aside as Tyler reached the street. They fell into step beside each other.

"So what makes it different from the regular slash skill?" Tyler asked.

"You don't remember?" James gestured loosely with one hand as they walked. "The knight slash skill manipulates air and launches an almost invisible wind blade at its target. My skill is similar, but it doesn't only manipulate the air, it distorts the space within it. That's what makes the attack stronger, and what gives it the ability to bypass defenses entirely. Or at least, it should do that once fully mastered."

"Whoa." Tyler let that land for a moment, his gaze dropping to the cobblestones passing beneath his feet. Then he looked back up. "Could you teach it to me?"

James glanced at him, surprised, then laughed, a short, genuine one.

"What's so funny?" Tyler asked, a slightly embarrassed smile pulling at his mouth.

"No, it's just, I expected you to say that." James shook his head. "But I'm sorry, kid. In the time we have left, I can't teach you this. Even if I explained how it works, it's far more complex than that. I could go on for hours about the theory and it still wouldn't be enough. I'd need to train you myself, over time."

"Right," Tyler muttered, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. "I got a little excited. I forgot you're leaving tomorrow."

James caught the flicker of disappointment on Tyler's face and nudged him on the shoulder. "Don't worry. The way you're progressing, I don't think you'll need it. You'll find more than enough as you go."

Something shifted in Tyler's expression, a thought surfacing that had been buried until just now.

"Ah,I actually got a new skill. I forgot to tell you about it."

"Really? What is it?"

"Mana Sight. The same one your instructor had."

James's brows lifted. "You have that? Then you can actually see the ambient mana around us."

"I can," Tyler said. "It's been useful. I can see the mana signature of things hidden behind objects too, makes it easier to spot enemies before they're in range."

"Huh." James nodded slowly. "That's actually a smart way of using it."

"Something's been bothering me, though," Tyler said.

"What is it?"

Tyler blinked. A faint blue light passed through his eyes for just a moment, brief enough that it might have been missed but he noticed it. Tyler looked at him, then blinked again, and the glow faded, his eyes settling back to their natural color.

*I was right,* Tyler thought, the shock of it spreading quietly across his face. *I mean, I thought maybe it was just my imagination. Things were chaotic back then, I thought I hadn't been seeing it correctly.*

"What?" James asked, glancing around instinctively, trying to find whatever had shifted Tyler's expression.

Tyler finally spoke. "James... did you, at any point, eat a monster?"

"What?" James turned to look at him, shaking his head firmly. "No. Why the hell would I do that? I told you, it's risky."

The image flashed through Tyler's mind again, what he had just seen when he activated the skill. James's mana core, visible for just that second. The silver-gray mana particles swirling steadily inside

it. And threaded through them, unmistakably, the dark ones.

"Then why do you have dark mana inside you?"

James stopped walking. "What?" he said, his brow drawing together in confusion.