Ch 198 – Echoform Reliquary Enhancement
Two days later, Deacon let out an exhausted breath as he flopped onto his back atop the roof of the highest watchtower within the Eastern Gate's walls, both mentally and physically drained to the point where even thinking about moving felt like too much effort to expend.
“Thank the System it’s almost over,” Deacon grumbled to himself as he called up the Quest Panel with a thought and saw that only a handful of minutes remained until the end of this Floor’s objective, and they could finally move on to Floor Twelve. “The NPCs should be able to hold the remaining army off for the last five minutes after all the carrying Bonehead, and I did for them.”
Time Remaining: 00:04:17
Glossing over the hundreds of other System Notifications that had been cluttering the corner of his vision for the past two days, Deacon quickly scrolled through them just to verify there wasn't anything important he'd missed before dismissing the entire stack.
*[Bluescale Lizardkiin Warrior Lv 22] has been slain – XP has been given.*
***
*[Undead Lizardkiin Shaman Lv 23] has been slain – Partial XP has been given.*
The notifications went on like that for what felt like miles of identical text, each one representing another Lizardkiin he'd put down over the course of the past four days.
Hearing a pained groan coming from behind him, Deacon titled his head upwards and cracked open his right eye just enough to see Bonehead heaving himself over the stone battlement of the watchtower, using his Bone Manipulation Racial Trait to reshape the bones that made up his fingers and palms and forearms into crude ice-axe-like protrusions that he'd been jamming into the gaps between stones to climb up the outside of the tower.
Deacon couldn't help but crack a tired grin as Bonehead turned his final heave over the battlement into an awkward roll that landed him flat on his back with a groan as his transformed arms returned to normal, announced with various clicks and clacks of bone resetting itself back to their original positions.
"You have to teach me how to air jump," Bonehead groaned as he pushed himself up into a sitting position and shimmied backward until he could rest his spine against the battlement. "Because whatever it is that you have to do to make that work has to be a hell of a lot easier and less exhausting than what I just did to get up here."
Deacon thought to himself for a moment about how exactly he might explain the Air Step technique to Bonehead.
The problem was that he hadn't learned it from any textbook or skillbook that he could just hand over, and the only reference he had to go off of was the extremely vague description his uncle had given him when he'd asked about it months ago during their early training sessions, though at the time he'd been too focused on improving his other combat skills to seriously attempt learning a new mobility technique, and he'd ultimately figured out how to perform Air Step entirely on his own through trial and error during the last few days of his solo training before his fight with his uncle to see whether he would be permitted to proceed onto Floor Eleven.
"You just have to channel your stamina down into your legs and feet like this," Deacon began, bringing both his hands up in front of his face with his fingers curved into claw shapes and pressed together, but with a small gap between his palms. "Fwoom, right? And then you pop it and spread the stamina out in small controlled bursts," he continued, keeping the claw shape of his fingers the same as he spread his hands apart before smoothly bringing them back together in small, rapid movements. "Like Foof-Pop, Foof-Pop, to jump higher and higher with each step."
He paused to make sure Bonehead was following along, though that was difficult to pick up, given that Bonehead was a skeleton.
"And if you want to actually stand in the air instead of just jumping, on the Foof part, you have to continuously send out your stamina to kind of mesh with the air around your feet and balance on it like you're standing on a really unstable platform," Deacon finished, his hands gesturing a man atop a shaking platform.
Bonehead continued to stare at Deacon in complete disbelief for several long seconds after the explanation had concluded, looking at him as though Deacon had just suffered a stroke in real-time, given the absolute nonsense that had just come out of his mouth masquerading as “instructions on how to Air Step”.
"I'll just wait until I find a book explaining some kind of flying spell on Floor Fifteen, or maybe see if I can figure out what spells Sam and Esme knew that let them fly," Bonehead muttered to himself, giving up entirely on trying to learn Air Step the way physical fighters like Deacon did.
And honestly, Bonehead blamed himself for forgetting just how absolutely terrible Deacon was at explaining topics such as martial arts and the like.
Sam had once described it perfectly by saying that Deacon would lose approximately ninety-nine percent of his IQ whenever he tried to explain how he performed various martial techniques and abilities, because the moment he tried to put those instinctive actions into words, everything just fell apart into incomprehensible nonsense.
It was one of those things that simply made Deacon who he was, because despite that deficiency, he was a genuinely gifted tactical strategist who could suddenly plan three moves ahead of everyone else.
Giving a grunt that might have been "oh well", Deacon shrugged and turned his attention to where Echoform Reliquary was lying on the stone roof beside him, reaching out to place his hand on the weapon before casting Identify on it to check its current status.
Item Name:Echoform Reliquary
Type: Weapon
Rarity: Artifact
Description: Forged from Livingwood, Echoform Reliquary can shift between multiple forms stored within, seamlessly in response to the wielder’s intent. Currently, it is made out of Tier 1 Damascus Steel. The Echoform Reliquary is designed to accept upgrades, allowing stronger materials to improve its durability and additional forms to improve its combat effectiveness; further more enhanced by its recently added Devour Enhancement.
Current Forms (5/5):
▸ Form I: [Broadsword - Ulfberht]
▸ Form II: [Dual Short Swords]
▸ Form III: [Crowbar]
▸ Form IV: [Double-Handed Axe]
▸ Form V: [Recurve Bow]
Enhancement (1/1):
▸ Devour
• Holy Flame
Effects: Soulbound, Self-Repair, Form Swap & Devour.
Requirements: Humanoid.
Current Material: Tier 1 Damascus Steel
Material Upgrade Requirements: Tier 1 Titanium
Materials needed to Increase Number of Forms: Tier 2 Artifacts x2 & Tier 2 Upgrade
During his heart-to-heart conversation with Bonehead several nights ago while they'd been sitting around the campfire sipping on the beers his uncle had dropped from the sky, Deacon had remembered that he'd won the Iron Scales Guild's Tournament and had received an Artifact Enhancement as his prize, but he'd completely forgotten to actually choose which enhancement he wanted and apply it to Echoform Reliquary.
So, after remembering that particular oversight, he and Bonehead had spent the better part of an hour scrolling through the extensive list of Artifact Enhancements that were compatible with Echoform Reliquary, the list having been emailed to him by the Iron Scales Guild some time ago but left unread as a result of him focusing on his training and further buried under hundreds of other E-Mails that he received after word got out that Sam, Esmerelda, and Jass had died.
After scrolling through what felt like an endless number of different Artifact Enhancements that were compatible with Echoform Reliquary, one particular Enhancement had stuck out to both of them almost immediately:
Devour.
And from the name alone, it was fairly easy to assume what the enhancement's primary function would be.
With the Devour Enhancement applied to it, Echoform Reliquary would gain a small percentage chance to permanently absorb and retain an effect or ability whenever it devoured certain consumables or catalysts that were compatible with the Artifact's nature, essentially allowing Deacon to feed it various magical items and potentially gain their benefits without needing to consume them himself or constantly reapply them.
In both Deacon’s and Bonehead’s estimation, the most obvious application would be to continuously feed Echoform Reliquary various types of Weapon Grease, such as Insectoid Grease, Spectral Grease, and the like. While the enhancement only offered a small percentage chance of success, if it worked, then Echoform Reliquary would be able to permanently retain those damage bonuses to those creatures without requiring Deacon to apply Grease to the weapon in the middle of combat or at all.
It would be absolutely perfect because Weapon Grease required constant reapplication after a certain number of strikes, and trying to pull out a bar of Grease and properly coat your weapon while simultaneously dealing with an endless swarm of antlions for example, charging at you from all directions was incredibly difficult to do, and something that was now practically impossible given their now two man Party that consisted of him and Bonehead.
Though after Deacon had selected the Devour Enhancement as his choice, and the physical enhancement crystal had arrived at their location via drone delivery approximately an hour and a half later, and after Bjorn’s friend Murdren had personally come to Floor Ten to perform his smithing magic and properly integrate the Devour Enhancement into Echoform Reliquary’s, Deacon and Bonehead finally understood why Murdren had acted with what they considered an excessive amount of uncertainty and repeated warnings about whether he was absolutely certain he wanted this particular enhancement applied as once applied it cannot be removed.
After the enhancement had been successfully integrated into Echoform Reliquary and Murdren had left with one final warning about managing their expectations, Deacon and Bonehead immediately began testing the Devour function by having Echoform Reliquary consume every single bar of Grease they had in their spatial storages. This turned out to be two hundred and fourteen individual bars of Insectoid and Spectral Grease, and they did it by simply stabbing the weapon’s edge into each bar and watching it dissolve and get absorbed into the blade.
After all two hundred and fourteen bars had been consumed, Deacon had cast Identify on Echoform Reliquary with bated breath, only to discover that the weapon had not gained any effect.
The small note that had been included beside the Artifact Enhancement's description had been entirely honest when it stated that there was only a small percentage chance for any consumed effect to be permanently devoured and integrated, though Deacon hadn't fully understood just how small that percentage apparently was until he'd burned through two hundred and fourteen bars of Grease without producing a single success.
Riding on that absolutely brutal losing streak but still hoping to break even, Deacon had begun rummaging through his Spatial Sling Bag looking for anything else that might be compatible with Echoform Reliquary's Devour enhancement.
After a few minutes of frantic searching, Deacon found the Sanctified Sunstone he'd received as a reward for killing the Holy Pontiff.
Item Name:Sanctified Sunstone
Type: Material – Infusion Catalyst
Rarity: Rare
Description: A polished golden-hued crystal that holds a trace of consecrated sunlight. It is used in holy forging rites to bless equipment, granting it radiant alignment and Holy-based effects once merged.
Effect: When provided to a skilled Blacksmith, the Sunstone can be merged into a weapon, armor, or accessory to grant a Holy Blessing. The rarity and potency of the Holy Blessing are entirely determined by the blacksmith’s intent and skill. Items infused with the stone may gain various Holy effects, such as increased damage to corrupted beings, purification properties, or radiant defensive blessings.
Duration: Permanent upon successful infusion.
Seeing that it was explicitly listed as compatible with Echoform Reliquary’s Devour enhancement when he cast Identify on it, and feeling the desperate gambler's need to “keep on pulling down the lever” to win big, Deacon had decided to feed the Sanctified Sunstone to his weapon and see what happened.
The moment Echoform Reliquary's blade touched the crystal, it was absorbed just like all the Grease bars before it, and while there were no outward visual changes to the weapon's appearance, when Deacon cast Identify on the Artifact immediately afterward, both he and Bonehead saw the new "Holy Flame" entry listed under the Devour Enhancement section.
Deacon was pulled from his musings as the sound of a horn being blared from behind the Eastern Gate could be heard from off in the distance.