Chapter 56: Legendary Gear, the Beastsoul Relic

"Primordial Bloodline integration continuing current progress: 30%. Skyborn Bloodline has advanced."

"Bloodline Effect: All attack, shield, and buff skills are now 100% more effective."

Kael’s eyes went wide as the notification settled in.

Every skill. Doubled.

The scope of it took a second to fully land. It didn’t touch anything unique Warden’s Mandate and Spectral Aspect sat outside the effect entirely, immune to the multiplier same as they’d been immune to everything else so far. But that carve-out barely mattered next to what it did cover.

His second class advancement had granted a flat fifty percent reduction to every skill’s cooldown.

This one stacked a hundred percent more raw output on top of that.

Run the math, and as long as his mana pool kept up with the pace, his actual combat output was about to come out somewhere around four times what it had been an hour ago.

Most players would never see numbers like that in their entire lives.

And if the bloodline keeps unlocking something new at every advancement...

He let himself imagine it for a second level 100, the Primordial Bloodline fully integrated, every one of these effects compounding on top of each other instead of standing alone.

I don’t even have a frame of reference for what that looks like.

A short laugh escaped him, half disbelief. "At this rate I’ll be glowing gold and screaming by level fifty."

He shook the thought off before it went any further and turned his attention to the rest of what the advancement had unlocked.

[STORMLASH]

Skill Grade: S

Effect: Unleash five lashes of condensed lightning in rapid succession, each one striking a different target for 160% attack damage.

Mana Cost: 300 | Cooldown: 20s

This one belonged to him alone no companion involved, pure personal offense layered directly onto a Beastlord kit that had, until now, leaned almost entirely on everything standing beside him rather than anything he could throw himself.

A genuinely useful gap to have closed.

Next came the reward pool from the day’s twin announcements an SS-grade skill book, and something wrapped in a weight he could feel just holding it.

[PHASE SHIFT]

Skill Grade: SS

Effect: Draw on the bond between tamer and companion to instantly swap positions either between two bonded companions, or between yourself and one companion.

Mana Cost: 500 | Cooldown: 120s

No attack value. No defensive number attached anywhere in the description.

And still, Kael could already see a dozen ways this single skill could turn a losing exchange into a won one pulling a companion out of a killing blow, or swapping himself clear of one at the last possible second.

He learned it on the spot, the skill book dissolving into a fresh icon on his bar.

Then, finally, the item.

Egg-shaped, glassy, warm with a soft internal light a piece of jade strung on a silver chain, throwing off pulses of deep blue every few seconds like something breathing slowly inside it.

[BEASTSOUL RELIC]

Grade: Legendary

Constitution +100 | Strength +100 | Agility +100 | Spirit +100

Equipment Skill Soul Binding: Bind the soul of any slain monster below level 60 into the relic, granting a permanent 20% bonus to that monster’s full attribute spread.

Equipment Level: 30

Kael’s eyebrows climbed as he read Soul Binding a second time, just to be certain he wasn’t misreading it.

Of course something dropped by the system itself would be this absurd.

Set the raw stat block aside entirely the equipment skill alone justified the entire kill.

He’d seen Epic-grade items in his last life that couldn’t touch something this versatile.

Calling this piece an early-game outlier didn’t quite cover it. It was closer to a mistake the system had made in his favor.

Conveniently, a body was already cooling on the ground a few feet away.

He equipped the relic without hesitation, turned toward the enormous, freshly killed spider still sprawled across the cavern floor, and triggered Soul Binding.

A hazy blue light spilled outward from the jade, wrapping the corpse of the Voidweaver in a slow, drifting glow.

A thin, translucent wisp lifted free of the body and folded itself into the relic and where the jade had sat perfectly clear a moment earlier, a faint, lifelike spider now hung suspended inside it, coiled and still.

Power rolled through Kael’s frame a heartbeat later every stat on his sheet ticking upward at once, the boost settling in like something that had always belonged there.

Even without a companion at my side right now, I could probably handle most players my own level without breaking a sweat.

Not that there was anyone left at his level to actually test that against.

He crouched over the Voidweaver’s corpse next and started working through what remained of the loot five Legendary-grade pieces, four Gold-tier items, two C-grade skill tomes, all of it dragged out from beneath the boss’s own considerable weight.

A staggering haul, by any normal measure. Most players pulling numbers like that off a single Legendary-tier kill would still be celebrating a week later.

Kael barely registered it. Months of grinding under the Ring of Infinite Fortune’s warped odds had a way of making even Legendary drops feel routine.

He swept everything into his inventory with a wave of his hand, and only one thing remained in his palm when he finished a small, jade-carved token, catching the light with a faint, deliberate shimmer.

The guild-founding token. Finally.

The whole point of tonight’s grind, and the first one to exist anywhere on the server.

Bring it back, register it with the right NPC, and he’d own the first guild the game had ever recognized.

Everything after that claiming the stronghold he already had marked out, extracting it into reality, turning it into a fortress his real body could actually hide behind hinged on this one small piece of carved stone.

Anticipation flickered behind his eyes. He drew a return scroll and crushed it without ceremony.

Five seconds later, white light swallowed him, and Frostwatch reassembled around him in its place.

He’d barely cleared the teleportation platform, guild registration already on his mind, when two figures stepped directly into his path.

"Excuse me are you Unrivaled?"

Kael stopped, one eyebrow lifting as he took stock of both of them.

A man and a woman, neither much past level 20. The man carried himself like a Warrior, gamertag reading Moonwarden.

The woman beside him a Mage went by BubblegumBabe, and something about her struck him as familiar, though he couldn’t immediately place where.

Both loitering near the town portal, at a glance, like they were simply waiting on friends to log in and grind together.

Kael studied them a moment longer before answering, voice level. "Can I help you with something?"

The man offered an easy, practiced smile. "Names first I’m Marcus Webb. This is my colleague, Casey Doyle."

A brief nod toward the woman, who offered a small, almost apologetic wave. "We’re here on official business. Sent by our superiors to make direct contact with you."

Kael’s gaze lingered on her a half-second longer. BubblegumBabe. The scammer from the market stall, back before any of this had even started. Small server, apparently.

Something in his tone made the word official land heavier than it should have.

"Captain wants a word," he added, almost as an afterthought. "Whenever you’re free after work tonight come by the office."