Chapter 328

The shrine filled with light.

It poured out of the walls, out of the floor, out of every carved line in the room at once, and it all rushed toward Grid. He threw his arms over his face, and the light went straight through them, into his chest, warm and cold at the same time.

[You have been chosen as the successor of Arisha, the Legendary Rune Saint.]

[You have acquired the second class 'Arisha's Successor'.]

Grid lowered his arms very slowly.

"...Second class?"

The windows kept coming.

[Arisha's Successor]

[Rating: Legendary (Second Class)]

[Countless years ago, there lived a legendary Rune Saint named Arisha, the Hero King of her era. She fought three Great Demons alone to save her people's World Tree, and in order to purify the corrupted World Tree, she absorbed the Demonic Force and became a dark elf along with her followers. She then led her corrupted dark elves into the depths and built them a home there, and in her final years she attached a fragment of herself to her crown to watch over the dark elves and choose her successor.]

[Class Basic Effects]

- Strength and Dexterity permanently increase by 15%.

- Rune Library: You can read, recognize and recall the meaning of any rune you have ever personally seen, permanently.

- Rune Master: You will never fail in engraving or extracting a rune.

- Runes cost no Mana to cast. They draw on Willpower and Inscription instead.

[The stat 'Willpower' has been opened!]

[The special resource 'Inscription' has been opened!]

[You have acquired the skill 'Legendary Rune Mastery (Lv. 1)'.]

[You have acquired the skill 'Rune Creation'.]

[You have acquired the skill 'Legendary Rune Interpretation (Lv. 1)'.]

[You have acquired the skill 'Legendary Rune Engraving'.]

[You have acquired the skill 'Arisha's Rune Combination'.]

[You have acquired the skill 'Legendary Rune Extraction'.]

[You have acquired the skill 'Legendary Rune Modification (Lv. 1)'.]

[You have acquired the skill 'Legendary Rune Saint's Breath (Lv. 1)'.]

[You have acquired the skill 'Legendary Rune Saint's Blessing (Lv. 1)'.]

Grid stared at the wall of text floating in front of him.

He read the first line. Then the second. Then he got to World Tree and three Great Demons and his brain politely stopped accepting information.

He understood exactly three things. He had a second class. It was Legendary. And there was the word rune in almost every line.

Rune, he thought slowly. The glowing lines. The things on the sword. They're called runes.

And I think I just got all of them.

"...What," Grid said, to no one in particular, "just happened?"

Arisha did not answer right away.

She was fading. He could see it now that he had stopped screaming. Her pale shape was thinner than before, more transparent, the walls of the shrine showing clearly through her. The light that had poured into him had come from her, too, and she had very little left.

"I am tired," she said softly. "I have been awake for so long."

She drifted back toward the altar, toward the simple dark crown that still sat behind her sword.

"I will rest now. Inside my crown. Where I have always rested." Her faded red eyes found him one last time. "Keep it close to you, my successor. I will be there, even when I am sleeping."

Then she did something strange.

She turned her head away from Grid, toward the shrine door, toward the long spiral stair beyond it and the city above, and her lips moved. Grid couldn't hear a single word. No sound came out of her at all. The runes on the walls pulsed once, softly, all together, like a heartbeat.

Grid thought she was saying goodbye to the room.

Then she was gone. The pale light sank down into the crown like water soaking into sand, and the crown glowed once, and went dark.

It lifted off the altar on its own, floated across the shrine, and settled gently into Grid's hands.

[You have acquired 'Arisha's Crown'.]

Grid looked down at it. It was lighter than it looked. It was cool to the touch, and very faintly, so faintly that he might have imagined it, he thought he felt something inside it breathing slowly, the way someone breathes when they're asleep.

He held it out at arm's length.

"...Is the ghost in here?" he whispered. "Is the ghost IN here?"

The crown didn't answer.

Behind him, the shrine door swung open.

Grid walked out of the shrine with the crown held stiffly in front of him, afraid that the ghost in the crown would come out and kill him.

Randy hit him first. She came running down the last few steps as a little girl and grabbed his leg, and he nearly dropped the crown. Noe landed on his shoulder a second later, fur sticking out in every direction.

"Master! The door closed and we couldn't open it, Nyang! And then you screamed! A lot, Nyang!"

"I did not scream."

"Master screamed very loudly, Nyang."

Grid opened his mouth to argue. Then he looked past Noe and closed it again.

Luvian was kneeling on the stone floor at the bottom of the stairs.

That by itself wasn't new. Luvian had knelt to him before. But this time, the two elders beside him had their foreheads pressed all the way down to the floor. And above them, all the way up the long spiral stair, there were more Dark Elves. They hadn't been there when Grid went in. They lined every step, as far up as he could see, and every single one of them was on their knees.

Grid slowly climbed the stairs with Luvian walking a respectful step behind him, and the higher he went, the more of them there were. When he finally came out at the top and looked out over the city, he stopped dead.

The entire city was kneeling.

Not just the guards, or the people near the shrine. All of it. Every street, every bridge, every rooftop. Children kneeling beside their parents. Old men who could barely bend their knees kneeling with the help of their grandchildren. Smiths in the doorways of their forges, women at the windows of the alchemy workshops, all of them on their knees, all of them facing him, hundreds and hundreds of glowing red eyes looking up at the young man standing at the top of the stair holding the crown of their foremother.

Grid had no idea that, in the last moments before she slept, Arisha had spoken to them. That every Dark Elf in the city had heard her voice at the same moment, faint and faraway, inside their own heads, for the first time in a thousand years.

My children. My Successor has been appointed .He will take you back to the sky.

Grid only knew what he could see. And what he could see was a whole city on its knees in front of him, for no reason he could understand.

He thought about it very hard.

He thought about the ghost who had refused to fight him and given him a Legendary class instead. About the ore. About the runes. About a whole race of people who seemed to think he was wonderful no matter what he did.

And then he remembered the notification from the door.

[Good Luck has increased by 100.]

Grid's eyes went wide.

It's working, he thought. The Good Luck stat. It's actually working.

A slow, disbelieving grin spread across his face. All his life, everything had gone wrong. And now, for the first time ever, everything was going right, one thing after another, faster than he could keep up with. There was only one possible explanation.

I'm lucky now. I'm actually lucky.

Luvian stepped forward and knelt in front of him. In his hands he held a thick book, bound in dark leather and sealed with a clasp of the same black metal as the crown. Its cover was carved with runes that glowed faintly when Grid looked at them, and somehow, without knowing how, Grid could already feel what some of them meant.

"Successor," Luvian said. His voice was as grave as ever, but there was something underneath it now that hadn't been there before. "This is the Book of Runes. Every rune our people have kept since the days of the foremother is written within it. It belongs to the foremother's successor. It belongs to you."

He held it up with both hands.

Grid took it.

[You have acquired the 'Book of Runes'.]

Grid looked down at the book. Then at the crown. Then at the rune-covered walls of the city all around him, glowing in the dark. And finally, he looked at the long list of skills still floating in the corner of his vision. Legendary Rune Engraving. Rune Creation.

He looked up at Luvian.

"So," he said slowly. "Does this mean I can make runes now?"

Luvian considered the question with total seriousness.

"Yes, Successor," he said. "I believe it does."

Grid clutched the book to his chest and laughed out loud, a big, delighted, slightly crazy laugh that echoed all the way across the cavern and back.

The kneeling Dark Elves, who had no idea what was so funny, smiled at each other with relief. Their foremother had been right. The Hero was clearly very happy to be leading them home.