Chapter 330

Grid found Luvian at the broken gate.

He had gone looking for him to ask about more ore. That was all. But when he reached the round chamber where the great door had once stood, he stopped at the top of the steps and forgot why he had come.

The hole Grid had smashed through the gate was letting the lizards in.

They came through it in pairs and threes, sliding out of the dark tunnels of the Hollow, drawn by the light and warmth of the city. And Luvian was standing alone in the broken doorway with his long spear, stopping every one of them.

Grid had fought those lizards for days. He knew how hard their scales were, how fast they moved, how they circled and flanked. He had needed every dance he had, and Noe, and Randy, and a mountain of potions, to kill a pack of four.

Luvian didn't seem to use any skill, atleast as far as Grid could see. The spear went forward and came back, and a lizard dropped. He turned on one heel as another lunged from the side, and the spear was already there, its point sliding into the narrow seam under the jaw that Grid had taken days to find. A third one breathed heat at him, and Luvian stepped half a pace aside and let it pass his shoulder, and the spear went in again.

And every time it struck, there was something around it.

A faint, dark blue energy, clinging to the spearhead and trailing behind each thrust like smoke. It flared brighter at the moment of impact. Where it touched the lizards' stone-hard scales, the scales didn't so much break as give way.

Grid's eyes narrowed.

He knew that feeling. He had felt it in his own sword a thousand times. Sword Energy, the special resourse that is consumed for activating his Sword Dances ever since he earned it from tht quest for Chresler. What Luvian was using wasn't sword energy. But it was the same kind of thing. Spear Energy.

Something gave him that, Grid realized. A title, or a blessing like mine. It has to be.

Three lizards. Ten seconds. Blue pixels rising into the dark.

Luvian shook the spear tip once and turned back to face the tunnel, as if nothing had happened at all.

"Noe," Grid whispered. "Did you see that?"

"He is very strong, Nyang."

"He's really strong." Grid swallowed. He measured it the only way he knew how, against himself. The speed. The precision. The way Luvian never wasted a single movement. "He might be almost as strong as me."

"Almost, Nyang?"

"...Almost," Grid said firmly.

Then curiosity got the better of him. He pulled the Great Lord's Sword out of his inventory and equipped it, and focused on the tall figure in the doorway.

[Character Observation has been activated.]

[Name: Luvian]

[Age: 312 Gender: Male]

[Race: Dark Elf]

[Class: Spearman]

[Title: Supreme Spearman

- A warrior whose talent has touched the realm of a Spear Saint.

- When a spear-type weapon is equipped, attack power will increase by 40% and armor penetration by 20%. This effect is applied separately from the Spear Mastery skill effect.]

[Level: 405

Strength: 3,210 Stamina: 3,100

Agility: 3,450 Intelligence: 620

Leadership: 950 Charm: 4,890

Dexterity: 1,850]

[Skills: Underground Tactics (A-), Dark Elf's Secret Movement (S), Advanced Sculpting Mastery(S+), Advanced Rune Mastery(SS), Advanced Spear Mastery (S), Dark Spear Arts (S+), Perfect Thrust (SS), Stone Carving (B+), Aesthetic Observation (S)]

Grid read it. A sculpting skill at S+? Probably for carving fortifications, he decided, and moved on. Then he read the title again.

Touched the realm of a Spear Saint.

His mouth went dry. He had seen spearmen before. The Number 1 ranked spearman Player in Satisfy was in his guild. He had seen Piaro swing his sword. And the thing Luvian had just done reminded him, very uncomfortably, of that last one.

Level 405. Stats in the three thousands. A title that brushed against Saint.

Almost as strong as me? Grid thought weakly. He might be stronger.

And then, a moment later, a much more Grid-like thought arrived.

A spearman that good. Who's never been to the surface. Who's never been recruited by anyone. Who already does whatever I say because he thinks I'm their hero.

He pictured Luvian in Overgeared Guild, standing on the front line of a war. He pictured Lauel's face when he walked in with him. He pictured Lauel saying good job.

"I want him," Grid said.

"Master wants everything, Nyang."

"I really want him."

He walked down the steps. Luvian turned, saw who it was, and immediately lowered his spear and bowed his head.

"Great Hero."

"Luvian. That was amazing."

Luvian considered this with his usual seriousness. "It is only my duty. Since the gate was opened, the beasts of the Hollow come more often. Someone must stand here."

"Right. Sorry about the gate." Grid's eyes dropped to the spear in Luvian's hands, and for the first time, he really looked at it.

It was a decent spear. The runes along it were beautiful, delicate and complex, and the smith who made it had clearly known what he was doing. But it was ordinary steel, made with ordinary skill, and it had been fought with for a very long time. Grid could see where it had been sharpened down over the years, where the shaft had been repaired more than once, where the balance had drifted a little and Luvian had quietly learned to compensate for it.

It was a good spear for a good soldier. It was not a spear for someone who had touched the realm of a Saint.

"Give me a day," Grid said. "And some of that ore."

Luvian looked at him, puzzled. "For what purpose, Great Hero?"

Grid grinned.

"I'm going to make you a proper spear."

He started with the forge.

Before he lit the furnace, Grid knelt and engraved Steady Heat into the stone at its base. His strokes were still clumsy, but they held.

[You have consumed 180 Inscription.]

When the fire caught, it caught evenly, the same bright orange from one side of the furnace to the other. Tuvar, who had come to watch, stared at the flames for a long moment, then quietly asked if Grid would show him how.

Then the crucible. Grid carved Purify into its rim, dropped in three ingots of Demonic Spirit Ore, and watched them melt. Thin grey threads drifted up out of the molten black and burned away. What was left behind was darker and cleaner than anything he had ever poured.

Grid pulled out a blueprint for a Unique-rated spear that Pon had found for him a while ago, one he had never managed to gather the materials for. He changed it as he worked, reshaping the head and lengthening the shaft to suit Luvian's reach, until it was no longer quite the spear on the page.

He forged the spearhead first. Long and narrow, with a slight leaf-shaped swell near the point, heavier at the base than the old one so it would punch deeper. With the fire perfectly even, every fold came out clean. For the shaft, he used a core of the same ore, bound with powdered lizard scale so it would flex without ever bending out of true.

Then he joined head to shaft, and carved Seamless Bond across the joint before the metal cooled.

[You have consumed 420 Inscription.]

The rune flared. When the glow faded, he couldn't find the line where one piece ended and the other began.

Now came the part Grid had been looking forward to.

He laid the finished spear across the anvil and opened his skill window.

[Arisha's Rune Combination]

[Passive]

[The pinnacle of rune combination. You are able to combine two or more individually-cast runes into a single, compound effect greater than the sum of its parts.

- Requires each component rune to be cast in immediate succession.

- You are able to combine conflicting runes.

- Currently only 3 runes can be combined at a time.

- The number of runes that can be combined is directly related to the [Legendary Rune Mastery].]

Three at once, Grid thought. Then let's use all three.

He chose carefully. Sharpen, so the edge would never dull. Pierce, so the point would drive through armor as if it wasn't there. And Accelerate, because a spearman as fast as Luvian deserved to be even faster.

He carved them one after another without stopping, the way the skill demanded. His Inscription poured out of him.

[You have consumed 350 Inscription.]

[You have consumed 600 Inscription.]

[You have consumed 620 Inscription.]

His hands shook. On the last stroke of the last rune, all three pulled toward each other, the lines bending and curling until they flowed into a single shape that wasn't anywhere in the book.

[Legendary Rune Saint's Breath has been activated. The rune's effect has increased by 31%.]

[The runes 'Sharpen', 'Pierce' and 'Accelerate' have been combined.]

[You have successfully created the unique-rated item 'Deepvein Spear'!]

Grid's fists clenched under the anvil where no one could see them.

Unique, he thought. Unique! First try with a brand-new material and runes I learned yesterday, and it's Unique! He allowed himself exactly three seconds of silent, internal dancing. Then he put his serious face back on.

The spear was black, with a faint red shimmer running through it. The combined rune along its head glowed a clean violet. Light enough to spin, heavy enough to kill. One of the best things he had ever made.

He found Luvian back at the gate and held it out to him without a word.

Luvian took it.

He just stood there, holding it in both hands, and looked at it. At the curve of the leaf-shaped head. At the way the violet rune flowed into the dark metal. At the joint where there was no seam at all.

His hands were trembling.

"Luvian?"

Luvian didn't answer. His red eyes moved slowly along the spear, the way someone looks at a painting, and something was happening on his scarred, stony face that Grid had never seen there before. It looked like wonder. It looked, almost, like grief.

For three hundred years, Luvian had carved small shapes out of stone in the dark, where no one could see. A chief should not make pretty things. A chief should hold the gate. But now he was holding the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and something he had kept locked away for three centuries broke open all at once.

Grid only saw that Luvian looked very moved.

"It's a good spear, right?" he said hopefully.

A soft golden light rose off Luvian's body. Enlightenment, Grid thought, thrilled. Because of my spear. He activated Character Observation again.

[Name: Luvian]

[Class: Spearman/Sculptor]

[Title: Supreme Spearman]

[Title: Muse's Devotee

- Has found ultimate artistic inspiration. Dexterity growth rate increases by 200%.]

[New skill: Perfect Masterpiece (??)]

Grid skimmed it. A new title. A new skill with question marks. Something added to his class.

Muse's Devotee, he decided. Probably devotion to battle. And Perfect Masterpiece has to be some hidden ultimate spear technique that hasn't awakened yet. He didn't even really register the word Sculptor. He was too busy grinning.

I knew it. A hidden martial genius. And my spear just woke him up.

Luvian lowered the spear at last and went down on one knee, holding it across his palms, his head bowed so low that his white hair touched the floor.

"Great Hero," he said, and his flat voice shook for the first time since Grid had met him. "Whatever you ask of me, for as long as I live, I will do it. This I swear."

Grid beamed down at him.

"Great. Join my guild."

That night, long after Grid had logged out, Luvian sat alone in his room with the Deepvein Spear propped against the wall where he could see it. In his hands was a small block of black stone and an old, worn carving knife.

He began to carve, and for the first time in three hundred years, he did not hide it.