Chapter 347

When Jacob hears the name Gornyakov, he starts wondering about something he just remembered.

“Your Majesty—”

“Grandpa,” King Blade corrected him.

“Grandpa. But my mother told me that I had not Gornyakov’s blood, but Luriev’s, because that was the requirement to open the gates to Zamorye.”

King Blade raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, no. Your family is wrong. Anybody with Rafnov’s blood, or one of his disciples’ blood, can enter Zamorye. It probably just means that their own blood is thinned beyond recognition, and they lost track of which disciple was which,” King Blade explains. “We never meant to keep out family and descendants of Rafnov or anybody else. But it clearly shows that you are cut from a different cloth, Jacob Cloud. So, why don’t we move forward with our trial?”

“Yes, of course,” Jacob says hesitantly, knowing that he has no artistic capability to speak of. And apparently this Gornyakov he’s a descendant of was a master artist.

But the problem that King Blade is putting in front of him is much more practical, and something much more pertinent to his own talents, than one might think. To turn a Primordial Spell into a Skill Crystal, it would need to condense some universal principle about the Skill itself. And Jacob knows that there is a way for him to do that.

“So,” King Blade says, “I shall start by showing you what the trial consists of. I created many incomplete murals that, put together, will be able to allow us to craft a Skill Crystal for Wrath of Blade — or whatever the System decides that the Skill should be called. Even though I would love if it could keep my name as my legacy.”

Jacob nods along. Meanwhile, Princess Yekaterina, Count Myshkin, and Kamenev are all shocked by the revelations that King Blade is making, because apparently there is a way for them to wage a war on Primordial Gods while holding the upper hand. But in order to do so, they have to rely on Jacob Cloud’s artistic ability.

And all three know very well that, given that Jacob Cloud didn’t even know the formulas that a miner should have known when meeting the royal family of Zamorye, the chances that he is any good at being an artist are practically zero. In fact, they are all afraid, and if given a choice, they would have already stepped out of this landscape painting, gone back to the royal palace, and hunkered down while waiting for King Blade to blow Jacob to smithereens the moment he finds out that Jacob has absolutely no idea what art is. But alas, being who he is, King Blade — their ancestor — wouldn’t tolerate them not following.

At this moment, the jolly man turns toward them and says, “Today you will all have the opportunity to assist at the very transcendental peak of art. Right, grandson?”

Jacob turns toward the others and gives them a very insecure smile.

Count Myshkin starts saying his prayers. Today could not have gone worse for the count, who was just wishing he could be spending his time in the mines, away from this bag of problems.

So King Blade brings Jacob to a mural on a dilapidated wall and shows him the sky. There’s only the sky painted, and a few sketched trees on the ground.

“This is the very basis for where I think this Skill would land. It would be, at minimum, a Diamond Rank Skill. I tried getting insights on how to make it an even lower level Skill, so that one could slowly evolve it in the course of their life in Zamorye, but the more I tried, the more it became apparent to me that the lowest level the Skill would be is Diamond Rank.”

Jacob looks at the mural and sees that this is, in fact, a completely different Primordial Spell from the Wrath of Blade that he has learned to practice. It does look like a component of the larger Primordial Spell that he applies on himself and his pickaxe when mining, and the same spell that he destroyed the Book of Blade with. But he gets the genius behind what King Blade is doing.

Well — thanks to the Grimoire.

“So this is a component of Wrath of Blade,” Jacob says. “It’s one of the base layers, right? And you think this component would be a part of the Diamond Rank version of the Skill. But I suppose there’s gonna be other murals that will have to be put together in order for this to actually turn into a Skill Crystal.”

King Blade is twirling the end of his big mustache and smiling so widely his face starts hurting.

“I knew that you were Gornyakov’s heir.”

Stolen from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Well, um, I’m just trying my best. It was probably just a lucky guess.”

Kamenev, who has no idea how Jacob could figure out such an esoteric piece of power and technique just from looking at a half-finished mural that meant nothing to him, is losing his mind. He would love to pull out his hair when Jacob says that he just guessed, but he knows that if he attempted anything like that, King Blade might very well execute him on the spot.

“So, Jacob Cloud,” King Blade says, handing over the palette from the cowering royal painter — who’s still glad that he got to keep his life after insulting the work of King Blade himself. “Show me how you picture resolving this mural. It has plagued me for so many years, but perhaps I was too old. It takes the fire of youth in order to understand true art. An old bastard like me couldn’t finish this job in a million years.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Grandpa,” Jacob says with a smile, and takes the palette. “I will complete this masterpiece of yours.”

“How is he going to complete that?” Princess Yekaterina mutters to Count Myshkin. “And if this is really something that could save millions of our people, shouldn’t we stop him?”

“I know,” Count Myshkin says, still whispering. “What if he ruins the thing? I doubt that Jacob has any interest in art. I showed him a few paintings when he was staying at my place. But he showed no interest. He says he doesn’t understand anything about painting, and that painting is a waste of time. So what is he going to do now?”

But they all saw Jacob walk forward with maximum confidence, then take the palette, dip it in black ink, and draw—

King Blade, who has stepped back to be close to Kamenev and the royal painter, ready to show them that Jacob was indeed a masterful artist and not the fool that they believed him to be — especially to the royal painter who had insulted King Blade himself — squinted his eyes and muttered, “Is that a stick figure?”

Jacob was drawing, in quick succession, dozens of stick figures on the ground. And then he drew a large sun in the sky. But the sun was just a yellow circle with little rays around it. And those were crooked, not symmetrical, of different lengths, but in no artful way. It just looked like a child had finger-painted them.

In fact, the royal painter wondered how Jacob Cloud had gotten that effect out of his enchanted brush, which should have at least guided part of the painting process. The fact that Jacob managed to draw such poor lines with the enchanted brush suggested he was actively fighting against the brush, which was trying to correct him.

“Your Majesty, are you sure—”

“Silence, Kamenev. You don’t understand art,” King Blade snapped.

But he found his hand in his mouth, chewing on his nails from being so nervous. That mural was so precious, and he had hidden it in a separate dimension that only he could access, because he had created them — all these murals — in a state of enlightenment. And if Jacob Cloud actually ruined one, he wasn’t sure that they could craft the Skill Crystal, or any Skill Crystal at all here, because they were all interconnected despite being at different Ranks.

“Grandson,” King Blade cupped his hands around his mouth. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Your Majesty, worry not. Art is in the eye of the beholder.”

King Blade frowned and asked Kamenev, “Isn’t it beauty that is in the eye of the beholder?”

Kamenev just gives King Blade a side glance and then scoffs.

“I told you, Your Majesty, that this boy was a fool, that we should have executed him. What if he’s now going to bring us ruin? What if he’s really an agent of Apocalypse?”

Seeing the extremely childish designs that Jacob was putting on the wall, King Blade actually started doubting himself, and started wondering if he had not made a huge mistake. However, he couldn’t back off. Jacob was already too far into the painting, and the scene looked somewhat harmonious. So perhaps he could salvage it this way.

And suddenly, just as King Blade was starting to squint at the absolutely ugly thing that Jacob had put on the wall, he started seeing the figures move. The stick men were kneeling and worshiping the sun, and the sun’s awkward rays turned into blades that descended at their feet, and they clasped them in their hands like swords.

Mind you, they still looked like shitty paintings from a child’s fingers.

But as Jacob stepped back, covered in paint — which King Blade had no idea where it came from, because the kid had barely used any shading. Well, he didn’t use any, actually, and drew the most simplistic things in the world. But he had completely doused himself in paint. It looked like the palette had been tossed over his head, along with an entire bucket of paint.

“Well, what do you think, Grandpa? Isn’t this a beauty?” Jacob pointed at the mural, satisfied.

Princess Yekaterina couldn’t help herself and asked, “What the hell have you just drawn?”

Kamenev unsheathed his sword, thinking that Jacob was mocking King Blade after sabotaging the birth of the most powerful Skill Crystal to be used against the Dungeon of Apocalypse.

But then King Blade slowly walked forward and briefly touched the mural.

Even though Jacob Cloud had used figures that were disgustingly simple, the Primordial Magic the young man had inscribed on the walls was true, and had completely hit the mark without missing. It was beyond genius how Jacob had filled up all the flaws of this mural, and that’s what threw King Blade for a loop.

Had he not actually understood the genius of Jacob Cloud? Was this actually a master painter that had developed a style so simple?

Yes, that must have been it, he reasoned.

And so he turned toward everybody else and said, “Jacob Cloud is a genius beyond belief. As you can all see, his sense of art has touched the very peak of art. He has reverted to the most simple style, and therefore he was able to complete the mural, thanks to his impeccable taste.”

Count Myshkin muttered to the princess, “But aren’t those just stick figures? What impeccable taste?”

King Blade had also just made that explanation up, because he wasn’t sure himself how it was possible that these stick figures had completed the powerful mural. But it was undeniable that the mural was now working, and that the first piece that would make up the Skill Crystal he had been chasing for so long was now complete.