Chapter 356

“What do you mean, a kid’s toy?” the man asks curiously.

The expression on Taya’s face mutates to embarrassment.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you, but, um, I don’t know how to explain.”

Jacob takes over, walking in front of Taya, and says, “This is a training sword meant for children. It does not cut. It has several enchantments at Mithril Rank that are not meant to do anything but fight the user back. It’s meant for children who can hold the sword up, and if they push Mana into it, they will feel a resistance that will train them to fight back through the right Mana veins. Here, I can sketch you a diagram of the first enchantment.”

Jacob fetched a piece of paper from his Interspatial Ring and quickly drew up the Mana pathway that the Grimoire had shown him.

“So this is the first pathway, but there are dozens of them. I can sketch them down for you, if you wish.”

The merchant looks down and says, “May I try?”

“Of course, but the effect won’t be as noticeable at your level.”

The merchant slowly takes the sword and cuts his palm with it, noticing that there is not even a scratch despite pressing really hard. Then he injects his Mana and does realize that he feels an itch in a very specific subset of Mana veins.

“This…” the man mutters.

“It is a very, very valuable artifact, despite being effectively a kid’s toy,” Jacob says, glancing at Taya. “You might not have much use for it yourself, but this can teach young children how to circulate Mana better than any instructor. All the enchantments on it cover the major Mana veins and several of the most used auxiliary ones. By the time a child has mastered all these paths over the years, they will have a very easy time absorbing their first Skill Crystal and mastering it. It’s hard to put a real number on this, but it can grow a family from common people to an extremely powerful dynasty, if you ask me. Or at the very least, give a family that option.”

The man is now looking at the sword in awe.

“Please, um, this is beyond the appraisal request, but I will pay for you to sketch all the diagrams.”

“Of course,” Jacob says. “It’s no problem.”

For the next two hours, Jacob is in a side room sketching diagram after diagram. The final ones are actually quite complicated. But when he’s done, he gets a fat bag of Adamantite coins from the merchant and a deed to the Dungeon. He’s now the legit owner of the place.

“It’s outside the city. Um, it will take a couple of days to get there,” the man says.

Jacob and Taya nod and bid their farewell, both to the merchant and Anna, and start making their way to the place.

“It would be faster if we flew there,” Taya says. “Can you fly?”

“Of course,” Jacob replies. “But let’s just walk for now, and let’s see if we can hitch a carriage or find some empty space.”

“Can you tell me about my s— Skill, or Primordial Spell, or talent, or whatever it is?” Taya asks. “We didn’t get to talk about it before.”

Jacob nods and activates the Grimoire.

“Ooh, what was that?”

“You felt it?” Jacob frowns. “Yeah. Well, apparently some people can feel it. Huh. It was my Skill. I have a, a powerful Skill, let’s say.”

Taya focuses on Jacob and narrows her eyes at him. Suddenly, Jacob feels a little shiver down his back.

“A Rainbow Skill?” Taya frowns. “How?”

“I don’t know. I can, I can see things, and I can feel how they move, how they are arranged. It’s weird.”

“But you have an actual Rainbow Skill. It’s been… I don’t know many people who have Rainbow Skills. I actually just know a handful, and that was a long time ago. I think they’re still extremely rare in Zamorye.”

“Well, where I come from, I am part of what they call the Generation of Legends,” Jacob explains. “Apparently, Karma gathered for a big showdown against Evil Gods, and now I have a Rainbow Skill. But there were a bunch of people with Rainbow Skills.”

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“That is incredible. I would love to meet them,” Taya says.

“Yeah, but your thing is…”

“My thing?” Taya asks, confused.

Jacob’s reading the Grimoire, and it’s all jumbled up, as if it’s having a hard time explaining what Taya can do.

“Your power is… you have essentially stolen the Karma of a Primordial God. And from what I understand, Primordial Gods can have a broad, broad influence on reality. That means you are able to read and influence reality. Uh, your luck, and your, uh, ability to analyze things. Well, the luck is part of this fate that comes with the power of a Primordial God. It’s a subconscious way you’re influencing reality. And you have the same ability to read reality that an actual Primordial God has.”

“Really?” Taya says, surprised. “So why do they think I’m gonna turn into a monster?”

“Well, if you shared the fate of a Primordial God, maybe they believe you will eventually turn into a Primordial God and try to subjugate this and all the other worlds, to consume them.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Primordial Gods are a mystery to me.”

“Have you met one?”

“Only an Apostle, uh, like a Dungeon. A Primordial Dungeon.”

“Oh my. And is it plaguing your planet too?” Taya asks, fearful. “Primordial God Dungeons are terrifying, and they can—”

“I’ve actually destroyed it,” Jacob says slowly. “It wasn’t that hard. Um, it was capped at Imperium Rank, because it tried absorbing an entire city so it could grow in power before stronger warriors could come and destroy it. But by creating a max Rank, it also meant the monsters there weren’t that strong. And so I managed to destroy it.”

Taya looked at Jacob as if he had just revealed he was a divine being.

“What? What are you saying? You actually destroyed an Original Primordial Dungeon? Do you know how hard that is? Zamorye has been afflicted with the same one since its inception. I still remember Grandpa Rafnov trying to undermine the Dungeon on this planet, and he couldn’t. It had grown too rooted, too entrenched. They’re still fighting it to this day.”

“I mean, it’s…” Jacob sighs. “It was a lucky set of coincidences that allowed me to destroy it, really. And a lot of us had Rainbow Skills. So there were almost twenty people with Rainbow Skills.”

“Twenty?” Taya raised her voice so much that the crowd around them turned to give them weird glances.

“Lower your voice,” Jacob mutters.

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. Twenty Rainbow Skills? Oh my goodness. I want to see that. I didn’t even know it was possible.”

“I told you, it’s Karma. And by the way, when was this Dungeon created? I’m surprised that nobody has raided such a Dungeon before. There must be someone strong enough in Zamorye to take care of it.”

“I mean, I was thinking the same. So I asked the merchant, and the merchant said that it appeared around a month ago, when I started circulating the Skill Crystals for Wrath of Blade. And by the way, like, it would have been nice to have some gratitude, and not be treated as a potential traitor to the nation that I’m helping out.”

“If I was on the throne, I definitely wouldn’t have treated you like a traitor.” Taya smiles at Jacob. “At best, a little slap on the wrist for disobeying.”

“Well, sadly, King Blade wants me dead. And now that he’s probably disappeared, Kamenev can’t wait to get his hands on me and kill me. But yeah, it is weird that it’s been exactly a month, apparently, since this Dungeon appeared. And it has killed everybody who entered it.”

“Yeah, it sounds awfully like what happened when you met Apocalypse on your own planet, doesn’t it?”

“It does sound similar, now that you think about it. But I guess it’s just a coincidence, right?”

- - -

Apocalypse was seething with rage.

Since a month ago, all these peasants — the bastard inhabitants of this world — had developed a technique, an ancient Primordial Spell turned into a Skill Crystal, that could cause permanent damage to her Dungeon. And her hordes, her children, were being killed by the thousands each day. And now even weak Diamond Rank fighters were chipping away at the Dungeon. And stone by stone, they were diminishing her power.

And so she had no other choice but to reincarnate ahead of time and deal with this matter personally. But to do so, she needed to gather power. And so she spawned a sub-Dungeon by infecting an inferior Dungeon. And inside, she laid traps so powerful that they would have even killed a Mithril Rank fighter. This was because she needed blood and flesh to fully reincarnate. And once she had a full body, she would then attack the humans while camouflaged as one. And that meant she’d be able to grow even stronger in power.

She had wanted to consume this entire world to destroy the hated heritage of Rafnov and his children, and the children of his disciples. But it had become clear that if she waited any longer, she would have been killed — consumed by whatever ability they had discovered, whatever thing they had found. And so she had to hurry up, and was not allowed to wait any longer.

Now, she had accumulated enough power, enough essence, enough souls to spawn an entire army. But instead, she was condensing them into this body. And the stronger her body grew, the more souls that she had snatched she could put inside of it. She would be unstoppable. And she would rip this entire world apart. She would harvest their souls, their bodies. And then she would depart, because she had to kill somebody specifically, on another planet.

Apocalypse had been close to infecting another planet with her Original Dungeon, with Lyra, one of her chosen children. But a bastard had foiled all her plans.

His name was Jacob Cloud.

And she was coming for him.

- - -

Jacob sneezes as they go out of the gate.

Taya asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He sneezes again.

“Bless you. What’s up?”

“I don’t know. It feels like I have this weird itch at the back of my head. Whatever. Let’s just go. I want to clear this Dungeon as fast as we can. I’m done with this planet. I want to go home. Do you like the beach?”

“The beach?” Taya asks.

“Yeah. Spending time at the beach. You know. I bet you could use a vacation after you were frozen in time for so long.”

“I guess.” Taya shrugs.

And so they made their way to the Dungeon.