THEOS

Cyzicus flashed Luke a half hearted grin. “Alright, follow me.” He said, and with a parting look at the cultivators teleporting away, he retreated into the castle.

“Now one of the rings, I believe you got from a warrior. I recognize it as one I made, and the defenses in it are rather easy to break. Well, for me. Since I made them, but, you can give it a try if you want. It will be good practice.”

“So they don’t go away when the owner dies then?” Luke asked.

Seems I made a good call after all.

“Of course not.” Cyzicus turned back and flashed him an expression that bordered on offense.

“I don’t know how any of this works.” Luke shrugged. “I don’t even have a storage ring yet.”

“Hmph. Allow me to educate you then. Crafting items is much like creating talismans. You inscribe runes onto objects, and fill them with mana. The patterns for talismans however, have been perfected through countless millennia, improved and iterated by the gods themselves, and simplified to such an extent that any hoodlum with mana can copy one down, fill it with mana, and it will function consistently and reliably. They are perhaps the most refined works or runecraft known to cultivators. Attack, defense, preservation, communication… Those are the tools that allowed us to escape the caves of our ancestors and spread throughout the world and conquer it.”

“That’s…, I can see how that would be useful.” Luke nodded along, as Cyzicus led him to a blank stretch of wall.

His ring flashed, and a large brass key appeared in his hands. Pressing it into the air, Luke watched intently as it disappeared into the air itself.

The Emperor turned it over, and the world shuddered. A mechanical noise reverberated through the castle, and the wall in front of them receded into the ceiling, like a cleverly designed garage door.

“Their usefulness is overlooked by many. Fighting with basic armaments has its place, but such tactics expose you to risk and require skill that isn’t easy to gain. Fighting with talismans requires that you have some spare time, paper, and a writing instrument, or friendship with someone who does. We can talk more about how they revolutionized the way sapient life thrived on Theos, but I can refer you to a few scholars and texts that will be able to educate much more on the matter, than I.”

“That would be amazing actually.”

“I’m sure it would. The history of this world has fascinated me more and more the longer I live.” Cyzicus said, stretching his hand out in front of him. Taking the cue for what it was, Luke stared into the gaping darkness of the hidden room, and back at the emperor himself, before confidently striding in.

A moment later, he heard the same mechanical noise, and the wall slammed shut beside them. Torches lit up gentle white light all along the walls revealing a wide stairway that descended deep into the earth.

“Come.” Cyzicus said, walking past him and into the bowels of his castle. “Now, in principle, creating artifacts is the same as creating talismans but in practice it is substantially more difficult. While the patterns that you draw contain all the necessary information to make a functional talisman they require no understanding from yourself. It takes actual knowledge of the runes to create artifacts. You cannot draw them blindly, and hope for the best. Doing so would have no effect beyond leaving markings on your material. Whereas using runes you do understand, and pairing them with ones you do not, will lead to a result that is much more destructive.”

“What are runes then? Is there like a dictionary or something that we can use?”

Cyzicus scoffed. “No. No, there isn’t a dictionary. The meanings contained in the runic alphabet, aren’t something that can be verbalized with something so paltry as the squawking of animals. Learning one is like learning a Technique. You connect with something that exists beyond the physical. Will you be able to teach someone the Stance’s passed on to you by Alexia by saying some words?”

“...No.” He said, eventually. He had tried once after all, remembering the frazzled and gaunt eyes of the person they had tried to teach. Trixie hadn’t learned in spite of his, Arya’s and Spiros’s best efforts. He frowned, absently wondering whether the older cultivator was still there, and how many others were still trapped her.

“Correct. Even though the gist behind them can be verbalized, the depth behind those words, the realization, the magic, cannot. It’s an effort of years to learn a single rune enough to etch it into an artifact, and not have it be inert. It takes decades to learn enough of them to create something serviceable. Centuries to create something even worth making. Once you do however, reproducing past results is rather easy.”

The stairway opened up to a large chamber. Easily the size of a football stadium, it was filled with clutter. All manner of weapons, shields, armors, and other nick nacks were littered haphazardly through the room. Scattered between them were countless tools. Anvils, hammers, lathes, and crucibles, and a dozen other things that Luke didn’t recognize.

Not breaking his stride, the Emperor led Luke to an assuming workbench right in the middle of the room, and held his hands out. Fishing into his pockets, he pulled out the pair of rings.

The moment the rings touched air, they floated away from his hand, and into the Emperors.

“For breaking into things, there’s two things to remember. One, if the person they belong to is still alive, then getting into them is near impossible. Not unless you're many tier’s higher than the tier of the ring.”

“Yeah, about that… I'm not sure if anyone else saw this, but when I was– how much do you know about how we killed the Rebel?”

Cyzicus looked at him oddly. “I talked to Nel, Lukeus, and Rex and took all their accounts. The only thing I don’t know is what happened within the castle.” His eyes drifted to Maximus resting on Luke’s waist, and he smiled. “Sentimental, huh.”

Luke blushed red. “It is.”

“I believe you. It’s quite the surprise that some random brat I found is a Paragon. Or that you now carry a Named Weapon. Most people don’t survive the tribulation.”

“A tribulation. Is that what that was? I got the sense that I was pretty close to the end of my existence.”

“A tribulation is a test. If you pass it, you get a reward, if you fail, you die.”

“A test by who?”

Cyzicus shrugged. “That’s not something I can answer. I’m not even sure that the gods know that answer. There are things about this world that quite frankly, I don’t know.”

“I see.” Luke said, feeling his thoughts churning in his head.

Hmm. It felt kind of like my Paragon Quest– and that emerged from the Primordial Order alongside the Creation of Theos according to the Seed. Not that I have a clue what that means. Is it some kind of mana, a group of gods, or something else entirely. It also said something about the Creation of Theos… did someone make this world? A god? Or maybe something higher.

The vision of Prometheus trapped in the cave, sitting within a pool of his blood, with a crazed look on his face flashed in his head. A chill went down his back, and forcibly, he shut down that train of thought.

Whatever had seized him when he was naming his Sword, was not a power he had any right questioning. Just thinking about it filled him with an ominous feeling, and he didn’t know if that was just him being nervous, or if it was the weight of something unfathomable resting on his back, threatening to break his mind.

Cyzicus cracked a grin at his nervous expression.

“I know there was something odd about you when I picked you up from Sophia’s forge, but I couldn’t place it. You had more mana than I even thought possible for a mortal that day. But a Paragon… I’ve heard about them, but,” he shook his head, “most consider it a curse of the greedy. Unparalleled power, but the inability to advance. Perfection in everything, it’s not easy to achieve– if it’s possible. Those that know about it, know not to take the choice when offered, and many shy away from the price. If they're lucky, or supremely talented they’ll break through one tier, maybe two, but as far as I know, no one has accepted it has ascended past the Saint-tier.” He looked at Luke meaningfully.

“I think I can do it.”

“Considering how far you’ve come in such a short time, I wouldn’t underestimate you, but I do believe you underestimate the difficulty of advancing through the higher tiers. Regardless, I do wish you the best. Once you become a god, don’t forget this old man on this little island on which you spent a few months of your youth.” He grinned.

“I won’t.” Luke said, with a face full of amusement, while wondering what the man would think if he knew about the Seed and its ability to cheat the requirements. “Anyway, I wasn’t alone in the castle. There was this woman… I think she was a god.”

Cyzicus suddenly grew still, and his gaze locked onto Luke.

“Truly?”

“Yeah. Her name was C–”

He snarled.

“No need to say it. I’m aware of who it is that you speak of. What did she do?”

“She took something from the Rebel’s ring.”

“A crown?”

How does he– “Yeah, that was it. Do you know what it is?”

“I do. That crown is something that I’ve searched for, for millennia. Alas, it’s not something you should concern yourself with.” He said, his face set carefully neutral. Only his hands, clenched in a white knuckle grip, betrayed his carefully controlled anger. “Did she do anything else?”

“She knew stuff about me and about Rex. She knew who Heracles was. She also gave me a pomegranate seed. Once I ate it, my mana surged. For a few minutes my mana was limitless… that and my Technique is what let me kill the Rebel,”

“I see.” Cyzicus nodded.

“Well, there’s no reason to be concerned. The Pomegranate Seed was a valuable treasure and not harmful. I won’t pry into your secrets, but what did she know about Rex.”

“She called him a descendant of uh…” He scrambled for the name.“Ep–”

“Lord Epimetheus.” He finished. Slightly more at ease. “That name will mean little to you, but Lord Epimetheus is an Olympian. That is where Agnella, Lukeus, and now Rex’s ability to control animals comes from, they carry his bloodline.”

“What exactly is a bloodline? I’ve heard you say it before but…”

“Ah, of course. A bloodline is essentially a Technique that is passed down from a god to their offspring. They aren’t particularly rare however. The only condition to them being passed on is for the parent to have unlocked their mana, and when the child unlocks theirs, they will possess it as well.”

Hmmm. So the original Max was probably a descendant of someone who had Prometheus's bloodline, just not awakened considering I needed all those Stat Points to unlock it.

“I see.”

“Is there anything else you would like to share with me?”

“Not that I can think of.”

Cyzicus nodded at that. “Very well, now where were we? Right. Breaking into the Ring is all but impossible unless the person it belongs to is dead. Even when they are, it isn’t an easy thing to do. Storage Rings, truthfully speaking, are more like talismans than other objects. The runes that enchant the metal are given to Emperors by Olympus, to be made and distributed and don’t require too much learning. Any Emperor worth their salt will pick up the skill relatively fast. Unlike talismans that even mortals can power however, rings require the weight of Hero-tier mana. Now as the maker of this ring, I know exactly the protection I put on it.” He tossed it back at him, and smiled. “Go ahead and channel your mana into it.” He said, his earlier anger at the mention of Cybele seemingly gone.

“I thought it was protected.”

“Oh, it is. Just be careful not to push too much.”

Hesitantly, Luke looked between him and the ring, and then deciding to trust the man, he slid a small tendril of his mana into it. Immediately a jolt of lightning latched onto that connection, and traveled through his body, and for a moment, left him paralyzed.

“Ghk.” Luke wheezed.

“That was too much mana. Try a little less. So it can’t do that.” Cyzicus urged him, a consoling expression on his face.

Luke looked at him reluctantly.

“Well, if you don’t want to learn how to break into storage rings, I suppose I can do it for you.” He held out his hands once again. “Now that I think about it, this isn’t a skill I should be teaching you about anyways.”

Luke frowned, and sent an even thinner amount of mana into the ring.

“Ghk.” His arms shook, and the ring clattered as it hit the ground.

“A little less.” Cyzicus urged. “Agnella learned this in three tries, so I’m sure you're close.” He said, and the ring flew up from the ground and landed in his hands again.

Why am I getting the sense that it was his idea to boil people for training? Luke thought with a sigh, as he once again sent his mana into the ring.