“Is... is it supposed to do that?” Gilliam asked Sirzan, becoming a bit uncertain.

The one armed demon joined in the uncertainty, not sure what was going on as the runes started illuminating a teal colour, one after another.

“The human who had it before, the blade was long and glowing. I... I don’t know the runes.”

Gilliam quickly considered things.

First, this might be a weird boobytrap thing, perhaps a magical equivalent to the mechanical one that the day walking half vampire in that one franchise back on Earth. If he held on his hand would be blown off.

Another thing could be that it’s supposed to do this, glowing blade? Perhaps the blade was magical? If so it would need mana, right?

But...

Placing it on the floor of their room, the runes stopped charging up, but they also didn’t stop glowing either. Looking towards Sirzan, Gilliam had to know.

“Pick it up.”

Sirzan immediately looked at him with fear in his eyes and the facial expression of ‘absolutely not’.

“You don’t need to hold it long, I just want to see if the runes charge when you hold it.” he further commanded.

Sirzan seemed to weigh his options, he hesitated and pondered for a moment before moving towards the sword.

He was clearly in pain, something which made a lot of sense, the severed arm was not bleeding but it still looked incredibly painful, he bore this rather well, all things considered.

Getting to the blade he inhaled and let out a deep sigh. Finally picking it up.

He held it somewhat loose, almost like he was waiting for it to bite him, but... Nothing happened. The runes didn’t increase or decrease, the runes were passive much like when on the floor.

This explained a few things to Gilliam. It was charging based on mana, since the demonic race didn’t have natural mana, only stolen skills, that could be why it didn’t work for him now.

Extending his open hand towards the sword, Sirzan didn’t hesitate in returning it. Immediately as Gilliam touched it the runes started to slowly charge again.

“Hmm... Glowing blade...” He investigated the runes spread across the sword and a lot of them were energy-holding runes. There were many runes dealing with sharpness and cutting, emitting and ‘solid’.

The more the thought about things the more it made sense that this should be relatively safe. If it was a trapped item it could not only actually be better to let the enemy get it, though that depended on how it worked. But there should be some runes or magic circles handling that, no? Unless they were hidden on the inside.

Placing it on the floor again he actively channelled some energy into it, not too different to how he would create mana crystals, just with the sword as a target more than a single point.

The runes continued to charge like before. As this felt like a much safer way to do it, Gilliam kept charging it like this instead.

This process didn’t take long, since most of the runes had already started charging already, at the end the sword didn’t take the funnelled energy, like trying to fill a full bucket the overflow just returned to the air.

“Pick it up.” Gilliam commanded Sirzan. Though he didn’t want to become the evil villain that has others test out experimental things for him, this was a somewhat... special case.

This time Sirzan was even more hesitant, something Gilliam completely sympathised with.

“If I do this one more test... can you take me back to the surface?” There was a strong hesitation in his voice. Clearly not wanting to anger the one holding his life in his hands, but still needed to mention it as this was decreasing his life expectancy. If not for the danger, then the stress.

Gilliam pondered for a second, though the demons most likely never gave this luxury to their victims, Gilliam didn’t intend to become like them. So he agreed with a nod.

“Yeah... You have sort of done your deal here... If you do this last thing, I will not have you test anything else and I’ll bring you up as unharmed as I can.”

Gilliam felt that he should explain it properly, though this is an enemy and letting him go will most likely have him do bad things to humans in the future... He wanted his word to mean something.

Sirzan was not just hesitant, but legitimately scared. This was now a charged artefact of a human so it was understandable.

It was not hard to see that he had to psyche himself up to do this but in the end he grasped the hilt and lifted up the sword. His eyes forced closed and his whole body in a position screaming that he’s expecting the thing to explode and remove his other arm.

But in the end, nothing happened. It acted as a normal sword would, just that this one had glowing runes. It didn’t do anything.

Gilliam was not good at sensing magic, he could feel the source of magic at times, so though he could sense magic from the sword that was all he could. So if this would explode in his hands or not, he had no idea. Though he could read the runes and everything he had seen hinted that this was just a magical sword, he should be safe.

Like before he extended his hand towards the sword, this had Sirzan hand it over at great haste. Though Gilliam was still a bit uncertain he considered that he put the ring on without hesitation... So it was almost strange that he was now this paranoid...

Holding it didn’t do anything weird and as it was already full of his mana, giving it more didn’t do much. Like with the ring there was an activation aspect to things, he had linked with it through his mana so perhaps he should just tell it to activ*

As soon as he had decided to activate it, it did.

Literally in a flash of blue light the broken blade was now whole again, from the broken point of the metal blade extended a long and tapered almost crystal-like blade with a slight translucent shimmer. It was dimly glowing of patterned teal and blue energy.

Before this, from pommel to end of the broken blade the whole thing seemed to be around half a metre (0.5m ~19.6nch). But now with the full blade it seemed to be just below 130cm (~51.1inch), this meant that the total blade length was a metre (~39.3inch), where a solid 80cm (~32inch) of it was now magical energy.

The crossguard now had more of it present, though the ‘more’ that was there now was of the same teal energy, the ends of them still looking broken somehow.

He jolted in reaction, being startled didn’t even cover it. In his startled movement he flailed the sword to the side, letting the blade pass through the stone and dirt wall next to him, this showed that the blade cut through stone on accidental movement. Gilliam had no idea how this thing was this sharp but he expected some magical reason and the collection of sharpness runes. There was also an odd feeling, a tingle of sorts but he was too busy reacting to the glowing blade to properly process this at the moment.

Sirzan was just as startled as Gilliam, given that there was a slight blue tint to the light in the room but also that there was now a deadly sword in the human's hands.

But at the same time, he looked a bit confused.

As Gilliam was moving the sword around, cutting rocks and trying to stab some other, he added a note as he kind of talked to himself.

“But, the blade that the human had was bigger.”

This had Gilliam react a bit, this was already pretty neat but, bigger?

Since the sword activated on his thought before, he didn’t consider much before he mentally tried to send the command to ‘get bigger’.

Like he hit the correct button there was another flash of light as the sword seemed to activate a second mode.

This time the flash of light was a bit stronger before it settled properly, the blade widened considerably as it lengthened. A second look showed that the slender blade was the core of the whole ordeal, but it almost looked like a greatsword’s edge was attached to the slender edge he already had.

It had grown longer, now the whole blade length was just over 130cm (~51 inch) alone, not considering the handle itself. It was almost 15cm (~6inch) at the widest part, tapering out as it went towards the slightly blunt-looking tip. It had the same teal energy and texture to it, and now the crossguard seemed to have fully manifested.

Due to the extra length this now extended into the ceiling, piercing the rock effortlessly. Before with just the slender blade he could cut through rock but it still required a bit of effort. Now with this wider greatsword-like edge it just slid through anything like a red-hot knife through butter. This was clearly a devastating weapon, especially if you added that though the sword had its own weight, there was no weight to the energy blades.

The tingle that first manifested alongside the slender blade became stronger now, and now that his mind was processing this, he properly realised what it was.

Back when he sparred against Kintas, the melee instructor, he felt an incredibly weak tingle he hoped was something interesting at the time, since he failed that fight he assumed it was just adrenaline. But, right now, after he activated the sword the tingle returned, but rather than just being a metaphorical tiny toy bell, it now rang like a massive church bell. Images and feelings, movements and twitches all came rushing into Gilliam’s mind.

He saw himself fighting with a sword, but the sword was glowing, he felt that this was the most natural thing ever and it just felt right.

Turning away from his prisoner he did a few moves against the wall, imagining it a fight or spar against someone. The few movements he did were incredibly fluid, almost like he had trained the sword since he could barely walk. As the images passed over him and he was out from his heightened battle sense he considered this for a moment. And after a short minute he came to a conclusion that made sense.

He had a cheat-level gift of magic, but he couldn’t use it in the fight against Kintas, but this was not a normal but a magical sword. It seems that his gift extended to anything magical.

This also explained why he could activate the magical items this easily.

It all made sense!

This was going to be an incredibly great boon! Not just the knowledge but the two artefacts as well. Though more testing was needed for the ring, right now he could at least keep the handle stored and charged in there. Testing a few mental commands to the sword he found out that he could easily turn it off, activate just the slender or the whole blade at once with just a thought. Likewise once it was turned off he could think the ring to absorb it, and as it just disappeared from his hand the little disk inside the ring’s cylinder started glowing dimly again.

This was great!

Sirzan looked more terrified at all of this, Gilliam assumed it was not only that he could instantly use the magical tools, but the danger of the sword and how he just used it. Adding to the carpet bomb and how easily Gilliam took out his arm and captured him, it made sense that he felt a bit of terror.

Still being naked, save the manacles, Gilliam walked over to Sirzan and patted him on the shoulder. Or rather he wanted to but he was too tall so he ended up patting him on the side of his fully present arm.

“Thank you for your help. I’ll stick to my side of the bargain.”

Just completing this sentence had Sirzan’s face light up, though being a demon and Gilliam not being entirely used to all their expressions, it looked a bit sinister.

Reversing the spells from before, he now did two things. First he tunneled upwards as he flew but he also raised a pillar of earth beneath his prisoner. This took a bit longer than just going down but eventually the darkness broke and the bright light stabbed at their eyes. Dismissing the light spell and stopping the raising of earth, Gilliam stopped for a moment and faced towards Sirzan.

“You might want to consider what you do during the invasion.”

This was meant both as a warning and a threat.

He didn’t give the demon a chance to reply, he just started flying upwards, taking care he didn’t have anyone after him and just kept going until he got very, very high up. With the new information about where to go and what to do he needed to get an overview and idea of where things are. The first thing he’d like to find was the static gate, second is some clothing. He has been naked for what felt like days now, and it was not exactly comfortable in the sandy terrain.

Taking a proper gander he could see that the landmass was slightly elongated, almost like an oval. Though not as smooth edges but sort of oval’ish. There was more and more proper construction and things were closer and closer the further you looked towards one of the edges of the mentioned oval. The other side, which was sort of where he was closer to, became more and more barren.

It felt logical that they would build and expand from the static gate, as that was their lifeline closer to the central places. If he was correct then he should find the gate over thataway somewhere.... He didn’t feel incredibly sure about this. Not about the expected bloodbath that could come out of this, for some odd reason he didn’t care much about that. No, it was more about if he went there and there was no gate, he could be in danger for nothing.

There is also the danger that, if he’s discovered, they might not activate the gate at all.

There was also the fact that the Gatekeeper must know that Gilliam has escaped, since the demon had some dislike for him and he planned to have a gate opened to the Heart, it strongly hinted that he planned to present Gilliam to the lord. Now that Gilliam was lost he probably would make sure that the way off the landmass was shut down.

Sirzan did explain that you just need to channel enough energy into the gate and it would activate on its own, so that was an option as well. If so it might be worthwhile considering a huge distraction and then just make for the gate and try to open it himself.

On that topic, the danger of this place might not be as high as it sounds. If what the demon mage said is to be believed, then there was no other mage as good as he was. There might be in the Hand or further in but, at that point the portal would have to open. So perhaps just go down and hope for the best is the way to g*

Before he could complete the sentence a massive ballista bolt impacted the shield. It hit with enough force to take out the secondary barrier Gilliam had going. The barrier just popped as the bolt did zero damage to the second barrier before the mangled mess that was left of it bounced off.

That was a terrifying thought, he was high enough up that he shouldn’t even be spottable from the ground, and they hit him with a ballista bolt? If there were some scryers down there, that would explain that part but; how did they get the bolt all the way up here?

Not wanting that to happen again he cast two more barriers, a total of three should work out for now. Though this was oddly taxing it was only taxing for a moment as the barriers contained their own mana until used up. This lets him recharge naturally in the meantime.

Since Gilliam could in fact not scry, he was left to look around, and at this distance that was impossible. What he could see, though, was what looked like a bunch of flying ants coming his way. Seems like they had sent someone after him.

Still being far in the distance he didn’t want them to get close and possibly become a danger. Though he had never cast a spell at this distance before it was a good time to test. A simple cast of the Aether dart he had been using would be a good test.

He manifested the spell circle, fed it the needed energy and sent a dart flying, target on one of the incoming specks in the distance. It seemed to have fizzled out before it hit anything. So there was a max distance to the spells, this was good info and something he wanted to experiment more on. For now the simplest experimentation was to just recast the spell but this time modifying the spell to have a few distance runes linked into it, this increased the complexity of the circle but he had the time to figure this out at the moment.

He cast it again with the new circle, it needed a little more energy which was to be expected. Though it flew at blinding speed it still used a few solid seconds to get down there, but it hit! It was very, very hard to see but there was a puff of red before one of the creatures started falling. The remaining incoming force spread out considerably after that, making Gilliam chuckle a bit; he should have tested with something bigger.

Well, they knew he was here, they weren’t all dumb so they might have some ideas of what he could do, and might have locked down the gate. This means that the best plan at the moment is to just get down there, cause some chaos and go for the gate.

‘There is no time like the present’ was the thought that passed through Gilliam’s mind as he started flying down towards the area he believed the gate might be located in.

On the way down the incoming swarm changed direction to intercept, though most of them didn’t seem to be flying as fast as Gilliam, he preferred to not have them tail him.

Making sure they got into range he reused the carpet bombing spell from before, but changed the runes a little to make the collection of spheres explode on impact rather than go through them first.

The effect was devastating, not much in the sense of mana cost but as the hail of golf ball spheres sped towards their target they started detonating on impact. This was somewhat gorier than he expected, being in air like this and the fact that the spheres that missed their targets were detonated by the other explosions had this become a rather horrible location to be in. This one spell took out all the demons chasing him in one fell swoop as the corpses, loose limbs, wounded demons and just a collection of innards started falling back to the ground.

This would normally have been nausea inducing, but for some odd reason it was not affecting him as much as he expected, he has had this thought a few times here in this world. Must be because of the survival aspect and the fact that they are demons.

Not delaying any more he made way towards where he expected the static gate to be, he needed to be somewhat certain before he either got too close to the ground or set off a distraction in the distance. In either case it was going to get harder, even with a good distraction there were bound to be guards around the gate.

Gilliam decided to consider this once he got closer, he needed more info before he could even consider a plan.