The Weapon

A day later, Ryun had taken him and Maleatus to a territory that was just south of the Warden Citadel, outside of the territories in the area of influence of the Exalted Empire, or anyone else really. Maleatus had guided him to it, as it was an old meeting spot of the League, and where they would wait for Selia and the team she had assembled. Ryun was impatient to go, but even he understood that he couldn't act rashly, the Unchained headquarters was an unknown quantity, he couldn't rely on his personal strength to be enough.

The territory was a high tier one, red trees spread in every direction beyond the hill that they sat on. It was one of the highest tiered territories that Ryun had ever been in, which was probably why Selia had picked it as a meeting spot. No one lived here, as it would be too hard for most to survive. The gravity was stronger, the intensity of the world seemed oppressive and would probably turn low tiered people to paste. Even the air around them was so thick and held such will of its own that it was a difficulty to force it into the lungs. Which was something that Ryun hadn't expected to have to do ever again, though, it wasn't really that he was doing it, but Scorn. The instrument mimicked a normal human body as it held the form of his shell. He could feel it drawing in the thick Air Essence into the lungs it had created, and drawing a tiny bit of Essence from it to siphon into its own Core, which was a mirror copy of Ryun's own. It too could cycle, it seemed, and perhaps even store Essence to convert it into Qi. Ryun knew that he had barely scratched the surface of what it could do, but the thing that worried him the most was that it felt like the instrument was yet to become fully functional. The description spoke of it being asleep, and Ryun had been able to feel something at the edge of his consciousness, something similar to the mind of an Awakened Object, slumbering yet still possessing great power. Ryun had a suspicion that Awakened Objects had once been lesser Aspects, in the world before the Infinite Realm.

“We’ve given it something, a piece of all of us,” Bright Star’s voice interrupted Ryun’s thoughts.

“Do you think that it is like you then?” Ryun asked.

Bright Star didn’t respond immediately. “It is dormant, but there is a spark of something in there. I could feel it as we forged it. There is nothing for us but to wait until it wakes.”

Ryun grimaced but nodded. He wondered what it would be like once it grew enough to be able to wake up.

He glanced at Maleatus, sitting on a boulder nearby and roasting a piece of an animal they hunted just a few hours ago. He still had a body of flesh and blood, so he did require such sustenance. The man was an enigma to Ryun's senses. He could usually tell how strong people were just by observing them with his perception skill. The way someone stood, the way that the Essence around them reacted to their presence, their weight, the twitches of their muscles, they all built up to tell a story. Maya Rebadotter had been strong, though clearly unused to it. Maleatus on the other hand was... Strong. Very strong.

Ryun had seldom met people like him. The few were only those at the peak of their power. Eratemus, the Explorer's Soul, the Warden Spirit, a handful of others. Maleatus was not this strong the last time Ryun had met him, though, admittedly, he hadn't spent much time with him back then, he could've missed it.

As the silence between them stretched, Ryun couldn't help but be curious.

"Why did the Herald take you prisoner? I know that you stole something that he wanted," Ryun turned to look at the man.

The ravzor snorted. "Stole? It was no theft, I claimed the treasure from our enemies. The Herald had no more right to it than anybody else did."

Well, technically, the armies had agreed to split what was recovered from the Warden Citadel. Though Ryun wasn't going to tell him that, he didn't care that much. From what he remembered there wasn't a lot left anyway. He did remember the Herald asking some strange questions though, asking if they had taken anything before he arrived. Perhaps he had been expecting to find something.

"What was it? If you don't mind me asking," Ryun continued.

Maleatus shrugged. "Not like it matters now, the Herald knows though I don't know how he knew that this thing even existed, and there is no way for anyone else to recover it now."

Ryun tilted his head as the ravzor raised his hand and a vial appeared in between his fingers. It was ornate, with a silver mesh covering the finger-thin glass beneath. It was also empty. He looked at it with a complicated expression on his face that Ryun couldn't quite identify.

"They called this a weapon you know," he said after a few seconds of silence. "Because what else do you call a thing that can make you so much more powerful? A weapon seems like an apt word."

The man raised his head and met Ryun's eyes over the vial. "This was a reward gained by the party of the Warden Commander Yirrel Annsi, though I don't know who all had been part of it. Zenker for certain, they had changed the stories you see, spread misinformation so expertly that I didn't even realize at first. I suspect, that perhaps the Herald was part of it, back before his kind founded their Empire. Even the timeline of their dive is suspect... Regardless, a group dwelled to the bottom of the Abyssal Deep Dungeon, so long ago," he threw the vial into the air, then caught it a moment later. "They gained a lot of treasures from being the first to achieve it, many powerful weapons and items. Things that helped them rise to the top of the Infinite Realm. But they found only one of these vials. And the name of it was the Elixir of Perfect Ascension."

Ryun frowned.

Maleatus grinned and continued. "I know, I know, the name doesn't tell you much, does it? It is the description that was the important part, and what it did, obviously," he shook his head. "The Framework is such an insidious thing, you know? Its descriptions offer so much knowledge to those who are paying attention, but it also hides in them traps, paths that lead to ruin, but for those who are able to read in between the lines it offers hints of what all of this is for," he waved his hand in the air.

Ryun understood what he meant, the purpose of the Infinite Realm. He had seen those hints himself, not just in the descriptions of perks and items, but in the words of monsters that he faced. In his own advancement. He wondered if that elixir was what made Maleatus so strong, or if the hint he discovered did.

"I found out about this by accident actually," Maleatus shook his head in disbelief. "I was out on a mission, spying, gathering information for the League, my usual stuff. I was following Yirrel's sister, Yerala, and I overheard a conversation about a single item that they had gained in the dungeon but hadn't yet used after so many years. That intrigued me, but after I heard her say that they had all agreed that none of them should use it, that it was either that or a bloodbath over who would get it... Well, that just made me want it more. I didn't know what it was, only that they had called it a weapon."

He turned his eyes back to Ryun, and now he could see a faint light flashing in the ravzor's gaze. "I spent years searching, investigating, narrowing down the most likely place where they would keep something like that. Obviously, I had no way of getting to it, it was in one of the most protected places in the world as I later found out, it was a passing fancy of mine, searching for it. And then everything changed, I got a taste of weakness, and I wanted more power. And fate provided, the Wardens fell, and I had a way in."

He huffed, almost in a chuckle as he gazed at the empty vial. "I thought that I was going to find a weapon," he whispered, then raised his eyes back up.

"You know, before I got captured, I was planning on coming to your Sect. I wanted to speak with Vryull and that new girl of his. He still runs a school for you now?"

Ryun blinked at the change of topic, but he nodded. "Valthua, and yes, they are teaching the children of the sect about advancement, about Essences and Aspects. And researching when they are not."

"Vryull says that you are also very knowledgeable about such things," Maleatus stated.

"I am, somewhat. I wouldn't say that I know all that there is," Ryun added.

Maleatus nodded. "I owe you for rescuing me, and if I know Vryull, he probably would've roped you into what I wanted to speak with him about anyway," he said, almost as if he was talking to himself. "What would you say if I told you that most of what we know about advancement is wrong?"

Ryun narrowed his eyes. "I would question, but I wouldn't be surprised. We had lived with the Framework for barely a thousand years, time that had been filled with struggle for survival, a mad grab for power. We live in a world of immortals that can get set in their ways, and then pass flawed knowledge down. A thousand years in the Infinite Realm are nothing, even on the scale of the old worlds it is nothing. My kind had spent several thousand years stuck at nearly the same level of technological advancement before we broke through and progressed at an alarming rate. Knowledge and understanding changes, we live and we learn."

And then Maleatus asked another question. "And what if I told you that focus madness is a lie?"