Arthur never expected that a simple stroll with Ranni would turn into an afternoon full of surprises. On the way home he'd met a cultivator from the East, learned about the sects, and—back at the house—cooked a feast that had everyone smiling. Ranni had blushed until her cheeks were nearly the color of the stew, and Hermione had watched the whole scene with a mixture of envy and calculation: she didn't have a cousin who spoiled her like that.
That night Arthur cooked an entire banquet—ten, a dozen dishes—just because his little Moon Princess had a craving. Hermione stared at him over the table as if at a magician performing impossible tricks. She never would have expected her cousin to dote on someone the way Arthur dote(d) on Ranni. The look on her face was equal parts jealousy and admiration, and when dessert came she still hadn't stopped glaring, though she did try to hide it.
After the evening's warm chaos, Arthur returned to the Lands Between. He left the Site of Grace and scanned the ruined skyline. The colossal corpse of Gransax still loomed over part of Leyndell like a fallen mountain; Arthur frowned. Leaving a body that size to rot in place was wasteful to the point of sacrilege.
He mounted his flying broom with a little disdain—ever since watching Li Xuanjian ride his sword, Arthur had taken to thinking of brooms as quaint. He rode out to Gransax's remains and, standing before the dragon's monumental form, finally understood the true scale of the beast. A single scale on its wing was larger than the biggest shield Arthur had collected.
He touched the dragon corpse and, thinking of the System, folded the body into his inventory space. The ruined architecture beneath the corpse — already brittle — collapsed with a thunderous groan as the dragon's mass vanished. Far above, on Leyndell's high platform, Morgott noticed the tremor.
Morgott walked to the edge of the throne platform and peered down. The dragon that had once covered half the city was gone. In its place a lone Tarnished—Arthur—was riding an odd broom toward the lightning-tipped spear still lodged deep in the inner city, the weapon Gransax had wielded.
Seeing the fallen masonry below, Morgott's eyes grew cold. If that Tarnished ever reached the throne, Morgott swore he would make the intruder pay dearly. He wouldn't rush into the field himself—Leyndell still had defenders, and his Omen troops guarded the sewers and the Frenzied Flame. If Arthur blundered into them, he could be buried there and no one would mourn. That thought alone comforted the Omen King.
Back on the ground Arthur picked up Gransax's lightning spear. The shaft was sheathed by twin coils of gold-metal that flickered like living lightning. When Arthur infused his own mana into the spear, the weapon shuddered as if sensing an unfamiliar hand on it and tried to resist.
"Your former master has been dead for years," Arthur murmured, and poured more power into the spear until it calmed. Under his will the lance shrank from its gigantic draconic scale into a size a human could hold. Red lightning crawled along its surface, but when Arthur grasped the shaft the lightning danced around his hand without burning him. He thrusted the spear once, and the blow punched a four-meter aperture clean through a wall with thunderous force.
Arthur grinned. He finally understood how Gransax had brought down Leyndell's walls: in the dragon's hands that spear had been a battering ram of storms. If a single thrust made such a hole, imagine the onslaught a full-grown ancient dragon could unleash.
He stowed the spear and pushed deeper into the ruined capital. There he came across strange creatures that wrapped themselves like snowmen and carried flutes. They blew slow, tracking orbs that hunted like tiny bubbles. Mikaela, who seldom spoke but had begun to murmur more since being nearby, identified them: they were oracle messengers born of the Erdtree's will.
Arthur felled a few and noticed their blood was white—pale and strange. It reminded him of the second-generation Platinates in the Liurnia lakes—those frog-headed creations born of human hands who had never been blessed by the Erdtree. If the Erdtree had sheltered such crafted beings, it made sense that oracles might look foreign by the standard of true grace.
Why were these oracles at the foot of the Erdtree, in Leyndell? Arthur guessed it had to do with Mikaela and Malenia's movements. When Malenia felt Mikaela's presence in Caelid she marched south; she must have sent oracles to negotiate passage through the capital. Morgott, eager for any pretext to test the assemblies of demigods, allowed the oracles to remain—and in the chaos after war they became part of the city's guard.
Arthur collected one of the oracular flutes. The System read it out: an instrument that was also a weapon, heavy and strange—one a human mouth shouldn't be able to play. For curiosity, Arthur blew on it. A sound like a child's bubble song escaped the flute; a handful of slow, luminous bubbles drifted out and homed on a nearby Leyndell soldier. The man swung his sword and charged—then a bubble struck him soundly and he dropped, dead. Arthur stared at the flute, intrigued. Could he blow it because he wasn't purely human? Or had some hour finally come for the instrument to sing?
Bored of pondering, Arthur tossed the flute into his System and logged out. Time for rest.
The next day in the Zen Garden Arthur sat with Hermione and set about engraving runes on her wand.
Hermione had watched his cooking the night before and been green with envy; this was his recompense. Arthur had told her he could inscribe runes that connected to the wielder's spirit channels, and Hermione—ever the studious one—had begged him for the set. She'd already suspected Arthur's secret powers: from duels between Snape and Lockhart to the odd, shape-changing dragon Draco once brought to their house, she had pieced together threads. The fact that the "skills" from Arthur's game existed in the real world had been a shock, but not a complete surprise.
Runes required skin contact to graft onto a body, and the back is the best place to link sigils into a person's magic circuits. Hermione refused the embarrassment of a back incision—so Arthur placed the runes on her wand instead. His post-Ascension spiritual focus made carving thin, delicate runes on a slender wand easy; the work that would have taken a dozen hours before now took less than two.
Hermione chose an array of spirit-oriented runes, and Arthur carved them faithfully:
Base Rune — "Angry Gaze": Allows outward projection of spirit power to perceive the surroundings.
Advanced Rune — "Fierce Radiance": Increases the spirit-perception range by 15%.
Advanced Rune — "Arcane Eye": Increases perception by 25%; when casting, magic may be launched from any point within the spirit-perception field.
Ultimate Rune — "Eagle Sight": Extends spirit-perception by 40% and doubles spell potency.
Hermione's eyes shone when Arthur finished. For a long time she'd envied his ability to project spirit and sense the world—his guidance had even helped her prototype the Animal-Speech spell. But that was only a sliver of what full spirit projection offered. With "Arcane Eye" she could, if her spirit reserves were sufficient, cast a charm from halfway across a Quidditch pitch and strike a target without moving an inch. "Eagle Sight" would turn her into a battlefield daemon of awareness—if she could control it.
Arthur took some of his homemade defensive trinkets—little alchemical devices—and inscribed shielding runes onto them. The wand itself could hold only so many runes; instead he created a wand handle with a built-in power reservoir. He poured a large amount of his mana into it so the runes would be maintained without requiring Hermione to constantly pour in energy. If she ever needed to recharge, she would only have to top up the reservoir now and then.
When the work was done Hermione, in a fit of affectionate gratitude, pecked Arthur's face like a woodpecker—soft, fast kisses across his cheek—much to Ranni's smug amusement.
Then Hermione asked, eyes bright with curiosity: "Cousin, if the skills from that game are real… what about Plants vs. Zombies? Do the plants exist too?"
Arthur smiled and ruffled her hair. "Yes, they do—just not many in my hands."
"In fact, you've already seen one," he said, pointing upward toward the Erdtree. "I extracted the Wisdom Tree's essence and let the Erdtree absorb it. The Erdtree produced a special dew."
He dug into his System and produced a small blue crystal orb.
"This is the special dew the Erdtree yielded after assimilating the Wisdom Tree's essence. It enhances spirit and arcane power, and can boost wisdom a bit. Very rare."
Hermione cradled the orb, its blue light reflecting in her eyes. She turned to Arthur and—without ceremony—handed it back.
"This is priceless," she said. "You should keep it, cousin."
Arthur only laughed and caught the orb. He had plans, and it was nice to be the one with the spoils.
To read 90+ future chapters, head over to Patreon:
patreon.com/WhiteDevil7554