Chapter 83: Ch122. Answers - 2 (Legacy)
"It’s the third time I hear about this legacy." Kurt scratched his chin. "Since you seem to be all about answers and stuff, do you mind telling me about what this legacy is?"
Orkas/Kurt chuckled.
He went to one side of the room, and from what looked like a bookshelf with a few drawers, he got a few tools.
"How about I show you, instead of just telling you?"
Kurt didn’t detect any malice in his tone, so he nodded, as for what Orkas/Kurt walked towards the black fire in the fireplace.
"How many [BLOOD VIALS] and [BEAST CORES] did you get?"
Slowly, the pieces began falling into place in Kurt’s mind.
He checked the inventory and answered.
"Ten thousand of each."
Orkas/Kurt’s jaw dropped to the floor.
"That many? Gods... Even I wasn’t able to gather as many back in the day." He laughed. "I think your legacy will be much stronger than mine."
"You’re telling about the [MIDNIGHT SET], right?"
"I like your wits." Orkas/Kurt hit his palm with the other hand closed in a fist. "You’re definitely faster than the others. Now, give me the vials and the cores, I gotta start the process of heating them."
Kurt gave them to his other self, and watched as he poured one by one into the cauldron inside the fireplace.
"Good thing about the black fire, its heat is far stronger than the common fire, and is perfect for forging certain items, such as your legacy."
"What’s the third trial?" Kurt asked. "I was expecting a fight or something, since my other trials involved some kind of danger or something."
"Oh, no." Orkas/Kurt replied. "This trial is much more interesting. Although you will only get through it once your legacy is ready."
After a pause, in which where Kurt scratched his neck, and Orkas/Kurt watched the black flames glowing, reacting to the beast blood and cores that were in the cauldron, the latter broke the silence.
"I want to tell you a story about us, and you are freely able to choose whether to believe me or not, but you will get to witness it firsthand when you get back to your world, if you pass the final trial. May I?"
Kurt nodded, and his other self began speaking.
"The system once designated you as a [REGRESSOR], right?" Kurt nodded. "And not long after that, The Red Oracle told you that you were nothing but a self-murderer, that needed to kill your other selves’ soul in order to "regress" into another world-line. But that’s neither the [REGRESSOR] thing, nor what Evellyn said were complete truths.
And for you to understand that, you gotta understand what happened when the Great Calamity fell upon us."
As Orkas/Kurt told Kurt the story, the latter approached the fireplace, interested not only in the story, but in how the process of forging his legacy was like.
He saw the blood in the cauldron boiling along with the cores that, strangely, were melting away along with the boiling beast blood.
"Every living being vibrates in a certain frequency.
Even the Earth itself vibrates in that certain frequency.
It’s what allows us to keep on living and existing.
But when the Great Calamity fell from the sky and crashed onto Earth, something happened that changed the entire Earth’s frequency.
It’s probably due to what got out from the first bubble, but that’s on you to find out."
As the blood and the cores finally melted and mixed together, the mixture assumed a blackish red color, and Orkas/Kurt placed a few strange ores into the black fire, that began burning even brighter and more wildly than before.
"What matters is that, when it happened, the Earth, and everything that lived in it, reverberated like an echo.
And that’s what gave birth to us.
The clash between two opposing frequencies of vibration allowed the Earth to split in many, countless versions of itself.
That’s what we call Echo of Reality.
And as you might have already understood, we were no exceptions to that echo."
After the mixture boiled even harder, filling the forge with a red, toxic-looking smoke that floated towards the ceiling, Orkas/Kurt interrupted the story for a few seconds.
"Now, I’m gonna need a few drops of your blood." He said, reaching for Kurt’s arm, gently.
But Kurt was quicker, and already had K’s dagger in hand.
He slit his palm open, and blood immediately started flowing from the cut.
"Will it be enough?"
Orkas/Kurt nodded as he watched the drops of blood falling into the red, almost black, boiling fluid.
And when it touched the mixture, it immediately began glowing, the blackish red gradually disappearing.
Giving place to the brightest, glowing tone of green.
"You definitely tamed the Calamite that was infecting the fragment of Essentium inside you." Orkas/Kurt said. "I’m very impressed to see one of us having performed such a feat, after so many deaths and tragic endings... Now, let’s go back to the story, shall we?"
"And even though I was the only one, until now, to find out about it, even if infected with Calamite, the system was, somehow, trying its best to drive us towards the answer.
Because we’re neither Regressors, nor murderers.
We’re just echos of the original world-line, that the system has been trying hard to get back together."
Kurt stared at the glowing fluid while his other self’s words swirled around his brain.
"So... There are no other versions of my world... Only the original one, and the echoes that reverberated from it when the Calamity happened..."
Orkas/Kurt nodded.
"And I was only able to become Orkas, because I wanted so badly to get rid of Kurt’s identity, that I ended up split into ego and alter-ego."
"Just like Kurt and Silence, in my Echoes of Reality..."
"Exactly."
After some more time, there was nothing of the green liquid left in the cauldron.
What was left of it, however, was a very thin powder, that glowed in that strange, pure green color.
Orkas/Kurt took a paletteknife, and began scooping the powder from inside the cauldron.
"This here, my friend, is the best iron compound you’ll ever find in the existence. And it’s the most perfect material to forge your legacy. Your true weapons."
Kurt smirked.
"So I’ll finally get my own daggers, then?"
"Oh, probably." Orkas/Kurt smirked back.
"Probably?"
"Yes, because one thing about the process of forging a Legacy, is that the weapon takes on the shape of the owner’s soul, his character. Which means that it might become a sword, daggers, a wand, or even a pair of gauntlets, depending on the owner’s capabilities and main characteristics."
Kurt frowned.
"But... Aren’t rogues only fit for light weapons? Like light swords, daggers and the likes of it?"
Orkas/Kurt laughed wholeheartedly.
"Oh, but you’re not a Rogue, Kurt."
