Chapter 150: You Search For Secrets In Armor

Elias observed the blade from both sides. It resembled a short sword when he was a mortal; now that he was taller and had longer limbs, the blade looked like a rather unflattering knife carved from limestone.

The end of the blade was broad like an axehead, as it was a top-heavy blade made for hacking and slashing rather than stabbing.,

Elias remembered pulling the hilt of the knife from the sands nearly a decade ago, and now that he was here looking at the blade, he acknowledged the weight of that moment that changed his entire life.

He had been desperate and dying, rotting from his bones, and the endless screams of the Passenger filling his head. This was his last act of curiosity before he buried himself inside the sand to die, and Elias had taken the chance to pull on the curious stone that was not too far away from his decaying body.

What led him to this position in the endless desert? Surely, something about his state must have drawn him to this blade, like a man dying of thirst can smell water.

Elias remembered kneeling on the burning sand, seeing the strange green runes on the blade, and, like a mirage or a dream, discovering that he could read them.

If he were in his normal state of mind, Elias would have never read these runes and would have most likely hidden the blade away until he knew enough about the supernatural and the mysterious, until he attempted to read these runes, but he was going to die in the next moment

He had read the runes aloud. He did not know how he understood them; he simply did. The words were alien, ancient, but they resonated in his chest like a language he had forgotten and now remembered.

The green specks on the blade had responded, and even as they entered his body through his skin, his mouth, his eyes, thousands of them, tiny and cold, he had thought that he was dreaming or this was the last delusion he was having before he died, like his brain firing all of its energy for one last time.

However, when his body began to heal, and the decay vanished, he knew he was not dreaming, and from this point, he discovered that he was not just healed, he had also been given power.

This blade gave Elias the first lesson about power, that it came with a price, because from that moment, his hunger had increased.

He flipped the blade from side to side, seeing clearly the strange runes that he could read without any issue. The Stone Blade, like all baldes had two sides, and Elias liked to think of them as two faces

One side calls the Swarm into the body. Elias used this when he first found the blade, and again whenever he needed to reclaim the Swarm after they had been expelled.

The other side calls the Swarm out of the body, sending them into prey or unleashing them as a weapon. He used this during his hunts and during the battle in the Fragment.

Since the evolution of the swarm that he now called his swarm, he no longer needed to do this any longer, and even when he recited the words of the blade, nothing happened.

Elias closed his eyes and tried to recollect the runes he had seen on the core of the Stone Art, but they were too blurry, and only the general shape made him realize that he was looking at the same runes.

Thinking that he needed to become more serious, Elias turned the tip of the blade to his chest, placing it on his left pecs, and without flinching, he pushed the blade into his chest, and arced an eyebrow in slight amusement when he noticed that the weapon could no longer cut through his skin.

As a mortal, this blade had been wickedly sharp and could even cut through the skin of a Fury Forge, but to avoid damaging it, Elias had not used it in his hunts; as it turned out, he had far exceeded those he had looked up in the past as giants.

Conjuring a swarm blade, he pierced his chest, having to dig in with a fair bit of force just to have the blade cut through his skin, and then slicing towards the right to open a sizable wound on his chest that hardly bled, and even then the blood as if they had life of their own began to crawl up his chest into his closing wound.

Hurriedly bringing the stone blade to his open wound, he pushed it in, hoping that something in his blood would respond to it, but he was disappointed when nothing happened, and the stone blade was forcefully pushed out of his wound.

Elias frowned, and he thought about this Stone Art. Unlike his other Art that began working right out of the gate without any requirements, the only ability from this art, Stone Skin, gave him a 45% physical damage reduction when he was armored.

He had not activated this ability before; perhaps the hint he was looking for could be found inside of it.

Surging to his feet, Elias did not bother donning any clothing; instead wearing robes made from his swarm. He had some pieces of armor in the next room, but he guessed he needed full-body armor for this, and he was glad that the Asylum had an armory.

The armory occupied two entire floors, and although he only had permission to check the first floor, he knew there were dozens, if not hundreds, of full-body armor, not counting swords, shields, and every other variation in between.

Exiting his room, Elias’ body flashed through the Asylum, heading for the armory. He could hear the voices of the other members discussing in other corners of the vast structure that could easily hold thousands, and so if he was not deliberately searching for them, he could come and go without meeting anyone.

He should meet his teachers, but he needed to know the mystery behind this Art or his mind would not be settled.

Reaching the heavy doors of the armory on the sixth floor, Elias pushed it open, and expected, they were not locked, the more important armory in the upper floors was placed behind wards and was securely locked with methods that Elias knew not to test, even as a mortal, his danger sense was screaming at him when he glanced at the door that led to the next level.

Several Ember orbs that were not too large lit up the expansive hall that stretched for hundreds of feet and continued into the darkness. The lights of the Ember Orbs had been designed to respond to movements, so as he came closer, they brightened, and as he walked past they became dim, with this method, it would take decades before these orbs had to be recharged, and because the elevation of the Stoneward Asylum was high, the Ember Orbs were quickly getting back all their charge from the Lumina floating around in the air.

With a few steps, he crossed several dozen feet and stopped in front of a full body armor that had been mounted on a wooden mannequin.

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