Timeless Prominence

Rein’s heart jumped in fright at this revelation. 

“Does this not mean that in a way, I have become a hand of a true god?!” Perhaps some might be elated, but Rein understood enough to suspect that perhaps… he was being possessed in some way.

“Not exactly,” chortled Blacksmith Tiehr, before a hacking cough interrupted his amusement. He continued, “Imagine if both you and I felt hungry and were interested in killing a rabbit for its meat. Knowing that we share this goal, I give you a knife to kill said rabbit. Would you have not attempted to kill said rabbit if I didn’t give you the knife?”

Rein contemplated this question, and knew he would still have attempted to kill the rabbit for this meat. Provided he didn’t have lamb meat on hand. That was his favorite.

“This is what I mean by stars aligning. To be accurate, it is when an individual’s heart vibrates to the same tune of a true god’s echo. At least, that is what scholars believe.”

“But,” Blacksmith Tiehr’s voice deepened heavily with gravity. “You are right in that there are some that believe those with origin skills are but possessed beings of the true gods. These advancers will hunt people like you relentlessly. There are also advancers that are interested in these fallen true gods, and you will be but a conduit in their eyes to understanding the true gods. The advancer world is a dangerous world.” Blacksmith Tiehr sighed in self-deprecation. “Just look at me…”

The man’s words ignited a fear in Rein’s heart. Rein resolved to be careful in demonstrating skills or any knowledge to do with his vision of the short humanoid and primordial ape in any shape or form in the future, if he could avoid it.

“Do you want to hear another tale?” The blacksmith suddenly asked.

“I’m growing into an adult, what use are these tales?!” Rein groaned in his heart. He was certainly not in the mood to listen to the blacksmith’s tales right now. However, Blacksmith Tiehr had given him assistance that was impossible to repay. Thus, he nodded.

“I will tell you a final tale, feel free to listen or ignore it as you will. But if you listen, I have a final gift for you,” Blacksmith Tiehr forcibly continued, determined to tell his tale. In this forge enclosure, as long as he spoke, he would be heard. His intuition told him that this final tale he was about to tell could very well be important for Rein. 

As for the accompanying gift? Blacksmith Tiehr had long decided on this when Rein fainted on the ground. In many ways, it was a dying legacy of his journey.

“A long, long time ago, when I was still a young teen like you, I dreamt of becoming an advancer who would roam the realms of the world! It was the realm of the golden crow, where fire aurae was most plentiful, and I, with my slightly high affinity for fire aurae, was considered an above average talent worth developing!”

Blacksmith Tiehr suddenly gave a few hacking coughs, with the final cough spitting out a greenish yellow saliva. However, he continued his tale with a joyful voice, reminiscing in his happy memories.

“I joined a top ten sect of the realm once I broke into the shell realm from the inner realm. What a glorious time! I formed a strong group with my brothers, and we started roaming across the golden crow realm, completing sect missions left and right.”

“Sure, not all of them were easy, but we were always successful in completing those missions. We were soon considered an unrivaled advancer group in the shell level advancers, and all the other advancers would avoid us when we marched down every street! After all, a good team of shell advancers could even take down a careless telekinetic advancer!”

“Us brothers’ advancer powers slowly but surely advanced, and eventually all of us broke through into the outer realm. We felt incredibly powerful with our newfound strength. We were already originally an unrivaled group of shell advancers in the golden crow realm. Thus, we decided we would go on a celebratory journey to another realm: The legendary realm of the dragons!”

At this point, Rein’s heart had settled down, and he held onto Blacksmith Tiehr’s every word. This was the very first time Blacksmith Tiehr had told him about his life before being hired by his parents. It also opened his eyes to the existence of other worlds.

“The dragon in ages long past was a symbol of auspiciousness! Though their reputation had fallen, what better a place to visit immediately after becoming outer advancers? Not only that, when we arrived, we immediately found out from an amicable young man that there was a unique treasure. We thought that the heavens were delivering the treasure to our doorstep and it was meant for us! Such a treasure appeared right after our rise in strength? That was our reassurance! We felt it was destiny!”

Blacksmith Tiehr’s originally bright eyes seemed to have significantly dimmed. He appeared to be an arrow at the end of its flight. He coughed up a large volume of green spit mixed with blood before continuing in a mournful tone.

“If it was too easy, we would know it was a trap. But it had a good level of security that our team would not have been able to break through. There were other collaborators that planned to work together, especially because the treasure was supposedly a dragon’s heart. It contains the dragon’s thickest blood, and can be used to create potions to augment any and all draconic related skills an advancer might have!”

“Draconic magics…” His eyes were misty in a dream as he sighed, “the capability to create storms, roll waves into tsunamis, tremble the earth. An affinity to all elements of nature!”

“We were certain our team could get our hands on the dragon’s heart and subsequently vanish in a puff of smoke back to the Golden Crow realm! Us brothers would have another ace-in-the-hole once we drank ourselves drunk on the dragon's heart blood!”

“Did we obtain our target? Damn right we did! The treasure was being moved among a number of different caravans in different directions, but our informer knew exactly which one it was! We and our collaborators were tied down by the guards, but my brother, talented in stealth and speed, activated his secret magical art and easily stole the treasure while another talented in advancer systems broke the inscription defense surrounding the treasure! The other collaborators were amateurs in the face of our teamwork. We left like the wind immediately after!”

“We soon found out we could not escape two groups of pursuers. One was the group we stole from-- the dragon demon elites. Another was a group of humans led by our informer! We soon figured out why we couldn’t shake them off.”

“The informer was actually a telekinetic advancer that had hidden some sort of magical mark on each of our bodies that allowed him to track us. It was difficult to remove these marks as it was placed by a far stronger advancer. We needed to last long enough to remove these marks. In truth, we only found out after the inscription master in our group ate a few rare augmentation pills that temporarily increased his perception to identify the tracking marks hidden in plain sight on our bodies.”

“The dragon demonic elites were even more fearsome. After all, this was their treasure! They transformed into their true dragon forms and soared through the clouds amidst thunder and lightning. Of course, the treasure had the blood of a dragon, they could easily pinpoint the aurae that inevitably would leak out from the treasure!”

“Whenever we heard thunder, we would know that the demon guards had drawn close. Luckily, we developed in the land of the Golden Crow, and had many flight techniques including blood sacrificial ones. This allowed us to sacrifice the blood of our own lifespan to maintain a distance from both groups while slowly purging the telekinetic advancer’s tracking marks.”

“We also continuously supported our inscription specialist in trying to form a system to suppress the remnant dragon aurae emitting out of the treasure. As long as we could suppress it for a few days, and remove the tracking marks, we would be able to throw off our pursuers! Our aurae replenishing pills were thrown to our inscription brother, who continuously attempted different types of systems to suppress the aurae.”

“We eventually accomplished both! Our pursuers gradually stopped being able to track our path, and we quickly made our way to a rarely used realm portal center of the dragon realm. Some of us had injuries, most of our pills consumed, our life blood dangerously low. But still, our brother talented in illusion arts casted a decent disguise for all of us as we moved to the portal”

Blacksmith Tiehr now had blood tears sliding down his square face, and Rein had an inkling that nothing good came out of this tale.

“To this day, I could not figure how that group of humans had managed to overtake us and set up a trap at this portal location. They could not have tracked us after we removed their tracking inscriptions on our bodies. Nor were they fast enough to overtake us without us noticing it. But they were there disguised as guards of the portals! I don't even know what they did with the original dragon guards stationed there…”

“They also immediately saw through our disguise. Perhaps they had kept count of our team members, and because our disguise was casted by a single brother talented in illusions, we could not increase our distance too much from that brother…”

“The first indication we noticed was when one of the human advancers disguised as a guard welcomed me before suddenly stabbing me with a dagger coated with a high level aurae poison. In some ways, we were lucky, since I was one of the brothers that specialized in body strengthening magics. Thus, my tough body could suppress the poison, and the dagger did not penetrate deeply. Anyone else on my team might have died rapidly from the poison.”

“However, next, all the fake guards numbering over one hundred piled onto our group, launching their advancer magical arts and weapons at our ten-man team. Our team immediately retaliated, meeting force with force to create time for our system master to immediately set up a small defense system.”

“But one hundred was one hundred, and my brothers fell one by one. And I, the tough-bodied advancer, was the last one standing as I watched my brothers collapse one by one around me. And in my pouch was the treasure box that carried the dragon’s heart, the treasure that had caused the death of my brothers, and soon me as well.”

“At that point, I realized I was a mistake. Why did I let my greed consume me and my brothers? Why did I ever think we were powerful enough to steal a dragon’s heart just because our team was unrivaled in the shell advancer level? Surely, I could have prevented this disaster…”

Rein understood Blacksmith Tiehr’s regret. The man and his allies had clearly become overly confident, leading to their ends.

“My brothers were injured but not corpses yet. Thus, I opened the box, hoping to gift the dragon’s heart to the leader of our enemies, and secure my companions’ waning lives.”

“It was a scam! When I opened the treasure box, it was but a draconic metamorphose bead. A dragon would create this bead upon sensing its impending death, and it was the method through which these dragons passed their knowledge generation to generation, in imitation of the fallen true gods. The draconic metamorphose bead would increase the elemental affinity of the next-generation dragon who consumed it as well!”

“One might think this was useful, but the reality was that it was absolutely useless for all non-dragons! The bead itself has the remnant will of the dead dragon. This was the same for all metamorphose beads of various races as well! Historically, any humans who attempted to consume these types of metamorphose beads would go mad like a demon, their mind hijacked by the remnant will!”

“No matter how I explained myself, my surrounding foes believed I had hidden the dragon’s heart elsewhere. I knew then that my doom was guaranteed!”

“But this would not be the end of me… because the dragon demons arrived immediately after, distracting the telekinetic human advancer and his lackeys. I immediately realized this was my chance to survive and seek revenge! I quickly took out a top grade spatial power crystal that we had found in some ruins in one of our sect missions, and channeled the power into the random closest portal, activating it in a single breath of time!”

“This would not have saved me, but my illusionist brother wasn’t quite dead yet, and he, with his dying breath, conjured multiple illusions of me activating all the portals and entering them all, misleading my pursuers!”

“I entered the portal, traveled the void and appeared in another unknown realm. I did not stay there. I repeatedly activated random portals every single time, jumping through god knows how many realms, before finally exhausting the top grade spatial power crystal as well as nearly all of my own aurae.”

“And this was the realm I arrived at. I needed to hide in case my pursuers somehow made it to this realm.”

Blacksmith Tiehr looked at his own mess of greenish yellow spit on the ground by his feet.

“And this poison is a type of aurae poison. It only acts when one uses magic. As long as I did not practice advancer arts and found an antidote… I would not suffer. Fifty years! That has been the time I have stayed in this realm. But I could not find an antidote… the poison was unique!”

Blacksmith Tiehr then shook his head as he closed his eyes in defeat.

“For fifty years, I searched for an antidote. Once I consumed the antidote, I could then seek revenge! But I did not dare to find any medical advancers. If my condition was to be leaked out, undoubtedly, my enemies would be able to find me due to the unique nature of the poison I received. Fifty years is nothing to a telekinetic advancer. They definitely have the patience to continue seeking in this time period, and I have barely stayed undetected here. I have no doubt they believe I have the dragon’s heart blood. Even if it truly existed and I had consumed it, they would take my life and seek to extract the strength of the dragon’s heart blood from my own heart.”

Blacksmith Tiehr's expression was now completely peaceful-- he had accepted his fate.

“But you know, after spending time in Golden Desert Town, now at death’s door, I discovered that attending a forge and hammering out different tools and weapons for everyone in need wasn’t so bad at all… It has been so… calm and peaceful… something I never had back when I was a genuine advancer.”

It became silent in the forge, and the air rather awkward. Blacksmith Tiehr had more or less admitted his impending death after the poison in his veins acted up in his fight against the devilish woman, which caused Rein to feel even more guilty.

Rein felt that if he had perhaps put up a bit more extra resistance against the devilish beauty, Blacksmith Tiehr would have succeeded in saving Jein while putting in significantly less effort.

Blacksmith Tiehr finally spoke again after a long pause.

“Rein, the echoes of the fallen true gods have communed with you. But origin skills are just skills. They need a strong and abundant source of magical power. And, such a unique and powerful skill will inevitably attract attention if used-- owning a jade ring inevitably becomes a crime for a poor man. And the advancer world is a dangerous place, in which the weak are inevitably prey to the strong…”

Rein finally realized that Blacksmith Tiehr was not just warning him about being overconfident. The tale was also an insight into the advancer world that Rein would have to enter if he wanted revenge for his family.

This only made him feel ashamed for questioning the worth of Blacksmith Tiehr’s offer of a final tale a short period ago. This did not dissuade his determination; Rein felt that he was on a path of no return. Today, he had seen and lost too much to return to being a simple mortal.

“So…” A manic energy consumed Blacksmith’s Tiehr’s slumped body. “How about you consume this draconic metamorphose bead?”

Rein scratched his ears in disbelief.

“Have you lost your mind?”