Epic Of The Demonic Sage

Lucius looked on in interest as he heard his father's words. A gift from the king must be something good he thought.

"What did the king send, father?" Lucius asked.

Even Kiana and Lita seemed to have not expected something like this and were surprised. The king sending a gift was not something that would happen often and if it did, then he must have thought that it must have been worth it.

They now wondered what had Asher really done at the battlefield. All they had heard was that he had killed many enemies, but they were all second-hand accounts. The actual people who had seen the act were still at the battlefield or dead.

"He sent an artifact for you, a sword." Gabriel said before gesturing to his attendant knight.

Lucius had noticed the man who was standing in armor to the side of the hall. He had been carrying a leather bag in his hand, but Lucius had not paid much attention to that. Now he understood what it contained.

The knight came forward and opened the bag before revealing a sheathed sword. It was the length of a normal sword, and even its handle was rather sober looking. The knight handed the sword to the count who took it carefully.

~shing~

He pulled it from its sheath, revealing the green gem that was embedded at the base of the blade. Soon the rest of the blade was revealed that had been polished to a mirror finish.

"Hold it and tell me what you think." Gabriel said before passing the sword to Lucius.

Lucius was not unfamiliar with swords and had learned to use them in his past life. Although his most common way of fighting was to use spells and traps. He held the sword in his right hand and could instantly tell it was well balanced.

Often there were swords that looked to be perfect, but there was an irregularity in the distribution of their weight. This would cause its user to use excess energy to wield it and would even make them averse to mistakes, while leaving them open to attacks.

A well balanced blade was the key to making a good sword; at least normally. There were of course, swords that were intentionally heavy on one side but they had different methods of use, than normal swords.

The blade was double edged and seventy centimeters long while being about an inch wide. The green gem at the base of the sword shimmered under the light of the lamps and Lucius could faintly see a rune inscribed in it.

'So this is what a rune crystal is…' Lucius recognized.

"It's a good sword father, but what is its ability since it's an artifact?" Lucius questioned.

"The sword has a rune crystal embedded in it that is from a Wind scar hawk. It can create sharp wind blades that can easily chop a man in half. Be very careful with that sword, if you make a mistake you can easily kill yourself. I would recommend you don't use it until you recover fully and gain some practice with normal swords.

I do not know how your swordsmanship is now that you have lost your memories." Gabriel answered.

"I understand, father. I will not touch it till I gain your approval." Lucius said right away.

Lucius knew how dangerous magic tools could be in his previous life, and these artifacts were pretty similar to them. Magic tools were also powered by crystals that were usually mana crystals. Though the effect they had could be changed according to who manufactured them.

In the case of the artifacts though, Lucius did not know if the power of the artifact came from the user or from itself. He also didn't know if it was possible to control the output or not. He didn't want to accidentally kill someone while he was just practicing, or worse, kill himself with it.

He had seen plenty of accidents, both magical and non-magical that happened due to a person's negligence or lack of experience.

"Alright, I will keep the sword for now and assign an instructor for you to learn the swordsmanship from. I can also see that you have gotten much skinnier than before. Perhaps some physical workout will help you more." Gabriel replied.

Lucius nodded his head, as this was what he was eventually going to do anyway. He knew in a world like this, physical strength was one of the other keys to becoming powerful. Just intelligence may not cut it anymore.

He needed both brains and brawns to get to the top. Another thing he needed to urgently figure out was the usage of his gift, 'Nexus'. While he could see the names of other gifts when they informed him, he discovered that he needed to use the Aether in his body to obtain the information.

The more Aether he used, the more information that would be revealed. Since he got the gift, he had not been able to use it more than three times as his Aether would get exhausted and would take about six to twelve hours to replenish.

He didn't know if this was the normal capacity that people had or if he had a small capacity. Another possibility that he thought of was that his gift had a greater consumption, but he could not verify that, as there were no means of comparison.

This led him back to a question that he had gotten a while ago.

"Father, I wanted to ask you, what is your gift? It's the gift that is inherited by the Inanis family, right? I don't remember this either." Lucius questioned.

"Ah, of course. The gift that our Inanis family is famous for is an Epic ranked gift called 'Phasing Strike'." Gabriel revealed.

Lucius could derive some conclusions just from the name of the gift and was wondering if it really was as he had imagined.

'If it really is then, the gift would be quite powerful.' Lucius thought.