NOVPUB
Chapter 46: Two Blades And A Beast
The training hall was silent now.
No instructors. No eyes watching. No Eli with cutting words or sharp palms.
Just Ian.
And the dagger.
Stone dust danced in the air like ash. Pale morning light filtered through the cracks above, making long shadows across the chamber floor. Ian stood at the center, shirtless, his torso a canvas of bruises and healing cuts.
His hands were wrapped in blood-stained cloth, and sweat clung to his skin like oil.
In his grip, the dagger pulsed ever so faintly.
Vowbreaker.
It had not yet revealed its power, but he could feel it—some presence sleeping in the core of the bone-forged weapon. Made from the creature Eli had slain in the Blackblood Forest, a Hazard-Rank predator whose aura alone had paralyzed Ian, made him feel small, insignificant, and already dead.
That same presence now lingered—subdued, but alive—in the twin blades he wielded.
Ian narrowed his eyes and raised one of the daggers. Its bone-forged edge glinted with a pale hue that shimmered like a mirage.
"You were called Vowbreaker," he murmured.
"Why?"
The system had named it the moment the weapon had taken form, as if recognizing something older than Ian himself.
It wasn’t random. He was certain it wasn’t.
He closed his eyes and focused.
Mana coiled within his veins, whispering across nerves, flowing into the blade. It took effort to guide it—like pushing against something former. The dagger resisted, not in hostility, but in caution, like a beast eyeing a stranger at the edge of its territory.
He fed more energy into it. Sweat beaded down his neck. The dagger began to vibrate subtly in his grip, not shaking—resonating.
[Bonecraft Sync: 46%]
"Come on," he muttered. "What are you hiding?"
A chill passed through his fingers.
[Bonecraft Sync: 51%]
Then—
Darkness.
A vision—not one Ian called upon, but one forced through the link now forming between blade and bearer.
He stood in the depths of a forest that beat with violet fog. Trees taller than towers stood around him, their bark gnarled like screaming faces. The air stank of blood and decay. But worse than the air, worse than the forest, was the presence.
It slithered beneath the soil.
It watched.
It remembered.
Something moved—massive and quiet.
Ian turned and saw the beast that had nearly ended him before Eli intervened. Massive, sleek, and feline in shape, but wrong in every way. Its hide was covered in bony ridges and void-like runes. Its eyes were rings of black flame.
A predator that moved like shadow given weight.
It stared at him—no, through him.
Then it spoke. Not in words, but in thought.
Cold. Alien. Ancient.
"You carry my bones, little thief."
Ian stood frozen.
"You forged me into a tool. And yet you seek to awaken my power? To kill once more in your name?"
’It’s sentient?’ Ian thought to himself.
"I didn’t name you Vowbreaker," Ian said aloud.
The beast paced forward in the vision, soundless despite its mass. With every step, the illusion rippled like a disturbed pool.
"That is because I am. Before the great migration—I was once a guardian-beast of the Ar’kul—the last of the beast clan, sworn to protect their last sanctuary during the Age of Hollow Flame. I slaughtered a hundred oathbreakers who betrayed their kin to the Pale Ones. I tore through legions of cultists, swallowed their mages whole. But when the Ar’kul fell..." 𝒏𝒐𝒗𝒑𝒖𝒃.𝙘𝒐𝒎
It stopped in front of him now, its breath cold as void.
"So did I. And in the end... I broke my vow. After the great migration, we were scattered across the world stripped of our pride and made weak beasts to be hunted...to be controlled and killed in a single strike..."
Ian’s throat felt tight. But he stood tall.
"Then help me fulfill a new vow."
The beast’s eyes narrowed.
"I’m bound by blood, by death, and by will. I have no master—but if you would walk the path of blades and shadow, if you would carve your name in the bones of kings—then perhaps..."
Its voice slithered into his mind like cold smoke.
"Then earn me."
—
The vision shattered.
Ian dropped to one knee, gasping. The dagger hummed in his hand, glowing faintly with a new heat.
Above the blade, a floating window pulsed into existence.
---
[Weapon: Vowbreaker]
Grade: 4 (BeastBound)
Type: Awakened
Form: Twin Daggers
Abilities Unlocked:
[Predator’s Pact]: Striking from stealth or surprise empowers the next attack, ignoring up to 50% of physical defense. Grants a burst of speed and reflex.
[Vow Severance]: Every kill with Vowbreaker stacks ’Severed Oaths.’ At 3 stacks, next attack can shatter magical and physical wards or shields.
[Waking Hunger - Dormant]: Feeding the blade with kills from mana-wielders awakens deeper instincts.
[Swift Cut]: Speed is multiplied 50 times for a single instant attack. Requires 800 Necrotic Energy.
---
Ian rose slowly, a smile ghosting across his lips.
"Now we’re getting somewhere."
The blade no longer felt cold or stiff in his grip. It was alive. Responsive. The weight shifted with him, adapting to his stance like a limb he’d grown used to.
He lunged forward.
The dagger flicked through the air—clean, sharp, silent. It moved with him, like it knew what he wanted before he did.
Each step was smoother.
Each transition tighter.
Mana flared as he activated Predator’s Pact, and he felt a ripple through time itself—everything around him slowed, if only for a breath, long enough for a killing strike.
Ian danced across the floor, twin blades in hand, carving through phantoms only he could see. He imagined Torkas—the Splitter. He imagined the crowd, the screams, the taunts. He imagined the weight of a city’s disbelief crashing down upon his shoulders.
And then he imagined breaking it.
Strike. Pivot. Twist. Parry. Thrust.
Every motion was smoother now.
Cleaner.
He wasn’t just training with daggers anymore. He was syncing with something far greater—a legacy carved from a fallen guardian of a lost world. A beast who had failed once, and now whispered through his grip: not again.
He didn’t need the city to believe in him.
He only needed to win.
He sheathed the blades into his inventory, his breath slowing, chest rising and falling.
Above him, the faint voice of the weapon lingered in his mind.
"Earn me."
Ian smirked. "I will."
