rpbooks Chapter 136: Needle’s edge
Chapter 136: Needle’s edge
The frantic scratching at the handle stopped instantly, the sudden silence on the other side of the wooden barrier proving that his threat had hit its mark.
For a moment, the only sound was the faint creak of the floorboards as Amelia shifted her weight, processing the terrible reality of a spell-less day.
From the other end of the door, Amelia let out a low, frustrated purr that quickly devolved into a disgruntled grumble, her small voice carrying a mix of irritation and profound betrayal that she didn’t even attempt to mask.
She kicked the bottom of the door one final, half-hearted time—just enough to let him know she wasn’t happy about the arrangement—before her heavy, dragging footsteps began to fade down the narrow corridor, signaling her retreat back toward the safety of the living room.
Noah remained sitting on the edge of his mattress, his shoulders dropping by a fraction of an inch as the domestic storm outside his sanctuary finally passed.
He exhaled, the warm air leaving his lips in a tired hiss that seemed to carry the last remnants of his annoyance.
’She... could be really annoying at times.’ he thought, running a hand through his hair with a wry smile on his face.
’I didn’t tell them though...’ he thought, his eyes narrowing.
The omission sat heavily in the corner of his mind, a cold, unyielding weight that separated him from the simple celebration they had shared the previous evening.
He had allowed them to build a pristine, joyful monument out of his sudden advancement, letting them believe his breakthrough was a beautiful stroke of hard-earned fortune, while he deliberately kept the foundation of that miracle buried in absolute darkness.
He had planned to tell them about this.
He had fully intended to sit his mother down, look her in the eye, and explain how he had been targeted, overpowered, and brutally buried alive by Lloyd in the dirt.
He had cooked up a grand, seamless story about how this mysterious, eccentric Mr. White was the one who had miraculously stumbled upon his premature grave, dug his suffocating body out of the earth at the very last second, and saved his life before deciding to train him as a personal disciple.
It was a perfect, bulletproof cover that explained his absence, his trauma, and his explosive leap in magical caliber in one fell swoop.
Yet, when the moment had actually arrived, the script had completely dissolved behind his teeth.
He couldn’t bring himself to say the words, though.
Their happiness was a fragile, beautiful thing, a sudden reprieve from years of systemic poverty and public humiliation.
If he had spoken the name Lloyd then, if he had described the terror of the earth pressing down on his chest, that collective joy would have instantly shattered into a million pieces of raw, maternal horror.
His mother wouldn’t be celebrating an adept; she would be consumed by an agonizing panic, realizing how close she had come to receiving a corpse instead of a son.
Noah clicked his tongue, pushing the matter to the back of his mind... for now.
He lifted his right arm, extending his arm slightly forward, and looked down at his open palm.
Before his eyes, the air directly above his skin began to distort, and a gray tear opened up on his palm.
The edges of the spatial rift pulsed with a dull, smoke-like vapor that seemed to bleed out from a void that existed completely outside the physical room.
The tear widened smoothly, expanding by a few inches without causing a single drop of blood to fall from his skin.
A sword slowly rose up from the center of the gray tear without even making a sound.
Noah watched the handle clear the rift first, his fingers moving automatically to meet it.
He closed his hand around the grip, his knuckles tightening as he held it firmly in his hand, feeling the immediate, grounding weight of the weapon anchoring his posture.
The moment his fingers established a secure hold, the gray tear on his palm snapped shut with a silent ripple, the air returning to its natural, stagnant state and leaving the physical blade as the only evidence of the magic.
He held the weapon across his lap, his eyes scanning the physical characteristics of his acquisition with an analytical, disciplined intensity.
It was a rapier with a brown hilt, the design favoring speed, precision, and lethal efficiency over the brutal, heavy impact of the broadsword.
The handguard was a sleek, elegant basket of darkened iron, designed to wrap completely around his fingers and provide maximum protection without adding unnecessary weight to his wrist.
The grip itself was wrapped in a coarse, textured brown leather that felt firm and reliable against his palm, ensuring that no amount of sweat or blood would cause his hand to slip during a prolonged engagement.
For now, its blade was still covered in its sheath, the dark, protective casing muted and unpretentious in the dim afternoon light.
Noah extended his left hand, his fingers gripping the top of the scabbard, and slowly pulled the rapier out of its sheath.
The sound of the metal leaving the casing was a sharp, whispering hiss that seemed to slice through the remaining quiet of the bedroom.
As the iron slid free, it revealed a sharp silver blade with a very pointed edge which reflected light with an almost blinding brilliance.
The silver surface was completely flawless, devoid of any scratches, dents, or imperfections, its polished fuller catching the dusty atmosphere of the room and fracturing it into a keen, cold line of white illumination.
The point of the blade tapered into a needle-like apex, an architecture designed solely for piercing through the gaps of heavy armor or finding the soft tissue of a monster’s throat with surgical accuracy. It was a weapon that didn’t look for glory; it looked for a pulse.
Noah balanced the weapon in his right hand, making a series of tiny, microscopic adjustments with his wrist to test the center of gravity.
The blade was remarkably light, responding to the subtle shifts of his muscles with an instantaneous, fluid compliance that felt almost like an extension of his own arm.
’This sword’s... pretty good.’ he thought, his eyes tracing the sleek blade.
"Eye of Truth," he murmured under his breath.
[Name: Needle’s edge]
[Grade: Epic]
[Attack: 2000]
[Durability: 700]
[Skills: Elemental burst]
Noah’s eyes narrowed into slits as he processed the information blinking before him, a low, appreciative whistle escaping his teeth.
’An Epic grade... with a skill at that.’ he thought.
The revelation was staggering, sending a sharp jolt of adrenaline through his chest.
In the standard merchant listings and the heavily guarded archives of the academy, weapons were graded common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary, and supreme based on their craftsmanship and magical conductivity,
However, an Epic-grade sword was something ordinary soldiers and low-ranking mercenaries would go their entire lives without ever seeing in the flesh.
To have one dropped directly into his hands, completely unblemished and ready for combat, was a massive leap in his tactical arsenal.
Along with the one million gold coins given to him when he became an S-rank adventurer, he was also given the choice to choose a weapon of his choice, up to Epic grade.
The Needle’s edge was what he ended up choosing, as it had the highest attack power and was also the one one with a skill.
He knew from his years of academic study that there were actually weapons with skills of their own, but those types were usually very rare, even among Epic grades themselves.
Most weapons of high caliber were passive instruments—incredibly sharp, profoundly durable, and exceptionally conductive to a caster’s energy, but ultimately dead objects that relied entirely on the user’s personal technique to achieve greatness.
A weapon that possessed its own independent skill, an integrated magical matrix woven directly into the core of the steel during the forging process, was an absolute anomaly.
It was a tool that didn’t just assist a magus; it functioned as an active partner in battle, capable of executing complex arcane phenomena on its own command.
The baseline characteristics of the grade itself were already formidable enough to rewrite his combat potential.
Epic grades, though, were universally known across the continent for their unique ability of being able to harness mana with near-flawless efficiency.
Ordinary steel weapons were highly resistant to magical currents; if a magus tried to force raw elemental energy through a standard iron blade, the metal would rapidly overheat, warp, or shatter into lethal fragments within seconds, ruining the weapon and severely injuring the caster.
An Epic-grade tool possessed no such limitations. The molecular structure of the silver blade was completely synchronized with the flow of mana, allowing it to act as a perfect conduit.
This meant magi could channel their elemental mana through them, coating it in their respective elements without any fear of structural failure or energy degradation.
A fire magus could transform the rapier into a living branch of -hot flame, while a wind master could extend the reach of the steel with invisible, razor-sharp currents of vacuum pressure.
For Noah, this meant the blade could become a conduit for his freezing frost or his violent, erratic lightning, turning every basic thrust and parry into a lethal hybrid attack that combined martial precision with devastating arcane force.
The description of Elemental Burst was also a good advantage.
Instead of simply coating the blade to enhance his physical strikes, Noah could use the rapier to condense a massive volume of his element and discharge it outward in a sweeping, destructive shockwave.