Chapter 695: Talent

Grey had a great time making Duke miserable. The next few minutes were mostly spent suggesting more and more elaborate additions to his future leather outfit, while Duke threatened to kill him with the very whip that had chosen him.

Eventually, though, Grey let the joke die and looked back at the remaining Legacies. James and Sabrina still hadn’t found anything that reacted to them. As far as Grey was concerned, though, 2 successes out of the first few sets was already a far better hit rate than he should have expected.

Dominion Class Legacies weren’t supposed to be something you could throw at a random group of people and assume somebody would fit. Yet, Lilac had been outright chosen, and Duke had been accepted so quickly that Grey doubted it had been a close call.

That said, the two cases hadn’t felt the same.

Lilac and the Thousand Door Bulwark had fit together in a way that went beyond ordinary compatibility. The shield had recognized something inside her so deeply that it started forming a Soul Link before she even touched it.

Duke and Widow’s Choice were a different story. It hadn’t felt like the whip had found the person it was waiting for. It was more like Duke’s Frame just happened to tick enough of its boxes.

Grey rubbed his chin as he watched Duke reluctantly experiment with the whip.

If a Legacy could accept someone just because their Frame was broad or talented enough to fit the pattern it needed, then the question wasn’t really whether Grey’s friends were destined for particular treasures. It was how adaptable their Neural Frames actually were.

Duke hadn’t needed the perfect inheritance. All he’d needed was something good enough to show he had more room to grow than Grey had ever bothered checking.

His gaze shifted to Lilac, then back to Duke.

’Was I really just lucky enough to grow up with a bunch of freaks?’

The thought sounded stupid even inside his own head. But, Grey couldn’t completely dismiss it anymore.

If the first Legacy Duke had come across had been closer to Ascendant Class, maybe he would have formed a Soul Link too. In that case, the difference between him and Lilac might have had more to do with the quality of the treasure than the quality of the person.

That only made the whole thing stranger.

For most of Arc I, Grey had assumed Earth just wasn’t all that talented compared to the Races around them.

He’d seen monsters born with stronger bodies and better Frames, established bloodlines, and entire civilizations built around preparing children for the Genesis Games. Meanwhile, humans had shown up without even knowing what a Neural Frame was.

Maybe he’d been looking at it backward. What if Earth didn’t lack talent? What if it just lacked the resources and knowledge to bring that talent out?

Grey’s eyes narrowed a bit as the thought sank in.

A child born into one of these old factions could have their Frame examined before they even understood what that meant. After that, they’d be handed techniques, treasures and teachers chosen specifically to push whatever natural advantage they had.

As for someone from Earth with an equally strange talent? The best they could do was spend 20 years using it to get really fucking good at accounting.

Breejara started to introduce another group of lots, and Grey ignored almost all of them while he kept chewing on the problem.

There were several rare materials he might have cared about under different circumstances, and a finished Command Class mech that got the crowd excited enough to start another bidding war. However, until his own blueprints sold, Grey had already decided what he wanted out of this auction.

More Legacies.

A few rounds later, he got them.

By now, the process had become routine enough that Breejara barely bothered making fun of him. Grey claimed another group and returned to his bubble with several new treasures tucked away in storage.

Most of them got no reaction from anyone. One, however, made James stop eating long enough to actually lean forward.

Grey noticed immediately.

"Oh?"

James froze with a piece of food halfway to his mouth.

Grey grinned and pulled the item back out.

At first glance, it looked like a set of metal rings. 6 of them were big enough to fit around a forearm, while 2 thicker rings sat at the center like incomplete bracers.

Fine channels ran through every piece. Whenever Grey moved them closer together, a low tone passed through the metal, and the smaller rings drifted toward one another without touching.

"That’s weird," Grey said.

James lowered his food.

The Legacy was called The Eightfold Refrain. Whoever made it had a Branching Frame. That alone was odd. Grey would’ve expected a Resonant Frame from something built around ranged attacks.

The 2 lead rings stayed locked around the wielder’s wrists, while the other 6 floated freely. The lead rings generated a controlled resonance that carried sound through the air. Then, Branching principles split that sound into multiple possible attack paths.

Grey turned one of the rings between his fingers as he read through the information attached to it.

The result was a weapon that didn’t just fire sound waves. Every tone created several possible trajectories, and the floating rings could reposition themselves around those possibilities until the wielder chose which branch became real.

For example, someone could send a pulse past an opponent and split it around a wall. Then, they could let three false routes collapse, and have the real attack arrive from an angle that hadn’t even existed when the sound was first made.

James slowly put his food down.

Grey’s grin widened.

"No fucking way."

James immediately looked offended. "Don’t start."

"I didn’t say anything."

"Your face said it."

Grey walked over to him with the rings in hand.

"Put these on."

James sighed, but held out his arms.

The moment the lead rings slid over his wrists, the other 6 pieces lifted out of Grey’s hands and spread through the room.

A deep note rolled out of the bracers. It was subtle enough that Grey felt it in his chest more than he heard it, and the floating rings immediately started shifting through several branching formations around James.

Everyone went quiet.

James stared at his wrists. One of the rings floated past his shoulder and split its tone in 3 different directions, before snapping back into formation.

Grey laughed. "There we go."

James looked up. "That’s it?"

"Unless you want to argue with the floating metal currently orbiting your head."

James raised a hand to test it, and the 6 rings shifted with him as though they’d been waiting for him to move.

A second tone sounded, sharper this time. One of the branches carved a thin line through the air before fading.

Brad whistled.

Duke pointed at James with his free hand. "Why the fuck does he get that?"

Grey looked at the whip coiled around Duke’s wrist.

"You’ve already got your thing."

"My thing looks like I charge for video calls by the hour."

"Then start charging."

The room broke out laughing again. Grey’s attention, however, had already moved elsewhere.

Sabrina was standing near the table. She had tried every one of the new Legacies before James touched the rings, but nothing had reacted.

Lilac had the Bulwark, Duke had Widow’s Choice, James now had the Eightfold Refrain, and Brad already had his hammer. Of the people closest to Grey, everyone else had found something that acknowledged them in one way or another.

Sabrina was the only one left.

She didn’t complain, and there wasn’t any obvious disappointment on her face as she looked at the next set of auction platforms starting to rise. Still, Grey caught the way her eyes lingered on James’s floating rings for a moment before going back to Breejara.

Something was burning in them now. It wasn’t jealousy, though. If anything, it looked more like anticipation.

She wanted to know what would choose her.