Chapter 3: The Spellblade Class
Ace pushed himself up from the floor, shaking off the phantom weight of the Director's attack. He forced his breathing to steady, mentally dismissing his status screen with a swipe of his hand.
He needed to secure the room before looking into this. He crept over to the en-suite bathroom, peeking his head in to make sure there wasn't a secondary threat waiting in the shadows.
Empty. Perfect.
He pulled the bathroom door shut, then backed toward the heavy oak office door, making sure the latch clicked into place quietly. Once the room was locked down, he made his way back over to the mahogany desk and slumped into the leather chair.
He looked down at himself. His favorite graphic tee was soaked in foul, black, mutated blood. His denim jeans were completely ruined, with massive tears ripping across the knees and thighs.
His eyes shifted to the floor, landing on the stainless-steel Tensa Zangetsu replica lying a few feet away among the shattered glass. He thought about the deep-violet UI that had just rewritten his reality. The Genesis Override.
It wasn't just a generic system; it was the exact game architecture from Genesis Online. It had somehow mapped his max-level main account directly onto his soul. He was a Spellblade, an Arsenal Specialist—a class that relied on soul-binding legendary weapons. Every weapon you found possessed a different lore and backstory, granting access to distinct abilities. The class featured three main slots to set as primary loadouts, but players could also summon any Arcane Weapon from their domain inventory using the Genesis Gate ability, seamlessly swapping them in and out to use weaker versions of their skills. It was a niche, advanced Spellblade class, but it was his favorite.
If the system was faithfully running his class mechanics, then that cheap, unsharpened prop on the floor wasn't a toy anymore.
He walked over, picked up the replica sword, and brought it back to the desk. He had 5 Upgrade Points. It was time to play in class.
[Item Detected: Stainless Steel Prop (Rank 0 - Mundane)]
Ace gripped the hilt, fully embracing the videogame logic of the moment. "Trace," he whispered.
A brilliant sapphire-blue glow traveled from his chest down his arm, slowly enveloping the weapon. As the energy washed over the steel, Ace felt himself seemingly merging with the blade's history. He could instinctively feel every imperfection from the cheap machine forging, the brittle tang, and the low-grade materials. To the system, it was just shaped metal. It had no magic.
[Weapon Memory Scan Initiated...]
[ERROR: Weapon Memory Not Available. Please designate Weapon Memory for Arsenal Conversion.]
Ace paused as a blank input panel opened in his vision. No predefined lore, he realized. It needs a history to become an Arcane Weapon.
Ace thought about it, then decided to try thinking directly at the screen. It worked, the cursor blinking in response to his intent.
He didn't hesitate. He weaponized his inner otaku, pouring the literal history of another world into the system. He mentally pushed the lore of the Shinigami, the devastating kinetic force of the Getsuga Tensho, and the inner world of the weapon. He envisioned the old man watcher, the duality with the white hollow, and the multiple forms of the black blade. The blinding speed of the bankai. The Hollow Mask. All of it. He was taking the rich, established legend of a completely fictional universe and imprinting it onto a piece of mall metal, providing the system with exactly what it needed to forge a legendary weapon.
Finally, after exhausting everything he could remember, the vision shattered, and the screen shifted.
[Weapon Memory Accepted.]
[Arcane Weapon: Tensa Zangetsu added to Arsenal Matrix.]
[ERROR: Genesis Gate Unavailable. Arcane Weapon cannot be manifested.]
He noticed the error, but that's fine for now. Time for the next step, he said, and used his next class ability to make it his primary weapon.
"Soulbind"
Rite of Inheritance initiated. The interface generated a visceral visual representation in his mind's eye, replacing the anime's protagonist with himself.
He wasn't sitting at a desk anymore; he was standing in the pouring rain on a barren, rocky plateau. He felt an agonizing, phantom exhaustion deep in his muscles. He lived through a thousand battles in a fraction of a second, completing all the iconic strikes and movements as the weapon's history compiled. He felt the specific tension required in his wrists to swing the blade, the precise footwork needed to anchor his weight, and the surging, explosive power of channeling his soul into a single strike.
[Arcane Weapon: added to Arsenal Matrix.]
[ Core Slot 1 Main Weapon:Zangetsu ]
[ERROR: Genesis Gate Unavailable. SoulBound Weapon cannot be manifested.]
Ace frowned, catching his breath as the sharp mental strain of the memory dive settled behind his eyes. He remembered the restriction now. The core was an endgame class item that gave a player access to their localized spatial domain. Without it, his manifestation powers—the Genesis Gates that summoned weapons out of inventory—were locked.
Since he couldn't manifest the true blade from his matrix yet, he would just have to use another class function and have the system upgrade the knockoff in his hands.
He focused his intent on the cosplay weapon.
"Reinforce."
[Action: Reinforce Item. Cost: 5 UP]
The sapphire energy flared violently, surging directly from his chest into the cheap steel. He watched in awe as the metal hissed and compressed, becoming sharper, more perfect, more real. Then it was over, and the blade was entirely new.
It wasn't a god-tier weapon yet, but it was no longer a mundane, unusable prop. The class skills had taken a flimsy toy and turned it into a real, forge-ready, perfectly balanced katana. And for now, that was exactly what he needed.
[Item Upgraded: Tensa Zangetsu (Rank 1 - Common Arcane)]
[Current UP: 0]
Ace gripped the hilt, feeling the lethal, undeniable edge of the blade. As he did, his Passive: The Burden of History was activated. Without consciously thinking about it, his body reacted to the weapon now. His stance shifted, his feet sliding into a perfect, balanced Kendo stance, bringing the black blade to rest casually over his right shoulder. It was the iconic, relaxed guard of the Substitute Shinigami.
The class mechanics worked perfectly. He had a cheat skill, and he knew exactly how to use it.
He looked over at the red leather trench coat hanging on the rack. He thought about taking it and using Trace to imprint Dante's legend onto the leather to forge Arcane Armor, but he was completely out of points, and the mental strain of uploading the sword's lore had left a sharp throb behind his eyes. He decided to leave the coat for the moment.
He needed peace of mind, and to get that, he needed to be safe; he needed a base camp. The Director's office was a dead-end, a one-way kill box. This definitely wouldn't work.
He stood up from the desk, gripping his newly forged Arcane Weapon. He took one last look at the Director's desiccated remains and pushed down whatever lingering nervousness remained. He tightened his grip on the black hilt and prepared to step out and secure the 40th floor.