The Tale of Kraven Ergeist

Living as a half-Elf in Inisburn Inferior, Krymson Starklight is welcomed by neither Human nor Elf. Shunned as an outcast, she struggles to make ends meet. Krymson lives with a kind innkeeper in Inisburn Inferior named Jeremiah, who has provided her with room and board for over a month. Anxious to earn her keep, she tries for a bounty on a wanted man named Everest Bard. To her dismay, she soon learns from Jeremiah that Bard has been caught. When pressed for further details, he describes the mercenary as a strange man with long blonde hair and a pair of broadswords, looking for fighters for hire. When Krymson hears of this, she seeks him out, hoping to earn something with which to pay Jeremiah.

The man reveals himself to be Kraven Ergeist, and his mission is to assassinate Hexus Vierge, “The Man Behind the State.” Krymson believes this to be a fool’s errand; as everyone knows that Hexus is backed by the entire King’s Guard and also employs a variety of mercenary soldiers of colossal capabilities. The money Kraven offers is enough to sway her decision however, and she agrees to signs on as a hired blade. After proving her prowess with her twin Wakazashi in a duel, she joins the strange man and accompanies him on his journey to Almsgard Average.

After cashing in the bounty, the pair encounters another mercenary in the forest, purporting there to be a bounty on Kraven’s head. Kraven recognizes the man as Jakken Faust. With his massive colossus blade, which stands as tall as a tree, Jakken levels the surrounding forest with a single clean sweep. Krymson suddenly collapses, her Elven heritage causing her to feel the pain in the surrounding trees. Taking advantage of the situation, Jakken swings his massive blade at the two of them, which Kraven halts with just one of his two mighty broadswords.

The two of them launch into a spectacular fight, before Jakken strikes Kraven with the flat of his blade while the other is leaping through the air, sending him careening off into the distance. Krymson is left to defend herself from Jakken’s mighty sword while an airborne Kraven processes the situation, determining the most efficient solution for returning to the battlefield, and snags one of the trees with the hooked end of his Deus Blade, and uses the bending in the bough to launch himself back towards Jakken.

Krymson is meanwhile eluding Jakken through a series of disappearance and distraction techniques that involves a mysterious set of ninja-style hand gestures which Jakken recognizes as Shinjutsu, and manages to fight on equal ground with him, before Kraven literally flies back into the fray, and destroys the massive colossus blade. After being bested by Kraven, Jakken reveals that he and “many of the others” are on the payroll of Hexus Vierge. Kraven sneers at this, claiming that neither Jakken nor Hexus had any honor, and silences him with his sword.

Later that evening, Krymson’s curiosity for Kraven’s situation gets the better of her, and she asks him why he was after Hexus. Kraven tells her that Hexus took away his humanity, and he seeks to reclaim it. Krymson asks him to go into greater detail, but Kraven refuses to talk any further on the subject.

They march through the mountains, barely stopping for rest. Krymson is unable to match Kraven’s pace nor his fortitude, and quickly tires, nearly collapsing as they hike through the frigid mountains. Kraven provides her with petrified ash from the Elven Mountains, an ancient cold survival product that had long been kept a secret by the elves. Krymson is amazed at his knowledge of Elven lore, and reflects on her past, growing up in Wildeverne, the last Elven forest. She recalls the day she was banished when they discovered she was a half-breed, indicating that there was a specific incident that arose, but does not elaborate.

Despite Kraven’s elven trade secrets, Krymson eventually collapses from the cold, and wakes up in a hot spring high in the mountains. She finds Kraven meditating beneath a waterfall, and cautiously approaches him. When he notices her, he finally answers her question from the night before – Hexus made him into something inhuman. Kraven does not eat, does not sleep, does not drink, does not breathe. Hexus, he claims, designed him to be the perfect solider, completely immune to pain, devoid of needs, immortal, and infinitely regenerative. To emphasize this point, he uses his sword to cut a gash in his arm, which grows back in a matter of minutes.

He goes on to explain that with his increased sensory perception, and his clockwork photo and audio memory, it is only in places such as this, where all his senses are cut off completely that he is able to attain true peace and sort through his thoughts and memories. Krymson takes note of the fact that Kraven pays no attention to the fact that they were both naked in the hot spring, and wonders how much of his humanity was truly lost.

They set off down the mountain, and before long, they find themselves lost in the woods. A young man named Wedge Breaker tries to rob them, only to be captured by Krymson and her skills as a wilderness tracker. His family having fallen on hard times, Wedge preys on travelers who pass through the surrounding forests, pick pocketing and foraging for what goods and wealth he can acquire. Agreeing to act as a guide through the woods, they let him go, and he leads them out of the woods to the far side of the mountain. They say goodbye, and he returns home to his village. No sooner had they parted ways when the team found him again after entering what they thought was just the next village on their way.

Noticing the destitution of the people, Kraven asks Wedge and discovers that the King’s men have been overtaxing the poor village, and surmises that it had been under the influence of “The Man Behind the State,” Hexus Vierge, using his hold on the King to gain more wealth to fund his twisted experiments. Further angered with Vierge, Kraven drives the tax collectors away. They return a day later with the King’s Guard, and lay siege of the village, but Kraven and Krymson deal with them all in a matter of minutes.

In awe of Kraven’s display of swordsmanship after the battle, Wedge asks to accompany Kraven and Krymson in order to learn how to be a better and stronger fighter. Kraven is reluctant to take on what could only be excess baggage on an otherwise dangerous mission, but he soon comes to see Wedge’s potential when he rescues them from another one of Hexus’ mercenaries named Isaac, a blindfolded man who fights with a staff and uses a pain-inducing high pitched whistle to take advantage of his and Krymson’s heightened sense of hearing, and agrees to take him as a disciple as they continue their journey to Almsgard Average.

For his first lesson, Kraven impales one of his broadswords into a nearby tree, and gives Wedge until dawn to remove it. Failing to do so, Kraven removes the sword and the party moves on as Kraven lectures Wedge on the basics of strategy and training. Making camp again, he repeats the lesson, letting Wedge attempt to remove the enormous blade from the bough of the tree. A week passes with no success, but Kraven is patient and spends the time imparting his wisdom onto Wedge: The sword is not the weapon – you are. The sword is only a tool – your mind is its only limit. The beginner uses his sword to attack. The expert uses it to attack and defend. Kraven takes it a step further by explaining how to use the sword to attack, defend, to dodge, and manipulate his environment. After a week, Wedge finally wrestles the sword free, and Kraven tells him that now that he’s become familiarized with the shape and heft of the blade, he’s ready to start training in actual swordplay.

Krymson writes back to Jeremiah, detailing their progress and assuring him that he would get his payment soon. They fight their way through hoards of mercenaries, including an unarmed, dark skinned warrior named Matthias who fought using a mixture of kickboxing and capoeira. Kraven demonstrates his prowess by overcoming obstacle after obstacle, from towering cliffs to dizzying valleys.

On the outskirts of Almsgard Average, Kraven sits down at a campfire with the two of them to share his story. When he was twelve, he was living his life in Almsgard as a street urchin, until a benevolent man named Hexus Vierge took him into his manor. After he had been fed, bathed and dressed, Kraven met others like himself whom the man had taken in – homeless men, women and children by the dozens, all of them fed and well cared for. That night, they all dined at a banquet, and Hexus greeted them all personally, assuring them that from now on, their lives would be better.

Unexpectedly, however, Kraven awoke the day after to find himself in a glass tank of yellow liquid, along with all the others in their own tanks, inside the manor’s dark underground lab, with a series of tubes and needles protruding from his body. After nearly a week of dissection and experimentation, which Kraven remembers only as disjointed, half conscious, tormenting nightmares, Kraven woke up to being thrown back out onto the street outside Hexus’ manor.

Confused and barely conscious, he went to the front gates asked to be let in. The guards refused, and at Kraven’s persistence, gutted him, leaving him for dead in the ditch. Kraven awoke hours later to find himself perfectly fine. Scared and perplexed, he tried again, only to be wounded and thrown into the ditch once more. Again and again he tried, until he finally managed to best the guards, learning from his previous encounters. He broke into the manor and found Hexus sitting quietly. When he confronted him, Hexus refused to acknowledge him, gesturing to him as a “failed experiment.” In a fit of rage, Kraven attacked him, only to be swatted away with ease by Hexus’ metal ribbon weapon. Once again, he was thrown out of the manor.

Lost and bewildered, Kraven wandered the continent for many, many years, trying to understand what had happened to him. After finding a number of people such as himself, he slowly learned that he and the other street urchins were made how they were in an attempt to create a perfect soldier. He found himself impervious to pain or any kind of physical contact. When injured, he regenerated almost immediately. He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he didn’t breathe, and he didn’t die. He didn’t feel emotion, nothing to hinder him on the battlefield, he was magic resistant, and he learned like a computer from experience. Even his long blonde hair, which rested at the same length at the time of the experiment, regrew to exactly the same length within a day every time it was cut.

As time passed, he began to thirst for vengeance. He tried confronting Hexus again and again, and each time, was thwarted almost effortlessly. He soon realized that in order to gain anything from the man who did this to him, he would first have to overpower him, and decided to spend his life training himself to become stronger. Working as a mercenary, gaining new experience from every job, as well as an accumulation of wealth that needn’t be spent on food, he grew as a fighter, and over time, became a legendary warrior. Unrestricted by normal Human needs, his name soon became known throughout the kingdom, to Inisburn Inferior to the royal capital of Pharaohaven Perfecta. He was rumored to be the second coming of Draco Delphinus, a great warrior from a thousand years ago.

He was at his peak when the King sought him out to aid his soldiers in battle during The Mage War some four hundred years after Hexus’ experiment, in which the Three Kingdoms went to aid the elves against the normally peaceful mages of the Thalian islands, who had waged war with the elves under the command of a mysterious warlock who was known as Shadow. Kraven obliged, being magic resistant, and single handedly led the soldiers of Pharoaehaven to victory, saving the elves and driving the mysterious Shadow from the Thalian islands, letting the mages return to their peaceful life.

Returning as a war hero, Kraven’s name was now the stuff of legends. As a reward, he was granted incalculable wealth, the keys to the city, and two matching swords called the Deus Blades, forged by the King’s finest smiths. At last, he decided to confront the ambitious Hexus once more, who had been using the more successful traits bred through his experiments on himself, making him into an immortal warrior, deadly in his own right. Disappearing from the public eye, Kraven confronted Hexus in his manor, now a stronghold, in Almsgard Average.

The battle raged on for days, and migrated into the outer lands, during which time, Hexus barely paid the fight any head in favor of gloating over his accomplishments, most of which involving what he did to Kraven. He elaborated on the process in which he used to transform him from Human to super soldier, which involved several alterations to his DNA. The first and foremost tapped into the body’s natural regenerative properties, normally kept at a limit so as not to overuse the body’s energy. Hexus gave Kraven’s body an enzyme that hinged on the theory that matter and energy were interchangeable, and allowed his cells to break down the matter surrounding them to absorb as energy, effectively offering him both a limitless supply of energy, and an infinite capacity for regeneration.

The changes to his senses were altered surgically, implanting artificially grown optical, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory receptors in body’s normal sensory receptors. Hexus explained how he had tried different alterations on each of his test subjects, and pointed out that one of his subjects, Isaac, had fared exceedingly well in this area. However, some of Kraven’s senses left him at a disadvantage when it came to ultrasonics.

The third and final change came to his higher brain functions, which were tampered with both surgically and on the genetic level. He cut off the stream of nerves that felt pain and pleasure alike, allowing his tactile senses to detect everything else. He also expanded the hippocampus of his brain, allowing his visual and audio memory to unconsciously store an infinite amount of information. And finally, he stunted the limbic cortex of his brain, in effect, stunting any emotion Kraven would have felt. Hexus points out the imperfections of this part of the procedure, as he notes Kraven’s persistence in his vendetta, and ponders the possibility that Kraven’s sense of pride, honor and justice are rooted into something deeper.

Growing bored, Hexus points out that Kraven is weak to the extremes of temperature and sound. He demonstrates his point by awakening a dormant volcano that nearly consumed Kraven in molten lava. Barely managing to escape, Kraven realized that he would never beat Hexus on his own, and decided to find someone who could help him. And from there, he found Krymson, and the rest is history.

They finally reach Almsgard Average, and break into Hexus’ manor. They encounter an ice mage under Hexus’ employ who goes by the moniker of Frost, who surprises them and traps them in a block of ice. They are separated, and Krymson and Wedge are released from the ice spell and are thrown into neighboring prison cells deep within Hexus’ manor.

After some deliberation, Krymson reveals her ability to use fire magic by turning her fingertips into a sort of arc welder and melting through the bars. Freeing Wedge, they scour the mansion for Kraven. Finding neither Kraven nor Hexus, they flee the manor, disappearing into the city.

Hiding away in a tavern, Wedge demands to know why Krymson would hide the fact that she had magical powers. Krymson explains that it was because of her magic that her people banished her some four hundred years ago. Because humans are able to use magic while elves are not, half elves have both the elves longevity as well as the Human’s ability to use magic, and thus have always been scorned by both elves and humans out of envy. It was for this reason that the elves left the Three Kingdoms some thousands of years ago, and have remained autonomous from mankind up until the mage war. Even at the mercy of the mages of Thalia, it took almost three years for the proud elves to come to the Human continent for help. Then King Cornelius had offered his aid in the form of a substantial army to boost their ranks, and a handful of mages to bolster their defenses. The motion stopped the advancing Thalian mages, but it was only when Kraven Ergeist entered the scene that the tide truly turned and the war won.

Lost for leads as to how to find Kraven, Krymson and Wedge wander Almsgard until running into Jakken Faust, demanding to know where Kraven was. After explaining to them that he wanted to put a stop to Hexus’ madness, they reveal to Jakken that Kraven had been taken by Hexus. Jakken leads them to one of Hexus’ outposts where he thinks they might find Kraven, and sure enough, they sneak in and find suspended in a block of ice kept within a freezer-like prison cell that sucked the warmth from inside, keeping the ice frozen.

After failing to melt the ice with fire, and finding no way to disable the freezer, Jakken surmises that the room is too cold for them to generate a fire hot enough to melt the ice and rescue Kraven in time to avoid detection. Wedge implores Krymson to use her magic again, and she reluctantly melts the ice. Recovering Kraven, the group makes a run for it, along with Jakken, before running into the ice mage, Frost.

Frost nearly traps them all again, and confident of his victory, reveals that he was the warlock who coerced the Thalian mages into war with the elves under Hexus’ instruction. This angers Krymson, who attacks with her fire magic, catching Frost off guard, and releasing the others from their half formed ice shells. Frost responds by concentrating all his power on Krymson, who is unable to withstand his attacks due to her fire magic being so untested. In a last ditch effort, Krymson attempt to combine her fire magic with her Shinjutsu hand techniques, and gets something unexpected: By using fire magic with a Shinjutsu technique that normally summons forest spirits, she instead summons a fire demon that unleashes a furious flame attack that utterly incinerates Frost. The force of the magic changes Krymson’s hair color to a deep red for the duration of the attack.

They leave the outpost and are confronted with a horde of the King’s Guard. Without his swords, Kraven is slowed by the horde of soldiers guarding the outpost. It is Jakken rather than Kraven, armed with the war hammer that once served as the counterweight to his massive colossus blade, who was pivotal in their escape. Kraven acts as their shield, sustaining injury after injury, which heal back quickly. When Krymson is wounded however, they are forced into a retreat, and find themselves cornered against a steep drop off the edge of a cliff. With Krymson and Wedge underarm, Kraven and Jakken jump the cliff’s edge, just barely catching hold of a cave outcropping halfway down the edge.

Afterwards, they find refuge in the elven forest of Wildeverne. At first, the elves don't want to accept the half-Elf, Krymson, but Kraven (Who is a legend among both the elves and the humans) speaks on her behalf, and they grudgingly accept her. One Elf by named of Setsuka is unsatisfied and challenges her to a duel, which she wins easily. Afterwards, she is avoided, but accepted.

Kraven confides in the others that he does not believe himself able to defeat Hexus, even with the aid of Krymson, Wedge and even Jakken. He relates what we experienced while entombed in his ice prison. Hexus, more powerful than ever, casually ordering the ice mage around, extracted samples of Kraven’s DNA and cerebrospinal fluid, before leaving with his Deus Blades and not paying him a second thought.

The Elven chieftain, an elder by the name of Gisan, overhears Kraven’s admission, and offers him words of encouragement, mixed with prosaic metaphors about every problem being an opportunity in disguise. Sensing the group being unable to interpret his meaning, Gisan spells it out for them and offers to teach Kraven the art of Shinjutsu.

Shinjutsu, as Gisan explains it, is the art of tapping into one’s “chi,” the latent energy found in the humors of the body. Kraven objects, saying that his body has been culled of its humors. Without preamble, Gisan places a hand on Kraven’s forehead and closes his eyes. He opens them again and tells Kraven that he has a massive amount of chi, despite having no bodily fluids, and encourages him to have more faith in himself.

Kraven enters the first stage of training by sculpting a weapon suited to channel one’s chi. Krymson points out that one of her two wakazashi was made in this manner (the other being a family heirloom she was allowed to take with her), and has five Elvish runes engraved on its side, from hilt to tip, meaning Initiation, Resolution, Determination, Acceptance, and Enlightenment. Gisan helps Kraven construct a sword similar in size to his lost Deus Blades out of Elvish steel, tuned to harmonize with the bearer’s chi, and when the sword is complete, Kraven begins second stage.

The second stage involves taking his newly crafted blade and entering a deep luminous cave for three days and three nights, as every Elf does during their coming of age ceremony. The cave resonates with one’s chi, and is strengthened by the blade, and presents the occupant with a vision. Sometimes, it is of what they desire most, while other times it is what they fear the most. Inside, Kraven is confronted with an image of himself as he would be had he lived a normal life, having grown up as a true Human being. He is disturbed by how little the image moves him, how unaffected he is by this vision of what he has always wanted. It becomes clear to him that although he is not the person he wants to be, he is much more than he could have ever been had Hexus not taken him in that fateful day. He decides to accept what was done to him for the time being, and to concentrate only on improving himself, and when he emerges from the cave, Gisan tells him he is ready for the final and longest stage of Shinjutsu: training.

Gisan shows him to a waterfall on the outskirts of the Elven land and offers it as a training and meditation ground for Kraven to study his newfound abilities, as well as a bundle of scrolls of Shinjutsu techniques recorded by masters over the centuries. Gisan informs Kraven of the five lessons he will cover in this stage of training: First, to lift oneself while immersed in water using only ones chi. Second, to stand on top of the water using chi to hold the surface tension. Third, to ascend the cascade of the waterfall using one’s chi. Fourth, to adhere to a solid vertical surface using only chi. And Fifth, to use chi to levitate into the air. Gisan confides that only the masters from the Elven homeland are capable of this fifth feat.

Each day, Gisan spends time with Kraven, teaching him how to focus his chi, and each night, Kraven is instructed to focus as much of his chi into his blade as he can. This causes a number of runes on the blade to glow blue, starting from the Initiation rune. When the next rune above that one begins to glow, it means he is ready for the next lesson. Krymson demonstrates for him, and lights the first two runes of her blade to full luster, with the third slightly dimmer than the others. Gisan says that this indicates that Krymson has achieved Initiation, Resolution, and Determination, and is on her way to achieving Acceptance. Gisan admits that even he himself hasn’t yet achieved enlightenment.

Krymson uses this time to train with her fire magic in the isolation of the training ground. She also comes to understand the relationship between her Shinjutsu and fire magic, discovering that every Shinjutsu technique she knew had a fire-based counterpart that could be used by combining it with magi. She even communes with the fire demons, called Spawn of Ifrit, and learns more about them.

Krymson also takes this time to speak with her estranged mother, an Elven woman named Sachiko who, while not banished from the forest entirely, has been exiled to the outskirts, and shunned in the city. When Sachiko sees her daughter again for the first time in almost four hundred years, she breaks down into tears. She identifies Krymson by her Elven name, Kurenai.

We learn that when she was younger, Sachiko had found a young human male named Seth, collapsed and nearly dead, within the outskirts of Wildeverne, and had taken pity on him, taking him into her house to nurse him back to health. Since humans were forbidden in the Elven forest without express permission from the chieftain, she kept his existence a secret from the other elves.

Seth regained his health, and expressed his appreciation for Sachiko’s kindness. Appreciation and kindness turned into affection and love, and soon Sachiko was with child, and was forced to make a choice. In order to protect their daughter, Sachiko hastily married one of her many Elven suitors, and Seth left the Elven lands in secret to return to his home in Pharaohaven.

Soon after, Sachiko bore a half-elf daughter, who was born with strange red hair, the same deep red that shone whenever Krymson used magic. She took the Elven name Kurenai, meaning Deep Red in the Elven tongue. When she reached maturity, the red in her hair had dissipated, replaced by the luminescent Elven hair that shone whatever color surrounded it. During her coming of age ceremony, however, her hair reverted back to deep red and she became surrounded by an aura of fire. The elders of the village recognized this as fire magic, and deduced that she was a half-breed, and banished her from the Elven forest. Before she left, her mother gave her a wakazashi that nearly matched her shinjutsu blade, as well as informing her of her father’s parting wish: that she taken the human name Krymson.

Both Wedge and Jakken ask to learn Shinjutsu as well, but only Wedge is judged to have any potential, and a blade is constructed for him as well, and he trains with Kraven. Jakken decides that there is no reason for him to stay while the others train, and decides to go find more Hexus’ super soldier that might be sympathetic to their cause. Krymson tells him that she will send him an Elvish messenger falcon when they have completed their training, and Jakken goes off.

During their time training, the forest of Wildeverne is set upon by an enormous green dragon, setting flame to the forest and heading straight towards the Elven city. One of Hexus’ mercenaries makes an attempt at finding them and scouring the last remaining Elves from the land at the same time, and has ensnared a dragon to fight for him. Kraven, Krymson and Wedge fight it off, but the Elves inform them that it is a taboo to slay a dragon, as they are a naturally peaceful breed that live in harmony with nature, whom the Elves dearly respect.

As they fight off the dragon and try to figure out what to do, Krymson notices something about the dragon: An enchanted sword had been stabbed through its snout, cutting a hole from the roof the dragon’s muzzle, through it mouth and tongue, and out the bottom of its jaw. Kraven leaps upon the dragon, and after a great struggle, manages to remove the sword from the dragon’s skull. Freed from its magical snare, the dragon turns upon the mercenary controlling him and kills him, before flying off to be free once more. The Elves thank Kraven and his group, and Kraven keeps the bespelled sword as a keepsake, ruling that a sword sturdy enough to penetrate a dragon’s scales, hide and bones would be a valuable tool indeed, and now has a duel set of blades to fight with.

Three years pass before training is complete. They leave Wildeverne and enter the imperial capital of Pharaohaven Perfecta, and meet up with Jakken, who has managed to recruit Isaac, the blindfolded staff wielder, and Matthias, the dark skinned kick boxer, to join them.

Before any plans can be made, the group is discovered by an underground resistance force, lead by the exiled Prince Cedric. Kraven first mistakes him for King Cornelius and bows at his feet, earning the young man’s attention by revealing himself to be the legendary immortal who helped his grandfather win the mage war. Jen, the prince’s caretaker, is suspicious at first, but Cedric believes his story. Cedric tells the party how his father had ordered the young prince removed from the castle at the age of seven by his guardian and caretaker, Jen, and has been living in exile ever since. He had never understood why his father had banished him, or why he wasn't allowed back into the city. But now he had snuck into town and was planning an armed invasion of the palace to confront his father, the reclusive King Cromwell.

The King has been manipulated by Hexus for the purpose of delivering him greater resources for his experiments. Kraven, Krymson, Wedge, Jakken, Issac and Matthias agree to help Cedric and his resistance group break into the castle using the Keys of the City that Kraven has had around his neck since winning the Mage War.

They find the king slumped over alone in the throne room, weak, and crippled, willing to believe anything Hexus tells him. After failing to reach him, Hexus shows up again, and reveals that he's been keeping the King on a steady dose of poison that stifles his brainpower, and giving him an antidote before it kills him, and then starts the process all over again the next day.

When Kraven attacks him, Hexus throws him away easily. Wedge then leaps on top of him, yelling about him not touching his master. Hexus throws him off as well. Hexus just laughs and leaves them be, taking note of Krymson and mentioning that he would love to experiment with her Elven genetics, before losing interest. Before leaving, he reveals to Prince Cedric that it was his father, in his last throes of consciousness before ultimately succumbing to Hexus’ poison, who gave the order to Jen to get the young prince out of the castle before Hexus could kill him. After so long, Hexus no longer cares about the prince, having been supposedly dead for so long and the king now fully in his thrall, that there was nothing the prince could do to amend the situation, and Hexus leaves.

When Cedric slumps over in defeat, Wedge reveals that his thieving days were far from over - when he’d attacked Hexus, he’d actually stolen the antidote out of his pocket. They give the king the antidote, and when he comes to his senses, they tell him everything. He orders Hexus captured, and Kraven warns Jen to guard the young prince in case Hexus should try to kill him. When brought before the king, Hexus is banished forever. He turns to go, before suddenly striking with his weapon (A long, metal ribbon that can extend and curve at his will) at Cedric. Jen protects him, and knocks the metal whip away, but he attacks again, this time killing the King.

Outraged, Cedric orders all the kingdom’s forces against Hexus, but after retreating to his ruined hideaway in the cathedral atop the mountain overlooking Pharoaehaven, the only way to reach him is by Griffon Rider. And Hexus simply uses his metal ribbon whip to bat them out of the sky. Kraven tells now King Cedric to withhold his troops and let him and his friends take out Hexus.

That night, Kraven tells Krymson not to fight, that if he were to fall, that Hexus would use her for his experiments. He gives her the Keys to the City and explains to her where to find his vast fortune, which he divided throughout the three cities, to use it as she saw fit. Unwilling to part with Kraven, she refuses to let him die without doing her part in the fight. When he dismisses her again, she explains to him that she would not let the man she had fallen in love with face death by himself. Kraven just shakes his head and explains that his humanity has been erased, and he was unable to feel emotions such as love. Unsatisfied with this answer, Krymson kisses him, demanding to fight alongside him. Kraven ultimately gives up, and allows her to fight with him.

The next day, the six of them march up the mountain to Hexus’ hideaway. There, Kraven meets his “Other.” Hexus explains that he originally designed his experiments to be in pairs, one male, one female. The male, he released out into the world to see how it would fare, and if any of the traits were desirably, he used the females as breeding material. When Hexus had extracted Kraven’s cerebrospinal fluid at his outpost outside Almsgard, in addition to stealing his two swords, he had used that to harvest memories and experiences to implant into Kraven's female “Other” named Lyric, to give her all his combat knowledge to make her just as powerful as he was and using his original weapons.

They fight, and Kraven’s Rune Blade and Dragon Blade ultimately shatters the Deus Blades. But because Lyric has the same makeup that Kraven has, she has the same sense of pride, honor and justice as he does, and Kraven eventually gets through to her by using words, convincing her that obeying this madman was wrong. When she stops fighting however, Hexus hits her with a special type of poison dart that he developed to effect immortals, and kills her instantly, explaining that she had become “contaminated with Kraven's rebellious ways.”

Enraged at the killing one of his own kin, Kraven taps into his newfound Shinjutsu powers and takes Hexus completely off guard. With the help of Jakken, Isaac and Matthias, the immortals cripple Hexus’ right arm. Hexus retaliates in a fit of rage, mirroring the injury fourfold, crippling all four fighters, rendering them all completely helpless. Before he can land a poison dart on Kraven, however, Krymson blocks it, and drives Hexus back with a surprise attack.

Kraven tells her to leave, to take Wedge and run before Hexus does to them what he did to Kraven. But she lunges at Hexus with all her fire magic, all the while demanding to Kraven that if he never intended for her to help, than what was she there for? Why had she spent the past three years of her life following him through the ends of the Earth, just to stop at the end, powerless to protect the man she loved?

Krymson is eventually overpowered, but her message rings clearly in Kraven's mind. All their wounds are severe, but Kraven is gifted with the greater healing power than any of the super soldiers, and recovers quicker. It is not enough, however, and he is still incapacitated by the time Hexus comes to finish him off. Kraven demands to know why Hexus stole his humanity, and Hexus just laughs, stating that he hadn’t taken away anything of value. Before he found him, Kraven had been trash, and Hexus claims that he made Kraven everything he was. Kraven begins to laugh, saying that he was correct in that he made him everything he was. He made able to fight. He made him able to learn. But he also made him able to teach.

And that’s when Wedge activates his Shinjutsu. Wedge uses the both Kraven’s Rune Blade and his own, synchronizing the two and illuminating all five runes on each of them, and attacks Hexus in full fury, relying on everything Kraven taught him. He breaks Hexus’ other arm, and Hexus is left nearly defenseless. Wedge entangles his metal ribbon whip in his own weapons and yanks it from Hexus’ grip, flinging it away, which Kraven catches, fully healed, and delivers the final blow.

In his last breaths, Hexus tells them a story. Kraven had been called the second coming of Draco Delphinus, the legendary warrior from a thousand years ago. But Delphinus disappeared and was never seen again. But he didn’t die. Instead, he grew old and weary, and distraught at leaving the world without a protector, began exploring the forbidden alchemies to attain immortality. He experimented on Human subjects and eventually, his own body. He lost all concept of who he was and became Hexus Vierge. His entire purpose: To find something he could give to the world that would outshine his legacy. He wanted to create a warrior that would topple his previous standing as an all-powerful warrior. Kraven had achieved this - not by his own means, but by his ability to teach what he can to others. Because he is able to pass on what he knows so effectively, he can teach a soldier to become just as powerful as Kraven. And if he can teach one, he can teach hundreds. And that’s hundreds of times more powerful than Draco Delphinus had ever been.

He also reveals that he had never taken Kraven’s humanity to begin with. In order to create a perfect soldier, he had to give him the ability to suppress his emotions. Suppress, and forget, but never fully lose. The proof of this: this entire time, he had been striving to vindicate his vendetta against Hexus. He hated Hexus, with a passion. And if he is able to hate, then he is also able to love. And so, Kraven realizes that all he had to do to return Krymson’s feelings was to simply get over his mental block he had created after five hundred years.

King Cedric rewards them all handsomely, and decides to reopen trade with the elves, and decides that a legendary hero that both peoples appreciate along with someone born of both worlds would be the perfect liaisons, and offers them the job. Jakken remains in Pharoaehaven to help the King’s guard. Isaac goes off to cleanse the Three Kingdoms of Hexus’ taint by razing his outposts and all their labs. Matthias decides to return to wandering the land. Wedge takes his share of the money and high tails it back to his village to put it to good use. In her letter to Jeremiah, Krymson sends her share of the gold along with her side of the story, finishing off by telling him that she wasn’t sure where Wedge had run off to, but she had a feeling they hadn’t seen the last of him. Sure enough, he sneaks aboard the ship to spend the rest of his days with Kraven and Krymson.

The ship sails off to the Elven lands over the horizon, and Kraven and Krymson stand together on the deck, talking about what the future holds for either of them. Kraven points out that, since they were both gifted with longevity, though through different means, that they were all but perfectly suited for each other. Krymson tells him that was the least romantic thing she had ever heard, and kisses him. He responds in kind, and they finally share their first true kiss.