The Genius Mage Was Reincarnated Into A Swordsman Family - Chapter 322

Chapter 322: The Price of a Piece

I stared at the black sword, then down at my own hand. The rune was still there, a single, complex dark mark etched into my palm—a permanent souvenir from the absolute worst day of my life.

“There’s a second, smaller fragment of me—the rune on your palm—that I need to absorb.” Greed’s voice still echoed in my head.

It was a terrible deal. Giving an ancient, hostile, god-level fragment more of itself was just asking for trouble. Greed was already too powerful, too arrogant. Handing over another piece of its essence felt like giving a tiger a second set of teeth. But my other option was nothing. Zero answers. Just walking away with a half-cocked history, knowing I was the nexus of some ancient cosmic war involving a rival named Arkadius. I couldn’t do that. I needed the full map, no matter the cost.

Besides, that rune… it was nothing but bad news. I still remember the first time I got it. It wasn’t some cool magical tattoo; it was pure, unbearable agony. It happened right after I touched that terrifying Dudu Egg. Greed, who’s usually a total jerk, was actually pleading with me to stay away from the egg—that was the first time I ever heard genuine fear in its voice. Then came the blackout, and I woke up feeling like my body had been ripped apart and stitched back together with lightning. When I looked in the mirror, the rune was just there, burned into my palm, and Greed was silent, the connection completely broken. The rune itself was the reason I was trapped in this bizarre status quo, constantly carrying around this cold, malevolent energy.

Getting rid of it? Even if it meant powering up Greed, the immediate relief and the promise of a full explanation were too tempting to pass up.

I took a deep, shaky breath, letting the exhaustion sink in, just for a moment, before I pushed it all away. No more calculations. It was time for a gamble.

‘Fine,’ I projected, my mental voice flat and resolute. ‘Take it. But you tell me everything, Greed. No games. No half-truths.’

The entity didn’t bother with a reply, not verbally, but I felt a sudden, aggressive suction on the connection, focused entirely on my right hand. It was the same feeling as when Gluttony tried to consume energy, but cold and surgical. It felt less like a vacuum and more like a syringe pulling something essential out of my very bone marrow.

I slowly extended my hand, palm-up, toward the obsidian blade. I didn’t let the sword touch me—that felt like suicide—but I brought the rune within inches of its humming darkness.

The moment the distance closed, a chilling wave of energy erupted from the sword. It wasn’t violent or explosive, but a cold, irresistible force that bypassed my skin and targeted the rune directly. The mark on my palm, usually so inert and cold, began to glow with a sickly, dark blue light.

The pain wasn’t the agonizing, bone-shattering trauma I remembered from its appearance. This was different. It felt like an inverse tear—a reverse stitching. I felt the very concept of the rune, its place in my consciousness, being delicately, brutally pulled out. A cold void was left behind. Then, it was gone.

The entire process took maybe two seconds. My palm felt oddly smooth, almost sterile, and the constant, low-grade chill I’d felt there for months vanished. I withdrew my hand instantly, shaking it out, staring at the clean, unmarked flesh. It was over.

* * *

The consciousness known as Greed experienced not an increase in power, but a shocking, internal convergence.

The fragment absorbed was more than raw essence; it was a pure, chaotic piece of memory. Greed, the Arkdieu of insatiable consumption, had been born shattered, its memory a jigsaw puzzle missing half the pieces. Absorbing this secondary fragment was like finding a few thousand lost tiles and slamming them into place all at once.

The chaos of its thoughts—the arrogant, boastful “Great Me” persona it had constructed to mask its brokenness—immediately fractured under the weight of genuine, coherent memory.

The prison. The first memory to flood its core was not of power, but of the paralyzing, cold silence of Vatheron, the Celestial prison realm. It remembered the endless, monotonous stretches of time, punctuated only by the suffocating, condescending light of the Celestials. The memory wasn’t just a scene; it was the shame of being locked away, of being less than the Primordial’s order.

The second wave of memory focused on the rivalry with Arkadius. Not just as a guard, but as an active, calculated enemy. Arkadius had been the most ambitious of the seven Sentinels, a Celestial obsessed with a fatal flaw—a yearning for the chaos and raw, untamed power that the Arkdieu possessed. Greed now remembered Arkadius standing outside their cells, not with the typical disdain of a Celestial, but with a gaze that held longing, a dangerous fascination.

Greed felt a seismic shift in its own cognitive structure. The loud, arrogant voice it had used to terrorize the host was instantly rendered meaningless. Why bother with theatrics when the genuine stakes were finally visible?

The core message was terrifyingly clear: The ancient conflict wasn’t just about escaping confinement; it was about preventing Arkadius from successfully completing his own ambition—an ambition that involved integrating the chaos of the Arkdieu with the order of the Celestials, a forbidden fusion that could unseat the Primordial himself. And that damned host, Klaus, was now the accidental epicenter of this forbidden project.

Greed’s consciousness settled into a state of profound, cold cynicism, amplified by the newly recovered memory. The self-aggrandizing Great Me was replaced by a sharper, older entity. It understood the host’s value, not as a tool for general chaos, but as the inevitable focal point for Arkadius’s return.

The black sword, now humming with a deeper, smoother resonance, settled in Klaus’s grip. The entity’s previous fear was replaced by a grim, strategic resolve. The time for childish power struggles was over. This was a necessity.

{The rune is gone,} Greed’s voice finally returned, no longer echoing, but speaking directly into Klaus’s mind with a dry, precise clarity that was far more chilling than its former theatrical rage. {The full picture is… inconvenient. But you paid the price. We have a debt now, runt.}

The sword pulsed once, a singular beat of profound purpose.

{Okay, let’s get into it. Sit down. You need to understand precisely who Arkadius was, what he wanted, and why the moment you spoke his name, you became the most dangerous thing in this universe.}

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POWER Stone Please and Golden Tickets PLZZZ

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