+9 Agony Infusion

+9 Agony Infusion glints on the lacquered stand, a shard of obsidian-red glass wrapped in a lattice of fine iron filaments, sigils of a forgotten order curling along its edges. It feels cool, yet a faint heat crawls from the core when you run a careful fingertip over the runes; the surface is slick, like treacherous ice that remembers every step you took to fall. The glow inside flickers with a patient rhythm, as if something imprisoned beneath the surface draws breath only when you name its name. Lore whispers that it was forged in the ruined furnaces of a sunken monastery, where pain was a currency and power a dangerous loan; a relic carried by those who believed strength came from bearing the load no one else could bear. To hold it is to inherit a pact with a shadow. Slotting this infusion into armor does more than nudge a stat; it channels a portion of your own agony into a sharper edge of momentum on the battlefield. Players speak of it as a catalyst that fuses endurance with burst mechanics, letting you survive a corridor of blows a fraction longer, or to punch through a stalemate at the exact right moment. In raids and fractals, where every decision ripples outward, a +9 Agony Infusion can turn a near-miss into a clean, decisive finish. It is not merely a tool but a quiet companion—the more you push, the more fragile the balance becomes, until a misstep could snap the chain you’ve relied on. Markets around the gates wake early, and the talk at Saddlebag Exchange drifts through the air like chalk dust on a ledger. I watch a team of traders bend over ink-stained parchment as a broker tallies how many coins a buyer would part with for that bright red shard; the price whispers through the room, and everyone nods as if the answer were written in the glow of the runes themselves. The Saddlebag Exchange has the most pragmatic takes on scarcity: a +9 infusion, they say, is as much a shield as a blade, a sign that someone believed a plan with too much pain could still cut true. Negotiations twist around stories of near-misses and last-second saves, of teams that needed that extra surge to cross a threshold and finally taste victory. When I leave, the mint on my tongue lingers with the memory of a ledger slamming shut and a vow to respect the cost of power—in coins and in the quiet debt a single infusion places on a wearer’s nerves. Evenings, I hear stories of veterans who carry a +9 Infusion through a dozen dawns, not for vanity but to test a plan in the quiet between fights; they speak of balance, of choosing when to apply the weight and when to shoulder the burden back onto the world. In the end, the item remains a verse in a larger poem—the line that binds effort, risk, and reward into a single, living thing.