Everything was calm on the Fublin island, the night was idly going by, Bookie giving regular updates on Pestle’s movents. She had been in the sa place for almost half an hour now, which was starting to really worry Sofia.
Pestle flew out of the liquid mana tank, almost on instinct, the blaring alarms and flashing lights were disorienting, but she felt a strange disturbance coming from below.
She decisively unsummon–
A strange chanical hand grabbed Pestle. It had been fast, too fast, faster than she could even see. The unsummoning failed. She keenly felt sothing, a cold presence, blocking all of her skills, tugging at her connection with Sofia and Bookie.
For the first ti ever in her short undeath, Pestle felt true visceral fear and panic.
[Halt]!
When all else failed, the Lords’ mirror still answered her call. Ti seed to co to a standstill, the alarms distorting into a continuous low hum, the flashing lights stopping, fully inundating the underground facility in an ominous red glow.
Pestle knew she couldn’t stay like this for long, already her thoughts were starting to slow down.
She finally got to give a good look at the chanical abomination that had handed her, so kind of giant, distorted chanical human figure with six arms and six red eyes. Its lower body was still in the mana tank, its legs slowly erging from the ground, as if growing straight out of the tank’s tal.
Pesle ss up!!!
The creature moved so fast that even in this ‘halted’ ti, Pestle could see its six eyes shifting, observing her, while a hole opened up in its forehead, shooting a strange, invisible beam toward her. It moved slowly, centiter by centiter, only observable by the obvious spatial disturbance it created. It seed to erase space itself as it approached her.
Pestle clearly understood that even for her, getting hit by this thing ant death. There was no coming back from it.
She desperately tried to fight back, bit and sliced at the hand holding her, tried unsummoning herself again and again, even tried to blow her mana heart up, to let her bones collapse, but it was all pointless. She could not even leave a scratch on the mundane-looking alloyed fingers wrapped around her bones.
No… Pesle is…
Sofia… Is be… Sad…
The beam got closer and closer under the chanical being’s cold gaze.
On the surface, Bookie had suddenly started screaming in pain, while Sofia suddenly felt like a cold hand had grabbed her soul, pulling on it as if to rip it away from her body.
She imdiately understood. Forced teleportation. She could resist it, but with Bookie’s current state, she could only think one thing. Pestle needed help.
It was a dangerous gamble. But that thought did not even cross her mind at that ti.
Sofia grabbed her dagger, released her grasp on Elsep, and disappeared.
Sofia appeared on Pestle’s right, face to face with the enemy, surprising even the chanical being, which had failed to calculate that she would proactively accept the forced teleport.
She saw the beam aid at Pestle, her body acting instinctively. Her left arm shot toward the beam, and her right toward the black-hole looking thing that shone brightly in the middle of the monster’s chest. The beam landed first. It touched Sofia’s palm. Undescribable pain assaulted her senses as her entire arm disappeared. It was gone, erased from the world. It was like her soul was getting torn apart. The erasure stopped at her shoulder, interrupted by the helt’s damage immunity. Before she could do anything else, five chanical arms battered her body, turning it to a dust of pulverized flesh, but she had her head and right arm left.
The dagger hit an invisible shield. It was stopped for an instant, before magically cutting through. The chanical being’s reaction was instantaneous, letting go of Pestle, its six arms crossed in the way to block the dagger. But the dagger kept going.
The chanical being’s alloy had complete immunity to physical damage, but it dared not take any risk against this unknown weapon that had pierced through its five defense fields without any resistance. The unexpected attack had activated all of its defensive protocols, completely foregoing offense.
The dagger pierced through the six arms like paper.
This made absolutely no sense to its chanical brain.
The chanical being tried to escape.
It could not. After all, its origins were not entirely chanical. Its core structure still contained so original parts, naly: alloy-reinforced bones.
Pestle, freed, flew right to Sofia’s help. But a sudden pull on her bones sucked her into Sofia’s helt.
The dagger pierced straight through the swirling black energy core.
Space cracked in an ominous black fissure.
Sofia focused all of her passive healing into explosively regrowing her bone armor. As the underground facility was engulfed by the ominous fissure, she transposed herself away.
Having been gone for barely more than a second, she reappeared at the campsite, in front of a small bone figurine of herself.
The pain was too much, her body fell into Pareth’s arms as her thoughts faded.
Sofia woke up with the worst headache of her life, her skull throbbing, skin sweating. She weakly opened her eyes, confused at her situation. She seed to be in so narrow cavern, lying on a straw mat, next to a weak campfire.
Imdiately she checked her connections. She could still feel Bookie, Pareth and Pestle.
With a sigh of relief, she tried sitting up.
This was when it hit her.
“Ah…”
Her left arm was nowhere to be seen. She propped herself up with her other arm. Her helt and other things were neatly stacked next to her, she was actually wearing Sonia’s clothes, and her left arm was gone.
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Na : Sofia Aphenoreth
Age :21 ♢
Class : [Saintomancer] ♢
Sub-Class : [False Lord] ♢
Level : 300
Health :15 122 005 (-20%)
Stamina : 7 846 671
Mana : 199 572 495 ( 77%)
Divinity: 130
(Mana Regeneration: (0.32%) Other sources = 847 371/s)
(Mana Regeneration in Sunlight : (0.32%) Other sources = 2 067 605/s)
Main Specialization : [Eclipse Skeleton]
Alteration chance : 100%
Secondary Specialization : [Heat Death]
Tertiary Specialization : [Sovereign of Unshackled fras]
Signature Skill (ULTIMATE)
[Awakening of the five calamities]
Mana Heart Abilities (4)
[Infinity Engine] Lv.3
[Relocate Core] ULTIMATE Rank
[Slashing Resistance]
[Explosion Resistance]
Remaining possible skill slots : 0.9 / 47.5
False Lord Skills (3 of 50 Slots)
♢ [Singularity edict] ♢ (1S)
♢ [Paradise Toybox] ♢ (1S)
♢ [Extinguish] ♢ (1S)
Active Skills (16.8 of 47.5 Slots)
[Spine of the Black Sun] - Level 349 (1S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Summon Odalite Blood] - Level 349 (5.3S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Graveyard of the Nymphs] - Level 349 (1.3S)
[False immortality] - Level 5 (3.2S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Skull Choir] - Level 349 (0.7 0.5S)
[Reign over shadows] (1.1S)
[Saintomancer’s Star] (1.4S)
[Avatar of Zeus] (1.6S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
♢ [Abereth of Greed] ♢ (0.7S)
Passive Skills (9.2 of 47.5 Slots)
[Blessing of the Deep] - (3/4) (0S)
♢ [Vakariazrehafin, Hungering hand of Sorrow] ♢ (2.1S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
♢ [Venerable physique of the prival void] ♢ - Starting step Boundless Space realm (4.3S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Runeforged Overlord] ♢ - Level 5 (1S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Sixth lody] (0.9S)
[Forced Genius body] ♢ (0.9S) /!\ MISSING NECESSARY LIMB /!\
Classless Skills (6.7 of 47.5 Slots)
♢ [Dreams Of a Demon which Gods Envy - March of the Envoy] ♢ (2.2S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Summon Self] - Level 100 (0.6S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Essence Resonator] ♢ (1.3S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Radiance] - Level 100 (1S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
[Crystallized Suffering] ♢ (1.6S) /!\ INCOMPLETE CIRCUITS /!\
Racial Skills (5 of 47.5 Slots)
♢ [Edgewalker] ♢
♢ [Pillar of Creation] ♢
♢ [Mockery of the Divine] ♢ /!\ MISSING NECESSARY LIMB /!\
♢ [Convergent Evolution] ♢
♢ [Quantic transposition] ♢
Special Skills (0.1 of 47.5 Slots)
♢ [The Book of Skeletons] ♢ (0.1S)
Wildcast Skills (3 of 47.5 Slots)
[Angel’s bolt] ♢ (1.5S) /!\ MISSING NECESSARY LIMB /!\
[Identify] (0.9S)
[Call Elental Sprite] ♢ (0.6S)
Biomagical engineering (2.8 of 47.5 Slots)
[All-in Earring] (2.3S)
[Prototype Relocation Eye] (0.5S)
Summoned heroes (4 / 4)
Lv.300 Pareth (Holy Hrimthurs Draugr Eclipse Skeleton)Lv.299 Alith (Alith)Lv.300 Book of Skeletons (Book)Lv.300 Ihuarah (Heartless Shade)
[Mark of Aphenoreth]
“Fuck… At least… Everyone is safe…”
Sofia suddenly felt weak, she let herself fall back on the hay, breathing heavily.
Sofia heard a faint gasp, followed by the sound of fluttering wings. A blue-haired fairy appeared above her face. She had a complicated expression, large tears welling up at the corner of her eyes.
“Sofiaaaaaaaaa…” Pestle bawled, falling weakly on Sofia’s chest. “Pesle sorry… Am Klepra… Pesle is deserve die… Waaaaaa–”
“It’s alright… There, there…” Sofia reassured Pestle, weakly caressing her tiny head. She couldn’t quite comprehend why and how Pestle was no longer a skeleton, but that was a aningless detail at this point. Her touch and soft words cald Pestle a bit, but the fairy kept trembling and crying.
“Because of Pesle… Sofia arm… It- It…”
“It’s nothing…” Sofia said, glancing at the empty space where her arm would be, quickly burying the pain she felt deep where Pestle couldn’t notice it. “I’m fine… It’s just an arm. As long as everyone is alive… It doesn’t matter.”
“Sofiaaaaa…”
Pestle was such a crying ss that she fell asleep on Sofia’s chest before long, still trembling in her sleep.
Sofia softly exhaled, staring at the rocky ceiling of the cavern just two or three ters above her, darkened with soot from the fire.
“How long have I been here…” she mumbled.
The others were still quite far, but she could tell Pareth knew she was awake. Despite that he was not rushing back. You must be fighting… Be safe. I won’t move. Pestle is with .
This was when Sofia’s oldest companion decided to chi in.
[From my internal data, it has been slightly over three months. My consciousness resurfaced about two hours before yours.]
“Three months… Shit…”
From the obvious concentration of ambient mana, they were still in the forbidden layer, which was not a great sign. Then again, the others had pushed through despite her being a literal dead weight, so it was understandable.
“How bad is the injury?”
[Pretty bad. But it could have been much worse.]
[Thankfully only the physical side of the blueprint was impacted.]
[The helt and our Mark are the only reasons we survived.]
The mark?
Sofia hadn’t even noticed her system logs during the short encounter. Of course because she was out of system range, there weren’t many, and there was now a three month gap. But the few notifications she had were mind-blowing enough by themselves.
[You were subjected to a Complete-Annihilation attack, but it was partly dismissed]
[The ‘Mark of Aphenoreth’ heavily punishes the attacker]
[Quest option five ‘Kill an ascended before Ascending’: completed.]
[Quest ‘Edrazeketh’s approval’ complete; congratulations! Your reward will be delivered soon.]
[Rewards delivered successfully!]
Large beads of sweat rolled down Sofia’s forehead.
Ascended.
Suddenly she felt lucky and grateful that she had only lost an arm.
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