I think back to the unfathomably powerful being that dragged me into its personal world. I think of the overwhelming force that its mere presence in a soulspace had, of the monsters it unleashed upon us even hundreds of miles away.
There is nothing in the description about controlling it, but the wielder of this item has access to what is essentially a nuclear strike writ larger.
The primary downside, as far as I can tell, is everything.
Still, this is valuable. Up until now, I haven’t had an answer for some of the foes that’ve opposed me, most notably anyone associated with Sapphire.
I don’t know how powerful the two who’d ambushed me were, but I am reasonably sure they were less powerful than Sapphire, especially given the way they referred to some nebulous “she” above them. I can guess who that woman is.
While I’m not familiar with Sapphire’s power level, I can confidently say that the Titans are stronger. This item means I finally have the ability to turn a fight against her.
Not that I can use it without repercussions.
I check my quest.
Objective: Find Sapphire
Sapphire is coming to find you.
Distance: 41 miles
She hasn’t gotten that much closer, which indicates that she isn’t using instantaneous magical transport of any kind.
I have time. Maybe that’s time in the sense of hours, not days, but that’s more than enough to come up with a plan.
I should probably avoid sending a Titan barrelling at this city. Novarath is a city of several hundred thousand, and the ramifications of killing all or most of them will set the entire nation on me. That’s a pain in the ass that I don’t particularly want to deal with yet. Not until I get stronger.
Also, I would probably die.
I shelve the thought for now, turning back to the dweller group.
“So, I say, crossing my arms, “Do you have any more items for me?”
The swarm chitters, looking at each other and then back to me.
I sigh. That’s answer enough.
“No,” they eventually say as one. “What little we have remaining must be used in order to secure the safety of the hive. This is not yet the paradise we seek.”
That tracks. I wouldn’t want to stay here either, and they were a weakened tribe anyway.
Still, I send out droplets of blood, using Shape Blood as a makeshift detection tool. I don’t detect any extra stuff on them that I don’t already have. They have weapons, yes, but nothing that looks like a particularly powerful artifact.
The items they’ve given me are powerful enough. While I would’ve preferred more, the currently-crumbling ceiling prevents me from keeping them here much longer.
I’m honestly quite impressed with myself. I’ve somehow managed to avoid kiling a single one of them, even knowing they could still be hiding items from me right now.
“Then this is goodbye,” I say. “Remember me. The name’s. Evelyn Carnelian.”
I can’t deny that it feels odd to end an interaction with monstrous-looking creatures without being arms-deep inside the corpse of one.
“Evelyn Carnelian,” the dweller swarm says.
They almost seem thoughtful, which is an impressive emotion to express when several dozen of them are speaking at once.
“We rejoin the great hive,” the swarm chitters. “We will remember you, Carnelian.”
Suddenly, dozens of iridescent lights illuminate the darkness. Each of the dwellers begin to glow, a glistening rainbow abruptly appearing amongst their ranks as they ignite with bioluminescent color. If Sierra were here, I’m sure she’d have some comment about how mesmerizing it is.
Just as quickly as it started, it stops. The swirling lights sink straight into the ground, and just like that, they’re gone. Idly, I wonder if they’re tunneling straight to the center of the world. The speed of disappearance is truly commendable. It almost looks like teleportation, but I do manage to catch the faint trail they leave behind.
They leave nothing in their wake, not even a hole.
Dweller magic.
I need to get going. The time I spent receiving the items and examining them was enough for the level around me to finish its structural collapse. It’s gone from chunks of stone, concrete, and rebar falling to the entire structure beginning to cave at once.
For me, this isn’t that much of a problem, but I’d still much rather not be buried alive under several hundred thousand tons of concrete. I reenter my Bloodpath, embracing the redshifted world. Thanks to the many dead anomalies around me, I have plenty of blood to fuel the skill with.
I climb, dashing from chunk of falling floor to the air to another house-sized chunk of debris, and I rise. I’m using up more magic power than I’d like, so midway through, I attempt Devouring the Forgotten Queen.
It’s a little more complicated to consume this creature than it was for other monsters. Even the demonic tree was a single being, rooted in one place. This monster, on the other hand, has its flesh sewn into the collapsing floor itself. Red and black magic streaks out from me, striking at one falling chunk of flesh and stone, and I Devour it.
Brick and steel crumble to pieces as I annihilate the divine flesh woven into the chunk of debris, but I barely get a dozen XP.
I’m in my Bloodpath form, so I can’t frown, but I would if I could. This is a piece of a shadow of a true god, but even then, that low of a return is surprising. I don’t get a temporary skill unlock either, which is even more confusing. Then again, it is an anomaly, and those have historically given me worse returns on my Devour.
The lack of an unlock is still weird. I wonder what the deal with that is. Maybe there’s another distinction between anomalies and divine anomalies? It’s hard to tell.
To be fair, the Forgotten Queen wasn’t much of a god. Yes, it was able to break physics, and yes, I had a near-perfect counter to it, but I was still only level 15 when I killed it. What kind of god falls to that?
Another memory from a life I haven’t lived bubbles to the surface, reminding me that killing one face of a god does not mean annihilating it in its entirety. The Forgotten Queen could easily be a leaf on a twig on a branch on a tree of the god it truly originates from. Even then, it still qualifies for the title of “god” thanks to its existence on that tree.
A baby god. I’d chuckle if I currently had a body.
Semantics aside, I just find it really disappointing that I didn’t get another overpowered level-up or skill from consuming the divine flesh.
I’ll make do with what I can get.
The crumbling ceiling reveals openings wide enough to fit my entire body through. Getting up with Bloodpath is a cinch.
As soon as I reach the second level, things start to look a little more familiar. Rusted towers rise from the ground, a dense latticework of bridges connecting them. They’re evidently not only attached to the ground, because the floor of the second level is the ceiling of the first, and very little of that is intact now.
A tower comes crashing down in the distance, too far for me to see but close enough for me to hear. In the dim, inconsistent light provided by several fresh fires burning in the broken ground, I catch a glimpse of a few of the bridges collapsing hundreds of feet away from me too.
Underneath me, mountains of human refuse, fallen ruins, and discarded trash fall, the Forgotten Queen’s demise setting the place crumbling apart. I wonder how much is going to fall.
I wonder if this’ll affect the people up higher up.
Before I can think about that, though, I need to stay alive. I remain in my Bloodpath, expending blood and magic alike in order to stay afloat as the garbage-ridden surface beneath me crumbles away, the glue that was the Forgotten Queen’s flesh decaying into nothingness.
Despite the fires, I can’t see that far, so I rely on my blood sense. It’s quickly getting untenable. I’m out of extra blood from the anomalies, so Bloodpath is starting to consume the misty cloud that I’ve been using Shape Blood on. My sensory range is decreasing by the second.
And then something brushes against the edge of my blood-cloud. Something living, I can tell, shaped almost like a human. Half a second later, it’s gone.
Could it be a human? I activate Locate Person, glad for the low magic cot. It’s not Sierra. Not Adrian. Nor is it Sapphire, Simon, Rin, Marie, or anyone we incidentally ran into along our journey here. They’re out of range.
I’ve committed to not using the Titan Caller immediately, which means that I need to climb. I need to ascend all four hundred or so floors of this place, find my party, and get the fuck out. Failing that, I’ll find the assassins that backstabbed me.
That said, I still need to survive the ascent in order to think about rejoining other people.
I bring up my system notifications. I’m not entirely sure if I want to swap out a skill now, but I need to make a choice for the random free skill.
Skill type selected: Divine
Rolling for random skill…
New skill unlocked: Radiant Aura
Tier: Silver
Level: 1
Somehow, you have tricked the world into accepting you as a force of divine purity. While active, this skill reveals invisible enemies within thirty feet and inflicts fear onto simple-minded creatures. You can expand extra mana to gain flight while this skill is active.
Any demonic, anomalous, or soul-twisted being within the aura will suffer continuous radiant damage. Any divine creature within the aura gains mild regeneration. Increase damage, range, and healing potential with each level.
For a second, I worry that the aura will damage me, since it doesn’t exclude me from the effects, but the reappearance of the humanoid being in my range alerts me to the fact that I have a quarry.
Said quarry apparently thinks that I’m its prey, not the other way around. It clings to the underside of a rusted bridge, hissing. It’s less than fifteen feet above the floor that is rapidly losing any semblance of being a solid surface, and the broken, twisted bridge it hangs to looks as if it’ll turn to dust any second.
The towers on either side of the bridge creak, and enough of one of them is on fire to illuminate the being I’m facing.
It’s not human, but it might once have been. Now, its legs and arms are one and a half times too long, and its jaw unhinges to reveal a gaping maw twice the size of the rest of its head. Its eye sockets are empty and bleeding. Perhaps most disturbingly, I can see its spine sticking out of it, sharpened bones punching through exposed flesh. Somehow, that part is bloodless.
I think back to the anomalies that Simon and Rin told me about. Every good lie has a grain of truth to it, and if this thing has the power to infect me with sound or touch…
Even if it’s not the same anomaly, I don’t want to let it get started on whatever it’s doing. Its jaw opens wider somehow, and I act.
My new Radiant Aura explodes out from my body, a soft golden light emanating from every inch of my skin. Running it at the same time as Bloodpath is possible thanks to my enhanced Magic (Meta) stat, but the two of them put together will sap me of all my magic power in a matter of minutes, so I drop the redshift, returning to the fire and smoke of the material world.
I tank the extra magic cost to grant myself flight. It drains my magic faster than Bloodpath does, but it works. Translucent, glimmering golden wings spread from my body, and I suppress the temptation to laugh at the angelic design of the skill.
The creature is well within the radius of my aura, and the effect is immediate. Golden light starts to eat away at its flesh, soft radiance growing in intensity until it burns the creature’s flesh everywhere it touches. I pump my remaining three stat points into Magic (Power), and the increase in efficacy is immediate.
Even as its flesh burns away, revealing decaying muscle and twisted skeletature underneath, the creature screeches.
But I never hear the sound. My aura flashes bright, and something in the air distorts. I get the distinct impression that a being has just died.
Did my Radiant Aura kill its attack?
I respond immediately, unslinging the Soulshard Rifle from my back and firing. Using the item is odd—it connects into my mind when I squeeze the trigger, becoming an extra organ that I can control as easily as my breath. As far as I can tell, the only thing I’m changing with this mind-meld is the number of charges I’m using.
There’s only two charges in this weapon, so I use both. Unlike with the assault rifles that the lab had, this one completely lacks recoil, and having pieces of blood contacting my enemy makes it much easier to aim.
A muted yellow beam rockets forth from it, completely silent. Against the golden light of my aura, it’s almost invisible.
What isn’t invisible is the interior of the formerly-human monster’s skull. The beam is no wider than my index finger, but it punctures cleanly through my enemy. The energy of the impact creates a fist-sized hole straight through its oversized head.
As it tumbles to the falling ground below, I try to Appraise it. It’s probably an anomaly, so I don’t expect it to work, but—
Name: ???
Age: ???
Race: Human (Corrupted)
Class: Soundspawn
Level: 21
Last Used Skill: Spawn Infection
Unnamed, this creature once was human. Experimentation made it less so. The Soundspawn now survives by embedding its brood of viruses into the air and infecting othes with it. Consumption not recommended.
It continues falling, and I dive after it. Even as I watch it die, the Radiant Aura I emit doesn’t stop burning its flesh away. It’s covered in more golden light than skin at this point, but that description that my upgraded Appraise gives me isn’t giving me much faith in eating it.
Why is eating non-baby creatures so much more difficult? Ugh.
I do have something I can do other than Devour it, though. Something I’ve freshly received, in fact.
The odd mind-meld sensation that activating the Soulshard Rifle brought on is still there, and I realize that there’s one more function I can gain from it.
A cap on the side of the chrome rifle pops open. Flexing my connection with it produces results immediately. Grey-white mist swirls up from the falling corpse, and it coalesces into a hidden chamber in my rifle.
Whatever magic the dwellers infused into this weapon, it enables me to check its status without using Appraise again, which I appreciate.
Charges: 2/100
Interesting. Two charges, not just one—was that because of the level? I fly up with my Radiant Aura, settling on a bridge that creaks under my weight before turning the skill off. I’m down to just over half of my magic reserves, and given that I haven’t even tried to Devour the corpse, I haven’t regained any of it. It’s too far gone now, probably buried beneath another ton of rubble.
I still have Merciless, which makes my magic usage significantly more efficient when I’m below ten percent of my overall capacity so long as I’m trying to kill something.
There’s a lot of levels above me. Vines crawl up long-abandoned towers, and the latticework of bridges is rusted beyond repair. I remember the sixty-second level being relatively intact, resembling much of what I saw of level 411. Nothing I can see is anywhere near that level.
I tread lightly, ready to activate a skill at any time if the bridge underneath me crumbles away.
Category 0. Am I really that weak? I’ve always known that there were stronger beings in the world, but to be so far down the ladder…
It does explain why the rifle is so effective. Even with only two charges, it annihilated the Soundspawn. Appraise tells me that the item is Category 1, which means that in terms of level, it’s at least an order of magnitude more powerful than anything I can bring to bear.
Come to think about it, I don’t know Sierra’s real level. Neither do I know Adrian’s. Though I was able to beat one of them, I’m abnormally powerful for my level, and he wasn’t doing his utmost to kill me. It’s eminently possible that they could be an entire category above me.
Levels are not all that matter. Categories, stats, skills—everything plays a part, but you will always stand a chance. Battles are not decided by the advancement of the fighter alone nor by their determination. The result is the only truth.
As always, advance.
The memory comes unbidden. I can’t track the source of the quote, but it rings true. Though I might be powerful already, I still have so much more to grow. I might be on par with people who are far higher levels than me, but there’s many more who outstrip me entirely.
Two of those are somewhere in this city, and I’m going to find them.
That said, I need to actually ascend Novarath first.
Objective: Find Sapphire
Sapphire is coming to find you.
Distance: 37 miles
And I need to do it fast.
I climb, alternating between my Radiant Aura and my Bloodpath as I ascend broken floors. I’m still missing a hand, which makes things slightly less convenient, but Phantom Shape is still available to lend me a few extra when I’m running low on magic.
The Soundspawn isn’t alone. I find others of its ilk along with garden-store varieties of monsters I’d expect anywhere. There are fewer anomalies than I’d expect, and most of them aren’t actually that powerful.
I think I’m getting lucky. Nothing close to the level of the Forgotten Queen shows its face again, and I’m able to deal with most everything in my way with some effort. I Devour a few monsters to regain my magic along with some temporary stats, gaining a couple hundred XP in the process. Anytime I face a Soundspawn or anything else that Appraise tells me is unsafe to consume, I steal its soul for my rifle.
As I pass the floors, ascending bit by bit by bit, I catch signs of human inhabitation. Nothing significant, and nothing living. Blood splatters are so common that they’re not worth mentioning. I spot a decaying corpse here, a months-old body stuck full of needles there. Once, I catch sight of two intertwined skeletons next to a long-dead campfire.
Eerie, but whatever humans were down here have been dead for a while.
The monsters, on the other hand, aren’t.
By the time I reach the underside of the sixty-second floor, I have twenty-nine charges in my gun, and I’ve managed to get Bloodpath to level 15, up from 12. Radiant Aura is level 7 now, thanks to all the Soundspawn I’ve threatened away with it.
The level was quarantined, but there’s more spaces in the metal floor blocking off the bottom than I’d thought there would be. Then again, I suppose I did manage to fall all the way to the bottom of the first level from here. Having gaps below makes sense, especially if whoever blocked it off really doesn’t care about dangerous shit getting free.
I find a gap in the metal large enough to slide a finger through, and I slip through with my Bloodpath.
Twenty-nine charges. Three-quarters magic capacity. About a quarter of the way to level 18. One skill left to allocate.
I activate Locate Person once I’m safely inside the entirely empty lab, expecting the same result I’ve gotten every other time I’ve used it.
Except this time, I get a hit.
Sierra is still alive, and she’s less than a thousand feet above me. Adrian is too.
So are Simon and Rin.
I unsling my rifle once more.
Time to get hunting.
I think back to the unfathomably powerful being that dragged me into its personal world. I think of the overwhelming force that its mere presence in a soulspace had, of the monsters it unleashed upon us even hundreds of miles away.
There is nothing in the description about controlling it, but the wielder of this item has access to what is essentially a nuclear strike writ larger.
The primary downside, as far as I can tell, is everything.
Still, this is valuable. Up until now, I haven’t had an answer for some of the foes that’ve opposed me, most notably anyone associated with Sapphire.
I don’t know how powerful the two who’d ambushed me were, but I am reasonably sure they were less powerful than Sapphire, especially given the way they referred to some nebulous “she” above them. I can guess who that woman is.
While I’m not familiar with Sapphire’s power level, I can confidently say that the Titans are stronger. This item means I finally have the ability to turn a fight against her.
Not that I can use it without repercussions.
I check my quest.
Objective: Find Sapphire
Sapphire is coming to find you.
Distance: 41 miles
She hasn’t gotten that much closer, which indicates that she isn’t using instantaneous magical transport of any kind.
I have time. Maybe that’s time in the sense of hours, not days, but that’s more than enough to come up with a plan.
I should probably avoid sending a Titan barrelling at this city. Novarath is a city of several hundred thousand, and the ramifications of killing all or most of them will set the entire nation on me. That’s a pain in the ass that I don’t particularly want to deal with yet. Not until I get stronger.
Also, I would probably die.
I shelve the thought for now, turning back to the dweller group.
“So, I say, crossing my arms, “Do you have any more items for me?”
The swarm chitters, looking at each other and then back to me.
I sigh. That’s answer enough.
“No,” they eventually say as one. “What little we have remaining must be used in order to secure the safety of the hive. This is not yet the paradise we seek.”
That tracks. I wouldn’t want to stay here either, and they were a weakened tribe anyway.
Still, I send out droplets of blood, using Shape Blood as a makeshift detection tool. I don’t detect any extra stuff on them that I don’t already have. They have weapons, yes, but nothing that looks like a particularly powerful artifact.
The items they’ve given me are powerful enough. While I would’ve preferred more, the currently-crumbling ceiling prevents me from keeping them here much longer.
I’m honestly quite impressed with myself. I’ve somehow managed to avoid kiling a single one of them, even knowing they could still be hiding items from me right now.
“Then this is goodbye,” I say. “Remember me. The name’s. Evelyn Carnelian.”
I can’t deny that it feels odd to end an interaction with monstrous-looking creatures without being arms-deep inside the corpse of one.
“Evelyn Carnelian,” the dweller swarm says.
They almost seem thoughtful, which is an impressive emotion to express when several dozen of them are speaking at once.
“We rejoin the great hive,” the swarm chitters. “We will remember you, Carnelian.”
Suddenly, dozens of iridescent lights illuminate the darkness. Each of the dwellers begin to glow, a glistening rainbow abruptly appearing amongst their ranks as they ignite with bioluminescent color. If Sierra were here, I’m sure she’d have some comment about how mesmerizing it is.
Just as quickly as it started, it stops. The swirling lights sink straight into the ground, and just like that, they’re gone. Idly, I wonder if they’re tunneling straight to the center of the world. The speed of disappearance is truly commendable. It almost looks like teleportation, but I do manage to catch the faint trail they leave behind.
They leave nothing in their wake, not even a hole.
Dweller magic.
I need to get going. The time I spent receiving the items and examining them was enough for the level around me to finish its structural collapse. It’s gone from chunks of stone, concrete, and rebar falling to the entire structure beginning to cave at once.
For me, this isn’t that much of a problem, but I’d still much rather not be buried alive under several hundred thousand tons of concrete. I reenter my Bloodpath, embracing the redshifted world. Thanks to the many dead anomalies around me, I have plenty of blood to fuel the skill with.
I climb, dashing from chunk of falling floor to the air to another house-sized chunk of debris, and I rise. I’m using up more magic power than I’d like, so midway through, I attempt Devouring the Forgotten Queen.
It’s a little more complicated to consume this creature than it was for other monsters. Even the demonic tree was a single being, rooted in one place. This monster, on the other hand, has its flesh sewn into the collapsing floor itself. Red and black magic streaks out from me, striking at one falling chunk of flesh and stone, and I Devour it.
Brick and steel crumble to pieces as I annihilate the divine flesh woven into the chunk of debris, but I barely get a dozen XP.
I’m in my Bloodpath form, so I can’t frown, but I would if I could. This is a piece of a shadow of a true god, but even then, that low of a return is surprising. I don’t get a temporary skill unlock either, which is even more confusing. Then again, it is an anomaly, and those have historically given me worse returns on my Devour.
The lack of an unlock is still weird. I wonder what the deal with that is. Maybe there’s another distinction between anomalies and divine anomalies? It’s hard to tell.
To be fair, the Forgotten Queen wasn’t much of a god. Yes, it was able to break physics, and yes, I had a near-perfect counter to it, but I was still only level 15 when I killed it. What kind of god falls to that?
Another memory from a life I haven’t lived bubbles to the surface, reminding me that killing one face of a god does not mean annihilating it in its entirety. The Forgotten Queen could easily be a leaf on a twig on a branch on a tree of the god it truly originates from. Even then, it still qualifies for the title of “god” thanks to its existence on that tree.
A baby god. I’d chuckle if I currently had a body.
Semantics aside, I just find it really disappointing that I didn’t get another overpowered level-up or skill from consuming the divine flesh.
I’ll make do with what I can get.
The crumbling ceiling reveals openings wide enough to fit my entire body through. Getting up with Bloodpath is a cinch.
As soon as I reach the second level, things start to look a little more familiar. Rusted towers rise from the ground, a dense latticework of bridges connecting them. They’re evidently not only attached to the ground, because the floor of the second level is the ceiling of the first, and very little of that is intact now.
A tower comes crashing down in the distance, too far for me to see but close enough for me to hear. In the dim, inconsistent light provided by several fresh fires burning in the broken ground, I catch a glimpse of a few of the bridges collapsing hundreds of feet away from me too.
Underneath me, mountains of human refuse, fallen ruins, and discarded trash fall, the Forgotten Queen’s demise setting the place crumbling apart. I wonder how much is going to fall.
I wonder if this’ll affect the people up higher up.
Before I can think about that, though, I need to stay alive. I remain in my Bloodpath, expending blood and magic alike in order to stay afloat as the garbage-ridden surface beneath me crumbles away, the glue that was the Forgotten Queen’s flesh decaying into nothingness.
Despite the fires, I can’t see that far, so I rely on my blood sense. It’s quickly getting untenable. I’m out of extra blood from the anomalies, so Bloodpath is starting to consume the misty cloud that I’ve been using Shape Blood on. My sensory range is decreasing by the second.
And then something brushes against the edge of my blood-cloud. Something living, I can tell, shaped almost like a human. Half a second later, it’s gone.
Could it be a human? I activate Locate Person, glad for the low magic cot. It’s not Sierra. Not Adrian. Nor is it Sapphire, Simon, Rin, Marie, or anyone we incidentally ran into along our journey here. They’re out of range.
I’ve committed to not using the Titan Caller immediately, which means that I need to climb. I need to ascend all four hundred or so floors of this place, find my party, and get the fuck out. Failing that, I’ll find the assassins that backstabbed me.
That said, I still need to survive the ascent in order to think about rejoining other people.
I bring up my system notifications. I’m not entirely sure if I want to swap out a skill now, but I need to make a choice for the random free skill.
Skill type selected: Divine
Rolling for random skill…
New skill unlocked: Radiant Aura
Tier: Silver
Level: 1
Somehow, you have tricked the world into accepting you as a force of divine purity. While active, this skill reveals invisible enemies within thirty feet and inflicts fear onto simple-minded creatures. You can expand extra mana to gain flight while this skill is active.
Any demonic, anomalous, or soul-twisted being within the aura will suffer continuous radiant damage. Any divine creature within the aura gains mild regeneration. Increase damage, range, and healing potential with each level.
For a second, I worry that the aura will damage me, since it doesn’t exclude me from the effects, but the reappearance of the humanoid being in my range alerts me to the fact that I have a quarry.
Said quarry apparently thinks that I’m its prey, not the other way around. It clings to the underside of a rusted bridge, hissing. It’s less than fifteen feet above the floor that is rapidly losing any semblance of being a solid surface, and the broken, twisted bridge it hangs to looks as if it’ll turn to dust any second.
The towers on either side of the bridge creak, and enough of one of them is on fire to illuminate the being I’m facing.
It’s not human, but it might once have been. Now, its legs and arms are one and a half times too long, and its jaw unhinges to reveal a gaping maw twice the size of the rest of its head. Its eye sockets are empty and bleeding. Perhaps most disturbingly, I can see its spine sticking out of it, sharpened bones punching through exposed flesh. Somehow, that part is bloodless.
I think back to the anomalies that Simon and Rin told me about. Every good lie has a grain of truth to it, and if this thing has the power to infect me with sound or touch…
Even if it’s not the same anomaly, I don’t want to let it get started on whatever it’s doing. Its jaw opens wider somehow, and I act.
My new Radiant Aura explodes out from my body, a soft golden light emanating from every inch of my skin. Running it at the same time as Bloodpath is possible thanks to my enhanced Magic (Meta) stat, but the two of them put together will sap me of all my magic power in a matter of minutes, so I drop the redshift, returning to the fire and smoke of the material world.
I tank the extra magic cost to grant myself flight. It drains my magic faster than Bloodpath does, but it works. Translucent, glimmering golden wings spread from my body, and I suppress the temptation to laugh at the angelic design of the skill.
The creature is well within the radius of my aura, and the effect is immediate. Golden light starts to eat away at its flesh, soft radiance growing in intensity until it burns the creature’s flesh everywhere it touches. I pump my remaining three stat points into Magic (Power), and the increase in efficacy is immediate.
Even as its flesh burns away, revealing decaying muscle and twisted skeletature underneath, the creature screeches.
But I never hear the sound. My aura flashes bright, and something in the air distorts. I get the distinct impression that a being has just died.
Did my Radiant Aura kill its attack?
I respond immediately, unslinging the Soulshard Rifle from my back and firing. Using the item is odd—it connects into my mind when I squeeze the trigger, becoming an extra organ that I can control as easily as my breath. As far as I can tell, the only thing I’m changing with this mind-meld is the number of charges I’m using.
There’s only two charges in this weapon, so I use both. Unlike with the assault rifles that the lab had, this one completely lacks recoil, and having pieces of blood contacting my enemy makes it much easier to aim.
A muted yellow beam rockets forth from it, completely silent. Against the golden light of my aura, it’s almost invisible.
What isn’t invisible is the interior of the formerly-human monster’s skull. The beam is no wider than my index finger, but it punctures cleanly through my enemy. The energy of the impact creates a fist-sized hole straight through its oversized head.
As it tumbles to the falling ground below, I try to Appraise it. It’s probably an anomaly, so I don’t expect it to work, but—
Name: ???
Age: ???
Race: Human (Corrupted)
Class: Soundspawn
Level: 21
Last Used Skill: Spawn Infection
Unnamed, this creature once was human. Experimentation made it less so. The Soundspawn now survives by embedding its brood of viruses into the air and infecting othes with it. Consumption not recommended.
It continues falling, and I dive after it. Even as I watch it die, the Radiant Aura I emit doesn’t stop burning its flesh away. It’s covered in more golden light than skin at this point, but that description that my upgraded Appraise gives me isn’t giving me much faith in eating it.
Why is eating non-baby creatures so much more difficult? Ugh.
I do have something I can do other than Devour it, though. Something I’ve freshly received, in fact.
The odd mind-meld sensation that activating the Soulshard Rifle brought on is still there, and I realize that there’s one more function I can gain from it.
A cap on the side of the chrome rifle pops open. Flexing my connection with it produces results immediately. Grey-white mist swirls up from the falling corpse, and it coalesces into a hidden chamber in my rifle.
Whatever magic the dwellers infused into this weapon, it enables me to check its status without using Appraise again, which I appreciate.
Charges: 2/100
Interesting. Two charges, not just one—was that because of the level? I fly up with my Radiant Aura, settling on a bridge that creaks under my weight before turning the skill off. I’m down to just over half of my magic reserves, and given that I haven’t even tried to Devour the corpse, I haven’t regained any of it. It’s too far gone now, probably buried beneath another ton of rubble.
I still have Merciless, which makes my magic usage significantly more efficient when I’m below ten percent of my overall capacity so long as I’m trying to kill something.
There’s a lot of levels above me. Vines crawl up long-abandoned towers, and the latticework of bridges is rusted beyond repair. I remember the sixty-second level being relatively intact, resembling much of what I saw of level 411. Nothing I can see is anywhere near that level.
I tread lightly, ready to activate a skill at any time if the bridge underneath me crumbles away.
Category 0. Am I really that weak? I’ve always known that there were stronger beings in the world, but to be so far down the ladder…
It does explain why the rifle is so effective. Even with only two charges, it annihilated the Soundspawn. Appraise tells me that the item is Category 1, which means that in terms of level, it’s at least an order of magnitude more powerful than anything I can bring to bear.
Come to think about it, I don’t know Sierra’s real level. Neither do I know Adrian’s. Though I was able to beat one of them, I’m abnormally powerful for my level, and he wasn’t doing his utmost to kill me. It’s eminently possible that they could be an entire category above me.
Levels are not all that matter. Categories, stats, skills—everything plays a part, but you will always stand a chance. Battles are not decided by the advancement of the fighter alone nor by their determination. The result is the only truth.
As always, advance.
The memory comes unbidden. I can’t track the source of the quote, but it rings true. Though I might be powerful already, I still have so much more to grow. I might be on par with people who are far higher levels than me, but there’s many more who outstrip me entirely.
Two of those are somewhere in this city, and I’m going to find them.
That said, I need to actually ascend Novarath first.
Objective: Find Sapphire
Sapphire is coming to find you.
Distance: 37 miles
And I need to do it fast.
I climb, alternating between my Radiant Aura and my Bloodpath as I ascend broken floors. I’m still missing a hand, which makes things slightly less convenient, but Phantom Shape is still available to lend me a few extra when I’m running low on magic.
The Soundspawn isn’t alone. I find others of its ilk along with garden-store varieties of monsters I’d expect anywhere. There are fewer anomalies than I’d expect, and most of them aren’t actually that powerful.
I think I’m getting lucky. Nothing close to the level of the Forgotten Queen shows its face again, and I’m able to deal with most everything in my way with some effort. I Devour a few monsters to regain my magic along with some temporary stats, gaining a couple hundred XP in the process. Anytime I face a Soundspawn or anything else that Appraise tells me is unsafe to consume, I steal its soul for my rifle.
As I pass the floors, ascending bit by bit by bit, I catch signs of human inhabitation. Nothing significant, and nothing living. Blood splatters are so common that they’re not worth mentioning. I spot a decaying corpse here, a months-old body stuck full of needles there. Once, I catch sight of two intertwined skeletons next to a long-dead campfire.
Eerie, but whatever humans were down here have been dead for a while.
The monsters, on the other hand, aren’t.
By the time I reach the underside of the sixty-second floor, I have twenty-nine charges in my gun, and I’ve managed to get Bloodpath to level 15, up from 12. Radiant Aura is level 7 now, thanks to all the Soundspawn I’ve threatened away with it.
The level was quarantined, but there’s more spaces in the metal floor blocking off the bottom than I’d thought there would be. Then again, I suppose I did manage to fall all the way to the bottom of the first level from here. Having gaps below makes sense, especially if whoever blocked it off really doesn’t care about dangerous shit getting free.
I find a gap in the metal large enough to slide a finger through, and I slip through with my Bloodpath.
Twenty-nine charges. Three-quarters magic capacity. About a quarter of the way to level 18. One skill left to allocate.
I activate Locate Person once I’m safely inside the entirely empty lab, expecting the same result I’ve gotten every other time I’ve used it.
Except this time, I get a hit.
Sierra is still alive, and she’s less than a thousand feet above me. Adrian is too.
So are Simon and Rin.
I unsling my rifle once more.
Time to get hunting.
