Lissandra then pauses and closes her eyes again, taking in a deep, slow breath; the smile on her face increases.
I don't feel any mana from her, none at all. It's as if her heart isn't beating and creating it. Yet the danger I feel from her is extreme. My instincts, my senses, all of them warn me and scream at me to run. The woman in front of me is much more dangerous than the people we just dealt with.
"Lissthanie?" I throw at her, testingly.
She shakes her head, "I'm sorry to say that, little pup, but that part of me is gone. I improved my imprint, and when I embedded it into Hadwin's hand, I removed your influence from it and also a few mistakes I made."
"That's a shame; I kind of liked that version of you."
"No, you did not, you hated it."
"True," I carefully walk to the side, and the kinetic energy I've already collected is quite massive. I'm also extremely hard to kill with the bracelet on my hand, yet... I can't see her level or her class. As before, there isn't any info over her head. I don't see it the same way I didn't see it on the second floor or the same way I don't see it over the heads of tutorial attendees.
I don't think it's because she is as strong as before; she is weakened and terribly so without her potent mana, yet, she feels dangerous.
She knew I would burn her; she knew her imprint was imperfect, so she dealt with it.
I don't even know how, but she is standing in front of me; before I'm able to do anything, her fist hits my chest and sends me flying against the wall.
I see that she only tilts her head and grabs Tess's javelin, and with immense force, throws it back at the blonde girl. It pierces Tess's chest and pins her to the wall.
"I have shown you mercy, so do not annoy me any further," Lissandra says to Tess and her steps are light as she moves towards me.
When Lissandra appears in front of me again, I'm prepared, and all around me, kinetic energy explodes, yet she endures it and only lightly dodges to the side a few times, jumps over one attack, and then ducks slightly and twists her upper body while deflecting the rest.
Lissandra dodges it all while looking exceedingly nimble. I slash against her, boosted with the entirety of my mana and my body constantly ravaged. She matches my speed perfectly.
She is much faster, yet she slows down to my level and totally destroys me. She dodges every slash, every kick, every blast of flames or kinetic energy. She redirects mana projectiles with the back of her hand. She cancels flames with a swing of her hand.
And then she slaps me, sending me to the ground.
"Little pup, you wouldn't believe how much I wanted to do that," Beautiful, full of energy, and smiling she stares down at me.
Then we hear a scream and see Lily stagger backward, one of her arms missing and a big round hole in the silver door with her grayish mana still along the edges.
Before Lissandra moves, a stream of Sophie's mind-manipulating mana shoots at her, yet Lissandra dodges even that and Isabella's flames after. She grabs the javelin Tess again throws at her and ignores the lightning that flickers around her body, coming from the javelin she holds. With a quick twist in the waist, she kicks me as I try to dash at her and endures the cone of kinetic energy I shoot at her.
"I'm sorry, little girl, I can't let you do that," with a quick movement she steps to the side and throws the javelin at Lily. The weapon pierces the shoulder of the black-haired girl.
Then, instead of Lily´s falling to the ground, the illusion made by Aaron or Dennis disappears and the real position of Lily is revealed, already standing close to the Saint.
The Saint is an unearthly beautiful woman who lies on the bed. Her skin seems to have some warmth to it and her chest is moving up and down; the woman seemingly only sleeping peacefully.
Yet it's only a body, a shell that used to house a brilliant mind. A woman who used to be strong enough to be called Absolute, the title that Lissandra also has.
Lissandra moves and easily avoids Hadwin, Tess's, and Kim's attacks and even throws a piece of rubble at Sophie, sending her crashing against the wall while coughing out blood.
Lily is already attacking the Saint and her gray, smoke-like mana continues to crash against the dead woman's body, barely doing any damage.
Lissandra stops right before passing through the hole in the silver door; there is still Lily's [Disintegration] floating around the entrance and creating something like a net.
For the first time, Lissandra hesitates.
My eyes meet those of Lily, and she says something; at the same time, both of her legs disappear, and I feel her skill strengthening even further as it pushes against the Saint. Lily, having only a single arm, continues to shoot mana at the Saint, sacrificing her limbs to strengthen her skill.
Immediately I stop releasing my mana and force the little that remains under my control. Just in time as Lily succeeds and grayish mana hits the Saint's head and chest, taking a big chunk out of them.
Congratulations! You've successfully completed the 3rd floor's main quest in the fifth round of the tutorial for Hell difficulty. An entrance to the 4th floor has been created.
An entrance appears next to each of us, and I see Lily falling through hers.
"Get in!" Tess shouts, yet she stays behind and watches, making sure everyone enters.
At first, Lissandra is confused but then quickly turns around and rushes at me.
There is no entrance next to her.
Tess enters her entrance as the last one other than me, and before Lissandra reaches me, I enter it as well.
When I pass through, I turn around, expecting the entrance to close now that all the members of the tutorial have passed, yet it's still there, and I get goosebumps all over my body.
Lissandra is standing in front of the entrance and looking at me, "I can see it now," I easily read the words she mouths, and she steps a bit closer, her hand carefully touching the entrance to the fourth floor. It looks like she can't pass through; her hand only touches it, and unlike for us, it's like firm material for her, not a portal.
The entrance starts flickering, yet her eyes that look at me are confident. She seems happy, excited about what is to come, and ready to take on anything that dares to challenge her.
She looks like she found a reason to live again and unlike on the second floor, her eyes are full of life.
When the entrance flickers and finally disappears, I sigh with relief.
Logically, Lissandra should have disappeared the moment we completed the quest and left the floor, yet I can't be sure. Something tells me this is not the last time we'll see her.
For now, I ignore the notifications and only check the surroundings with [Perception]. When I don't find any monster or human, I walk towards where Lily is lying. Tess is already holding the petite brunette in her arms, and Lily is sobbing.
More than in pain, it looks like she is just scared; she is hyperventilating, and her eyes continue to tick from side to side. She also doesn't seem to hear Tess, who continues to try to calm her down while caressing her hair.
Lily currently has only a single arm, and even from that, she misses a few fingers. The arm she has is the pale one, the same paleness she shares with me. Both of her legs are gone and the second arm as well, all used through [Sacrifice] as fuel to power [Disintegration].
I know she can restore them all given enough time, yet it's not a good look.
"Tess, if she allows me, I can use my skill and help her calm down a bit, maybe even fall asleep," Sophie's voice is gentle as if soothing a small child; she is even smiling at Lily carefully while offering so.
At that moment, Lily seems to hear that, and I can see that she is inclined to accept her offer, but before she says anything, she looks around, looking for someone.
Her eyes meet mine.
She looks so pitiful, just a torso with a single arm. But, at this moment, I don't see that at all; in my mind, I only remember her face as she pushed herself to her limit, sacrificed her own limbs, and did it just to help us clear the floor. Worrying about what Lissandra will do to us.
It's weird, but I think that was the moment I felt I saw her for the first time. I remember every detail of her face, sweat running down her forehead, bangs sticking to it, her big eyes full of fear and resolution, her clenched jaw, and the movement of her mana.
At that moment, she was beautiful. In the same way, Lissandra was beautiful when she threw everything away to follow her twisted logic and destroy her fake world.
"Lily, it's okay now," I say while observing my voice. I sound calm; there is a bit of gentleness in it, yet it's still firm.
Just that short sentence seems to be enough, and it still takes a while but she slowly calms down.
"You don't have to do anything, Sophie; I will deal with it on my own," her voice is firmer, and she doesn't hesitate anymore as she says so.
Such a silly kid, a cool silly kid.
"Well, that was unexpected," Tess sits next to me, and together we look down from the cliff where we are.
We got thrown on top of a giant mountain, and a strong, cold wind constantly blows here. There are weirdly shaped mountains all around us, some of them even covered with snow. The cliff I'm sitting on offers a view of the valley below us; there is a giant lake down there with water so clear that it almost looks unreal, and we can see the tops of green trees.
The view is a killer.
"I hope you did diss Hadwin a bit," I lean back and turn my head to Tess.
"I didn't even have to; he constantly does it on his own and keeps apologizing to everyone around. At some point, I'm sure he will apologize to Biscuit as well."
Good. Everyone learns from their own mistakes, so I think we can give Hadwin a little bit of slack. It's not like he had bad intentions; he is nearly innocent.
And no, it's not like I'm defending him because I also might be partially to blame.
Nope. I did nothing wrong.
Damn it! Why doesn't she just die?! A goddamn cockroach, like Absolute. The way she clings to life is almost admirable. Plus, if things go the way they're going now, I'm sure I will do a few more similar things and break the tutorial and the system around the 7th floor.
Hmm, that does sound kind of interesting.
"Lily?" I ask Tess.
"She is sleeping now. It will take a few days or weeks before she restores her limbs, but she doesn't have to worry; we will take care of her."
"Sounds good," I answer.
The silence that ensues is interrupted only by the chilling cold wind that I ignore, even though I'm sitting here in tattered, thin clothes. My heart continuously creates energy that I transfer into thermal energy to keep myself warm. I even left a few orbs for others that they use as heaters, and little Isabella also helps by radiating some heat.
"Nat, she did play with us, right? She didn't fight seriously at all."
"Yes. What kind of adult would go all out on little kids?" I answer Tess, "But I still think she wanted to keep us there. She needs a new mana heart and to become more like us to escape the tutorial. She would sacrifice any of us to do so if we stayed there."
Lissandra tricked me. She made me think she had less mana than she actually did. She also acted as if my personality affected her more than it did, causing me to lower my guard.
In the end, she even connected to the healing aura of the Saint in a similar way to the items I took. The woman copied my [Resonance] to do so. Then she spent her entire or nearly entire remaining mana to recreate her body.
The scary part is that she affected the process and recreated her body to be as strong as possible, each stat other than mana probably well into the high hundreds.
She fought us with only the strength of her body.
I made a mistake and it nearly cost us. Actually, it did cost us; we couldn't take much stuff with us, only a few big bags that the twins and Kim, no, Min-Jae, shamelessly took with them to the castle and left before the throne room. They grabbed them again when they were returning from fighting Edwal, such greedy little twerps.
What I regret is not being able to train in the aura of the Saint, but that's kind of my fault, so I will deal with it as I always did. I will bear the consequences of my decisions.
Now then, the notifications.
Congratulations! You have cleared the 3rd floor of the Hell difficulty tutorial. Welcome to the 4th floor: Waning Realm.
You have acquired:
Access to the Shop
Skill upgrade token
Rare-graded gear of your choice
30 stat points
Well done! You successfully entered the 4th floor. You can now select one of the sub-classes. The classes are based on your actions and performance up until now within the Tutorial.
Pick carefully; it's difficult to change your sub-class!
Available sub-classes:
Initiate of Pride
Initiate of Patience
Initiate of Greed
cerim
The third floor has ended, hooray to the 4th floor! There is plenty of fun stuff I have prepared for you.
I hope you liked the end of the floor as much as I did :) If you have any questions (or compliments), throw them at me either here or on Discord > https://discord.gg/dBcjRGcM
Thanks for sticking around and have a nice weekend!
Lissandra then pauses and closes her eyes again, taking in a deep, slow breath; the smile on her face increases.
I don't feel any mana from her, none at all. It's as if her heart isn't beating and creating it. Yet the danger I feel from her is extreme. My instincts, my senses, all of them warn me and scream at me to run. The woman in front of me is much more dangerous than the people we just dealt with.
"Lissthanie?" I throw at her, testingly.
She shakes her head, "I'm sorry to say that, little pup, but that part of me is gone. I improved my imprint, and when I embedded it into Hadwin's hand, I removed your influence from it and also a few mistakes I made."
"That's a shame; I kind of liked that version of you."
"No, you did not, you hated it."
"True," I carefully walk to the side, and the kinetic energy I've already collected is quite massive. I'm also extremely hard to kill with the bracelet on my hand, yet... I can't see her level or her class. As before, there isn't any info over her head. I don't see it the same way I didn't see it on the second floor or the same way I don't see it over the heads of tutorial attendees.
I don't think it's because she is as strong as before; she is weakened and terribly so without her potent mana, yet, she feels dangerous.
She knew I would burn her; she knew her imprint was imperfect, so she dealt with it.
I don't even know how, but she is standing in front of me; before I'm able to do anything, her fist hits my chest and sends me flying against the wall.
I see that she only tilts her head and grabs Tess's javelin, and with immense force, throws it back at the blonde girl. It pierces Tess's chest and pins her to the wall.
"I have shown you mercy, so do not annoy me any further," Lissandra says to Tess and her steps are light as she moves towards me.
When Lissandra appears in front of me again, I'm prepared, and all around me, kinetic energy explodes, yet she endures it and only lightly dodges to the side a few times, jumps over one attack, and then ducks slightly and twists her upper body while deflecting the rest.
Lissandra dodges it all while looking exceedingly nimble. I slash against her, boosted with the entirety of my mana and my body constantly ravaged. She matches my speed perfectly.
She is much faster, yet she slows down to my level and totally destroys me. She dodges every slash, every kick, every blast of flames or kinetic energy. She redirects mana projectiles with the back of her hand. She cancels flames with a swing of her hand.
And then she slaps me, sending me to the ground.
"Little pup, you wouldn't believe how much I wanted to do that," Beautiful, full of energy, and smiling she stares down at me.
Then we hear a scream and see Lily stagger backward, one of her arms missing and a big round hole in the silver door with her grayish mana still along the edges.
Before Lissandra moves, a stream of Sophie's mind-manipulating mana shoots at her, yet Lissandra dodges even that and Isabella's flames after. She grabs the javelin Tess again throws at her and ignores the lightning that flickers around her body, coming from the javelin she holds. With a quick twist in the waist, she kicks me as I try to dash at her and endures the cone of kinetic energy I shoot at her.
"I'm sorry, little girl, I can't let you do that," with a quick movement she steps to the side and throws the javelin at Lily. The weapon pierces the shoulder of the black-haired girl.
Then, instead of Lily´s falling to the ground, the illusion made by Aaron or Dennis disappears and the real position of Lily is revealed, already standing close to the Saint.
The Saint is an unearthly beautiful woman who lies on the bed. Her skin seems to have some warmth to it and her chest is moving up and down; the woman seemingly only sleeping peacefully.
Yet it's only a body, a shell that used to house a brilliant mind. A woman who used to be strong enough to be called Absolute, the title that Lissandra also has.
Lissandra moves and easily avoids Hadwin, Tess's, and Kim's attacks and even throws a piece of rubble at Sophie, sending her crashing against the wall while coughing out blood.
Lily is already attacking the Saint and her gray, smoke-like mana continues to crash against the dead woman's body, barely doing any damage.
Lissandra stops right before passing through the hole in the silver door; there is still Lily's [Disintegration] floating around the entrance and creating something like a net.
For the first time, Lissandra hesitates.
My eyes meet those of Lily, and she says something; at the same time, both of her legs disappear, and I feel her skill strengthening even further as it pushes against the Saint. Lily, having only a single arm, continues to shoot mana at the Saint, sacrificing her limbs to strengthen her skill.
Immediately I stop releasing my mana and force the little that remains under my control. Just in time as Lily succeeds and grayish mana hits the Saint's head and chest, taking a big chunk out of them.
Congratulations! You've successfully completed the 3rd floor's main quest in the fifth round of the tutorial for Hell difficulty. An entrance to the 4th floor has been created.
An entrance appears next to each of us, and I see Lily falling through hers.
"Get in!" Tess shouts, yet she stays behind and watches, making sure everyone enters.
At first, Lissandra is confused but then quickly turns around and rushes at me.
There is no entrance next to her.
Tess enters her entrance as the last one other than me, and before Lissandra reaches me, I enter it as well.
When I pass through, I turn around, expecting the entrance to close now that all the members of the tutorial have passed, yet it's still there, and I get goosebumps all over my body.
Lissandra is standing in front of the entrance and looking at me, "I can see it now," I easily read the words she mouths, and she steps a bit closer, her hand carefully touching the entrance to the fourth floor. It looks like she can't pass through; her hand only touches it, and unlike for us, it's like firm material for her, not a portal.
The entrance starts flickering, yet her eyes that look at me are confident. She seems happy, excited about what is to come, and ready to take on anything that dares to challenge her.
She looks like she found a reason to live again and unlike on the second floor, her eyes are full of life.
When the entrance flickers and finally disappears, I sigh with relief.
Logically, Lissandra should have disappeared the moment we completed the quest and left the floor, yet I can't be sure. Something tells me this is not the last time we'll see her.
For now, I ignore the notifications and only check the surroundings with [Perception]. When I don't find any monster or human, I walk towards where Lily is lying. Tess is already holding the petite brunette in her arms, and Lily is sobbing.
More than in pain, it looks like she is just scared; she is hyperventilating, and her eyes continue to tick from side to side. She also doesn't seem to hear Tess, who continues to try to calm her down while caressing her hair.
Lily currently has only a single arm, and even from that, she misses a few fingers. The arm she has is the pale one, the same paleness she shares with me. Both of her legs are gone and the second arm as well, all used through [Sacrifice] as fuel to power [Disintegration].
I know she can restore them all given enough time, yet it's not a good look.
"Tess, if she allows me, I can use my skill and help her calm down a bit, maybe even fall asleep," Sophie's voice is gentle as if soothing a small child; she is even smiling at Lily carefully while offering so.
At that moment, Lily seems to hear that, and I can see that she is inclined to accept her offer, but before she says anything, she looks around, looking for someone.
Her eyes meet mine.
She looks so pitiful, just a torso with a single arm. But, at this moment, I don't see that at all; in my mind, I only remember her face as she pushed herself to her limit, sacrificed her own limbs, and did it just to help us clear the floor. Worrying about what Lissandra will do to us.
It's weird, but I think that was the moment I felt I saw her for the first time. I remember every detail of her face, sweat running down her forehead, bangs sticking to it, her big eyes full of fear and resolution, her clenched jaw, and the movement of her mana.
At that moment, she was beautiful. In the same way, Lissandra was beautiful when she threw everything away to follow her twisted logic and destroy her fake world.
"Lily, it's okay now," I say while observing my voice. I sound calm; there is a bit of gentleness in it, yet it's still firm.
Just that short sentence seems to be enough, and it still takes a while but she slowly calms down.
"You don't have to do anything, Sophie; I will deal with it on my own," her voice is firmer, and she doesn't hesitate anymore as she says so.
Such a silly kid, a cool silly kid.
"Well, that was unexpected," Tess sits next to me, and together we look down from the cliff where we are.
We got thrown on top of a giant mountain, and a strong, cold wind constantly blows here. There are weirdly shaped mountains all around us, some of them even covered with snow. The cliff I'm sitting on offers a view of the valley below us; there is a giant lake down there with water so clear that it almost looks unreal, and we can see the tops of green trees.
The view is a killer.
"I hope you did diss Hadwin a bit," I lean back and turn my head to Tess.
"I didn't even have to; he constantly does it on his own and keeps apologizing to everyone around. At some point, I'm sure he will apologize to Biscuit as well."
Good. Everyone learns from their own mistakes, so I think we can give Hadwin a little bit of slack. It's not like he had bad intentions; he is nearly innocent.
And no, it's not like I'm defending him because I also might be partially to blame.
Nope. I did nothing wrong.
Damn it! Why doesn't she just die?! A goddamn cockroach, like Absolute. The way she clings to life is almost admirable. Plus, if things go the way they're going now, I'm sure I will do a few more similar things and break the tutorial and the system around the 7th floor.
Hmm, that does sound kind of interesting.
"Lily?" I ask Tess.
"She is sleeping now. It will take a few days or weeks before she restores her limbs, but she doesn't have to worry; we will take care of her."
"Sounds good," I answer.
The silence that ensues is interrupted only by the chilling cold wind that I ignore, even though I'm sitting here in tattered, thin clothes. My heart continuously creates energy that I transfer into thermal energy to keep myself warm. I even left a few orbs for others that they use as heaters, and little Isabella also helps by radiating some heat.
"Nat, she did play with us, right? She didn't fight seriously at all."
"Yes. What kind of adult would go all out on little kids?" I answer Tess, "But I still think she wanted to keep us there. She needs a new mana heart and to become more like us to escape the tutorial. She would sacrifice any of us to do so if we stayed there."
Lissandra tricked me. She made me think she had less mana than she actually did. She also acted as if my personality affected her more than it did, causing me to lower my guard.
In the end, she even connected to the healing aura of the Saint in a similar way to the items I took. The woman copied my [Resonance] to do so. Then she spent her entire or nearly entire remaining mana to recreate her body.
The scary part is that she affected the process and recreated her body to be as strong as possible, each stat other than mana probably well into the high hundreds.
She fought us with only the strength of her body.
I made a mistake and it nearly cost us. Actually, it did cost us; we couldn't take much stuff with us, only a few big bags that the twins and Kim, no, Min-Jae, shamelessly took with them to the castle and left before the throne room. They grabbed them again when they were returning from fighting Edwal, such greedy little twerps.
What I regret is not being able to train in the aura of the Saint, but that's kind of my fault, so I will deal with it as I always did. I will bear the consequences of my decisions.
Now then, the notifications.
Congratulations! You have cleared the 3rd floor of the Hell difficulty tutorial. Welcome to the 4th floor: Waning Realm.
You have acquired:
Access to the Shop
Skill upgrade token
Rare-graded gear of your choice
30 stat points
Well done! You successfully entered the 4th floor. You can now select one of the sub-classes. The classes are based on your actions and performance up until now within the Tutorial.
Pick carefully; it's difficult to change your sub-class!
Available sub-classes:
Initiate of Pride
Initiate of Patience
Initiate of Greed
cerim
The third floor has ended, hooray to the 4th floor! There is plenty of fun stuff I have prepared for you.
I hope you liked the end of the floor as much as I did :) If you have any questions (or compliments), throw them at me either here or on Discord > https://discord.gg/dBcjRGcM
Thanks for sticking around and have a nice weekend!
