The dark figure, Pride, turned to watch as she fled. The creature started to walk slowly after her, seemingly unconcerned with her flight. Soon the field full of statues would be creatures that were all under thrall.

I suppose if I had a mass transform stone spell that I didn’t need to speak I’d be less concerned about the little fish, too. Truly the longer this carries on the more of a disadvantage I’m at. I guess it doesn’t matter if I escape to the next floor?

Amelia frowned at that thought. Solving a normal puzzle would open the door to the puzzle room and solving a rarity puzzle would yield rewards. So she could fight this thing or she could run to the next stage of testing. The next stage would be a safe zone and testing would continue. Nothing had been mentioned regarding what would happen if she actually cleared the practical combat test… Would she get another reward? Did… did she care about that? Was she caring about that? Amelia frowned again.

First things first, Amelia had to ditch her stone pursuers before she could figure out what was going on and make an informed decision. A quick look back revealed that she was barely still in sight of the dark cloaked figure and a look forward revealed that Amelia honestly had no idea where she was going. The graveyard seemed to extend endlessly in all directions and there was no guarantee that she would find a wall with a door. Would it just be a floating door? What if she ran past it already? There were just too many questions and Amelia didn’t have enough options.

“[Search Entries - Amelia + Runs + Duration greater than 5 minutes].” Her Chronicler began to glow at her side as it searched. Several options began to appear on the side of her vision as she continued to run. “Time to show you what a Chronicler of the Heavens can do,” she muttered.

⇿⇿⇿⇿⇿⇿⇿⇿⇿

The dark figure continued forward and spread arms, directing the stone creatures that were still shaking off disorientation toward the fleeing figure in blue. It didn’t matter that the figure was running. All the stone creatures took wing or began clawing their way forward at different paces with unerring accuracy toward the blue figure that struggled, and then fell, it rolled behind a large headstone, seemingly trying to gather it’s wits about it.

It didn’t matter.

Pride waved an arm again and continued striding forward. Despite the large steps that were taken by Pride the ground that was actually covered was still very small. The large steps came at a ponderously slow pace.

It didn’t matter. Pride advances.

A blue figure was suddenly running away from behind the headstone and Pride once again waved a hand sending the stone creatures after the fleeing blue figure with directional cues.

It didn’t matter. Pride advances.

Pride faltered for a moment as a second blue figure emerged from behind a headstone further away from the blue figure that she was currently watching. Pride took in this new information. One blue figure ran off into the distance directly away from Pride, the original one she had been watching. A second figure was running perpendicular to the route that the other blue figure was running. Both carried a staff under their arm and moved purposefully. Both carried books that were sealed to their waists.

It didn’t matter.

Pride lifted both arms and sent directions for the statue creatures to split up and head toward both fleeing figures. The creatures began to divide themselves on the field, the large swarm of creatures separating into two distinct chasing forces.

Then a third blue figure popped out going adjacent to the first, then a fourth fleeing blue figure popped out from behind a large cornerstone near the second figure that had appeared.

Pride lowered her arms and considered this new information. It didn’t matter, really, but it was getting to be a little troublesome. The stone creatures continued to pursue the original two blue figures, at least until Pride reluctantly lifted her arms and began organizing the two chasing forces into four chasing forces…

I-it didn’t… matter…

Pride reared back, startled as the image of a red dragon materialized from the smoke in front of her and shook itself as if it were waking up.

“You. You have a lot of courage to be waking me! You have foolishly ended your life well before the end of it’s cycle! What do you have to say for yourself, you deviant?! I will eat you with or without an answer so be quick!”

Pride spread her arms wide and howled with an unearthly bestial scream back at the dragon…

⇢⇢⇢⇢⇢⇢⇘⇘⇘

“Holy crap,” Amelia chuckled nervously. She was glad that there wasn’t any sweating to be done while she was in the dive gear. Otherwise the expression ‘sweating buckets’ would have been surprisingly accurate to describe how she was feeling right now.

She peered over the gravemarker she had originally ‘stumbled’ behind, doing her best not to attract any of the attention of the statues that were chasing her four shared entries across the field in different directions. Apparently she needn’t have bothered because Pride had given them tasks that they were fulfilling mindlessly.

Amelia made a mental note to use this trick in the future. She could just write about herself doing all sorts of things as a decoy to what she was actually doing. The power of the idea was a little heady.

A curtain of lightning seemed to be draining itself from dark storm clouds that had suddenly appeared above Keristrazly. The devastating attack that was taking place over the shared entry of Keristrazly was absolutely deafening even from this distance.

I was supposed to fight that thing?! What the crap?

“Kkkffffffffffarrgghhhrrlrlllllgg.” The script from the original fight was actually lining up quite nicely with what was going on. It seemed like Keristazly had shrugged off the attack when he howled at the sky. The lightning passed through him before the whole image was covered with exploding dirt and smoke as the explosions continued. When the scene cleared he was staring hatefully(admittedly slightly in the wrong direction) toward Pride.

“Right, okay, need more options.” Amelia immediately checked her inventory and was hoping for some sort of laser beam weapon from her puzzle room book.

-------------------------------------

Job - Chronicler of the Heavens - Skill Book Generator

Warning! Object is consumable with one use! Object will vanish after use.

A skill will be randomly selected from the list with a rarity of common to rare.

------------------------------------

Amelia blinked rapidly. Even if this wasn’t a nice place, the Research Facility would definitely attract interest. Who else wanted free skills and weirdo trials? Uh, everyone? She would definitely have to figure out how to get other people kidnapped… or, you know, get a pass or a gateway or something. Without much more thought she used the book by pressing her hand on the cover. It was just a guess but the cover had a hand outline on it so…

Thankfully it wasn’t any more complicated than that.

----------------------------

Selecting Rarity.

C,UC,UC,UC,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,C,UC,UC,R,R,R,UC.

Uncommon was selected.

Selecting Skill Appropriate to Job

Skill Selected - Storied Hero (UC)

-------------------------------

Amelia’s heart began to ache slightly. She knew she should be grateful that she hadn’t pulled a common, but she had really wanted that rare. Especially since it kept displaying ‘R’ in big letters one after another with less and less speed. She knew the selection was cycling down because the last ‘R’ flashing across her screen had hovered there for a long time, lingering like it was torturing her before turning into ‘UC’.

Her book flew up from her waist and settled into her hand, which she had jerked up when it startled her. It seemed weightless as it glowed and interacted with the skill book. Moments later the skill book vanished into her Chronicler with a flash of light.

“Spiffy…” Amelia started to mutter. Honestly she had been starting to forget where she was when a large draconic voice howled out from nearby.

“Hooo… I think you made a mistake today, Mourning. When last we met you were strong, but I can see time has not matured you like a dragon. In your gaze I feel only chaos. This woman behind me just fortified me with something I can only describe as YOUR DEATH. I do not know what you did to anger her or make an enemy of someone like her, but I am at least grateful that I can crush you with all of my might!”

“Ahahah,” Amelia laughed nervously. “Show me my skill!”

[Storied Hero - Uncommon] - The skill showed up proudly in front of her screen on the list with her other skills.

“Uhh, I know? What does it do?” Amelia tried to select it but it just started to activate. “Oh, okay, let’s just… do that then. No freaking rush…”

----------------------------------

+Please Select Your Storied Hero By Name To Activate

Mana Cost: 0

Storied Heroes Allowed: 1

Chronicler Experience Gained: 0

Your Storied Hero Will Increase in Power at: 1000 Experience.

Current Level Will Be Adjusted Based Upon Job, Class, and Story Level: ??

----------------------------------

From where she was cowering Amelia stared blankly at the information. There just wasn’t enough there to make any sort of decision? Fight or flight? Run or stay? Gamble or--

Amelia stilled slightly as she realized she could hear the dragon in the background running around and grunting, but the thunder and lightning had ceased. Additionally, there were no longer any explosions filling the air with a sort of D-day sort of cacophony.

She spared a moment to look over the stone and found, to her horror, that Pride had ceased attacking the dragon and was now studying the image of Keristrazly as it ran back and forth crushing an invisible foe. The dark hood watched the dragon go back and forth for a long moment but was otherwise absolutely still.

Amelia was about to duck back down when the hood seemed to freeze. Though she couldn’t see into the hood, Amelia was absolutely certain that if Pride had eyes they were peering directly at her own. She ducked behind the gravestone and pressed her back against it with widened eyes.

Amelia selected the line:

[+Please Select Your Storied Hero By Name To Activate]

Her eyes suddenly widened as a list of unexpected options had popped up. She had expected heroes from Aspiria like Victoria or maybe if she was really lucky Vienne or something. Heroes and Heroines of legend that could be called upon in weird sort of way. She had even prepared herself to have a list of unfamiliar names. The ‘storied’ descriptor led her to think that they might be heroes of the realm she was currently in, though she supposed that made less sense because ‘here’ wasn’t anything more than room where a deadly testing monster was trying to eat her. Finally, she had thought in her wildest delusions that the game might reach out into the real world history books and give her a champion from real world history.

Not that she would have chosen Gandhi as her champion.

Okay, she would have totally chosen Gandhi! Who would be willing to beat her up if she called out Gandhi and the peacemaker showed up in front of her? She would really like to see who had the courage to smack Gandhi around!

Amelia was saved from further thinking by a hood that appeared above her. Pride looked down, and for the first time Amelia could see into the hood. A pale face with a hawk nose and chiseled gaunt features stared back at her. Pride’s hair was a wispy and voluminous black. Her eyes were red and bloodshot. Unmistakable fury was etched into every feature.

Pride raised a shaking hand and Amelia watched as the fingers formed a claw. It wasn’t as though she had sprouted claws or turned the hand into an actual claw. The fingers just came together and looked threatening. Despite the fact that there was no visual difference, Amelia knew that if she took that hand she would be killed.

Out of time Amelia did the only thing she could think of, and shouted out her new ability and hoped for the best.

“[My Storied Hero Is Raven]!”

----------------------------------

First Catalogued Storied Hero: Raven

Mana Cost: 0

Storied Heroes Allowed: 1

Chronicler Experience Gained: 0

Your Storied Hero Will Increase in Power at: 1000 Experience.

Current Level Adjusted Based Upon Job, Class, and Story Level: 650

Story Hero Rating Based Upon Tales Within: Powerful

----------------------------------

The statistics in her Chronicler materialized at the same time a slight female form with closed eyes and short cropped dark hair with the familiar single arm appeared next to Amelia. In an instant a hand shot out and caught the wrist of the arm Pride was going to use to kill her.

The Storied Hero Raven opened her eyes and slowly released Pride’s arm with a look of menacing warning. She held the arm out to the side and a two-handed long sword that was taller than she was materialized in her hand.

Pride did nothing but watch as Raven slowly lifted the huge sword above her head.

Pride looked up at the sword as the sky began to tremble above them. She spoke for the first time in a harsh whisper as she looked at the blade, more of a huge hunk of black metal than anything, “...it doesn’t matter.”

“[Watch Me].” Not Raven said.

The sky tore apart.