Chapter 20

???

The young woman was chained to the center of some kind of well, bleachers completely surrounding her, covered with people with bad looks, who reeked of rage, sadness, and desire for revenge, all these emotions directed towards the condemned.

“Lily Amevrarde, for the crimes of treason, murder, massacre, blasphemy and sabotage, the council of the Principalities sentenced you to death.” Then said what appeared to be a priest, dressed in a simple but well-crafted clerical gown. He was the only one of the five Principalities to have risen, watching the traitor making an effort to keep calm, but the hatred cracking in places his mask of serenity.

"I should have killed you all when you were in my hands!" she cried, enraged, struggling in vain.

The crowd of spectators began to boo her and even cast spells, even if they had little effect, protected as she was by her chains.

“I call on the council to show mercy !” Then cried a man, his voice cutting through the noise of the crowd like a white-hot knife in a lump of butter.

The great hall sank into mortal silence as a man stood in the bleachers, looking at the Principality still standing since his proclamation.

“The condemnation of the council is irrevocable, Araclus.” The priest replied flatly.

Lily looked at the man, a mixture of tenderness, anxiety, and hatred painting on her face, before hatred prevailed.

"You can go to hell, asshole ! You hear me ? It’s your fault that I’m here !" She cried, her voice full of rage and venom, but the man did not even turn his head, keeping his eyes firmly planted in those of the Principality.

“I call my right of Vow.” he said in a weak, almost whispering voice, but everyone heard it perfectly.

The face of the Principality became white before being distorted by a rictus of anger quickly contained.

“Are you sure you want to use your Vow for this unholy creature, this fratricide demon ?” he asked the man with his most measured voice.

'”Yes”' Replied Araclus.

“Go die ! Go fucking die !” Continued to yell Lily, ignored by the audience.

“... All right.” The priest finally replied, having seemingly suddenly aged, as if overwhelmed by this choice.

He looked at the other Principalities around him, two on the left, two on the right, each nodding towards him.

“Blessed is our Lord Lily the Fratricide, for today your life has been saved by your husband. You will have a second chance to serve the lord through him. Your memories of this world will be purged until your arrival here and, pure, your education will be remade so that you can become what you should have been, a messenger of our lord, shining with his glory and bearing his word. Take her away.”

“No! No,not that, kill me !” She started screaming frantically in these chains.

“I hate you ! I hate you and curse you, Araclus !” she cried, desperate, before receiving a powerful electric shock.

Araclus

A deep sadness in his eyes, he watched his unconscious wife being carried away by two paladin. He himself came out of the arena of judgment, a bitter taste in his mouth remembering the state of his wife, a monster unleashed with hatred and rage. Thinking back on the crime she had committed, he felt a nausea taking him, despite his habit of the unglorious battlefields that the Heretics of the Rebellion created when they fought.

Having separated from the crowd by taking a path reserved for the high dignitary, he descended deeper and deeper into the building until he reached his goal, the purification chamber.

“I hope you will not regret this decision, Araclus.” The Principality who had been in charge of the judgment of his beloved then told him.

“I too, Liam, I too.” He replied in a tired tone.

They went in silence until they entered the main part of the room. The circular room was large, numerous symbols engraved on the ground and going up to the ceiling at the center of which was suspended a metal rod by a cable of the same material. Below the stem, on a seat again of the same material was Lily, still unconscious of the shock she had received. Thirty other people also filled the room, each already in position on one of the ground symbols.

A woman dressed simply turned to the Principality when he entered, making a slight reverence.

“We are ready to start whenever you want, your Eminence.” She said to him.

Liam turned one last time to Araclus.

“You know that you will not be able to see her for many years, and that she will no longer be your wife. Are you sure you prefer that to her death ?” asked the tired priest.

“Yes.” He simply replied, in his voice, the sadness of a broken heart.

“I owe her that much.”

“... Okay. Process.” Liam tells the Mistress of Ceremonies.

The priests then began to sing, the symbols and engravings gradually lit up. The field increased in intensity as a kind of strange liquid began to flow from Lily’s eyes and ears. Awakened by the shock, she began to scream.

“No, stop! Please kill me! aaAARGHH ! No, NOOOO !” She screamed as she began to cry, her tears mingling with her snot as she shook and struggled in irons.

She saw her memories disappear, she felt her levels and classes being torn from her, she felt the indescribable horror of seeing everything that made her disappear, tirelessly sucked by the steel stake that was suspended above her head, gradually transforming it into a weak and empty shell, purging these years of experiences and life in the Labyrinth.

“AAAAAARGHH!!!” Unable to endure the pain any longer, she began to convulse before fainting.

And all along, Araclus looked at her with tears in his eyes.

Eleonor

With her head raised towards the rocky ceiling, the young woman had her eyes closed to focus on her other senses, her smell, her hearing, her sphere. A big smile spread over her face, a smile dripping with blood. She suddenly opened her eyes, her sphere having indicated that something was approaching. She lowered her centre of gravity by bending her knees, anchoring herself cleanly in the ground, facing the new rival who presented itself to her. She was soaked with blood and emboldened by her easy victory, waiting for a new fight, a new hunt, a new execution. Just thinking about it, her smile widened even more.

The creature, baited by the smell of blood, approached her not from one of the nearby groves, but from the dark area, the one filled with mushrooms. It was more or less the same size as the Pawn who attacked her a few minutes ago, but it had a very clear difference. If the Raptor Pawn had been made for agility, precision and silence, this one, with its massive chitinous plates, its oversized skull cut like a ram and its broad legs, seemed rather optimized for its endurance and brute force.

The small biological tank finally turned to the corner of a massive rock and its gaze landed on Eleonor, the young woman slowly turning her head towards it and opened her eyes like a cat that would have been disturbed during her nap.

The creature stopped, keeping its evil eyes on the thing it had encountered as it smelled the air, before ravaging the ground with one of its clawed paws, not identifying the thing before it as a threat, not when she seemed hurt, with all the blood that covered her.

A second passed, the air tense to crack and, suddenly, the apparent calm tore like a thread. The creature charged and the young woman put herself in a receiving position, left shoulder forward.

Chitin against skin, shoulder against head, the two beings crushed against each other in a pure confrontation of brute force. Confrontation that ended on an equality, the anchor of Eleonor insufficient to keep her in place and the strength of the creature laking to withstand the backlash of its own strike, each of the two sent flying a few meters further in long furrows of earth.

Wow. It’s got some fucking punch. She said to herself by massaging her sore shoulder, feeling all the muscles and bones of her body recovering from the shock.

However, the creature was in much worse condition. The young hunter’s shoulder stroke had partially penetrated its frontal armour, the thickest of all its body, and a viscous substance was now running from the cracks that extended into its flesh.

Then, to Eleonor’s surprise, the creature opened several orifices and began to unload a kind of greenish gas. At the same time she it opened the upper part of its skull and suddenly the powerful sound of a foghorn resounded on the walls of the cave. Without giving its prey time to react, the creature charged Eleonor again, leaving behind a trail of gas.

Too focused on the fight, perhaps also too inexperienced, the young woman did not pay attention to the screaming of her opponent, discarding it by considering it as a war cry. Anyway, the creature seemed determined to fight, even if more cautiously.

Eleonor put her shoulder forward again, ready to receive but, to her great surprise, the creature did not come at her, preferring to turn around her quickly, like a motorcycle taking a sharp turn, showing an agility in its movements that the young woman would not have believed it capable of.

What is it trying to do ? She wondered, but only for a second, before realizing that the gas was now circling her from all sides, filling the area around her.

She breathed a little inadvertently and her lungs began to burn, as did her throat.

|You were poisoned by “Mutated Sauriot Extract” in stage 1:

-3 hp/second; -5 sp/s|

You idiot, of course it’s poison ! She thought, feeling really stupid.

At least it’s not a big deal right now.

She continued to follow the creature with her gaze, keeping an eye on her life bar, wondering what to choose between fleeing or continuing to fight.

How about the stamina bar ? She then asked, the system responding by displaying the so-called bar as it had done previously with the hp one.

...it can still be attempted. She ended up thinking, driven by her greed.

All I have to do is grab it. She thought, for, indeed, the creature was now keeping its distance, surely counting on its toxic cloud to do the work in its place or, at the very least, weaken its adversary enough to be able to tackle it with less difficulty.

Fortunately, the Abyss Eyes of Eleonor began to slowly taking action, allowing her to read the movements of her opponent with less and less difficulty. She spends another minute watching the creature roam around her, keeping herself at a distance, before considering that she was ready enough.

Between the pain and pleasure that emanated from her shoulder and elbow, and the excitement of the fight, of the hunt, she had a hard time keeping calm. She made an important effort, however, to restore her peace of mind, before extending one of her arms. She waited for the right moment, the moment when the creature would pass through the spot she was pointing at, as her Abyss Eyes told her.

Now ! She thought, powerfully projecting her tentacles forward, the sucker’s head crashing on the chitinous shell of the surprise creature.

She then retracted them with all her strength, rushing quickly to her enemy to take advantage of its distress. Arriving on it, she kept her tentacular anchorage and, focusing as much as she could while doing the rodeo on an armored monster, looked for the weakness in its shell.

|Poisoning Stage 2 reached!

Effects:

-5 hp/s; -10 sp/s|

She did not pay attention to the announcement of the system, all her attention directed towards her sole objective, to find a place where to hit the beast effectively, pieces of mushrooms and occasionally rocks raining on her because of the monster struggling to get her off.

Haha ! She exclaimed mentally when she found what she searched.

Between its neck and its head, skin was periodically discovered by two sheets of chitines sliding on top of each other. Waiting for the right moment, she stuffed her fist in it as deeply as possible before opening it, partially blocking the monster’s head movements, before beginning to frantically shred the tender flesh in it.

The creature heckled all the more, destroying the environment around it in its attempts to crush Eleanor against something, anything, as long as he could dislodge her. Unfortunately for the beast, Eleonor finally found what she was looking for. She surrounded him with her hand and suddenly pulled the piece of spinal cord she had just clumped. The monster was swept by a spasm and almost immediately stopped, its limbs escaping under it. A few seconds later, his various organs failing him without the instructions of the nervous system, the creature died.

|Congratulations, you killed a Pawn (Merion strain) Level 21.|

The cloud of toxic gas dissipated quickly, letting Eleonor take her first breath of clean air in a few minutes.

Without further ado, she threw herself on the carcass. This time she removed the chitin plates, too thick and numerous to be pleasant to eat, and focused on the flesh itself. Her pockets quickly inflated with viscous liquid, weighing her down even more.

***

It had been several minutes since she was feasting on the monster’s death body when a new creature entered her sphere, apparently walking right toward her. The young woman managed to stop eating, in spite of the sheer pleasure she derived from it, turning her attention to the present question. She used one of her hook to tie herself to a tree, the highest she could.

Great good did to her, for quickly, more and more creatures, Merions, gathered around the corpse of their companion, seeking vigorously the source of their misfortune.

Interesting. They are community animals… She thought with curiosity.

I could really use a notebook or something. She said to herself, imagining what a difficulty it would be to have to memorize all the information she was going to gather about her preys.

A powerful vibration then made the cave tremble, removing the most fragile stalactites that hung from the ceiling and making them crash here and there.

The horde of Merions, which had accumulated not far from Eleonor, reacted straight away, placing itself in a head-out defensive circle formation. The silence fell again on the cave, all the creatures watching and keeping their breath.

Suddenly, the vegetation of a nearby grove was torn apart, revealing an imposing beast, as tall as a two-storey building. It landed in the herd of Merions and, with the eight tentacles emerging from its back, began to mow them quickly, catching them before throwing them into its huge mouth, the poor beasts quickly crushed by the multiple rows of teeth that lined it.

The herd began to escape practically by reflexes and the creature took a step to follow it before coming to rest.

FLEE ! Screamed Sanakan in the head of the young woman, who did not wait any longer before throwing herself forward with her tentacles.

She heard a deaf clatter behind her and saw through her sphere a tentacle crashing right where she had been a second earlier, sending pieces of wood flying. One of them struck the young woman in the back, sinking slightly into her, projecting her forward even more.

The creature had its eyes fixed on the young woman, seemingly extremely focused, and began to chase her with surprising agility in view of its mass and size, using its tentacles with great skill to move between the trees, sometimes leaning on its rear legs to give itself a powerful speed boost.

Eleonor, on the other hand, had difficulty remaining out of reach of the terrifying creature, the mass added by her pockets weighing her more than a little.

Passes the entrance of the tunnel, it is too massive that to catch us in ! Shouted Sanakan again, giving a goal to her host.

Understood ! The young woman replied in return.

She passed between the trees, exploiting their cover to avoid the tentacles that the monster projected toward her. As a result, the most difficult parts were the ones where she was exposed, jumping over the weak vegetation and the fungi of the dark zones, passages however obliged if she wanted to get out. After what seemed an eternity of flight, she finally saw the light at the beginning of the tunnel.

We are almost there ! A last effort ! She thought to motivate herself, putting even more force in her grapples to get there.

“BAM !” A powerful noise resounded, that of Eleonor’s body smashing against the stone, thrown by the end of one of the monster’s tentacles.

Her whole body then screamed with pain, the pain of having had the majority of her bones broken, the pain of having her organs bleeding internally, the pain of having her spine partially crushed. The lack of sensation too, coming from her legs, her inability to move them or the have feel them. Her mind almost got lost in pleasure but she held on, even if she didn’t know why, given her pitiful state.

A tentacle then wrapped around her, the young woman surprised by the delicacy of the movement. The majestic creature brought Eleanor to the height of its eyes and their gaze crossed. Surprisingly, the young woman did not perceive the thirst for blood she expected to see, but rather a form of… curiosity ?

Well ? What do we have here ? A new tiny creature ? Then said an unknown voice in her mind, a young and breathing voice.

I know you understand me, little creature. Speak. Where are you from ? What are you ? Asked the voice again, still with curiosity.

Stunned as much by her feelings as by the loss of her legs, Eleonor did not respond directly.

I...No, leave me alone ! She ended up answering, lost, struggling with all her strength against the embrace of the tentacle, her instinct yelling at her to run away.

Tsss… Too bad. I would have liked to keep you to myself, little thing, but you seem to have taken the Queen’s interest. You will speak soon enough, my future sister. Then thought the creature, giving the impression of speaking more to itself than to the young woman.

Eleonor felt, at that moment, a fear that she had never really experienced, that of a prey whose destiny rested between the claws of a predator. She felt small, weak, unable to defend herself.

The great creature then opened a hole in its body where she placed its hunting trophy, the prey it had captured alive. Eleonor felt herself gripped by a myriad of tentacles that surrounded her like chains, preventing her from moving even an inch, totally different from the way Genèse wrapped her to protect and rock her. She tried to struggle but, with her broken body, it was in vain.

The shadow surrounded her, weak vibrations the only indications that she was not lost in a world of darkness. Time lost its meaning, until…

No… Until the wrath of Sanakan resounded in the spirit of Eleonor. The Arbiter then took on a red hue and, bristling like a cat, projected a powerful impulse through the Xeark network that ran through the young woman’s body. The inside of the pocket was illuminated red as the crystals on the surface of her skin took on a powerful and luminous bloody hue. Something went through space, like a wave on water, a distortion, and a putrid smell invades the air.

A big red tear appeared just in front of the young woman, who then felt herself fall, freed from her prison. A rift, like a broken mirror, had appeared in the middle of the creature, cutting it almost in two.

“AARRRRR!” Its scream of pain echoed into the great well as it threw itself to the side to extract the crack from its body.

It turned its eyes toward the young woman, its eyes full of fury and pain, but even before it could attack Eleonor, a long tongue of lilac fire came out of the rift, turning to the imposing monster and throwing itself on it.

Suspended above emptiness by one of her hook which she had used by reflexes, she did not even take a second to watch the monstrous fight that was taking place not far from her. No, her whole being was turned to flight. She more or less recognized the surroundings because she was currently not far from the place where the entry of the tunnel, the one toward the cave were she hunted, was. So she began to swing as she could, using her hooks one after the other to go down the wall and return to the level of her balcony. The act was long and exhausting, especially since she did not have her legs to help her balance.

Finally arriving at her balcony, she used her hooks again, this time to crawl on the ground, groveling through the corridor that led to her base. This strangely reminded her mind drowned in fatigue of the moment when the mimetic Pawn had attacked her, a time both near and far.

As she entered her nest, she made a final effort to drag her broken body to Genèse, who, sensing her arrival, surrounded her with warm and numerous tentacles.

AGAIN ? He exclaimed, feeling her wounds.

DON’T WORRY MISTRESS. LET SLEEP TAKE YOU, I’LL TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING. He continued in a tone that could be perceived as soothing by someone who knew him well and, Eleonor trusting him, she did as proposed, falling asleep once again in what was gradually becoming her favourite place.