SERA

Vaun is gone. When Sera awoke, she was sure he hadn’t come back. It wasn’t worth staying, either. So it may be a while before they meet again. Picking herself up Sera gives herself a good stretch and takes a final look at the beast. Its body is still in pristine condition as if it had died moments ago. A strange phenomenon. Is there a point to preserving the body? Or perhaps the system changed them in a fundamental way. The thought of that made Sera shiver.

Stepping away she reaches the side of the three dead bodies and can confirm, rather grotesquely, that their bodies are showing signs of decay. As Sera casts her eyes over Gray’s dismembered body she feels a little sick, but forcefully pushes it down. She hasn’t seen much death. Torture. Pain. Cruelty, yes. But before all of this death was a rarity. The races had brokered a peace that had lasted half a century. Only the elderly remember what a war-torn world looks like.

Sera still remembers the way the elders would smile at her. For standing out for her they suffered a lot. But still they would turn and smile and tell her ‘it is better now’. ‘At least we can reason with words and not blades’. Sera had found it a sad statement at the time, unable to understand their thought process. Whether it’s words or blades it’s still designed to oppress. They still had to suffer. She still had to despair. How could she understand their mentality? She still doesn’t. Yet when she looks down at Gray’s body, that momentary joy is long gone. All she can see is a dead person. And her heart feels a little cold.

Slapping her cheeks Sera shakes herself out of her revelry. No matter what, she’s glad Gray is dead. Her heart is free. She will make it to the ground one day and see Raze again. No matter what. Forcing her eyes away from the gruesome scene Sera walks a bit away and gathers herself. Sera is well rested after giving herself a day to adjust. Her mind had been strained for a long time, always walking on a thin line as she forced herself not to lose everything in her anger. Now that tension is gone, even amidst danger, Sera has felt the most relaxed she has ever been. Which is why now is the time to seriously plan for the future. “Status.” Sera commands.

Ark Plate Name Sera All-mother [ 0 ] Age 22 Race Eltera Essence 32 Gender Female Titles n/a Focus n/a Bloodline One-Tailed Fox Memory Cubes Ignite [ Bloodline ]

Two Plus Two Equals Five [ Trait ] Weak Mortal Aura [ Art ] One-Tailed Fox Familiarity 13 / 100 Rank Basic The thinned bloodline of a One-Tailed Fox. Fosters a distant connection with Spatial and Aura. Ignite Ability Bloodline Familiarity 8 / 100 Rank Basic Ignite your bloodline. Boosts your power massively by burning your blood. Two Plus Two Equals Five Ability Trait Familiarity 33 / 100 Rank Basic A certain probability to trick the law of equivalent exchange. Weak Mortal Aura Ability Art Familiarity 3 / 100 Rank Basic The first shedding of a mortal’s will.

Her eyes trailed across all the information, gathering it into things that she knows and things that she believes. The first test. Focusing on the essence she presses it into her ‘Two Plus Two Equals Five’ skill. She watches as it jumps a point before relenting, confirming her thoughts. As her eyes trail along the other skills Sera confirms something. “In the first place, this is my own power.” It can be seen as simple as that. The fact that Aura only awakened when she could naturally utilise it directly confirms the thought. “Then essence. Isn’t it an already existing strength?”

Sera had felt it strange that she already had some of this so-called energy before everything started. Things are strange and out of place, but her rational mind made her believe they came from somewhere. There are old documents in her homeland that spoke of an era where magic was abundant and the gap between the strong and the weak were akin to the sky and the ground. It was a flourishing era where a person could advance past their own body’s limitations. And in Sera’s eyes, this is no different to what people are experiencing now.

The true difference lies in the strange ability she’s been given. ‘Two Plus Two Equals Five’. It’s something that defies sense. Sera had been skeptical at first, but after using it these past days she started to understands its principles. The term equivalent exchange is used in the broadest of definitions. Anything that has a value is rated as exchangeable. Her stamina. Her strength. Her body and life-force. Without a doubt, essence is no different. Sometimes she feels it trigger as she receives essence, giving her more than it should. It’s the ability that seems the least valuable on the surface, but Sera now sees it differently. “Invest all my essence into it.” Sera mutters as she focuses on its box.

Two Plus Two Equals Five Ability Trait Familiarity 65 / 100 Rank Basic A certain probability to trick the law of equivalent exchange.

“I’m anticipating the moment this upgrades.” Sera can’t help but feel a little excited at the prospect. She had read in one of those old, dusty books. What separated the weak from the strong isn’t talent, but knowledge. If you didn’t know how to grow, how can you become strong? It isn’t something instinctive. It needs knowledge and understanding. This system circumvents all of that, the most fundamental concept that creates the disparity between weak and strong. Anyone can become strong. If they’re lucky enough, or tenacious enough.

Sera no longer needs to worry about the lack of knowledge. She only needs to choose her path. “In the end. It’s my body,” Sera continues to whisper to herself, feeling the strength that overflows out of her. Aura has only heightened what she already had - an innate strength that separated herself from others. When she was a child she could already beat down adults, much to their chagrin. It is also the way she feels most satisfied in combat. Directly blowing them apart. Breaking them with her bare hands. Sera has never liked weapons from the beginning, and still remains that way. She, herself, is the strongest weapon.

However she didn’t take the ‘Body Forging’ focus. It seems synergistic. But Sera can only feel it as a waste. For the idea of this Focus to be listed separately alongside Bloodline means both are special. To use it on something she already holds a strength in, and has the ability to grow with, would be a waste.

So it’s simple to her. She’ll spend essence to level the ‘Two Plus Two Equals Five’ skill, grow her Aura ability and eventually invest further into the bloodline she was blessed with. Feeling her doubts leave her Sera lets escape a small smile of satisfaction. “This is my path.” Turning her eyes upward Sera tenses her legs and launches herself upward, her body flying through the air as her hands latch onto the roof’s opening. After giving herself a moment to balance Sera clambers up and into the tunnel, using the messy thicket of vines and other flora that make up its walls to slowly ascend.

Stretching her body, enduring her limits and overcoming them, has always been a simple pleasure to Sera. A lot of normal things a child could enjoy was held from her. But her body, herself, is something they never could take. It was always her choice when she exercised. Her choice when she trained. And that feeling has always been with her. For Sera, even the simple act of climbing up the precarious, and rather unorganised, tunnel was a joy. One she hadn’t been able to feel for a long time as her heart slowly suffocated. Now the simple pleasure was back and Sera felt she could move forward with life again.

A few more minutes of climbing passes until Sera finds her hand gripping the exit’s edge, and launches herself over it. When Sera saw what was ahead of her, she couldn’t help but gasp. The room was gigantic, so tall and wide that her eyes couldn’t see its edges. Many interwoven vines trailed through the room. Some wove themselves together to create a small enclosure, keeping prying eyes out of its depths. Others trailed upward and downward to form winding pathways leading to all different areas. It felt like a huge gathering of different areas, or misshapen and squashed together to form a disturbing consistency. It is definitely different from anything before.

However, it is clearly a good place to fight. Sera could pick out enemies of all shapes in a few locations. Frankly, it felt odd to her. Much like the place in front of her eyes, everything that has happened feels so…misshapen. Like someone tried to play god with the artistic sense of a five-year old. Standing where she is, Sera is situated in a tiny corner of the room. The area in front of her is open and wide, with a number of different pathways slowly closing in and leading to places hidden from her view.

Humming to herself takes a guess at random and ends up walking to the leftward path. The vines in the thickets are a dark purple, but in here they’ve evened out into a mottling of light purple and green. Her feet attempt to press into them but they suffer no damage. Neither do they respond to her attempt to rip them apart with her hands. This place is rather resistant. To Sera’s surprise, though it shouldn’t be, it doesn’t take long for her to meet enemies.

Fallen Paziri

[ Monster ]

A jarring sight. Humanoid in structure the two creatures seem to have their back bent permanently, their body naturally extended to seem more like a predator pouncing then a person standing up. Flesh and vine intertwine together to form their features, with moss growing in different areas as a form of covering. And their face - it lacked both a nose and ears. Its mouth is wide with teeth long and sharp, and eyes that fail to blink no matter how long you look. To Sera, it’s close enough to a person to be familiar, and so far from natural to be disturbing. It’s the perfect blend of familiarity and grotesque disparity to make a person feel uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

“Well. I just don’t like them.” Sera couldn’t give an excuse. It’s a natural prejudice born from their features. Casting her eyes around Sera finds a spot where the vines weaving the path provides an indistinct shadow, using it to slowly approach them. SHe makes it a fair away, coming within a few steps of the two creatures, before they react. As their guard picks up and the spot her, Sera notes the spear held in each of their hands. But more then that, it’s the horn tied to one of their belts that it’s reaching for.

Sera dashes forward, quickly covering the distance as she appears in front of them. Her body weaves around the spear that strikes toward her and her hand snakes its way through their guard to grab the horn. Sera can see clearly now a huge doorway made of vines between the two creatures. It had blended in naturally to the environment so she had failed to spot it before. Her eyes turn and study the horn for a moment before shattering it. One of the two creatures hisses at her, incomprehensible words flowing out of its mouth as it gestures wildly. Sera couldn’t pick up much from its motions, but she could see one thing. Scorn.

“You see them everywhere.” Sera mutters to herself, feeling bad memories stir at the feeling. It is rather annoying. Squashing them down she twists her body to the side as a spear approaches her. Her hands ride on the momentum to grab at the spear’s base and she strikes down, separating the weapon from the monster. Sera then proceeds to duck and roll forward as another spear pierces where her head was. Using her hands to twist her body around, her legs kick up and strike against the head of the creature on the left. A heavy thunk is felt as Sera feels her foot jar, a pain striking through it at the same time the monster reels back.

“Fucking hard as rock,” Sera breathes out as she jumps back onto her feet and slams her fist into the other one. This time she aims for a spot where more flesh then vine can be seen, feeling it sink into the flesh easily which sends the monster flying backward. It hits one of the walls hard and sticks to it, getting tangled into some of the vines there. Turning away Sera pounces back toward the first one that had fallen down and smashes it in the face again, just as it was picking itself up, sending it crashing back into the ground.

As she sends another fist crashing down she tries to feel for the Aura she had gathered and draw it toward her fist. When the skill was unlocked it’d give her a simple instinct and understanding toward what Aura is. In its simplest terms, it’s strength. Strength of the body that surpasses the body, or rather its limitations. So when it reinforces Sera’s fists, it’s both the strength of her body and the strength of the Aura that is sent crashing down onto the fallen paziri.

Which made the crunch of the impact very satisfying as its face caves in slightly. “I think I’m becoming desensitised,” Sera said as her fist slams in again, bringing back with it a mix of red and green blood. “Don’t you think so?” Of course, it can’t answer. The original creatures were a bit easier as they were a far cry from the way the people Sera knew looked, and it felt a little bit more simple. But with each fist taking a little bit more life out of the creature, Sera felt it is no different then killing the humans. It is obviously intelligent. Most probably sentient. She could be considered an invader.

However, does she have the luxury to think this far? In the first place, they invaded her home. This world. Sometimes it’s better not to overthink things. “Friends and enemies.” A final fist, and the final breath is drawn from the monster. At the same time as Sera turns to look, the other one is still struggling to escape the vines it’s been latched onto. Sera quickly advances to it, her fist shrouded by the barest of Aura, glowing a dull purple, slams into it. After awakening her bloodline Sera’s eyes had become similarly purple and remained that way. Only her fur remained that deep luster of red.

Yes. It’s easier to separate it into friends and enemies for now. It makes things simple in this place. Friends? Vaun for now. Enemies? Anything that fights back. A straightforward thought process, even if a bit purposely single-minded. A few more hits and the creature collapsed, its body sliding down from the wall onto the ground. A little bit of energy passes into her as her eyes turn toward the vine door. Her eyes pass over it to look around. The path ends where the door is and all around her is only the walls of vines. Around the door extends a huge dome that shapes itself around to farther then Sera can see.

No easy way in then. Leaving the bodies Sera stands in front of the huge door and pushes where the two sides connect. However the door doesn’t move. At the same time a box appears.

Paziri Arena [ Challenge ] Essence 20

A new box. Sera grits her teeth and uses all of her strength to push, but the doors refuse to budge. She could feel it. An invisible force that seemed to just decide that what shouldn’t move doesn’t. In all honesty, it’s a little unnerving to Sera. Another example of things not following a proper rhythm. With a soft sigh Sera lets go of the door. She gives it one last look, her eyes trailing over the box, before moving back through the path to the small open area. She looks at the other few paths leading to different areas but decides not to move toward them for the moment. She’d checked her essence and knew she’d only gained one from the last battle. The enemies were tough but she gained so little. She needed to gain some strength. An idea had been nurtured in her for a while, a niggling of instincts she has only recently acquired.

Deciding to test it out she ends up descending back down the tunnel. After reaching the area where the dead beast lies she picks it up and drags it with her back to the small moat and simple house. Staring at its entrance, Sera felt a mix of emotions. It hadn’t been long, but a lot had happened. With glistening eyes Sera enters the house and dumps the beast to the side. Afterward she exits and moves to where the moat is, laying on the man-made grass that lay in front of it.

Sera sits down and relaxes into a meditative posture. Ever since awakening Aura she had this feeling. A yearning in the air that desired to be grasped. Sera can feel it even stronger as she focuses. A whisper in the wind. Sera shuts out the outside world and focuses her mind and sense to finding that whisper. Slowly its location is revealed, birthing a new sense inside of her. In her mind she can see it. A huge river of energy that streams through the world like a never-ending current. Sera feels as if her body is standing in front of it as she stares at it flowing consistently along. The river’s majestic presence erodes at her sense of self, creating a dignity that forces her to bow down. For the first time, Sera finds she feels…small. So very small. As if her struggles are a tiny disturbance in the flow of life. Not even enough to create ripples. An insignificant speck.

Sera didn’t like it. And as her eyes narrowed, she made sure this mysterious river understood she didn’t like it. Her hand reaches down and pierces the river. As if feeling her intentions the river seems to scream out, her hand burning as the river of energy rejects her. Still Sera hand clenches her hand into a fist and holds tight to a tiny sliver of energy, drawing it out even as her skin erodes around her hand. Strangely there is no pain, but as Sera sees her hand turn into a skeleton as it escapes from the river it is quite jarring. It is only then that the pain strikes.

Sera’s eyes snap open as she groans and collapses to the side, the pain too great for her even to scream out. It feels as if her very soul is ripped out as she lays there in constant suffering, unable to even think. Still she holds her hand tight, refusing to open her fist. Refusing to move as the pain attacks her over and over. Until, finally, it receives. Weak, and feeling so very frail, Sera drags herself into the house and rests by the fireplace. Though weary and despondent, a vicious smile full of a small victory can be seen. She stares down at her hand and opens it. Inside is a tiny sliver of purple Aura. As she watches it melds into her, and converges into her centre where the little bit of pale Aura she holds resides. The two merge together and she feels it grow stronger, prompting her to check the ability.

Weak Mortal Aura Ability Art Familiarity 33 / 100 Rank Basic The first shedding of a mortal’s will.

An exuberant laugh escapes Sera’s lips. It’s a long laugh, filled with a sense of pride and deep emotions. She knew what her instincts told her. If she had interacted with the river using her will she could slowly develop her Aura through it. It was the right way to do it. But it pissed Sera off. “No-one is insignificant.” Once her laugh died down, Sera could not help but mutter this, thinking of hers and Raze’s difficulties over the years. Whatever that thing is, she didn’t like it. Since it wants to belittle her then she just won’t engage with it. She’ll take what she wants by force. Another peal of laughter escapes her as she realises the strangeness of the event. “I’m disparaging a river.” The thought is a little absurd. Sera looks down at her arm and sees its intact shape, flesh and all. She can still feel the injury inside her however. Perhaps this is what is called will.

“How about another arm?” The thought was a little scary. But Sera felt differently. The pain is extreme, but it is also quick. Regardless. She had her own way of doing things. Sera closes her eyes and prepares herself for another dive.