Kara rested on the velvet sofa as she twisted her hair into six braids. They pressed against her scalp and fell to her shoulder blades. The rest of it was pulled towards her back. Finally, Life Force with a sticky imbued quality seeped out of her skull, coating her hair in its dark green hue. A few seconds afterward, the braids kept still against her head, with only the bottom half swaying with her movement.

Kara's original body had dreadlocks. She quite liked them, though since she was made of stone, she didn't have much of a choice. She'd been experimenting with different styles in this body, and in the end, braids remained supreme. Dreadlocks were a good second. It wasn't just fashion, either. Because of Kara’s ability to sense each individual hair, it was mandatory for her sanity that she kept it tight.

Did playing with her hair get her any close to avenging herself and her family? Not really, but it did calm her down. As a mage, and as a ticking bomb, taking care of her mental well being was as important as her physical being.

After her recent failure, Kara figured rest would help. It wasn’t too hard to find one an empty house in the well-off section of the Second District. From the slash marks and the countless holes sprawled about, as well as the living room that was missing large portions of its floor, Kara could easily tell which side lost. At that point, the corpses stuck to the ceiling were just a dead giveaway. They didn’t bother her enough to remove them; she could neither see nor smell them, after all.

It was a good time for a break, but her mind refused to rest. She had so many problems, so many things to sort out, that relaxing her restless thoughts proved to be impossible.

One issue, really.

General Stats & Parameters

Level

150

Strength

90 (90 Total)

Species

Lordran

Agility

90 (90 Total)

Class

Sky & Earth Weaver

Constitution

90 (90 Total)

Profession

Life Siren

Soul

180 (180 Total)

Age

72

Danger Rank

???

HP

0/0

Life Force

0/0

STM

0/0

Mana

1330/1800 (+18/ Minute)

Overall STM

0/0

Equilibrium

5/5 (+1/minute)

Skills

Dual Source (Racial skill)

Stone Skin (Racial skill)

8th Rank Internal Life Force (Epic)

6th Rank External Life Force (Rare)

11th Rank Kinetic Mana (Divine)

6th Rank Thermal Mana (Epic)

10th Rank Gravitational Mana (Legendary)

5th Rank Electromagnetic Mana (Rare)

Major Bleed Resistance (Rare)

Major Poison Resistance (Rare)

Major Kinetic Mana Resistance (Rare)

Major Blunt Resistance (Rare)

Major Pierce Resistance (Rare)

Major-Burst Resistance

Overwhelming Blood-lust (Rare)

Supreme Sixth Sense (Epic)

Extreme Outnumbered (Epic)

Killer Flow (Rare)

Time Metaphorize Dodge (Epic)

Sky & Earth Weaver (Legendary)

Unstoppable Carnage (Cursed Epic)

Enduring Resource Conservation (Rare)

Murderous Lolie (Unique)

Insightful Grasping Eye (Epic)

Supreme Multi-Caster (Legendary)

Endless Flesh Mender (Unique)

Immortal Puppeteer (Epic)

She wasn’t 72, damn it. The last four decades that she spent crossing the lines between death, life, and consciousness did not count.

Other than that, she was dead. All senses other than sound did not function. Its heart didn’t even beat. It did house her Soul though, and for that she needed it to maintain its form. Losing her arms and legs weren’t an issue—all she needed were the bone to use Mana and blood for the Life Force. She used Mana to hear, speak, and move her body through Kinetic Mana. She was like a puppet on a string—hence the Immortal Puppeteer. Feigning walking took her a good year while she was in seclusion, and that wasn’t even the hard part. Her Soul could hear just fine, but how would she communicate with the rest of the world?

For a few years, Kara truly understood why Souls scratched the ground or just pointed. Talking without a throat was hard. For all the thousands of hours she put in studying how Kinetic Mana worked, she never bothered to figure out how sound works. After a few years, The Game probably took pity on her and gave her an add-on for Flesh Mender to include speaking.

Setting aside the loss of sight, taste, and touch, she also had to permanently maintain three skills. The First Movement: Equilibrium, Flesh Mender, and Puppeteer. If she wanted to attack, then she also had to channel a fourth skill.

The Game did not like that. Each non-class skill after the first increased the cost of all multi-cast skills by 50%. The first skill would cost 100%, the normal amount, while adding a second would make both skills require 150% of their original cost. Kara on the other hand, because of the ludicrous amount of work she had to put in every second of the day, had learned the Supreme Multi-caster skill, turning the 50% coefficient into 25%. The penalty for casting 4 skills in Kara's case was 175% instead of a horrifying 250%.

Class skills did not increase the penalty, but it did make it practically hard to juggle so many skills.

But wait, that’s more!

The very purpose of her class, dual-wielding Life Force and Mana skills simultaneously was no longer possible. She needed 2 points of Mana for 1 Life Force point. It was too inefficient. Not to mention, because of the whole being dead thing, Kara was only able to meet the requirement for 3 of the 10 skills her class provided. Those were problems. The solution?

There wasn’t any, as far as Kara was aware. In raw power, she was actually stronger than ever. Even with the reduced chance of gaining skills someone of her level had, 40 years was still a long time. Learning how to navigate the world, amongst a few violent outbursts, through Kinetic Mana finally broke through the 10th Rank Kinetic Mana, reaching an unheard-of Divine rarity, gained Flesh Mender, Immortal Puppeteer, and the strongest multi-cast skill known.

Really, though, what did any of that matter for? What was the point of all that power if using it meant forfeiting her life? Her body can barely take 6th Rank skills before starting to crumble, much less 11th. She hasn’t even seen what a skill of that magnitude could do.

The Game offered no alternatives. Why would there be? Kara was supposed to be dead, or at least teleported to the Abyss. Her existence was questionable at best. Even if there was a way, she had no way to gain points. For her to receive rewards, she had to fight and enter Dungeons that were around her level. Monsters hunted outside of Phases, Dungeons, Events, or Special Areas did not provide points and had a large experience penalty.

She rubbed her eyebrows out of habit, exhaustion and hopelessness giving her a chance to sleep. Dying is the reason I received the Life Siren profession, and goodness what requirement that is.

Her siren skills did not cost anything, as far as she was aware, and were not difficult to use. Most importantly, profession had no penalties when used on low-levels. They were generally support skills anyway, such as blacksmiths, tailors, enchanters, or tacticians.

There were a couple of Sirens in history. Soul and War Siren were the ones Kara familiar with. A Soul Siren was able to converse with Souls, and a War Siren cast various unique buffs and debuffs, but not much else is known. Information about their number, origin, requirements, and skill effects were all lacking because of their extreme rarity.

Playing support solved none of her problems, but the chance of an unknown skill was the only thing that can get her out of this hell-hole. It was her only option forward. She received the Life Siren profession for a reason, after all. It must have something that Kara could use.

Worst-case scenario, she would become an over-glorified children’s bard. She’ll roam the world, spreading stories of how Shinkro wetting his bed until the age of 6 was her idea of revenge, or how comically scared he was of fish.

Yeah, she could finally rest in peace if she could accomplish that.