Chapter 893 Bath

Ilea leaned against the wall of the Soul Forge, smiling to herself before she sipped at her ale.

People clapped as Elfie danced with Felicia, the elf not as horrible as she would’ve expected. She wondered if Ben had taught him.

Ilea didn’t miss Celene trying to convince Weavy to dance as well, Walter playing his lute and singing, Kyrian, Trian, and Dale joining in to create a quartet of deep voices. At least they stopped singing Lilith songs, she thought and watched as Keyla rushed over.

“New attempt,” the cook said and handed her a plate.

Ilea had eaten a few kilograms of dragon meat already. The others couldn’t even bite it, Verena now helping out in the kitchen with her fire magic, but Ilea was pretty sure the Elder’s attempts weren’t quite sufficient. She herself didn’t mind the meat. It was tough and the taste was more akin to coal and brimstone, but the mana, the mana was delicious. As if the power of a dragon flowed through her whenever she ate a bite. And if she noticed at all, she was sure there were massive benefits for lower level people. If they could eat and digest the meat in the first place. Her mana was topped off, and she didn’t want to use any spells here to test the meat.

With my regeneration, it’s hardly required. Nearly a hundred thousand per second before even using my Fourth Tier.

“I think you need a forge to cook this in,” Ilea sent, the meat still tough. She ate it anyway, her teeth more durable than the remains of the dragon.

“So, you’ve joined the realm of gods and monstrosities,” the Meadow sent. “How do you feel?”

“Not super different,” Ilea said. “Bit tired honestly. Good, I think. Feels like I crossed an important threshold. It doesn’t feel like I have to run off and fight monsters again immediately.”

“I’m sure you’ll be ready for a fight by the end of the week,” the Meadow sent.

She smiled. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“Question is if you can even find an adequate enemy at this stage.”

“Don’t scare me. There are tons of realms out there, and I have a moon to clear as well.”

“Right. Perhaps that task isn’t quite as impossible anymore by now,” the Meadow sent.

Ilea smiled at Myr Iva, the Mava still a little apprehensive, but closer now, and glancing her way occasionally.

“No new abilities in regards to finding Ascended facilities I assume?”

“Not exactly. Fabric Alteration has an addition in regards to old tears and beings traveling through realms. I could check in Kohr, see if I find anything near the facility Ker Velor blew up,” she suggested.

“It’s worth a shot. I suppose it depends how far back it goes,” the Meadow said.

“We’ll see. I’ll go check it later.” She caught the Fae that zoomed towards her and landed in her hands, a giggling Cless running after the creature.

The girl stopped in front of Ilea and made large eyes. She tilted her head slightly. “You are so bright. Like the sun.”

Ilea smiled. “What do you see?”

Cless just giggled and ran away again, joining the dance.

“Her perception is quite extraordinary,” the Meadow said.

“Yeah. Doesn’t seem like she’s freaked out either.”

“Perhaps she looks at it from a different angle. I believe she can see more of me than most, and more of the Fae. Maybe she’s just used to it, or entirely without fear.”

Ilea smiled at that idea.

“Can you show me your abilities related to cosmic magic later?”

“Of course,” Ilea said. “I can show you the flame too, whenever you feel ready.”

“Already acting like the teacher. Hmm. I can’t say I’m not proud. Annoyed too.”

“Why annoyed?” Ilea asked, sipping some ale.

“Because you didn’t try new things or change your approach. You just went and punched bigger things.”

“Blaming me for the power of evolutions,” Ilea murmured in her mind.

“Entirely your fault. Yes,” the Meadow sent.

“Doing alright?” Felicia asked as she joined and sat down.

“Yeah. Done dancing?” Ilea said.

“For now. Niivalyr is quite lovely. I’ll be sure to tell you know who about it,” Felicia said and smiled. “I don’t suppose I can convince you for a dance?”

“I’m not quite comfortable with my new powers yet,” Ilea said. “In a few days maybe. When I feel settled.”

“I’ll be there, just let me know when you’re ready,” the woman said and linked her arm through hers. “You still didn’t tell the story.”

Ilea sighed, looking at the yellow eyes now squinting at her. She couldn’t help but smile.

“Come on. Once, for everyone,” Felicia said.

“Alright. Sure. Just once, before a dozen songs are made up about it all,” Ilea said and stood up.

Felicia clapped Ilea on her back and smiled. “I’m sure you’re too late for that already. Storytime!”

“Dragonfire,” Harthome spoke when Ilea was done with her retelling. He smiled to himself. “Ah I wish I could’ve seen that.”

“No you don’t,” Walter said from the side.

Ilea chuckled. I have a few fun things about as impressive by now. She didn’t say that of course, not confident enough in her control to show anything off. Fighting massive creatures in an area with kilometers of wasteland in each direction was one thing, using her spells near normal humans was another.

She smiled at the thought of them being normal humans. She certainly hadn’t felt that way back when she had met them. All but maybe Dale’s family, they were plenty normal.

The conversations split up again after that, and the first people soon left, returning to their respective duties or in Cless’ and the Baron’s case, to their adventures.

Ilea stayed to the last, only Walter and Evan remaining, the two talking about dark magic theory. “I’ll be going as well. It was good seeing you two,” she said.

Walter stood up and smiled. “And you, Dragonslayer,” he said with a wide smile, clasping her arm. “I’ll wait to hear about your next exploits.”

“Just don’t believe the bards,” she said.

“Good to see you. And I’ll be in touch in regards to meeting the dragon Garonoth,” Evan spoke as he joined them. “But I must return to my work. So much new information unearthed with every passing week. And you’re not helping.”

“I do have the habit of creating an ever increasing workload for everyone I meet,” Ilea said.

“Opportunities is what you create,” Walter said.

“Which takes work to get through,” said Evan. “Good fortune on your journey, Lilith.”

“And to you two both,” she said and teleported to her room. A bath, she thought and started collecting lava into the basin. Hmm. Might not be safe exactly. She stopped her lava collection and stepped through a gate, appearing out in the northern wasteland. And this is too in the open.

“I’ll be out. See you when I get back,” she sent to the Meadow.

“You are always welcome,” the Meadow answered.

Ilea opened another gate to Kohr. The first place she wanted to check anyway. Flying up, she quickly scanned the desolate landscape before she found a nice medium sized mountain of salt stone. She formed a lance of ash and volcanic glass, the thing growing until it was around five times her size. Charging it with her wings, Ilea sent it crashing down into the stone.

Her projectile dug deep, a tremor traveling through the ground until her spear came to a halt. She flew into the hole and dissolved her weapon. She focused on her Fabric Alteration for a moment and charged it, spreading her arms as a wave of force spread in a sphere around her, pulverizing salt stone, leaving cracks and splinters in the walls of the now spherical chamber. “That’s more like it.”

She landed on the ground and increased her weight, and subsequently her ability to generate heat. Falling to her back, she impacted the ground with a loud crash, debris and splintered stone spreading aside, some unfortunate pieces pulverized below her weight. She sighed and started forming lava, further increasing the size of her improvised bath with a few limbs of ash.

Oh, I could’ve just used Cosmic Deconstruction for all that.

Well. What’s done is done.

The cave walls started glowing as the heat of her ash and lava bath increased, Ilea relaxing in the smoldering liquid as she closed her eyes. Killed a dragon. Brought it to Ravenhall. And now there are hundreds of people working to collect scales, blood, and bones.

That was me.

She smiled to herself and opened her eyes. Raising her hand out of the lava bath, she summoned the Primordial Flame, watching the bright yellow and orange fire move atop her palm. She didn’t really think it was an issue to use her magic back on Elos, but here in Kohr or in Erendar, she just didn’t feel like she had to be careful with testing at all.

There will be so many stories about me.

Kind of want to lay low for a while. Monstrous helps to an extent, but I still show as a three mark at least by now.

She was glad to have made friends before reaching these heights. It wasn’t impossible to connect to new people by now, but her status, her influence, and wealth all would make it more difficult.

Her recent bouts of meditation and reading had provided some perspective, but she couldn’t help but feel relieved that she had reached this stage. Of course there were more monsters out there to fight, levels and stats to gain, but she didn’t think another evolution or major spike was anywhere near. The daughters would provide reasonable growth in the coming months if she kept fighting them, but she assumed that everything would slow down again, now that she was in the thousands.

Not that there isn’t anything to do, she thought. Not having a major reason to kill high level creatures, I could explore my magic a little more. Or get back into archery. Certainly been a while.

She wondered if she could learn about basic enchantments and runework as well. It just never really stood out to her as particularly interesting, but she supposed a major part of that was just the presence of far more important things to do. No wonder the Meadow is such a scholar. Who knows what skills I’ll build up in the future.

Ilea looked through her status and realized she hadn’t spent her core points yet. I hardly understand what I can do with my current abilities. I think I’ll wait until I get a handle on everything. Then I can decide in which Class or stats to invest.

She steamed in her scorching bath for a little longer, falling asleep after a while.

Ilea woke up to pained screeches and the smell of burnt flesh. It seemed a few demons had found the location, some of the braver ones pushing down until they reached the vicinity of Ilea’s bath.

She yawned and stretched, forming her scale armor before she teleported up and out, her wings spreading right after. Now, where was that facility?

She had reset her gate a few times, but remembered the rough direction.

Her wings charged before she shot off into the distance, a glowing streak of burning air left in her wake.

It took longer than she had expected to find the large crater, but she did find it.

Flying down, she focused on her Fabric Alteration, specifically the ability to see where creatures had traveled through the realms. She searched for a few minutes and finally found something strange within the fabric. A small and faded tear, but something about it felt strange. Even though, she had never used this new part of her ability, she could tell that the old scar had been tampered with. To the point where she couldn’t alter it any further.

Paranoid, are we?

She switched into her Sunbound Creation, her ability to affect the fabric increasing greatly. Looking at the broken tear, she deactivated her spell, knowing that there was no way she could affect it. All she knew was that something had once used this specific location in the fabric to travel to another realm.

Doesn’t seem like he used this facility very often either. Or he just didn’t use it to travel through realms.

With what she had learned the hard way in her fights with the blood Oracle and the Meadow, she could guess that an ancient space mage like the Architect would be careful in regards to realm travel.

So much for that idea, Ilea thought as she did another sweep, occasionally using Sunbound Creation to add to her space awareness and manipulation.

She thought about what else she wanted to try out, remembering that the Meadow had asked for a cosmic magic demonstration. She was about to leave when she thought about one of her new abilities.

Maybe I don’t have to be there at all.

Mastery of Ash activated, twenty five copies of her forming out of thin air, made entirely of ash and volcanic glass. She gave them the command to stay and listen, quickly testing a few things.

She found that she could imbue them with new mana and health, but the beings lost their ability to use their spells nonetheless, once the initial resources were used up. She could however give them new commands.

So, how can I effectively use this.

She assigned those who had received her aura skills to go out and hunt one demon each while she thought.

Cosmic Deconstruction I can send to the Meadow. I suppose I can tell all of them to just return to the domain of the Meadow once they use up their initial mana. They can still use the normal teleportation gates. Or I just dismiss them from a distance once I remake them an hour later.

May be helpful to deploy them as monster hunters assigned to Aki. They can perceive their surroundings at least, and they can hear.

She wondered if one of them could beat an Executioner without using a skill. Either way, her copies would be valuable assets to anyone she assigned them to. They could be guards as well, but then Aki fulfills that role well enough.

The True Reconstruction one could travel the cities and heal whoever needs it.

She received a message and smiled.

‘ding’ ‘You have killed [Breaker – lvl 185]’

Which means…

Ilea summoned her notebook and sat down on a chunk of salt rock, hearing the thing crack as she sighed. Not even rock is safe anymore.

Wait, before I waste time on this. She opened a gate to her home and imbued her winged copy to retrieve a random kitchen utensil before returning through the open gate.

The shadow left and returned mere seconds later, bringing a single spoon.

Which means they can go to another realm and stay there.

She took some notes.

- Cosmic Deconstruction – Show the Meadow your powers and listen to its commands, written or spoken. Return to the anchor in the northern landscape and wait if imbued mana is used up.

- True Reconstruction – Travel the lands and work with Aki to find the most efficient way to heal people. Return to the anchor in the northern landscape and wait if imbued mana is used up.

- Embodiment of the Arcane. Hunt spirits with your group in Erendar.

Better not send them back to Icy’s lair… but I could go and look for a different spot where they can gather.

She added the note and looked through her other Cosmic Immortal skills, mostly keeping their tasks the same, adding small additions in respect to their skills. Without the synergies her abilities provided, the separate skills weren’t quite as universally useful, but Limitless Domain and Catalyst Core could absorb some of the damage for example, while Timeless Perception could perhaps distract a spirit for longer with its increased reaction time.

The goal was to build a formation that could hunt Daughters of Sephilon, without her being there at all. Killing them would require the Primordial Flame or either one of her cosmic abilities. She wanted to use True Reconstruction to go and heal people, which left Cosmic Deconstruction, which would stay with the Meadow for the time being.

So Primordial Flame at the back, only coming in when the Daughter was defeated, to burn them away. Or when all the others were destroyed.

All the defensive abilities form a protective circle around the offensive types. Sunbound Creation uses its ability on itself and the other copies if a Fourth Tier spell is used by the spirits. The movement and teleportation types distract the enemy and try to get their attention away from the offensive types, sacrificing themselves if an offensive type is about to be destroyed.

She would have to refine the specifics a little, and she needed a place in Erendar for them to return to. If they even manage to kill a single daughter.

The synergy between her abilities coupled with her resource generation and Class bonuses were what made her so powerful. Ilea didn’t know how strong the individual copies really were. They were made of her ash, in no way connected to her health or benefiting from it, only imbued with a small amount each. The defensive ones had one defensive skill, not all of them like she did. The offensive ones could use their spells until their mana was used up, not benefiting from the various auras or her enormous pool and regeneration. It would likely come down to a few seconds where they could strike, but perhaps that was enough against weaker spirits.

Only one way to find out, she thought and teleported both herself and all of the copies to Erendar.