Chapter 197 - Behind the Locked Door

When Arciel awoke, she found herself in a confusing predicament. Her arms and legs were bound, her mouth was sealed with an apple, and her head was strapped to a large metal pole. Moving her eyes around the cave revealed a pair of giants sitting in front of a roaring fire. One of the loincloth-laden humanoids was of a bulkier make and sported a hairy beard, while the other almost looked a little more feminine. Almost.

There was another smaller male walking in and out of the abode. Unlike his father, who was sitting around and picking his nose, the child was unrooting trees with his bare hands and bringing them back inside. His mother ripped the tops off the oaks and willows and threw them into the pan, whilst shoving the trunks and roots into the fire instead.

All preparations to cook the sea creature alive.

With no desire to wait for salvation, Arciel quietly slipped away when the clouds opened and basked the cave in the light of the moon. But while she was able to escape the hole in the side of the mountain, she was unable to venture beyond the plateau. The entire mesa was trapped in a large, invisible barrier. She tried pushing it, as well as sneaking in an attack with her shadow, but it refused to bend or break.

If the filthy field was any indication, she was not the first uninvited guest. Dozens of half-eaten corpses were strewn across the highland plain. Some of the faces, she recognised. Members of the royal guard loyal to the treacherous queen of the whores, men and women she despised to the very end. She was almost grateful to the giants for having dispatched them; she would have done it herself, had she ever found the opportunity.

Appreciative as she was, however, the blood-drinking squid soon concluded that there was no room for mercy. She had no way of breaking through the barrier; her only choice was to kill its caster. Fortunately, there were more than enough corpses, enough blood, for her to do just that.

Crimson spears rose from the half-eaten bodies and skewered all three giants. The wounds themselves were shallow, but Arciel cared little for the physical damage dealt. Coming in contact with their vital fluids provided her the opportunity to seize it, to force it to run rampant within their bodies and kill them from within.

It was a perfect solution, a guaranteed execution, but everything was reset as soon as the third monster bled out. She was right back where she started, tied to a pole with a fruit in her mouth, and the three were back to their previous positions. The only thing missing from the equation was the mana she had spent on their previous executions.

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A hand against her temple, Lia clenched her teeth, took a deep breath, and scanned her surroundings. She could hardly see. Her eyes were still spinning, and her head refused to unblur the scene laid out before her. Just as obnoxious was the buzzing that filled her ears; she was being assaulted by a constant, high-pitched ringing, loud enough to drown out everything else in her surroundings. Only her nose was functional, but she wished that it wasn’t. The overly sensitive organ sang her a tune of despair and regret, a rhapsody that brought her not to the high heavens, but the very depths of hell, for her nostrils were filled with none other than the putrid stench of death.

Covering her face with one hand, she closed her eyes and focused her mind on the events leading up to her unpleasant awakening. She knew that something had suddenly affected her body. She had suddenly started spinning in all different directions, moving so quickly and erratically that she blacked out before she could even attempt to fight back. That was why her head hurt as much as it did. The repeated change in direction had mercilessly battered and bruised her brain.

Vision still blurry, she looked not towards the dreary, purple woods around her, but at the old wooden watch she kept stashed in her pocket. The time was 17:28; less than an hour had passed since she last checked it, but the sky was dark. The afternoon sun had vanished, hidden away behind a moonless night.

It took her a moment to realise that she was not alone. Someone else lay beside her. A closer look confirmed that it was the newest addition. Arciel was not entirely unconscious. Her eyes were empty but wide open, and she was muttering something under her breath as magic radiated from her body and turned to smog. Every once in a while, she would construct a spear made of shadows and impale something random in their vicinity, but it was hardly consistent or even targeted.

Natalya grimaced as she threw the other girl over her shoulder and quickly checked over her key items. Her journal and her sword both hung off her waist, and so too did the bag of emergency rations she had prepared in case she was separated from her lyrkrian restaurant.

The air was the only cause for concern. It was unbreathable; the discoloured smoke was so noxious that it stung the inside of her lungs. Each breath came with a twinge of pain, and looking over her status panel confirmed the physical effects. Her status displayed as weakened, and her health regeneration had nearly been reduced to zero. She would have to be cautious. Any wounds she sustained, whether from her own abilities or otherwise, would effectively be permanent.

Catching a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye, the cat hopped to her feet and drew her sword. The plants were just as hostile as all the others they had crossed. The trees were slowly creeping towards her, their hungry roots slithering ever closer as they revealed their gnashing teeth. A glowing purple sap, thick as honey and foul as the air, dripped from the maws that lined their trunks. There were corpses inside. Half-decomposed kelpfins and scyphs, their organs more visible than their skin. And yet, though mangled, they still appeared to be alive. Their eyes were empty, just like Arciel’s, and they too were mumbling under their breaths, moving slightly on occasion. Even as maggots thick as fingers burrowed through their bones.

With a light cough, and a subsequent moment to catch her breath, Natalya dashed towards the nearest treant and struck it with a wide, sweeping slash. The brittle wood crumbled like a cake as the malevolent tree collapsed, screeching in pain as its life abandoned its withered husk. The half-rotted, living corpses inside of its body were destroyed in the same attack. It was the least she could do, to put them out of their misery.

The tree’s death came alongside a sigh of relief. It was only level 250, certainly a challenge for some, but Natalya was confident that she could fight her way through the forest. And it was with that confidence in mind that she began to move. Every monster in her way, she cut down, but those out of the reach of her blade were ignored. She needed to find the others, or at least a safer location where she could lie low and perhaps wait for Arciel to recover.

Her eyes scanned the dark forest as she moved. There were traces of battle everywhere, but all of them were old, from weeks, months, or even years past. She could sense none of her companions—or much of anything at all for that matter—beyond the infinite mass of trees. Still, she stayed on the move, stopping only as she spotted a large clearing. At first, she was relieved to be out of the woods, but her solace was almost immediately deleted, replaced with a gasp of horror.

At the center of the clearing sat not a watering hole or other place of rest, but a massive tree with dozens of corpses hanging from its branches. Some were already stripped bare. Had they not been partially digested, their most shameful parts would have been exposed to the noxious purple fog. Others were still partially clothed, their protective armour slowly rotting away with their bodies. But naked or not, all were suspended from the tree’s branches by twisted, wooden ropes. It was not by their necks that the corpses were held in place; the knotted tendrils pierced their skulls with such force that some even had branches that emerged from between their legs.

Guarding the haunting graveyard was an equally haunting knight. He sat at its base, his body covered from head to toe in thick armour made from the tree’s bark. Though his head was left exposed, his visage was of little help when it came to the identification of his race.

For one, he had no skin. His head was effectively a collection of black lines, like a children’s scribble brought to life. His eyes were perfectly round—bright white circles etched into the darkness—and his lips were curved into a seemingly permanent smile, a grin made of blood-rusted daggers.

The cat’s gut screamed for her to run. Raw terror welled up from within her chest and urged her to seek refuge, but she gulped down her fear and set Arciel down, just in time to parry the monster’s first attack. The tree knight bridged the fifty meter gap in less than a second and delivered an overhand swing. She could feel her wrists creaking beneath the overwhelming blow; it took pushing with her whole body just to deflect it off course.

Its second and third strikes were just as heavy. His blackwood claymore lost its sharpness wherever it was touched by her master’s blade, but a dulled edge did nothing to lower the raw power that backed his attacks. It felt like she would be flung away if she let down her guard.

Twirling past a particularly heavy smash, she stepped on his foot and delivered a blow to his side. Her blade cleaved through his armour, but the wound it left was shallow, too small to leave any lasting damage. The confirmed hit would have easily ripped him in half had she enraged or sacrificed her health, but she dared not pay forward her life force, knowing that she would regain it at less than a tenth the usual rate.

Capitalising on her failure, the tree knight launched a counterattack and drove its wooden claymore towards her. She made an attempt to dodge away, but no matter how she pulled or twisted, her sword refused to budge. It was only as the dulled blade crashed into her shoulder and nearly shattered the bone that she finally acknowledged that a blood price was not something she could afford to avoid.

Clenching her teeth to resist the ensuing pain, she activated the weakest of her dark knight skills, and sacrificed a hundred points of health.

There was a flash through the forest as her strength was bolstered tenfold, followed soon after by the spilling of purple blood. With just one hand, she tore her blade not out, but through the fighter’s body and ripped it cleanly in two. Not letting down her guard, she plunged her weapon into his corpse and nailed its upper half to the floor. She continued to keep an eye on it, just in case, as she scrolled through her logs to confirm its death. Then and only then did she finally step away.

He was level 297 and certainly tough enough to match. What caught her attention, however, was not the number of milestones under his belt, but his race. He was a blighted corpsetree fruit. Just like the hundred others that had suddenly fallen to the floor.

The bodies that the plant released changed as they were dropped from its branches. Wood grew from their frames and enveloped their skin. Their faces were stripped away and turned to blackened fibres, blighted xylem, that sought nutrients not from the soil, but the blood of the deceased and soon to be.

Again, the thought of running flashed through her mind, but the monsters were too fast, and their grasp on the terrain ensured that her attempts at escape would end in vain.

Natalya closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Without opening them again, she lowered her stance, raised her sword in front of her, and put her free hand behind her back. Had she been like her master, she likely would have held a sidearm, a thick dagger she would use to parry the enemies’ weapons. But she was a catgirl, not a huskar. Her invisible claws would serve the same purpose.

Rushing headfirst, she started the encounter by eating a thousand points of health. For the next hour, her strength and dexterity would be doubled, her eyes would grow sharper, and her body more durable.

Another blood price was immediately paid forward, its result a heavy, horizontal sweep. For another five thousand points, roughly four percent of her total, she delivered an attack powerful enough to split open a mountain. The fruit fell like flies, but the tree itself was far tougher than its brittle shavings. It resisted her attack and suffered nothing but a tiny nick, a minor scratch that healed in a matter of seconds, but it threw a fit all the same. It roared violently as it tore its roots from the soil and shambled towards her, the corpses still on its branches shrinking and shriveling with every step.

The rancid, purple fog grew thicker as the fleshiest part of its body rose from beneath the earth. A collection of stolen, swollen brains, arranged to form a pulsing, infantile body. It was the sort of sight that would have an inexperienced warrior vomiting and fleeing. But in Natalya, its airborne venom instilled more confidence than fear. The poison had eaten away at her health. And finally given her an excuse to enrage without waste.

The world blurred as she drew the rune and chanted its key phrase. Her spell immediately overwrote the effects of the brain-eating tree’s miasma, replacing it instead with a self-inflicted madness.

That was when the black thing finally attacked. It lashed with such speed that its thin, sharp lines turned to a blurry mess. She could barely follow it. Her last minute parry failed to amount to a defense. Her arm ruptured, exploded when she deflected its attack, bursting into a mess of red and white.

But level two saw the limb immediately regenerated. Because the limit on her life force dictated that she was in perfect condition at exactly half her maximum health.

Diving through a forest of long black things, she swung her sword and claws in tandem.

None of them cut anything. And her vision was filled with red.

One of the black things poked through her thinking thing and tried to lift her above the purple. Even slashing at its branches, she found herself unable to break free. So she enraged again.

Once, twice, thrice she descended.

Straight to level five.

Pain. Rage. Death. Murder. Sword. Claws. Attack. Dodge. Kill.

Every purple spore inhaled was neutralised. Every seedling that attacked was cut down. Every tendril that drew near was shredded.

It was not with a violent, messy blitz that she challenged the treant, nor a mindless charge with aggression as its only measure. Because unlike those that embodied the wrath of the gods, Lia, Natalya Vernelle, was a blademaster first and a berserker second. Even when reduced to a beast with less than half a brain.

The instincts she possessed were not like those of a feral tiger’s, but a graceful cheetah’s. The steps she took were slow and methodical, almost like a dance, a perfect symphony conducted with her blade.

But her victory could not be celebrated.

Because upon the tree’s death, the clock’s hand was turned. Back to the twenty-eighth minute of the seventeenth hour.