Sofia commended the graveyard nymph to slowly back up and return to another empty tunnel.
Pestle. I’m going to do something a bit risky. You need to hide in my armor.
Without a word, Pestle climbed into the opening Sofia made in her chestplate.
The graveyard nymphs grabbed Sofia’s ankles again and dragged her back down.
The crystal, and the tiny ‘dead’ body of an unknown creature species on top of it. It was unclear which one was actually the level 442 boss. But Sofia operated under two assumptions. The boss was either non-hostile, unconscious, or unable to attack. And it was unlikely to be both ‘objects’.
The spider had survived entering the room before, and her face sticking out of the wall had not triggered anything either, so she felt it was worth a try.
She placed herself correctly within the spirit realm to be lined up with the curvature of the cavern wall, and the nymphs pushed her into the room all at once.
The moment Sofia was fully into the physical plane, she used her eye to store both items.
The crystal disappeared.
In a timeframe that Sofia could barely perceive at all, the tiny creature had ‘disappeared’ as well, lunging toward her face so fast that Sofia’s eyes could not keep up. It crashed into the cavern wall.
Sofia was already gone, finding herself in space, at the closest point her light was, straight up above the northern pole, a mere fifteen light-minutes away, the time she had spent in the dungeon. It was close enough that even to the naked eye, Veliadren was still about half as big as the sun. Sofia zoomed in, her heart still beating loudly from the close call despite having no blood to pump.
She failed to spot herself going into the dungeon but the thought of being potentially able to see herself like that was quite amusing.
Without the divinity to transpose herself back to the surface, she killed some time chatting with Pestle, trying to calm her heart but having a bad feeling in the back of her mind.
Pestle had a lot to say, recounting the events of the last few days in Ser’Extra and Bookie’s current whereabouts trying to decorate his tower in the palace without any help.
Then it happened, a blinding flash of light that was almost enough to hide the planet from view, for but an instant.
UNHOLY.
FUCKING.
SHIT.
A gigantic fissure was quickly spread along the Knight’s death continent, spanning almost a third of its entire length. Not only had the one hit from the creature fully vaporized everything about the dungeon’s altitude and caused that gigantic fissure, the entire part of the continent the strike was aimed toward had broken off. A chunk of ice hundreds of times the size of the human peninsula was rapidly drifting south, about to cause a wave of cataclysmic proportions.
“Pesle want look!”
Oh, sorry. Stay in, there’s no mana outside. Can you even see anything?
“Pesle no eyes. Magic good look.”
Giving Pestle an opening to look out without destroying her armor, Sofia watched the consequences of her little theft, sweating bullets.
She had left an effigy at the point she landed on the continent and instead of transposing directly to space, she had considered transposing there, thinking that a few thousand of kilometers of distance was probably enough. She had changed her mind at the last second, just to be on the safe side.
I would have still been in the range of the fucking strike!!!
What in the fuck did I even steal?!
She watched in terror as an apocalyptical wave brought all along the water from the illusory sea down to the seafloor toward the human continent.
WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST DO?!
“It dragon wave,” Pestle commented, impressed by the sight.
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Then, something just as incomprehensible happened. A glowing net of gigantic runes appeared above that entire region of the northern hemisphere, shining for just a moment, and when they faded, the sea was back to normal, the drifting block of ice now stuck in place.
How… What?!
Although Sofia felt great relief seeing the situation stabilising so fast, the way it had happened was certainly quite strange.
Did an ascended do that? The system? The world itself? What was that?!
Do I have an extra mana debt to pay for that?
What about the monster?
As Sofia kept looking, the fascinating sights continued. In between the now quite distant block of ice and the icy continent, the ocean was freezing over so fast that the expansion of water created more waves, though much smaller, but with ripples still tall enough to be visible from space. At the same time, the huge fissure that had formed in the ground was closing, separated edges brought back together like a shallow skin wound healing by itself.
Just as Sofia thought she had seen everything, a blue dragon appeared above the northern pole, so unbelievably huge that its eight deployed wings almost completely blocked it from view.
The sight was numbing. Even the deep whale would look like an ant next to that. Its mottled blue scales reflected the sunlight in strange ways. It was only there for a scant for seconds, hovering above the Knight’s death continent.
The dragon disappeared as mysteriously as it had come. The icy expanse below was calm, dead, left with no visible trace of what had just happened aside from gaining a new peninsula.
Woah.
If anything, it’s bigger than it was before.
To think a single level 400 monster can cause that much destruction and such a response in one singular attack…
Seriously, how is this planet still in one piece?
… It’s actually a fucking blessing in disguise that the Phageid want to eat the mana in things and can’t just destroy everything without it spilling out.
If they could absorb airborne mana and didn’t need to be so careful… Hell…
I notice now that the black beams of the Alphageid never actually hit or destroyed anything other than their direct target. The only thing I’ve seen them destroy is buildings to grab the people inside.
How much damage could an Alphageid really do if they actually tried to destroy things?
It might be better not to think about it too much…
After this mind-numbing spectacle and realizations, Sofia was left with a burning urgency to get stronger even faster.
What even is that thing I stole?
Sofia took the crystal out, and let it float in front of her as she took a good look.
That thing’s bigger than it looked. Forty centimeters large, right about? It’s transparent pink but the insides are blurry. Five, ten… Twenty triangular faces? Icosahedron. Who knew investigating the alternative casting types would force me to learn so much about geometry.
Does that mean it uses triangular magic? This thing has way too much mana. It’s got to be in the billions at least. It’s leaking out a lot but in comparison to what’s inside it’s just trace amounts.
“Feel leg,” Pestle commented, flying around the floating crystal.
Yeah well it’s probably not, so you better not take a bite.
“Pesle not Klepra!”
I know, I know.
Sofia placed her hand on the object, not feeling any particular reaction.
Mr.Scribe?
Firing up their custom out-of-body [Identify], Sofia let her scribe handle the analysis of the strange object. She had been reading a lot about enchantments, rituals and spell structures so the result would normally be a lot better than they were with the forbidden layer’s cursed sword.
The results took a while to come, but Mr.Scribe had managed to extract a surprising amount of information.
Chromatic glass? The stuff made by grinding mana cores into a powder? It thought it was supposed to be useless decoration?
[Unfinished Spell Jewel]:
A carefully crafted jewel in a semi-final production state, it is ready for miniaturization. Its crystalline structure is currently stretched out to the absolute maximum, leading to mana leakage. A mix of unfamiliar and primitive enchanting patterns suggests it is from a different era; judging from the redundant color pattern and sense of aesthetics, likely from the golden age.
Composition:
Pink diamond (Outer shell)Orichalcum (Vein structure and internal enchantment vector)Chromatic glass (Inner core)Unknown blood (About 3ml, serving as the mana battery). Grafted spirit bodies (Numerous)Usage:
A jewel apparently meant to be embedded into the skin, the spirit bodies will gradually latch onto the user’s blueprint, allowing them to easily use the contained spell without having to learn it after the connection is complete. The process is likely to take several months to a few years, but can be reversed by severing the blueprint connection to the spirit bodies.
Contained spell: [Oblivion of mindfulness]
