Chapter 1801: Tessa’s Tribulation
The Tribulation didn’t wait for everyone to get there, though they all tried their best to be on time for Tessa’s surprise advancement.
The last one to make it was Rae, who had been busy working with a customer to finish an order, and then snuck out, leaving Meisje to run the shop while she watched Tessa’s advancement.
Meisje didn’t mind. This was her first chance to really prove herself to Lady Rae, and earn some favour from the notoriously terrifying spider.
She was fairly sure that Rae was actually fond of her, but her mannerisms made it difficult to tell, and that left the girl with some concerns that Rae might kick her out of the shop if she didn’t perform well enough.
That would be terrible for her future in the Guild, as this was the best place to sell the items that she was just now learning to make.
She had been appointed as the manager, but Meisje lacked any sort of confidence in dealing with Rae if the spider was in a bad mood. She already knew how that could end for people that Rae did not like, and she had no intentions of becoming part of the spider’s next bath.
If Rae knew what she was thinking, she would be at least mildly insulted. She didn’t turn on useful people like that, and Meisje was an ongoing project.
She had already put a lot of effort into improving the girl, and now she was beginning to see the payoff.
Like breeding smaller creatures to defend your nest, she was raising the girl to run her cloth shop and help her make clothing. It was a win for everyone, and the better that Meisje did for herself, the better that she would do in defending Rae’s shop.
Getting impatient now, or sending her away, would be counterproductive.
Only once Meisje was fully grown into her powers and Rae was ready to move on to a new shop would she be prepared to stop keeping the girl at her side. Until then, there wasn’t much that would stop her from guiding Meisje toward a greater future.
The first bolt of tribulation lightning hit just before Rae arrived, a massive disturbance that shook the ground and startled every creature living in the Tiny World.
Unlike the other advancements that had happened here, the ones for the lizardfolk and the demons, this one was particularly violent, and the individual strikes appeared to be even more intense than usual.
Then, Rae settled in with the crowd, and the second strike slammed into the barrier that Tessa had put up around herself. The divine power and the tribulation lightning seemed to merge for a second in an impossible combination of gold and blue.
Then, the barrier stabilized, and a third strike, this one made of a half dozen smaller bolts of lightning converging over her head, pounded into her barrier.
Tessa remained perfectly focused as the wrath of the Tribulation lightning increased, and Thor silently cheered her on.
The fourth strike was the same as the third, only more intense, and the fifth was strong enough that even Thor began to feel the intensity of the lightning.
The sixth strike shattered every barrier that Tessa had put up, and Karl saw smoke coming from the red scales on her body as the [Warbeast] transformation tanked the worst of the damage.
Hurriedly, she put the barriers back up, just in time for the seventh volley of lightning to crash into her, scorching her robes and exposing large patches of scaled skin.
For the eighth volley, her barriers were shaky, as she had mostly exhausted her mana storage during the earlier strikes.
The barriers shattered immediately, and Tessa was slammed to the ground, her scales charred and smoking, but already regenerating as she gritted her teeth and focused on gathering as much mana as possible for what was bound to be the strongest strike of them all.
Dana watched in horror at the fury of the Tribulation, so much worse than what she had undergone, as if the god of war was personally testing his disciple to see if she truly was worthy.
The final set of barriers was better than the eighth set had been. But it was far from being enough to take the full force of the tribulation. The final volley did not come as a single strike, but as nine simultaneous bolts of lightning crashing into Tessa from different angles, shattering every scale on her body and leaving the ground under her a shining black volcanic rock.
It was marked with hand, knee and footprints from where she had been braced, visible after the impact, as her body was tossed to the side.
The tribulation faded, and Thor rushed over to his wife as Lotus, Leo and Tian all cast healing spells at the same time. You couldn’t heal someone in the middle of the tribulation without causing even more issues. But you could start the moment that it ended.
Her body was visibly mending under the combined efforts of her friends, and Tessa’s power was steadily growing as her flesh knit back together and her scales regrew.
Slowly, she rolled over and gave the group a V for victory gesture, before passing out.
Thor chuckled as he picked up his wife and draped a blanket over her.
"Well, that’s one more Immortal for the group. Now we’re down to just a few of the ladies. I know you can’t be far behind, especially Lotus, with that Immortal bear bonded to you."
Lotus nodded. "It will be soon. And then we will have a full team again. Well, assuming that Ophelia is right behind me."
The Werebear laughed and swatted her girlfriend on the backside. "What makes you think that I’m going to be slower than you to reach Immortality?"
"I have motivation and fluff on my side."
Lotus stated it as if it were an unquestioned fact that being in the presence of fluff was good for her advancement, and not a distraction that kept her from getting things done.
Perhaps it was, when the fluff started making demands.
