Chapter 783 - A delicious meal

The conversation continued for a few minutes, Death diverting it to more mundane subjects. They discussed Ezerid’s impatience stunting his growth, and Death somehow ended up roping Sofia into the Recessed chat’s plan to secretly mobilize a few of their Apostles to prepare a surprise birthday party for Cinthia a few months later. 

Despite both parties enjoying the conversation, being this close to Death itself was taking a toll on Sofia, so Death cut things short, and proceeded with giving her more essence. They both hoped she could take at least three, but when he gave her the second one, bringing her total to five, Sofia keenly felt that this was her limit. Even in the Recessed plane, she felt her chest grow cold, the essence starting to be too much for her to contain.

Nevertheless, Death seemed satisfied, it was still a mutually beneficial exchange.

“Will that be enough for you to come to the physical plane without issue?”

“Only by trying will I find out.”

Death’s gentle words echoed in Sofia’s mind as she felt her surroundings change. The transition was smooth, she was back in her city, Leverle watching over her.

“Two more?” he immediately noticed, “Good enough, I suppose.”

Back in the physical world, Sofia felt the icy grasp of death spreading within her even more clearly. If Pareth was a frost giant she currently felt like a frost Lumian. Her Lumian horns were burning brightly with ghostly grey flames, working overtime to control the overflowing divine energy.

“This is the most I can take,” Sofia said, she instinctively felt that it was her final limit. And in a way that reassured her somewhat. Five of the same divine essences was what it took to create a god, carrying that much was already strange, and something in the back of her mind screamed that going past that, be it Death or any other essence, might lead to unforeseen consequences.

“Do you still need many?”

“Don’t read this one out loud,” Sofia answered with a smirk, sharing a system window.

[Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ - Peak of the Light forging realm : 

Gather divine essence (30) to unlock the Boundless space realm.

Current divine essence (21) : 

• Scripture (1)

• Aphenoreth (1)

• Dread (1)

• Sorrow (1)

• Ormoncleth (1)

• Victory (1)

• Sun (5)

• Creation (2)

• Life (1)

• Death (5)

• Rejection (1)

• Taxes (1)

“... What a mind-numbing list,” Leverle said in disbelief.

“Hmmhmm. And that is not including the four divine items I have, so technically I own 25, but sadly items do not count.”

“...”

“You can always consider making this the main temple,” Sofia joked, “Now if you’ll excuse me, it looks like I need to attend to another guest.”

“Truly a demon,” Leverle whispered, watching Sofia run toward another of their kin, her appearance changing from Lumian to Demon as she moved.

The new figure, unlike Leverle, made no effort at hiding their uncanny demonic body, even if it was perhaps the tamest demonic appearance of an Apostle Sofia had met so far. Slightly taller than Sofia, she looked like a human-shaped black-furred fox, like the fox version of avians. All over her body, sharp red horn-like protrusions showed from under the fur. With pointy sharp teeth, blood red eyes, and dangerous-looking claws, she looked like a blood-thirsty feral creature, yet carried herself with elegance, her five ‘soft’, oddly long fox tails swayed behind her back like serpents ready to strike.

As for what made the demon easily recogniseable as Suffering’s Apostle? A black serrated blade stabbed diagonally across her chest. It was fascinating to look at, and even stranger for Sofia, who could feel without even trying that the blade was fused directly with the Apostle’s ribs instead of cutting through them. The blade was technically one of that Apostle’s bones.

The Recessed certainly all have peculiar tastes…

The fox Apostle watched Sofia approach, looking her up and down, nodding approvingly, and speaking first before Sofia stopped.

“Arapherlenminera of Suffering,” She presented herself respectfully.

Sofia couldn’t identify the demon, but if she judged purely from the mana she could feel within her, she did not lose to level 499 Leverle.

“Vakariazrehafin of Sorrow,” Sofia answered, “Welcome to Ser’Extra, daughter of Suffering. Thank you for coming.”

The Apostle smiled, which made her look even scarier, like a rabid dog about to bite, “Just Pherlen is fine,” she said, “I will be looking around on my own, here is what we owe you, now it is up to you to fulfill your side.” Saying this, Pherlen stabbed her own throat with her fingers, and pulled out a bloody round pebble on the tip of her claw. “Swallow this ‘divine item’ and you will receive the Suffering you seek.”

Sofia nodded and extended a hand, grabbing the small pebble dripping with demonic blood.

Pherlen smiled again without a word, and jumped away, leaving as abruptly as she had arrived.

“Not even stopping to say hello,” Leverle commented, having just walked up to Sofia.

“Does she dislike you or something?” Sofia asked.

“Hopefully not. She is simply… Not very sociable,” Leverle answered.

“Well, I got what I wanted without much effort so I can’t complain… Can you identify this for me? I’m locked out of it currently.”

“This might not be the best idea.”

“Is there an issue with it? Does that thing have protection against identification?”

“No, I…”

Leverle stopped himself and just shared a system window.

[??? Suffering gem]:

Can you really call this disgusting bloody garbage a divine item? It’s just physical agony in rock form. And not even a nice-looking rock! The audacious might gain an essence by consuming it, but it sure as fuck won’t be a good time. Literally go eat rocks! Hell, I’d rip my balls off before putting this shit anywhere near my mouth if I had one. No way!

If you’re gonna have this thing at least put as much distance as you can between you and the subspiritual, or you might just start regretting being alive.

Grade: Puking blood from the eyes

Sofia was so stunned by the item description that her demonic transformation failed and she reverted to her regular form. Was that how Leverle’s scribe always talked? If hers was like this she wouldn’t ever dare to share her system menus with anyone. To avoid an awkward discussion, she decided not to say anything.

“T- thanks… I’ll, I’ll go eat that somewhere quiet…”

Leverle wordlessly turned and walked away. Sofia wisely decided to do the same, and teleported directly to Zandgar. She sat on her bed, and after washing of Pherlen’s blood with a bit of water, popped the ugly pebble in her mouth, chomping down on it.

The rock shattered and started to melt in her mouth. She expected pain to come, but how bad could that really be?

Very bad, was the answer, and Sofia discovered that even if her blood was now light, the ‘puking blood from the eyes’ grade of the object was not a metaphor. Puking blood from everywhere might have even been more adequate.

Her screams filled Zangdar, and the only silver lining was that Rem was currently away with Alith.

After writing on her bed for almost an entire hour, the pain started to disappear. Sofia felt like cursing out Suffering for putting her through this, but the system windows appearing before her eyes silenced her.

Not only did she get not one but two of Suffering’s essences, but she had gotten something else.

‘[Forced genius body] has reacted to the strong power!’ 

‘[Crystallized Suffering] has reached level 1!’

A skill that cannot level up has leveled up!

As expected [Forced genius body] is an absurd skill!!!

[Crystallized Suffering] ♢ : For each % of Health lost during a singular battle, your body will produce a suffering shard. Gain 1.5% (1+0.5skill level) increase to Strength, Agility, Speed and Processing for each suffering shard until the end of combat. When you reach 500 suffering shards or the battle ends with at least 100 suffering shards, stop producing suffering shards, and all shards gather to form a suffering crystal. Consuming a suffering crystal grants a temporary Processing multiplier of 1.5% (1+0.5skill level) per shard contained in the crystal but also inflicts immense debilitating pain and soul damage.

Requires (Essence of Suffering).

The maximum stat bonus jumped from 500 to 750%!

And the processing bonus increased too!

In three seconds Sofia had gone from internally cursing Suffering to calling her Auntie Suffering with respect and thinking about how she could make her temple look even better than she had planned.

Now with twenty three divine essences, she returned to Ser’Extra. Ihuarah was hard at work carving the ritual circle in Sorrow’s temple. The next day she would shamelessly collect even more divine essence with such ease that it would make Stebron the essence collector dragon green with jealousy.