Chapter 638 - The twin ruleset

Before leaving the city, Sofia left a large bone slate propped up against a wall with a message for Remia, since she could somewhat see outside of the fake world.

‘I can already think of multiple ways I might be able to get you out. But I need to get stronger for any of them to have any chance to succeed. I will be back in at most 4300 resets, stay strong until then. I won’t forget. – Sofia’

After that, the group left without ever returning to the surface until they were well past the lake surrounding the city.

That is when trouble began.

As it turned out, finding their way back through the moon’s dark and dust-covered wasteland was not easy. When, after three days of fruitlessly running around, the giant deep stalker appeared again, running even faster than the previous time, Alith did not even wait for Sofia’s opinion. She teleported everyone to Zangdar using Erredis’ single-use emergency device. “Putain de merde! This fucker almost got us!” she cursed, breathing heavily.

Sofia looked at Alith with incomprehension.

“Wha- What? Did you want me not to use it? It was right abou-” Alith started asking, but Sofia cut her short.

“No, no. What you said before. Did you swear in Orcish or something like that? I didn’t get what you said.”

“What… What’d I say, again?”

“Pootain dmarde!” Bookie proudly repeated from the side.

“Oh shit! Really?! That’s my native language. I’m not even supposed to be able to speak it…”

“That’s what your original language sounds like?” Sofia asked, “I wonder why it got through. The censor is really starting to break, huh. Can you try saying it again?”

“Fucking shit? No, that sounds like the usual, right?” 

“It does. Oh well… You are cursing a lot these days,” Sofia pointed out.

“I’ve had plenty of reasons to use a lot of expletives. I’ll say, I’m not mad about finally being away from that moon!”

Sofia nodded, “I cannot agree more. Time was starting to run short anyway, I have to join Mornn for the next trial really soon, if I kept track of days correctly.”

“Right… Saria should have already gone while we were in space, correct?”

“That was the plan, at least, and Zephir was to take care of Remia then. Since I don’t feel Remia's presence anywhere here, she must still be at it, actually.”

“Remia…” Alith repeated, “Now it’s going to get confusing since they have the same name.”

“If anything we were lucky that we had avoided interacting with people who had the same name for so long.”

“Yeah true. Maybe we can nickname our dryad Rem, then?”

“I like Rem!” Bookie chimed in, jumping in place, “Can we use it?!” he asked Sofia.

Sofia shrugged, “The both of you are going to use it no matter what I say, aren’t you?

Alith’s light laugh was the only answer Sofia got, as she instantly changed the subject back to the trial. “You’re going for the next trial right away?” She asked Sofia, “I’ve still got to wait for Shadow-man myself, since our levels are still linked.”

“I probably will? I had plans to see Speed again before, but since I might be already late for the trial, we might have to postpone that… There are a lot of plans I have skipped on, actually… And to begin with, we should warn Grandma that we’re out. I need to see whether she made any progress with using the Odalite Blood as well.”

“Ah! Right, what about that?” Alith asked, untying Ormoncleth’s dull rapier from her belt. “It’s basically a very sturdy stick.”

Sofia shrugged, “You can keep it if you want. I don’t see why I should be the only one profiting from the trip if I can help it. Think you earned it, honestly.”

“Guess so. Or we could give it to Shaily,” Alith suggested.

“Up to you. It would feel right, but I don’t think Shaily could use it as well as you could. Didn’t you have a skill for blocking with a weapon? That’s a perfect tool for that.”

“True, true. Ah, I’m almost sad I didn’t get to show off my skill during our little trip to the moon.”

“It was for the best that we did not even try to fight anything. You will have plenty of occasions to show off later anyway. Unless you want to fight right now?” Sofia asked, sparks instantly starting to fly around her right arm.

“I’m good,” Alith answered, turning around toward the stairs of Zangdar’s castle, “You go do your things, I go do mine.”

“Just like that? What do you have in mind?” Sofia asked, the sparks around her arm dying down as Alith walked away. Alith stopped and looked back with a grin. She said nothing, and simply grabbed a bunch of dead-looking herbs from one of her pouches.

The plants from the light world!

After returning to the outside with Sofia’s Zangdar ring, she immediately found out that she was already a few days late for her appointment with Sun’s Saintess to start the next trial. She left messages for multiple people in her to-be bone city, and immediately left for the next trial tower, far north above the red desert, in the middle of a cold ocean with floating blocks of ice everywhere.

As she flew over the floating ice, before she could even see the tower appear, a tall elf teleported in front of her without warning.

[Seraph]

There we go again.

Hi. Sofia thought in her head, guessing the seraph was reading her thoughts as usual.

The elf said nothing, looking Sofia up and down. He was wearing a very feminine golden robe and many golden bracelets and accessories that one had to wonder how they even stayed on.

“Hmmm…” The seraph finally said, “I suppose you do look slightly impressive for your level.”

“And you are?” Sofia asked, mildly annoyed at the elf’s contemptuous expression.

“Hmpf. One of the overseers of this trial, though this you already know.”

“One of?” Sofia repeated. Multiple Seraphs?

“Four trial takers, four overseers. Do you not know basic maths?” The elf asked back with a raised eyebrow.

Feeling a headache coming, Sofia flew past the elf and kept going toward the tower. 

The elf teleported in front of Sofia again. “Not fond of conversations, are we?”

Sofia rolled her eyes, “Quite the opposite, actually. But if you do not mind, I am already late, and quite frankly, I very much dislike your attitude.”

“Ahahah! Respect has to be earned, human. You show promise perhaps, but did you think all elves and seraphs would grovel at your feet because you snatched Victory’s crown and completed one of Sun’s little death games?”

What? That’s not what I meant at all…

“It seems, to me, that you’ve been lucky at every turn, Saintess.” The seraph continued, “You even failed the previous trial and still have the gall to present yourself here like none of the system’s rules matter.”

“Luck?” Sofia repeated, in shock, “Must you be so insulting? And whether you like it or not, I am, in fact, allowed to be here, so if you have an issue with it you can take it up to Nex, why don’t you?”

The Seraph stared at Sofia, wide-eyed and seemingly at a loss for words.

“Ah! Didn’t expect that name to come out of my mouth? Now if you’ll excuse me, my level 300 is waiting for me.”

Sofia flew past the Elf Seraph, leaving him behind. He turned around and watched her leave for the tower, scratching his head.

“Do we have more insiders leaking information?” he mumbled to himself.

“You don’t have to write a report,” another voice said from behind.

“Sen? What about your towers?”

“Look at me again.”

“Oh, one of your damn clones? You’re really making them difficult to recognize… No report… Because you’re monitoring her already?”

“That’s not even it, Mid, I just came to watch, you don’t have to report because she’s the reason he’s out.”

“UUUHH??!”

“Ah! That’s what you get for skipping our last meeting… You should go open the door before she breaks her way in.”

“Wha- Man! Hey! Human, stop that! Sen, the nutcases are from you species every time, I swear!”

Sen answered with a smile.

Standing in front of the trial tower’s closed doors, Sofia pulled up the relevant messages from her logs.

[Congratulations, you have reached the fifth filter. Will you witness the greats, or become one?]

[You will no longer gain experience]

[Please proceed to the trial site : Tower of the Ark, distance : 1m]

Finally having somewhere to stand on, Pareth came out of the storage, in his usual tri-headed skeleton, wearing his new favorite long jacket. 

“Let’s get inside,” Sofia told him, starting to push the doors open.

Ah, is it locked?

The elf seraph yelled something in the distance, but with the northern winds blowing strongly, Sofia didn’t quite pick up what he meant. She looked back just in case.

He’s with a guy in white robes? Why does it look a bit like Sen?

Sofia enhanced her far-sight with her fake eyes, perhaps her favorite feature of the things beyond its storage-item capabilities.

Wait, it IS Sen!

Sen flashed Sofia a smile before disappearing. Meanwhile, the other seraph reappeared next to the door.

“You’re supposed to wait for me to take you inside, both of you,” the elf grumbled, “but never mind that, before you can go in, we need to get clear on something. This trial has both team and solo components. The annoying thing is with both of you being part of each other’s skillset, if we want you both to fight at full potential, you’ll need to go with a special ruleset. So here’s the deal, basically if you want to be allowed as a ‘duo’ in the solo parts of the trial, you need to accept a penalty.”

“I trust you are not making this up because you think I was lucky and don’t deserve to be here?” Sofia asked, doubtful.

“This is standard procedure, not the first time, there are rare duo classes for twins, you will go by their ruleset,” the seraph explained, “You can chose between the following penalties, which will only be for the solo parts. You only need to pick one for the both of you.”

System windows appeared in front of Sofia and Pareth.

[Brittle Twins: Take double damage from all sources]

[Broken Twins: Deal halved damage]

[Bonded Twins: All damage taken by a Twin is also taken 1:1 by the other]

[Botched Twins: Whenever a Twin uses an Active skill, the other one’s Active skills will disappear. Same for Passives.]

“Some pretty heavy penalties,” Sofia commented.

“You can also choose to both go solo if you don’t want a penalty, you’ll get a 20% overall stat buff in solo trials to make up for the missing power,” the seraph said with a shrug.

“Twenty percent stats to give up my first specialization… Yeah, no thank you. I would rather fight with Pareth. I think I know what I want to pick anyway.”

“Not gonna ask him?” the elf asked, motioning toward Pareth with a slight tilt of his head.

“Oh I don’t really need to. I’m relatively sure he would pick the same thing I would. In fact, I’ll let him choose. Go ahead Pareth.”

Pareth’s skeletal finger rose to pick one of the penalties.

Double damage, right? Sofia predicted before he could even pick.

His finger touched a system window.

[You have selected the penalty : Brittle Twins; welcome Sofia, Pareth, to the fourth trial]

Author's note:

Heya! Finally back!

The move went better than expected, surprisingly enough, and believe it or not, I was fully ready to start writing again last monday... Until the fever hit.

And that gets us to today. I'm still kinda weak, and still coughing my lungs out as I write, but the fever, at long last, is gone (yes it last a whole damn week), and that feels damn great.

I'm so happy I get to sit down and write again without feeling like I'm going to faint any second.

I might have been a bit too eager to get to the next best part though, hence why, huh, the transition from one arc to the other might have been a bit short, but whatever.

Sorry for the week of lateness. It's time! TRIAL ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRC!!!!

(Also if you're wondering, I posted this an hour early today because I was a bit too excited to be back, it is what is is.)