Chapter 637 - You get a single warning.

Pain, and euphoria. Delight, as the prisoners squirm like worms at the other end of the bright red marking iron.

Sofia’s vision changed, with a gloved hand that was not hers, she watched herself slowly strangle a helpless man, before the scene in front of her eyes shifted again.

He abducted and tortured. People, animals, old and young, nobody was safe from the man’s obsession. Then he would leave them behind, broken wrecks, barely able to think, just conscious enough to recoil at the sound of his footsteps. This, he took great pleasure in doing.

Sofia’s thoughts were muddled, she barely understood how she got there, she vaguely remembered being excited about something, before being pulled inside of this infernal spiral.

And as she was forced to watch one atrocity after another, she was slowly losing her mind at the horrendous sights.

Until finally it all stopped, a door opened, bright light spilling in, a svelte figure’s appearance dispelled the horrors and the foggy thoughts altogether.

Wearing a thin golden crown, the figure was swift and merciless. She said not a word, and stabbed her long and thin rapier through the man’s head, pinning him into the wall.

“So you were serious about that warning, huh? This much will never kill me, human!” the torturer spat out despite his punctured head. He raised a hand toward his attacker, conjuring some nasty spell. The magic discharge struck the crowned woman without encountering any resistance, but it did nothing.

“Enough,” the queen answered calmly. And the mad god impaled on her sword simply died a mortal’s death. His mind ceased to exist, and somewhere, another god of pain, for that was who he had been, would soon rise to replace him.

The queen left without another word, leaving her blade in the god’s skull. This was where Oviron’s mangled memories ended.

But Sofia’s mind was only getting clearer, and she was still there, stuck inside of the dead God’s body.

If this is like it was with Speed… Shouldn’t I wake up now?

Hello?

Am I… Am I stuck?

In a memory?

Besides her thoughts, she controlled nothing.

She then heard footsteps. The queen came back.

So it wasn’t over? But that god is already very dead…

The queen was walking awkwardly as she stepped in the direction of the god’s corpse. She opened and closed her hands, as if trying to regain sensations in a numb limb. Coming close, she looked into Sofia's eyes.

“Sorry you had to see that,” she apologized in a monotone voice.

Who? Me?!

The queen flashed Sofia an awkward smile. It was like watching a monster trying its best to imitate human expressions. She turned around, her back facing Sofia, she took a few steps away.

It’s really you?!

“What do you think, Sofia?” Ormoncleth answered, a hint of amusement in her voice. “No other living mortal has shared my eyes and kept their will to live. Is existence not ironic? Only in shackles can we truly enjoy freedom.”

I… I’m not sure I follow. 

“If you close your eyes, does anything else still exist?” The lord asked next.

Of course it does!

“But does it, really?” Ormoncleth rebuked, taking a few steps out of the door. She looked up at the sky, supposing these memories had one. “Perhaps I should start walking these lands again,” she said to herself, “Close a few eyes, for but a short moment.”

With these last words, the world of memories faded without Sofia being able to say anything.

“Sofia?” Alith called out. “Hey Sofia?”

Sofia was pulled out of the memories by Alith. Her hand was on the god’s skull, still pinned on the wall by the rapier, which looked the exact same as it did in the memory.

“How did we get here?” Sofia asked, looking down at Alith.

“What do you mean how did we get here?”

“Well… I just witnessed some of this god’s memories… But the last thing I remember from before is digging up with the dagger.”

“Really? Shit must’ve messed up your brain, you’re missing like half an hour of exploring this shitty tower, baiting out the deeplings and making sure they don’t come back in. Look, you even plugged that wall with your bone armor,” Alith pointed out, showing a wall which was indeed plugged by an uneven slate of bone.

Bookie nodded, “You really don’t remember, Sofia?”

“Not at all…”

“Well, that happened,” Alith said, “then you put your hand on that skull without a word and you’ve been frozen like this for, uh… Probably five seconds?”

“I suppose the god’s memories really shook me up… It was quite bad… I think… Some of these are going to be hard to get out of my head… But now is not really the time to reflect on that.”

“We should be fine as long as the dragon doesn’t spot us again. But yeah better not stay too long. What now, since you got the memories, did you get the remains?”

Sofia looked at the softly glowing ring under her glove.

[Gluttony] : A ring from the lost Epoch, given to mortals by the Annihilator.

Its purpose was to give mortals a way to get rid of the tainted remains of dead gods corrupting the land.

It had regressed to a weaker form due to a lack of use.

Must be primed to unlock advanced functions (2/ 5 divine remains absorbed).

“Got it,” Sofia confirmed, “we can just grab the things here and leave, I guess. Got everything we came for.”

“Moon wasn’t all that dangerous after all, eh,” Alith said, hands on her hips.

“You mean except the part where we almost got stuck forever in a fake world?” Sofia argued lightly, “Also I’ll remind you these things outside are normally completely invisible for anyone else. Even Sun had to get me to go clean her sun temple for her.”

“Right… Eh, that makes me wonder now, if the tethered were people, what was that horse thing you saw near the first city?”

Sofia was silent for a second, she had completely put that incident to the back of her mind by now, “That… Uh… You know, that’s a good question… There weren’t any tethered in the first city either.”

“There were those dust mites things… Kind of like a bunch of little tethered without a tether, now that I think about it…” Alith theorized, her expression getting a bit darker as she realized the implications of her guess.

“Maybe it’s best not to think about it too much,” Sofia decisively cut the conversation short, “Pareth, can you remove the blade?”

Pareth had been busying himself staring at the bone wall to make sure no creature was attempting to make it through, he turned around and pulled the sword out of the wall, letting the god’s gray skull fall into Sofia’s hands. The god’s other bones were piled up on the floor at her feet.

Sofia gulped audibly. What am I going to do with it?

There were quite a few possibilities in Sofia’s mind, and although she had dreamed many times about finding a god’s skeleton, she had never decided on which one she would actually choose.

The obvious choice was to feed it to Bookie, or at least try, assuming he could summon a god, but if so, it was obvious that Sofia would be locked out of actually summoning it for a very long time. After all, she did not even have enough mana to Summon Pestle until she got to level 250, who could guess how much she would have to level to get the kind of mana pool required to summon a god, no matter how weak?

Another possibility was to just feed the Skull to the Skull choir, and keep the other bones for whatever other purpose, possibly item crafting. This ensured her an instant power up, if and only if the skull’s ability ended up being useful.

She could also keep it as a human-sized spare for Pareth to use instead of his original skeleton, which was much weaker. She could tell these bones were quite a lot more resistant, as proven by their continued existence more than thirty thousand years after their original owner’s death.

Lastly, she could very likely sell them to Richard or Valeure for a huge price, working toward her long-term goal of getting enough Mithrium to encase her scepter with it. It had to necessarily become a shorter-term goal if she wanted to level up even faster. Her weapon could not lag behind, and Mithrium was prohibitively expensive to a ridiculous degree.

While she considered each option, Pareth observed Ormoncleth’s weapons, swinging it around looking perplexed and distraught.

“Is something wrong with the rapier?” Sofia asked him. She had expected the item to be incredible in some way or another, considering its origin and its perfect state after so much time, but she could not feel any magic from it.

Pareth seemed to hesitate, scratching his skull, and finally, he gave up trying to explain, just handing over the blade to Alith, as he knew Sofia couldn’t touch it without the admin’s dagger getting rebellious and throwing itself to the ground. Alith grabbed the blade and her brows immediately furrowed.

“Woah this is all kinds of wrong. What the… What is this even made of?” she wondered out loud, balancing the blade on a single finger. “That’s… I don’t think we can even call that a weapon. The blade looks double edged but it’s not sharp at all, the tip is rounded, and considering the size it should probably weigh about a kilo but that’s at most twenty grams… And also…” Alith grabbed the tip of the blade with one hand and its round pommel with the other. She clenched it as if she was trying to fold it in half, her arm muscles bulging. The blade did not even begin to bend. “Stiff as… I don’t even know. Feels like an unbreakable stick more than a rapier.”

“The uncles probably don’t need real weapons!” Bookie chimed in.

“You right, because that clearly isn’t one,” Alith agreed, “though we should probably call this lord an Aunt, now.”

“No matter what we call them it’s probably wrong either way…” Sofia commented, “Ormoncleth actually invaded the god’s memories while I was watching them,” she explained, “we had a quick discussion, kind of.”

“Really?! Why do I always miss out on this stuff?! What did she say?”

“Worrying things… And that she might come back.”

“So two worrying things,” Alith deadpanned.

“That’s a way to see it… Tried identifying the rapier?”

“Yeah but my Scribe’s about just as confused as I am. Being out of system range isn’t helping either. What about the skeleton, what are we doing with it. Decide fast, it’s not that safe here.”

“Well… Bookie can you eat it?”

Bookie seemed surprised by that question, despite how obvious it was that things would end this way.

“I don’t know! It smells weird. But I can try!”

Smells?

“Alright then, have a nice meal,” Sofia told him, placing the skull on top of the bone pile. The book flew out of her side, and the bones disappeared inside of it in an instant. There was nothing special about it, just another meal for bookie.

“So?” Alith asked.

“It worked,” Bookie answered.

“Just like that? Does it have a soul or something like Pestle did?” Sofia asked.

Bookie shrugged, “No, it’s a skeleton. It doesn’t have very much different kinds of magic, I think. And it looks disturbing. But no soul!”

Good, I was a bit worried about Bookie having to deal with that crazy psychopath. Though I guess it would have been strange if any speck of soul survived after what happened to him…

Sofia had a chill looking back on it. From what she could tell, Ormoncleth had just wished a god dead, and it happened. It was not like she did not expect the Lords to be that powerful, she had seen what Aphenoreth had done to Curse, but it was still disturbing to see it happen so easily and effortlessly.

“How’d it look disturbing?” Alith asked Bookie, who showed her the page.

Sofia also glanced at it. The drawing was indeed slightly disturbing, showing a skeleton covered in eyes, greatly resembling Victory’s second form during the trial. But what really shocked Sofia was something else.

Three, six, nine—Ten. How do I even read this number? That’s a lot of zeroes…