Chapter 490 - Tea time anywhere

Sofia transformed to take her measurements in demon form, considering that she could no longer get level debt and that her mana regeneration could no longer be stopped; the only downside left was the half hour of weakened physical state she was left in when the transformation ended.

Except the demon transformation this time was not the same as it used to.

The strange eye within her skull was now half exposed at the top of her head, somewhat hidden between her two light horns that persisted even in that form. Those were the lesser changes, however, as the demon form now had ethereal streams of golden light flowing around its hands, feet and wings, extending far behind her like caught in a violent stream.

This is what the runes on my lower body were for?! She thought, feeling the source of this new magic.

It looks nice but what else does it do?

I think it’s connected to the divine essences somehow? Right I have all those ‘mana cores’ with the divine essences I can move around now. Let’s call them essence cores, that’s less confusing.

It's nice to see that the melody persisted even through the transformation. That means I can just use the winter melody whenever I’m going to transform if I need to quickly empty my mana.

But if I want to get the best out of the transformation, I seriously need to find a way to reduce the cost of [Runeforged Overlord].

[Runeforged Overlord] ♢ : Your body has become one with runes of power.

This skill has three tiers of power, you may activate the higher tier at any time, but returning to a lower tier requires to either take no damage for 100 seconds or become unable to sustain the tier’s cost or conditions. 

The effects and cost of subsequent tiers are added together when active simultaneously.

In your presence all undead and yourself gain the following effects:

___

Tier 1 (No cost; Requires the user to have arms) :

Become unwilling to attack this skill’s user.

+24.9% Speed (Skill level /10)

___

Tier 2 (0.5 (0.25)% max mana per second; Requires the user to have a torso) :

+24.9% Speed (Skill level /10)

+24.9% Strength (Skill level /10)

+24.9% Agility (Skill level /10)

___

Tier 3 (2 (1)% max mana per second; Requires the user to have wings) :

Successful attacks inflict a short lasting [Confusion]

Reduce all incoming damage by 20%

Omnidirectional free flight

Acceleration resistance

+124.5% Speed (Skill level /2)

+124.5% Strength (Skill level /2)

+124.5% Agility (Skill level /2)

Tier 2 is about 12500 mana per second, so I can afford to keep up indefinitely for as long as I stand in the sun, and that’s basically only half of my regeneration gone. I’m still at a 2000 mana per second loss otherwise.

Tier 3 is still wildly unsustainable though… Right around 63000 mana per second… I can’t even offset half of that.

With Sofia lost in her thoughts, the five minutes were up before she realized, and she transformed back.

“Ah, shit, I forgot to take the measurements. And the post-demon weakness hasn’t gotten any better, I see…”

Feeling too weak to walk, Sofia summoned her armor and puppeteered it with her inside all the way back to the castle. She topped up the mana reserves of the two guard Skelems standing at the entrance and trudged inside. 

This place is really starting to feel like home. It was nice to finally get a space to store the clutter from my ring too. 

I should go check on Remia.

Sofia already knew that the dryad was still sleeping peacefully, her mana senses extended to what used to be the entire city of zangdar, and she could feel and ‘see’ every minute mana movement in that area. The new essences had helped extend her mana senses through [Quintessential] but it seemed the mana heart itself also helped. Despite that, she still liked to go watch over the dryad up close. The walls and floor of her room were now covered in a wild growth of red-leafed vines, giving it a really nice atmosphere, contrasting with the cold bone and midenicite rest of the void castle.

“It smells good in here now. A bit like being in a real forest. Do dryads normally sleep this much, though? I should have talked with Jen more…”

Lying down on the bed next to the dryad, Sofia dozed off to sleep.

Suddenly, Sofia was woken up by a violent wave of mana washing over her, a true mana storm originating from the castle’s main hall just below her, completely blinding her mana senses. 

Bookie!

The small skeleton was currently resting on a shelf in the main hall in his book form, Sofia panicked and pushed her mana through the floor, using [Summon Self] to warp down to the hall.

She landed in the middle of the last thing she expected to encounter in her lost margin castle, a literal crowd of people, Alith and herself in the center.

“Sup’ Sof!” Alith reacted instantly while the others were all rendered speechless from one thing or another.

“I knew you would come! But, uh… Welcome to New Zangdar, everyone?”

“Yeah, I mean… Yeah,” Alith had time to say before everyone started to speak at the same time.

There was barely enough space in the hall for everyone to stand, somehow Altih had brought along not only Saria, Cinthia and Ihuarah, but also Erredis, Richard, Zephir, Everelle, Astelia, and even Clint, Moon and Sun. 

Just the time to set up a bone table, fix cinthia’s memory, and for Alith to get drinks for everyone from her own reserves, and Sofia had to start explaining how she ended up in the margin.

“Wait… It’s only been three hours since the reforging?” Sofia repeated Erredis’ words, an incredulous look on her face.

“Three hours, thirty eight minutes and about twenty seconds since you disappeared, to be exact,” Richard confirmed.

“We’ve been stuck here for more than two months!” Sofia told the group, pointing at Pareth and Bookie who were sitting right next to her, and struggling to control her voice. “Are you saying we went back in time?!” And that was all it took before the gears started to turn in her head. Time!

That’s impossible, Sun started to say, but Sofia did not hear the rest of her sentence, somehow everything became silent, though it seemed nobody else noticed, and from the corner of her eyes, Sofia saw something. Long white hair, someone standing just outside of the castle’s open doors, observing the Skelems with an amused smirk.

The man’s head turned toward Sofia, but she couldn’t clearly see his face. The man raised a single finger in front of his mouth.

“Not a word, saintess,” Yvraveteth whispered through all the guests’ mouths before his form faded away into nothingness.

Regular sounds came back, nobody noticing Sofia’s few seconds of inattention, and Richard was arguing with Sun.

“-al distortion, it’s theoretically possible, if the effects lasted until now. Contact with us might be what brought them back to the correct flow of time,” the lich hypothesized. And Sofia had trouble understanding what he meant as she had missed the first half of the sentence.

It could be that this part of the margin is… Sun started to mumble to herself, when Saria interrupted the discussion.

“Can I get more explanations on what happened? Because I feel like I missed a lot of details, like what happened in the first place, and how that led to here?” she asked.

“Right,” Erredis said, “we barely had time to fill you in, but to make things easy, Sofia should be dead right now, and instead she reappeared here.”

“Dead?!” Saria repeated, and all eyes turned to Sofia.

“Erm… Right. Maybe Clint should start by explaining what happened to me at the end of the reforging, and I will take it from there. It’s… Uh… Complicated, as you might guess. But I did not die, quite the contrary, the level up went perfectly well, if we exclude the initial hiccups and the whole part about being stuck here.” 

“How did you even get stuck, did the ring break?” Alith immediately asked.

“No, it’s, uh… Again, let’s start with the reforging, I’ll explain everything.”

Clint scratched his beard, Well, no need to look at me like that, half of yall were there to see this shit happen. The Lord’s rune spread as a byproduct of the forging, since she used that essence. Still have a hard time trying to wrap my head around that, by the way. But yeah. Shit reacted with all the mana and collapsed into a tiny little miniature black hole, he said, while gesturing with his hands, mimicking striking with a hammer, Or basically, for those who don’t understand the words I’m saying, space broke and it sucked the lil’ lassy in, that being usually pretty bad.

More than pretty bad, Sun commented, There’s-

Richard stopped Sun, slapping a skeletal hand on the Godesse’s mouth, “Hoy hoy, careful now, not everyone here is a God or an ascended.”

Sun frowned and pushed Richard’s hand away, Such a stickler for the rules, I knew this was going to be annoying. Should’ve stayed home, she complained.

“Aren’t you the one who wrote them with the admins and Death?” Erredis asked from her seat, giving Sun the side eyes.

Sun sighed and leaned back into her chair, saying nothing.

Well. That’s where the story stops on our end, really, Clint continued. The tear in space was very small, so it disappeared almost instantly, but since it originated from the mana heart, she disappeared with it, he explained to those who had not been present.

Sensing all the eyes fall on her once again, Sofia started to explain her side of the story.

“Alright, so, to begin with, everyone should be familiar with this dagger, right?” Sofia started, holding up Anna’s key.