Chapter 455 - Peace

Faced with a lack of options, Sofia walked through the lifeless streets of the city. The Gods’ realm, so far, seemed like a lonely place. A constant slow wind blew over the city, making some doors creak, and the sea in the sky never ceased its oppressive rumbling. 

Even when Sofia reached the castle, going through the open gates, there was nobody there, and she eventually reached the throne room. It was somewhat reminiscent of the Red Winds Empire’s throne room, one the dais in the back a shapeless blob sat on a large throne.

Sofia did not dare to enter. 

It’s one of those things! Like in the labyrinth!

[I have no data on what that creature was, but it seems it being from the Gods’ plane was truthfull. What do you want to do?]

You’re asking me this? I hoped you would know what to do. But I’m not eager to check if this thing is firendly or not.

[Since the enemy brought us here, I would wager the chances of it being friendly are fairly low, whatever it is.]

Let’s retreat for now. If we find nothinge else then we’ll come here again, at least it’s an option.

As Sofia turned around to leave, the doors of the throne room’s antechamber closed, blocking her way to the outside. 

Fear encroaching on Sofia’s thoughts, she turned around. The thing on the throne had changed, still a formless thing, it now looked like a mist full of slitted eyes, all silently staring in her direction. The eyes sometimes blinked, but the thing did not leave the throne, it simply stared, like daring her to make the first move.

Sofia steeled her resolve and ventured forward into the throne room. The thing kept staring. The thing sat at the place of a king in the center of a human-like city, so Sofia decided to follow the proper etiquette to salute human kings, which she had learned from the books in Scripture’s church. She stopped at a proper distance and kneeling until given the permission to rise. On the way, she notted that all the exits from the throne room were closed.

Apprehension and dread clouded Sofia’s mind, but there was currently nothing else she could do. The scribe was also at a total loss, and they both watched the seconds pass as Sofia kneeled on the floor.

A deep and authoritative voice pierced the silence. It came from every direction at once.

“Envoy. Why dost thou disturbeth this Peace?”

Ah… How do I answer that… Envoy? From sun because of the Essence? From the Deep like in ‘March of the Envoy’? I can’t afford to mess this up… Fuck.

Even without a physical body to get in the way, Sofia had to make an extra effort for her voice to not shake. “My apologies, oh Divine one. This humble Envoy was brought to your domaine against their will.”

As she was still staring at the ground, the following silence made Sofia extremely uncomfortable. She was already thinking about what to say next to salvage the situation when the entity spoke again.

“Unsightly. Disturbing Peace deserveth punishment.”

The entire throne room was suddenly covered in eyes.

SHIT!

“Disappear.”

Sofia opened her eyes to a black void. 

I’m still alive? Space?!

She instinctively tried to move, but she couldn’t feel her body. She felt cold fingers holding her head from behind. 

Pareth! 

Her mana senses expanded, and she could feel the outline of Pareth behind her, and Bookie sitting on his shoulders. She also understood why she could no longer feel her body, as her head was all that was left, her veins of light dangling from it in the emptiness of space. 

Health : 7394 / 85 980

Stamina : 1810 / 21 047

Mana : 417 100 / 417 100

Not a great start.

Pareth turned her head around so she could see them, and Bookie almost jumped in excitement. He was holding a bundle made of the robe Sofia had been wearing during her duel with Everelle, the Dragon-sclae armguard and her Scepter were sticking out from the sides.

Good to see you guys again! I see you have all my things with you. Mind explaining what happened on your side?

[KEY]

Oh, shit! Right! Bookie, give me the Key, quick!

The sudden order startled Bookie but his fingers quickly dug into the bundle of stuff and grabbed the slick white dagger. He was lost as to how to give it to her, but Pareth just brought Sofia’s head next to Bookie and Bookie pressed the flat side of the dagger onto Sofia’s cheek.

[Title changed to ‘Core Member’]

[Title change function is locked for the next 24 hours]

[You have entered Scribe-only privacy mode, all system functions may be impacted]

Alright, good, thanks Bookie. 

Sofia made a bone slate for Bookie to write on, and they exchanged minimal words to explain the situation. The news were not great. First she got to learn how Everelle had suddenly forgotten about her, then how using Pareth’s teleported had brought them to this empty point in space, where she was floating in a weird sleep-like trance and wouldn’t wake up no matter what she did. Then, out of nowhere, her entire lower body had disappeared, leaving only her head behind, and her things floating away in all directions. Bookie and Pareth had just finished gathering all her things when she woke up.

If one could overlook all of this, the good points were that nothing had been lost in the process, the mana hearts also being intact, and the sun seemed to still not be too far away, it being about the same size in the void as it had been on Cerberus beta.

Good, good. It won’t take forever to go back, hopefully. The memory-loss thing is worrying but I will have to deal with that later… At least everyone with the Mark should be safe.

As long as Saria remembers me, together we can work things out.

Hopefully it’s just Everelle, though. That much is already somewhat sad…

Maybe it’s all the system staff? That would be a good way to make sure nobody tries to fix things for me if their goal here was really to stop my progression… 

But then why not just kill me? All because of the Aphenoreth’s Mark?

Well, that’s probably a pretty good reason. Speaking of which, I’m still not getting any extra help, I suppose? I would be happy to see Aphenoreth’s face right now… What about the others?

When she checked on her connection to Alith and Ihuarah, she could feel it gradually growing weaker, from which she deduced that they were drifting away from them at a very fast pace. There were no messages from the Scribe to guide her, so she had to decided on the next move herself. First of all, she brought a statue of her out of her bone storage. This was a pre-prepared bone body replacement, with channels for her veins already carved inside. She had a few of these ready, as this was what she had been training her bone sculpting on ever since the battle against Cardinal where he had reduced her body to a pile of shredded meat. She separated the head with [Bone dominus], then had the body float under her neck, waiting for the light veins to find their way inside. 

This is stiff… Even with the dominus imperium soft evolution, this is going to be very limiting. I can still use all my spells, though, so there’s that. Starting with [Runeforged Overlord].

Using the skill’s free flight, Sofia slowly inverted her momentum, thinking that it would probably send her back from where she came, which also happened to be in the general direction of the sun. Pareth had gone back to the storage, for now, while Bookie was now attached to Sofia with a short rope, and helping her get dressed. Putting clothes on with a body than could not feel anything while also floating in space was not exactly easy, especially to get her fingers inside of Aphenoreth’s glove then inside of the armguard.

After about half an hour, Mr Scribe gave signs of life again, in the form of another fake quest prompt. 

[Quest: Now we roll

Requirements:

• When nearing Cerberus beta, slow down and enter the spirit plane through the graveyard.

• Land on Cerberus Alpha and locate one of the Altars.

• Sacrifice enough Sunless Debris on the Altar to complete the bonus task.

• The automated reward delivery will fail, as we have failed the trial, but due to a failsafe of the core member privacy mode, we should get it anyway.

• Request an upgrade to Tier 3 and pray that the High-Scribes are still neutral.

• We will see how to proceed from there. Don’t die.]

So it was in the spirit realm! That’s… Yeah that kind of explains some things, like where the Sunless’ spirit bodies go when they die. They actually do go there, don’t they? A black Sun in the spirit plane that attracts souls. 

That shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Sofia stored Bookie with Pareth after giving him a hug and summoned the graveyard on herself, bringing her to the spiritual plane. As usual, it was all white and blurry, even in space, it was hard to see far away.

I can’t even locate the real sun like that… Finding that Cerberus Alpha might be a bit harder than just-

I wonder… 

Sofia popped out of the spiritual plane and searched through her belongings in her storage ring.

Here it is!

[Sun compass]: Points toward the nearest sun-level source of light.

As expected, its needle pointed toward the sun. The graveyard skeletons’ hands grabbed Sofia’s bone body again. 

In the spiritual plane, the needle moved.

So this was the point of this thing! It’s not actually a useless piece of trash!

After a good day of correcting her direction and speed, shifting in and out of the spiritual plane, it finally revealed itself: Cerberus Alpha, the Black Sun.

To think they would throw me into space AND the Gods’ plane to try to get rid of me.

At least it removes the issue of how to go into space the reach Cerberus Alpha in the first place. Though I guess there must be an intended solution we can find in the trial. They can’t possibly be expecting everyone to have a way to turn into a ghost and also be able to navigate in space. 

When Sofia returned to the physical plane, the celestial object completely disappeared. 

Now just how do I land on there without dying? Can I even actually land on it?