Chapter 152 - Curse of Sorrow

[Miner’s flair scroll] : Infuse it with mana while holding a piece of mineral in your hand; this scroll will give you the precise location of this mineral's nearest unexploited natural vein. One-time use.

It’s pretty good! A bit random but good. A small vein of mithril is still a vein of mithril. There might be better minerals to search for, though, I don’t know what’s rarer than mithril, but it has to exist. I’ll hold on to this for now.

I could also use it to find some Midenicite, which could lead to some interesting discoveries.

Wait, speaking of locating Midenicite… There was this device to locate the rings…

[Key-Ring locator] : A Key-ring locator. Infuse with mana to cycle the currently tracked ring.

Item level : 0. Grade : Regular.

I have never used it since. Let’s see. That’s mine. The next one should be Alith’s. Hey, it actually shows a direction; she must be on the human continent, then. The range limit is a thousand kilometers if I remember the letter correctly. Annnnnd. That’s it. The other two rings must be too far away.

Sofia pocketed all of her things and got to actually put on a rune. After which, the Avian was still sleeping, so Sofia decided to cook herself a meal.

How long is she going to sleep?

Sofia was done waiting. She got Pareth to bring her the Demon within the bone prison. Talking didn’t wake her up, and neither did touching her head. She took out a water stone and used it to splash some water on the woman’s head.

It’s working!

Her eyes suddenly opened, her head jerking back, trembling. Sofia could swear she saw walls of runes flashing through the Apostle’s pupils for an instant. Then her eyes closed again.

The Demon stopped moving.

She was no longer breathing.

Fuck. Pareth, heal!

Sofia was scrambling to get a potion out of her ring while Pareth used his [Greater He

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

How long is she going to sleep?

Sofia was done waiting. She got Pareth to bring her the Demon within the bone prison. Talking didn’t wake her up, and neither did patting her head. She took out a water stone and used it to splash some water on the woman’s face.

It’s working!

Her eyes suddenly opened, her head jerking back, trembling. Sofia could swear she saw walls of runes flashing through the Apostle’s pupils for an instant. Then her eyes closed again.

The Demon stopped moving.

She was no longer breathing.

Fuck. Pareth, heal!

Reality collapsed. To Sofia, this was now an oddly familiar sight. The so-called sandwich of the planes, everything colliding together. The colored world turned white; that was the Spiritual plane. Then it turned gray and distorted, the Recessed plane.

The next step was the eternal black, the void in which Zangdar resided. The Margin. But it never came; the world was stuck in gray, and things moved, but they were oddly still. Sofia was surprised to realize she could still mov

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

How long is she going to sleep?

Sofia couldn’t wait anymore. She got Pareth to bring her the Demon within the bone prison. No matter what she tried, there was no waking her up. She took out a water stone and used it to splash some water on the woman’s head.

It’s working!

Her eyes suddenly opened, her head jerking back, trembling. Sofia could swear she saw walls of runes flashing through the Apostle’s pupils for an instant. Then her eyes closed again.

The Demon stopped moving.

A piercing, visceral shout destroyed Sofia’s eardrums. ‘No!’ she had clearly understood the singular word being spoken.

It had stopped everything like a giant’s hand holding the world in its clutches.

The planes collapsed, slowly, deliberately. Like the light slowly fading as one plunges deeper and deeper into an abyss. First white, then gray, th

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

How long is she goi-

Sofia observed, deadly silent, the Apostle on the ground.

She froze. Her very thoughts were stifled. Yet, deep inside, she still had a hint of functioning consciousness. At that time, if her mana senses were more developed, she might have perceived a hint, a remnant of the magic circles making up the skill she had given up on earlier in this very dungeon, [Pristine essence].

Something or someone was very hard at work to make sure it keeps running. Maybe it was her body’s reflexes, like muscle memory with mana. Wasn’t that the entire point of the skill system? I thought so when she had discovered I didn’t need the system anymore to use [Angel’s bolt], even if her version was weaker. If a passive skill was on all the time, wouldn’t my body naturally learn it?

A flash of light stopped her last wisps of consciousness dead in their tracks; the last thing she was was a rift. A crack in space. A crack emitting energy so extreme, so violent, nothing could exist in its presence.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

How long is-

How long have I been here?

In Sofia’s brain, vibrant images of events unhappened collided with each other. Like clockwork, the image converged into one reality. She already knew what was coming next.

But that was the extent of her knowledge. By the time she had organized her thoughts, it was too late.

In the blink of an eye, the world turned gray and then back, leaving behind a crack, a fissure in space, the energy was unsurmountable, but while her rune activated, leaving nothing behind but a promise to bring her back three seconds later, she switched to Pareth’s eyes.

Pareth, looking at the scene from the opposite direction, could see inside the crack.

A black, gnarly, and stubby clawed hand pushed its way through the cr-

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

How l- Sofia’s mithril dagger appeared in her hand, and Pareth appeared in front of her, right in her reach, holding his head. Sofia severed his head with a dagger slice and punched it with her other fist, sending it flying away.

The world froze. She switched to Pareth’s eyes. As Pareth’s head flew up, rotating on its axis, she saw the fissure opening in the rare instances that his vision was aligned with the scene. She witnessed reality being torn to shreds by two black hands, prying open space so that they could reach out and try to reach the Apostle on the ground. An outcry accompanied it.

A complaint.

A desperate plea.

Rage, dread; sorrow.

Curses.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

Ho-

Sofia sat on the ground. She had exhausted her options.

As sure as the sun rose in the morning, the desperate hands of Curse would force their way into the physical plane. They were burning and consuming themselves and everything around them. No matter how hard it tried, it could never reach the Apostle.

And then she died.

Did this Recessed refuse to accept that fate?

What did the notions of time and space mean in the face of such an entity?

No matter what they did, and they tried something slightly different every time, Evranarheimlein would always die after she opened her eyes.

The splash of water hadn’t mattered; even if Sofia did nothing, the demon would open her eyes and die all the same.

Sofia had crazy ideas to attempt to save the demon, but in the fifteen seconds she had, she was powerless.

She had tried running away, jumping into the rift, anything she could think of. But it always ended the same way.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

Sofia had spent thousands of retries studying the un-life rune carved on her body. She wasn’t willing to give up. But even that had come to a dead end. She could never examine the full cast of the spell. No matter what she tried, fifteen seconds being her limit, the rest of the channeling remained a mystery. And even if she uncovered it all, it might not help.

That’s it.

I give up.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

Sofia fell to the ground and cried.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

There were no more thoughts that Sofia could think.

She watched absentmindedly as the world ended.

Pareth was still trying.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

The hands weren’t getting weaker.

They tried and tried again when even Pareth had stopped.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

Sofia called out to the lords.

She had already tried many times.

The Gods.

The Recessed.

Sorrow.

Sun.

Ormoncleth.

Aphenoreth.

Nobody answered her call.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

Sofia had found her calm. She had been there for what felt like months, fifteen seconds at a time.

Now she was methodically exploring solutions, no matter how crazy.

She had placed good hopes on getting a reaction when she attempted deleting [Blessing of the Deep] from her skills. But that had failed to produce any results. And the skill was back the next time, as it should be.

For the first time, she wished that the Deep would react for her as it did for everyone else.

Who else but the Deep could help her?

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

Sofia was trying something new. At that point, it was more of a way to keep her mind occupied than anything else, but she made up names on the off chance that it may work.

Names of the deep.

Ormoncleth and Aphenoreth. There were two more.

As far as she could tell, they were both ten characters and ended in ‘eth’.

There couldn’t be too many different combinations of syllables one could make under these constraints. Either way, she had nothing else to do.

“Boravereth”

“Boraveseth”

“Boraveteth”

“Boraveueth”

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

It didn’t feel too long anymore. Like a machine, she kept iterating through every possible name. Who knew how long she had been doing that? But if you asked her, it felt like she had barely started. Her memories of the previous attempts were all jumbled together. Now every start felt strangely fresh as if it were the first. Her logic said she had been there for years, but if you asked her, she was genuinely convinced it felt like an hour or two at most.

She just kept going. She'd try again if she ran out of possible names, but maybe with eleven characters next time?

She had loathed Curse. She had hated him for putting her through this. It had to be his hands.

Now she only felt pity when the fissure opened in a slightly different spot every time.

‘You have murdered [Evranarheimlein - Daughter of Curse lv. 299]’

“Edrazaketh”

“Edrazbketh”

“Edrazcketh”

“Edrazdketh”

“Edrazeketh”

What just happened? This is a new loop?

“Edrazeketh”

For some reason, though she knew the world had gone back, it wasn’t as it should be. There hadn’t been a murder message. The hands hadn’t even gotten time to appear.

“Edrazeketh!”

Oh, I got you now! Don’t think I’ll stop!

“Edrazeketh!”

“SHOW YOURSELF, LORD OF THE DEEP! EDRAZEKETH!”

Time had gone back once more. Sofia had no time to open her mouth.

Everything was black.

She had a vision of a gigantic black circle.

A circle surrounded by mana.

A hand covered her eyes.

Sofia stood in the cavern.

Aphenoreth was there, bent over the Avian Apostle on the ground. With a single finger, he was pressing on the Apostle's forehead.

The crack in space appeared as it always did. For the first time, Sofia saw ‘The Inquisitor’ move. Not teleport around. Move. He raised an open palm toward the emerging opening.

The crack disappeared without a trace.

And so did Sofia’s consciousness, once again.

Sofia opened her eyes. She failed to understand what was happening.

I vaguely remember a hand… And a circle… And… Aphenoreth? What?

Wait, wasn’t I just going to wake up the bird?

She was currently in a comfortable bed. One she recognized, that was the bed in the inn room she had been staying at for a whole month. Where she read all the books she could get her hands on in Hooasow, right after her conversation with Valeure. How did I end up at the inn? What happened to the dungeon? The Apostle?

There was no doubt that she was currently at the inn in Hooasow. She could feel Pareth’s presence on her left. He was in his first skeleton, watching over her from the bedside. Behind him, sprawled on a chair, was a certain Avian Demon, sleeping.

How?!

There were two more strange things. Firstly, above the Apostle's head, she saw :

[Evranarheimlein - Daughter of ̶̜̬̼̲̠͑̍̔̅ ̵̭̦̈́̋̔͒͠ ̷̘̠̲́͑ ̷̯͌̄͒ ̷̘̠̲́͑ ̶̨̓̓̈͊ - Lv. 299]

Sofia felt that something was wrong, but she didn’t understand where this feeling came from. She frowned in frustration. It must be my imagination. She focused on the second strange thing instead.

On her right hand, Sofia was wearing a black glove. A glove she had never seen before.