Chapter 499 - Vyssari Champion

"I'm sorry!"

"Just a simple sorry won't cut it, Tess."

"I can clean your room a bit."

"Fuck off. If you so much as move a single book, I'll burn your ass so badly no healer will be able to fix it for the rest of your life. And why the fuck are you bringing so many people here?"

"You are using the word 'fuck' too often. Reduce it a bit, please."

"Fuck off, Tess."

"I'm sorry!"

The short vyssari jumps to her feet, carefully putting the book down before moving between the book piles that are often taller than she is and stopping in front of me.

I return her gaze as she stares at me. "Fucking hell, man, what kind of fossil left that mark on you? Such shit was old school thousands of years before I was born."

"Would you say it to her face?"

"Hell no." She smiles brightly and waves her hand. "But now answer my question before I kill you."

The aura around her shifts, her expression turning serious.

Anger wells up inside me, but I shove it aside. “Sure. On one of the worlds we visited, I met her. Later, we crossed paths again, and after some tests, she named me a Champion candidate. As you can probably sense, read, or whatever it is you're doing, she is—or was—Absolute. It’s... a bit complicated.”

"See, it's not that difficult. You guys came to my house, likely even to ask something of me. So tell me, is it wrong of me to expect to have my questions answered without having one asked back?"

"If you say it like that, it's very reasonable."

"I know, right?" She then moves and stops in front of Sophie. "If you hadn't come with Tess, you would’ve been dead already."

Before Sophie can respond, the vyssari halts in front of Izzy, who stands just slightly shorter. Izzy cradles Biscuit in her arms, with Noodle, as always, coiled around her arm.

The vyssari looks at Izzy, then at Noodle, and then at Biscuit, whom she observes for a bit longer. She then glances back at me from him and shakes her head.

Without a word, she moves in front of the twins. She gestures for them to lower themselves and pokes their cheeks, pulling them while observing their faces.

"Handsome," she notes, touching their blond hair and looking into their blue eyes.

I notice right away Dennis opening his mouth to spew out some stupid stuff, but he stops himself at the last second, remembering who we're dealing with here.

But the vyssari Champion notices that as well and turns to him. "Tell me what you wanted to say. If you lie, I will beat you up."

Dennis looks toward Tess, who smiles at him gently and nods.

He turns to the vyssari. "Declare me a Champion candidate if you think I'm handsome. I’ll flash you my best smile—free of charge."

Oh my.

Right away, I get ready to fight if needed, and I notice the same reaction in other members of the group.

The vyssari blinks a few times, staring at Dennis before a laugh slips out. It's a light, cheerful sound, and when it fades, she shakes her head in disbelief. A sudden crackle of lightning flares behind Dennis, zapping him square in the ass and drawing a startled squeak more from surprise than pain.

Without any words, the vyssari moves and stops in front of Lily, her eyes moving from the huge bone axe to Lily's face.

Her expression looks more serious than before, "Tess, where did you find this one?"

"She is my friend."

"Your group surely has a bunch of monsters in it," the vyssari says, shaking her head but not taking her eyes off Lily. "I declare you a Champion candidate."

She says this simply, turns around and heads back to her chair with the book in hand. Glancing at Tess, she asks, "Happy?"

"Thank you very much!"

Lily looks around a bit confused, but I can see that she is reading a message invisible to us, and her title is something I can feel now.

Tess moves closer to the vyssari with a big smile. "Can I do something for you as thanks?"

"Maybe you can shut up?"

Tess smiles even more, still happy. Gesturing for us to stay quiet, we leave the room.

Before we fully exit, the Champion calls out, “Tess, come here in one hour. I’ll show you how to properly use Primordial lightning.”

“Sure! Thank you!”

“Yes,” the Champion replies, waving her hand to dismiss us."

As we are leaving I check a few titles of the books.

Postcards from Eternity

The Cartographer’s Lover

Echoes of Forgotten Cities

Through a Thousand Sunsets

A Court of Starlight and Shadows

I notice her watching me, so I stop reading and leave quickly.

We move a floor lower, entering another room that is the same as the one we just left, with the exception of actually having nice furniture in it.

"Congratulations, Lily!" Tess hugs our still confused healer.

"That was... simple?"

"She's just like that, so don't worry about it. For now, we'll stay here a bit longer to avoid annoying her further—otherwise, she might snap. In the meantime, we should be safe. Speaking of which, how's your progress, Sophie?" Tess asks, leaving Lily for the others to congratulate.

"I will be done soon, but..." Sophie gestures out of the window.

Far in the distance, the blood-red sky can be seen, gradually expanding further.

"Domain?" Tess asks, this time looking at me.

"Likely something like that," I confirm.

"How bad is it?"

"No idea, to be honest, but I don't want to stay on this floor long enough to find out."

"Didn't you want to move to your old base and get some materials you left there?"

"Yeah, that huge anvil and more golden chains, plus that massive hammer. I also wanted to go to the Mana Desert to get some more sand. But I got most of the valuable metals here, and Sophie bought and looted more for me, so it's fine—they are just items anyway. I also got a small box with white sand remaining so it’s at least something."

"The items and materials we got from Archon's palace should be well worth it. But thank Lily; she stole anything not bolted to the floor and broke into multiple vaults," Sophie notes.

Lily smiles somewhat shyly. "As you said, take anything not glued to the floor."

"...anything not glued to the floor," the twins finish in unison with Lily.

Min-Jae looks between them, confused.

***

According to the instructions Sophie has, I continue to work on the base of the array. It's somewhat similar to the one that teleported others from the mana desert but much more intricate. I guess it makes sense, as it's meant to allow movement between moons, planets, or wherever it leads to.

What I don't like is that Sophie holds coordinates and something akin to an activation sequence. That sequence is something I don't think I would be able to make on my own, and neither does Sophie.

It's akin to a code that can be used once, as we don't understand it enough to replicate it.

We also theorize that these sequences—the coordinates themselves—have to be somewhat designed to pass through things like planetary defensive arrays, spatial locks, and similar. It only makes sense for most of the planets capable of such travel to have such defenses set up.

This is the floor quest only, so I think we only need to activate it to fulfill the requirements, and the entrance to the 7th floor will appear. But outside of the tutorial, it would likely be more difficult. I mean, how can you guarantee the coordinates won't teleport you to some empty spot in space?

I think it should be possible to gain some information from the coordinates themselves to make sure that doesn't happen. Sophie also theorizes it should be possible to use something akin to a "connection check" before deploying the activation sequence. The problem is neither of us knows. This sort of thing seems to be ridiculously advanced, and both of us currently can only do something akin to remembering the text without fully understanding it.

The main thing I noticed, after going through it all, is that the system seems to have simplified things for this kind of escape, making it possible with our current abilities and mana. Similar situations have happened a few times before, and since it's a tutorial, there’s some logic to it.

During that time, the blood-red domain—or whatever it is—expands even further, filling the entire horizon and stretching far into the distance. Tess says she can see some of these fleshy veins stretching across parts of the sky, shaping some enormous inscriptions.

And I can confirm it won't be anything good. My eyes and even my senses can feel the amount of mana collecting in the distance—the Bloodroot Devourer likely close to its power as Champion.

The vyssari Champion continues to sit in her wooden chair, sometimes glancing toward that blood-red sky. But that sky seems to stop and does not stretch further toward the floating island within the storms, so she doesn't care.

She only gives lessons to Tess and reads her books, wanting to be left alone.

But that changes while we are all visiting the vyssari for the first time in two days.

The inscriptions far in the sky activate with a single powerful pulse of mana, and the effect caused by them washes over the surface of the Arcane Prison. It reaches us within a moment, our mana briefly goes out of control, destabilized before the wave continues further at incredible speed.

A sudden thud echoes as the book slips from the vyssari Champion’s hands, falling to the floor.

The lightning surrounding the floating island is gone—the very same weak residual lightning she allowed the prison to take from her to defend the area. Without its constant barrage, the silence is eerie, and instead, a sound of crackling lightning comes from the vyssari as her hair stands up as if risen by static electricity.

There is extreme rage in her eyes as she stares in the direction of the blood-red sky.

"How dare you." Unlike her expression, her words are calm, almost unbelieving.

Caused by the eyes, the metal choker around her neck unlocks with a sharp click and falls to the ground, only to be torn apart by the lightning that surges around her.

"How dare you," she repeats, her voice laced with a dangerous edge. She leaps from her chair, the ring on her finger sparkling wildly, lightning crackling through her hair and flashing in her eyes.

Her words carry a weight that seems to travel for miles. They aren’t loud, but they hold an authority laced with a dangerous undertone. And something answers—a pulse of mana rippling from within the blood-red sky.

"As you wish then," she says solemnly, her voice steady as the air around her thickens with an almost tangible tension. The mood shifts sharply, a feeling like a storm gathering strength. She steps forward, her presence commanding, "I call upon the ancient right. By my will and by my strength, I stand against this insult. Let power itself decide our fate." Her words reverberate, carrying a weight that seems to press down on all who hear them. The sky darkens and in the moment of silence she says, "I challenge you."

I'm certain these words can be heard across the entire surface of the moon. They are not loud, they do not cause pain, and they are not meant for us. Yet, they reverberate through the air, inviting us to witness this Champion's challenge.

There are no wagers, no rules. Just a challenge to fight.

And the Bloodroot Devourer rejects that challenge.

"Coward," the vyssari declares and lifts her arm toward the sky.

A single lightning strike crashes down, blinding us all and seemingly tearing through the air rather than simply passing through it. It strikes her arm with the ring on it and lingers there, like the purest form of lightning suspended in time, stretching to the length of a spear.

(We are leaving! Nat, right away!)

Something in Tess's voice makes me listen, and even though I still stare at the Champion in front of me, I throw a [Ley Line] as far as I'm capable of.

With the prison's locks now broken by the eye, it's simple.

The vyssari takes a step, pulling her leg back and preparing the thing in her arm for a throw. White and red lightning cracks around it, the air itself damaged by it.

I teleport all of us away as far as I can. Immediately, I use my mana to form a barrier around us. Sophie strengthens it, the twins cooperate and add to it. Min-Jae and Tess do some of their own shielding. Maya creates and boosts her own barrier. Lily's healing skill floods the air, and she cuts off one of her arms, the bone in it twisting and growing into the shape of a hemisphere that surrounds us, bits of her blood dropping on us.

Even here, I can sense the crazy reverberations, and the barriers break one after another under sheer pressure until there are none.

Our view opens up again.

The once dusty sky is now clear, the miles of dust that once blocked it blown away. Through that hole shines a star—harsh, cold, and strange. Its light is a pale white streaked with faint crimson. The glow cuts through the cleared sky like a blade, casting sharp shadows across the broken ground.

The floating island is gone in its entirety, and where it was, a small figure floats—the vyssari with blonde hair and lightning passing through her hair and surrounding her ring. Her small figure is bathing within that star’s light as she hovers there.

There is a trail of lightning in the air, a line that stretches on for miles heading to where the blood-red sky is.

The mountains that used to be there are largely evaporated, a single deep crater replacing them.

***

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