After about two hours, the siren’s call of the capsule proved too strong for me to resist. Those lingering traces, those memories and even the sharp, immediate pain I had been feeling while on Mundus, all those things proving and reminding me of my relationship with Sigmir, I wanted to feel them. Outside the capsule, the pain was dull and blunt, making the experience not as immediate and almost unreal. It just wasn’t enough.

Delving into my capsule space, I still felt that there was something lacking, the emotions were clearer but not as sharp as I wanted them to be. But I had something that I wanted to do first before I could return to Mundus. I needed to remember and immortalise.

Stepping through space, I reappeared in the temple I had set up in the beginning, where four alcoves housed statues of four goddesses, each of them a distinct form of power in female form. All of them held their own appeal, but none of them could compare to my Sigmir.

Shaping Sigmir’s form was simplicity itself, the memory of her body was deeply engraved into every facet of her being and the capsule space allowed me to form her image directly from my thoughts. No need to mess around with any tools, pure imagination and clarity of thought were enough.

Soon, Sigmir’s statue stood in the middle of the temple, a little bigger and more prominent than even the deities around it. Here, I would be able to return and remember her, whenever I wanted.

Sitting cross-legged in front of the statue, I mentally triggered the process of logging into Road to Purgatory, letting myself fall into that world once more. The world where I had found my most important person and the world where I had lost her. The world that I was willing to destroy if it brought her back to me.

After the brief moment of vertigo that came with logging into Mundus, I found myself in my Hallow, the raw, irritating sensation that followed the use of my Avatar state irking me but compared to the sharp pain in my chest, it was only a nuisance.

“You’re back,” Lenore greeted me, exhaustion palpable in her mental voice.

Spreading my senses outward, I was stunned for a moment. Lenore was flying through the sky, that much was expected, but nearby, just a few metres away from her, was Ylva, running… through the sky.

Below her paws, I could faintly see a shimmering glow, as if there was a faint, almost translucent something she was running on, but what that might be, I had no idea. But from the looks of it, the two of them had managed to get away from the elves.

“Can you take over? I’m about to fall asleep mid-flight,” Lenore asked me and after a moment of consideration, I gave my assent. We still needed to hide from the elves, or history would repeat itself, so some care was needed.

“I shall carry you,” Ylva offered, her voice filled with profound grief, one that I could easily understand. She, too, was grieving, her connection to Sigmir just as strong as mine was to Lenore, partners, friends, family, all those labels and many more could be used to describe it and now, that other half of hers was gone.

Pushing out of my hollow, I dropped with gravity, only to step into the shadows of the forest and back out, gently landing on Ylva’s back and holding on, letting her carry me.

“She is gone, but I will carry you in her stead,” Ylva promised me, her words bringing a fresh wave of grief to my heart. But at the same time, I could feel Ylva’s warmth, the connection formed by the bonds of our small pack still there, reminding me that I wasn’t alone, wasn’t the only one who had lost. Maybe misery shared truly was misery halved.

“Are you alright?” I asked, knowing that Ylva wasn’t but needing to ask regardless. The only response I got was a soft chuff, accompanied by a wave of grief and pain flowing through our connection, the emotions just as sharp as my own.

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Wrapping my arms around her, I simply held on, my tears wetting Ylva’s fur as she continued to dash through the sky, staying just beneath the canopy.

Feeling restless, I needed to distract myself, to find something to focus on. A part of me wanted to immediately rip out a chunk of the elven forest to feed the Nidhögg in the Soul Prison but that would come later. First, we needed to get some rest, to recuperate for a bit, before we could deliver their share of pain to them.

Instead, I looked at my log, where hundreds of messages waited for me. It had been an incredible battle and while the losses most certainly outweighed the gains, there had been some gains.

The first pair of messages stopped me in my tracks as if I had crashed into a solid wall.

You reached level 157.

You have been the target of the Eternal Embrace Ability. The entire EXP of the user have been transferred over to you.

Level hundred-fifty-seven. A jump of thirty-six levels, or something thereabout, maybe thirty-four or thirty-five, depending on how much EXP the previous battle had given me. Regardless, it was an utterly insane jump, a jump which Sigmir had paid for with her life.

There were no more tears running down my face, only a profound numbness, the words of the message imprinting in my mind. Eternal Embrace. What a nice name.

Mentally numb, I opened up my character sheet to see the numbers there. Fourteen free attribute points were easy. But my intelligence had been increased by a whopping twenty-one, bringing it to a mind-boggling ninety-six, while my Intuition had been raised to sixty.

The increases should make me ecstatic, but somehow, I couldn’t make myself care. Numbly, I put four of my free points into Intelligence, bringing it to an even hundred, triggering a new notification.

Special Ability gained You gained the Special Ability: Perfect Magic Control For having an Intelligence of 100 or higher, you gained Perfect Magic Control. You can now control the entirety of your magic, infusing it into your spells at will and even retaining your control for a time while your magic is in your vicinity.

Blinking, I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading. Perfect Magic Control, it sounded incredible and yet, there was no joy within me. The joy that should be there had already turned to dust, leaving only a cold and empty void.

Shaking my head, I pushed onward, quickly scanning down the various skill increases, numbly taking in the information, not truly caring that pretty much all my magical skills had gained a point or two and even the improved traits, further increasing the power of my large-scale magic could barely move my mood. There was even another increase of my Defilement-trait, further empowering my Blood Magic but also increasing the chance that Nethersprites appeared when I used it casually.

In addition, I gained a Title called Stormcaller, increasing my ability to conjure up storms and similar violent weather phenomena.

And yet, regardless of all those gains, it was as if all the joy I had been experiencing had been sucked out of Road to Purgatory and Mundus had turned from a wonderful world that I felt at home in, into a sea of misery, no better than the reality I had been escaping from.

A part of me thought about simply logging out, maybe tossing the capsule to the trash and never bothering with the world again. But even as that thought wandered through my mind, I could feel Ylva and Lenore, both of whom were with me, keeping me company even as they were grieving themselves.

No, I couldn’t just leave those two. And I couldn’t let Sigmir’s sacrifice be in vain, not if there was a chance to meet her again. I couldn’t let myself drown in despair, I needed to keep looking forward and to stay my course.

Fanning the anger in my heart, and the desire for revenge, I managed to gain a semblance of motivation. I needed to keep going if I wanted to meet Sigmir again.

Raising my head and sniffing the air, I began to plot. I had a few things I wanted to accomplish and only so much time. The elves and the dryads would be looking for us and without Adra, I had no idea how long it would take them to find us.

Better to give them something else to think about, a single devastating blow that would disrupt their communications and shatter their cohesion.

A vicious smile appeared on my face, as I noticed a faint, almost imperceivable trace of magic in the air, something that suffused the entire forest. The connection of a dryad to the forest, it was their strongest trait and the greatest tool in their arsenal. And I was quite certain it also made them into the best treats for a certain Dragon with a taste for trees.