The next few days passed slowly for Sam. Parish filled in some blanks that Nara didn't know about Hallista and the System in general; the half-elf had more knowledge than most people, thanks to her mother being from off-world. Although Cara had withheld many things she deemed either unimportant or unsafe for Parish to learn, the things she taught her fascinated Sam.
Sam learned that apparently, no one knew how long the System had existed, or if they did, they weren’t telling. There was also the fact that there were countless verses, but due to the nature of Void, traveling between them was a perilous endeavor even for the primordial gods of the first verse. That being said, there seemed to exist at least seven paths in every verse that linked them to others across the Void; sometimes it was a simple item, while other times it could be a black hole, but no matter what it was, the faction that controlled a verse path would inevitably be the most powerful in the known verse. They would have access to virtually limitless resources. They could cross great distances instantly without worrying about the insane mana expenditures and dangers of void jump engines. The verse path items could traverse the gap between verses but also create links between different points in their own verse.
Learning there may be a way gave Sam hope she might one day have the option to travel back home. She didn't know if she would take the opportunity but was hopeful it would present itself. Since there was usually a minimum of seven Void routes per verse among the literal billions, if not trillions, of inhabited planets, Sam realized there was almost zero chance of her ever finding one. Depressed at the thought, she said as much to Parish, who surprised Sam by suggesting there may very well be one on or near Hallista; postulating a nearby verse path may explain why Sam's soul wasn't destroyed when she traveled through the Void. Sam did her best not to hold out hope, but she couldn't help herself.
Parish also explained precisely how unique Sam was with her class and race. Apparently, most non-monster races and classes received an average of five attribute points per class level and four per race level before they evolved. At that time, they would usually double. With Sam now receiving seven free points in her race and ten in her class, she was truly overpowered. When Parish learned all Sam's attribute points were free to assign, she nearly had a nervous breakdown. She went on a tirade about how absolutely idiotic Sam had been when distributing her free points. After calming down thanks to Lupie sitting on her, Parish finally explained that if Sam had put ninety percent of her points into her wisdom and intelligence attributes, she would be nearly invincible as a mage and could have vaporized the troll they encountered. When Sam argued she would have been a glass cannon, Parish shot back that Sam could regenerate eighty mana points per second and nearly double that while meditating. And by having the unique mana manipulation ability, Sam would be able to maintain a magical shield that could withstand concentrated fire from one of the city's massive anti-siege weapons while at the same time firing a beam of concentrated arcane energy strong enough to melt the city's gates! It had taken Sam hours to calm Parish down once she got rolling on the subject, and in the end, she had agreed to focus on her magic more from now on. She had only agreed once Parish explained attribute point distribution, skills, spells, and resistances would all play a part in her evolution options, something neither she nor Nara had known.
The only other exciting thing that happened before Nara cloned Naris again was when Sam produced the kitchen knife and remote from her soul and showed them to the group. Nara, Lupie, and Nul were curious about the items, but Parish, as usual, had another freakout session. “You cannot just bring items from your soul!” She had shouted. When Sam told her she had found Nul in her soul, Parish had actually hyperventilated, then vomited and passed out. After waking up, Parish refused to talk about anything regarding the System or soul with Sam for the rest of their time in the cave.
***
After Naris returned with the group, they left the safe zone, determined to get to the Beastlands as soon as possible. The final few hours in the tunnels proved to be uneventful. Within eight hours, they emerged from the gloomy glow of the caves into the brightly lit landscape of the Beastland plains.
When she exited the caves a few hundred meters up the side of a sloping cliff, Sam came to an abrupt halt, her breath catching in her throat. The sight before her was breathtaking; the landscape was an infinite grassy plain interspersed with the occasional forested area. The plains had a massive rift spanning as far as she could see. “It’s like the Grand Canyon but green and twice as long.” Sam thought as she wondered what could have caused such a tear in the planet. Her thoughts were interrupted by an explosion from a grove of trees below them at the foot of the cliff.
Having spent the past few days relaxing, Sam was itching for a fight. She wasn't sure if she should pick one so soon here in the Beastlands. Focusing as hard as she could on the area where the now rapid-fire explosions were coming from, she could make out beams of light flying back and forth beneath the canopy of the trees. Looking at Parish, she asked, "How did the church find us so fast?"
Parish didn't respond but focused on the fight below them, where several shadowy figures in white robes and armor were now visible. It looked to Sam as if they were fighting a single person wearing a tan-colored duster and sleek black space-age armor. Sam was about to ask Parish again when the half-elf gasped and said, "Mother!" Before jumping off the ledge, they were on to slide down the cliff.
"Good plan," Sam called after her, "let's just dive headfirst into a conflict we know nothing about." Then she thought, “Am I rubbing off on her?” Before she jumped off the cliff after her friend.
***
“For the act of mutiny, I sentence you to death!” Elris screamed to Cara as he blasted her with another concentrated light beam.
Cara’s shield held against the attack, but two more beams joined Elris’s an instant later; even though the new beams were weaker, she was still pushed back slightly from the force of the magic, her boots digging furrows in the loamy soil. If they were the only attackers, Cara was confident she could at least escape from this battle. High Priest Elris was the only one in the group close to her level and, thus, the only actual threat from the priests. Unfortunately for Cara, the enraged priest had brought two Valkyries with him to his little hunting party.
The two winged women in white armor swooped in from above Cara, one brandishing a spear and the other a glowing sword. “A shield breaker sword,” Cara realized and braced herself for the inevitable by charging her armor, hoping it would protect her from the light beams when her shield was shattered. Her drones were still nearly a minute away, so she was alone until then. Linking her mind to the disruptor rifle on her back, Cara started charging it with what mana she could spare, thinking for the thousandth time, “Stupid level caps! None of you would stand a chance against me if we were in my home world!”
The spear-wielding Valkyrie reached her first stabbing forward as she dove toward Cara. Just before the tip of the spear struck Cara’s shield, a beam of violet energy slammed into the warrior, knocking her off course. She hit the ground a few meters away, quickly jumping to her feet and looking for the new attacker. The sword-wielding Valkyrie didn’t deviate from her attack, though, continuing her dive. Still, just as with the other flying woman, something struck her from the sky before she could reach Cara. This time, instead of an energy beam, it was a red blur of tentacles and blood.
“What is going on?” Cara thought. She hadn't detected any other people nearby with her drones, so who could be here, and why were they helping her? Her questions were answered a moment later when Parish ran up beside her with her magic shield raised and a mace in her hand.
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“What are you doing here?!” They both shouted at each other in unison.
“No time to explain!” Cara shouted to her daughter over the earsplitting sound of the magical attacks striking her barrier. “The priest with the gold and white robes is mine! He’s much too powerful for you! If you and whoever is with you can distract the others, I can take him down!” Cara knew trying to dissuade her daughter from helping would be useless, so she could only hope she and whoever she was with were up to the task. With a nod of affirmation, Parish dashed off toward one of the priests, her mace glowing.
***
“Wings! No fair!” Sam thought as she knocked the flying woman from the sky while Lupie took out the other one, racing toward the woman she assumed was Parish’s mother, “Also, how do I get some!”
The spear wielder locked eyes with Sam as she approached, her bright blue eyes shining through the visor in her helmet. When she noticed Nul on Sam's head, her eyes went wide, and she screamed, "Voidling!" trying to thrust her spear at Sam's head.
Sam erected a kinetic barrier that slowed the spear enough for her to dodge past and send a magic-infused punch into the woman’s armored side. The instant her fist made contact with the white armor, a burst of force pushed Sam away, causing her to stumble and trip on an exposed root.
“Focus on the voidling! Kill it! Kill it!” Sam heard a man wearing white and gold robes shout as he held his outstretched palms toward her from twenty meters away. Just as his hands started to glow, Parish’s mother slammed into him, knocking him back. Sam watched in fascination as the woman held up what looked like a rifle from a sci-fi movie and started shooting the man with laser beams.
Sam lost sight of them as they ran through the trees, firing energy beams at each other. "This planet is insane!" Sam said to no one, then jerked to one side, barely dodging a spear thrust. Before she could retaliate, Sam had to throw up a shield barrier to stop a beam attack from another priest running toward her. His light beam was much more potent than the one from the deacon had been, and it was all Sam could do to maintain her shield. A quick check of the battlefield told Sam she was on her own; Parish and Naris were engaged with another priest who was doing an impressive job of keeping them both occupied, dodging Naris’s lightning-quick strikes while at the same time parrying Parish’s mace attacks. Lupie and Nara were similarly occupied with the other flying woman with the glowing sword.
“Aww, why does it always have to suck?” Sam thought, knowing what she was about to do. She told Nul, "Stay on my head and be ready to teleport us to Lupie when I tell you to. Okay?"
“Okay,” was Nul’s curt reply.
Sam moved toward the priest, infusing her body with magic. She was pissed that these people instantly wanted to kill the innocent little Nul, who was no threat to them.
Sam sensed the spear woman approach behind her with her mana threads just as she reached the priest. His eyes grew wide, and a manic grin spread across his features when Sam released her shield and took the full brunt of his spell in her chest. The grin quickly faded when Sam grabbed his forearms and yanked them apart, canceling his spell. The man was weak against Sam's magic-infused strength. She growled, "Stupid glass cannon," right before headbutting the priest in the forehead, still gripping his forearms. His head kicked back from the impact, but Sam knew she had only dazed him.
Sam smiled as a spearhead punched through the front of her chest. The woman stabbed at Nul, but Sam used her mana threads to redirect the spear, so it went into her upper back instead, puncturing her until the tip of the spear nearly stabbed into the priest in front of her. With a bloody scream, Sam released the priest, holding him in place with her threads and grabbing the spear with both hands, using all her strength to snap the tip off and slam it up under the priest's chin! The life instantly left his surprised eyes as the bladed tip exited the top of his head.
Sam felt the woman behind her try to pull the spear shaft free but grabbed it before she could. Using her threads and arms, she yanked the shaft forward and the woman with it, throwing her head back at the same time to smash it into the woman's faceplate. Sam felt the warrior release the spear when their heads collided. Quick as a flash, Sam pulled the shaft the rest of the way through her chest and turned while swinging it like a baseball bat, like she was hitting a home run. The winged warrior was stumbling back, trying to take off her crushed helmet; she never saw the attack that killed her. The end of the spear shaft shattered on impact with the woman's head; blood and brain matter sprayed from her visor as her body was slammed into the ground from the force of the blow.
Sam immediately stored both bodies in her inventory. Before she could tell Nul to open a portal to Lupie, a booming voice so loud Sam thought her eardrums would rupture cut through the sounds of battle! "Sacrilege! How dare you! Give my fallen children back immediately or perish!" The priest Cara was fighting appeared right in front of Sam, his face purple in rage.
“What is wrong with you, psychos? Do all of you just go around trying to murder anyone who doesn’t fit into your stupid doctrine?” Sam shouted back to the priest.
The priest responded by screaming, "Die!" And blasted Sam with a beam of light.
Sam realized she had screwed up the instant she felt the power radiating from the priest. It was like nothing she had ever felt. Hastily erecting a barrier around her and Nul, Sam tried to jump clear of the light beam, but it was useless. Her barrier shattered instantly, and she screamed as the concentrated magical beam burned across her stomach, cutting her in half. She felt the loss of over half her body weight even as her Rebuild Skill immediately went to work rebuilding her lower body. She had exhausted most of her quarantined energy when she tanked the beam from the first priest and was stabbed through the lung by the warrior. The light burned away everything her skill replaced, and it was agony. Sam was forced to turn her concept of pain off to keep from passing out while she used her mana threads to continue trying to evade the priest's attack by swinging herself through the trees. Not even the trees proved to be a match for the energy beam as it burned through them as though they were made of thin tissue paper.
Finally, the attack cut off abruptly when Cara appeared before Sam, shielding her from the priest’s attack. Lupie and Nara ran up to Sam, and she felt herself being grabbed by blood tentacles and wrapped up in a cocoon of blood on Lupie’s back. Sam was barely hanging on to consciousness but thought she heard Nara telling Lupie to take her and Nul to safety. She wanted to tell them it would be fine, that she could still fight, but Sam knew she was done. She felt a healing spell wash over her from Nara right before Lupie dashed off through the trees toward the plains.
The healing spell had brought a little clarity back to Sam’s mind, and she could see the trees and ground flying by as Lupie activated her movement skill. They reached the plains within seconds, the world blurring in Sam’s vision as Lupie poured more and more stamina into her skill. A beam of light struck the ground to their left before it was abruptly cut off; it blasted chunks of dirt and grass against the soft cocoon Sam and Nul were cradled in on Lupie’s back. Sam heard Nul’s voice through their group chat, “Portal?”
“Yes! Make it far!” Lupie responded before Sam could say anything.
A large portal opened in front of the dashing Bloodmorph as another light beam nearly struck them.
Sam felt weightless as soon as they exited the rift in reality and quickly realized why. Nul had teleported them into the sky! Before Sam could panic, though, she felt their freefall being arrested by two enormous wings of blood from Lupie. Unable to look behind her, Sam checked her map to see how far they had gone. “It has to be at least fifteen kilometers from the battle and at least five above the ground,” she thought.
She knew Nul had leveled the skill several times as they had traveled but had no idea it would be capable of this distance so soon. Thinking of Nul made Sam reach up to check on the little slime. “Oh no, Nul!” She immediately started pouring healing magic into the Nul, using the last of her energy to stabilize the rapidly fading void slime. “He must have used his life energy to teleport us this far,” Sam thought as she tried to focus on the areas of the slime’s body that needed healing the most, trusting her skill to show her as she healed the foreign creature’s damaged body.
Sam slipped into meditation as they glided after telling Lupie to land them in the canyon and ensuring the Bloodmorph was okay. She calculated they would travel at least another twenty kilometers at Lupie's speed; apparently, Lupie’s movement skill worked regardless of what she was doing, so they were hurtling through the sky at commercial airliner speeds.
With her meditation active, Sam focused on healing Nul and rebuilding her reserves enough to get her Rebuild skill to activate again. That is, until her pain receptors kicked back on a few minutes later. She had forgotten she had used the ability, and now she had ten minutes of double pain. Thankfully, she was only conscious for two minutes before she passed out from the unbearable agony of the exposed nerve endings pressing against the blood cocoon as her lower body slowly regrew itself with the help of Lupie's blood magic.