The pale horror in front of Alice kept thrashing and squirming in the dirt, her [Torment] once again in full blast. The malevolent aura enveloped the monster from all sides, assaulting its body and elevating its squeals to an even higher pitch.
As Alice moved towards the other leg with intentions of completely disabling the thing, she once again felt invisible tendrils approaching her face from within the monster's head, the coils of alien Ether leaving a strange wake in [Torment]’s aura.
With a savage snarl, she stabbed her dagger into the fleshy abdomen of her enemy, where she could see the biggest clump of strange organs, then dragged the weapon down as she twisted it. With the dagger came a waterfall of clear fluid that spilt out from the monster along with darkened sacs and organs she couldn’t recognise. Surprisingly, the horror — which a glance identified it as a ‘Gloomstalker’ — kept trying to burrow into her head. Be it from desperation or mindless hunger, Alice neither knew nor cared.
As it tried to put back its guts where they belonged with both of its eerily human hands, Alice focused on [Torment] as she idly stabbed its stomach again.
As she ignored the latest animalistic scream, she started noticing with increasing clarity how the tendrils coming off the Gloomstalker moved and interacted with her own Etheric field. Compressing her aura around one of them and slowly stopping it in its tracks, she noticed something familiar within the ghostly appendage. It was made of a mixture of Ether that felt incredibly close to her own Pain, if ‘sanitised,’ so to say.
Far too late, she noticed how [Torment] had eased on the side of the other tendril trying to burrow into her head as it shot towards her. Screaming both in hate and fright as it pierced her ear and made it an inch deep, she pulled her aura closer to herself, compressing it around her body and coalescing it further, banishing the foreign Ether and denying it further access.
[Torment] now looked like a vague haze around Alice, the outlines of chains could be seen crawling within her shadow and the penumbra that fell within her reduced domain.
Acting on pure instinct, she pulled a coil of Ether from her own core, and sent it outwards and through the tendril the moment it tried to breach [Torment] once again. Noticing how the bastard was starting to move slower and mewl instead of crying out, she stabbed it once again for good measure, this time in the neck area. Pulling out the dagger, she noticed how it moved its free hand towards its neck while a gurgle escaped its torn throat.
As her own Ether travelled the seized connection and Alice stared at those beady eyes she now realised were clusters with dozens of smaller eyeballs — all of them roiling around in their sockets. She didn’t feel the merest hint of remorse; if anything, she regretted not being able to string along its own personal hell for longer.
Trying to invade her mind deserved nothing but complete oblivion.
Her Ether reached the creature, and even in the throes of death, its body convulsed and contorted one last time as Alice tore wide open an entrance to its mind. The thoughts, if she could call them that, were disjointed, wild and — in most cases — dim, fraying threads on a rotting tapestry, ready to crumble at the merest touch.
And so, Alice grabbed as many of those threads as she could, and ripped them away, one fistful at a time. Once, twice — she grabbed a third cluster but before she could tug at them with savage glee, she was violently ejected from the monster’s mind. Its body now lay completely still on a small pool of its own alien blood, its many eyes dim and still.
Alice arose from her kneeling position as she gazed at the being, turning off [Torment] and noticing the precarious state of her Ether. She only had around half left, and a cast of [Oppress] would drain a significant portion of it.
As her racing heart slowed, she took a step towards the Gloomstalker and engraved its otherworldly features and appearance within her mind, vowing never to forget them.
Then, she raised her leg, and stomped down on its head. It burst with a splatter of pale gore, transparent fluids and strange sacs bursting with the strength of her brutality. Then, she did it repeatedly, stomping faster each time, leaving nothing but a stain on the floor after a couple of minutes. With a savage snarl, she did it one last time, crushing whatever was left into an irrecognisable paste.
Breathing heavily, she glared at the former monster now turned slurry, teeth bared in seething hatred. It had been one of the most revoltingly vile creatures she had ever seen, and now that it had been reduced to mush it wasn¡’t much better.
It was then that Alice noticed the blinking at the edge of her vision, and Alice scanned her surroundings, listening to the rustling of leaves on a wind that had no business being underground.
Stepping over the mulched corpse, she took a seat on the maw of the cavern’s entrance, just deep enough to not be instantly spotted if anything came strolling around. That way, she’d have a way of escape if anything approached her, be it from the tunnels or from deep within the canopy.
“I should use this echo thing more often though…” Alice sighed, as a glint in her left arm caught her attention. Looking at it, she wanted to smash her head against something hard. Strapped to said arm was the strange mirror-shield she had taken from the strange building with weird space. Noticing how it still didn’t reflect whatever it had in front of itself, she rubbed her thumb on it out of pure curiosity, hissing and snapping her hand back when the surface rippled, a needle-like protrusion filled with a small amount of her blood retreating.
Link found!
Attune?
Yes/No.
Alice blinked, then frowned in consternation. She didn’t know if attuning to a piece of junk she had found in the middle of some madhouse was a good idea, regardless of the benefits it could bring. If it brought any, that is.
But even then, she needed every advantage she could get, regardless of where it came from. Grasping every chance at power was vital if she wanted to get out of whatever place she had fallen into.
“I could always try to climb the hole, but…” There was something about the lack of light at all from the chasm above the moss grove that brought a chill to her spine. She did not want to delve into that darkness if at all possible.
Name
Tyrant’s Echo
Tier
[1]
Rank
[A]
Affinity: Profane.
Effects
Jagged Impression: Copy any of your wounds into another’s body for a significant part of your Ether.
“Wait it can do what?”
Alice read and reread the description, hoping to find some kind of flaw or strange cosmic joke, but no matter how much she looked, the floating box remained the same.
“Now that just means I need a way of healing myself, and that could create a pretty nasty combo… I like it.” Alice smiled, only briefly pondering the implications of the shield’s requirement to activate. Well, she could always take a hit intentionally — she doubted many people expected someone to actually throw themselves into the way of a moving blade or axehead. Besides, if she could heal herself it didn’t really count as a hit, right?
Nodding to herself, she looked at the forest and the tunnel anew, eyes slowly scanning everything. Upon not finding any threats, she opened the rest of her notifications. The stat gains made a smile bloom on her face as she muttered to herself. Watching numbers going up was strangely addicting.
Profession-aligned action taken.
Bonus granted.
Huh. That probably was from when she had discovered the weird forest. And from all the trampling around the caverns.
Thinking about her profession, Alice was disappointed at how minor the enhancements seemed to be. Yes, she had noticed that her feet were a bit nimbler the weirder and more unknown the place seemed to be, tripping less on their own, but it faded so fast that she wasn’t sure if it was really worth it. Perhaps she could change Professions at a later date, or pick a more general evolution.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
She’d have to see, as for the moment she couldn’t really do anything about it.
Victory!
You have killed [Gloomstalker].
You were out-tiered and alone.
Bonus granted.
Level-up.
[1.7 Acolyte of Pain] up to [1.10].
+3 Vitality, +4 Power, +1 Control, +3 Free per LV.
Total:
+9 Vitality, +12 Power, +3 Control, +9 Free.
Level-up.
[1.4 Initiate Explorer] up to [1.8].
+3 Vitality, +4 Power, +1 Control, +3 Free per LV.
Total:
+8 Agility, +8 Reaction, +8 Perception, +12 Free.
Skill-up.
[1.4 Torment] up to [1.6].
Success!
You have created [Mindsnap].
Learn?
Yes/No
Smiling, Alice selected ‘yes,’ and watched the spell appear on her Echo.
Mindsnap [1.1]
Pluck away your enemies’ thoughts, one fistful at a time. No finesse, no technique; just raw, undiluted hatred seeping into their psyche, a rotting poison that you know all too well.
Range: Moderate.
Cost: Very High.
Damage: Low.
Other: Can paralyze, incapacitate and stun for long periods of time, depending on enemy attributes and Tier.
— One, two, three it goes. Four, five, here she comes. Six, seven, run.
Alice stared at the quote at the end of the spell, not knowing if she should feel disturbed or concerned. She had ignored said quotes, thinking them more of a quirk of the system than anything else, but this was the first one that looked downright creepy.
Vowing to ask Marie once outside, she soldiered on and got down to the meat of the updates; her attributes.
Vitality
26→
35
Agility
20→
28
Reaction
20→
28
Perception
20→
28
Power
36→
48
Control
19→
22
And twenty-one points left free that she didn’t know very well how to distribute. The temptation to dump everything into power was there, but Marie did warn her against it.
She had said that only bad things occurred when it massively outscaled the rest of her Soul attributes, right? A few more points wouldn’t hurt…
Strength
10→
22
Agility
28→
31
Power
48→
51
Control
22→
24
Will
21→
22
Free
21→
0
She didn’t want Strength to fall behind everything else. She loved her magic, but the thought of being left completely defenceless physically sent a jolt of nausea through her stomach that she had to quickly put aside.
The strange tingling overcame her body and Ether core, and she sighed in contentment. It felt really nice, actually feeling and seeing changes being made on the spot. She felt nimbler, her vision was clearer and she could make out the sounds of the forest more easily, and all that without talking about how her core now felt like a roiling cloud of condensed miasma, ready to lash out at her command.
It made her smile.
Once she assigned everything, she gave a sigh as the tingling she now associated with stat growth spread all over her body. It seemed to be getting stronger the higher she went, instead of tapering off as the numbers got higher. Did that mean something important? Some kind of limit or threshold? Alice hoped it wasn’t some sort of hard cap, as that’d ruin her drive to see them getting bigger and bigger. What would be the point if there was a hard number no one could get through?
It’d be like Earth, but… spicy. Marie did say that someone had managed to get a foot inside godhood, so it couldn’t be a hard cap. She hoped.
If it was just another place where people could be on top of you, their foot on your neck simply by virtue of birth or luck, she’d be incredibly disappointed. Aethas seemed like a brutal place, but fair in its savagery, and she hoped that it was indeed that way.
She didn’t want a repeat of what had brought her here.
Alice shook her head and pushed away the quickly forming downward spiral. First of all, she had to attend to her basic necessities, then get out of there, and then she could think useless thoughts all she wanted.
After being done with her Echo, Alice stood up and patted away the dust and grime on her armour, not minding that it only made a further mess. Just after, her stomach emitted a dull pang of hunger — not painful, but on the verge thereof. Grimacing, she slung her backpack around, opening it with care so nothing spilt over.
Numbly, she stared at the missing rations and crumbs of food that she could see at the bottom of the leather bag. Had something just seen her bag, opened it and eaten everything inside as she was crawling through the non-euclidean maze?
Slipping her hand inside confirmed that it wasn’t an illusion, and Alice forlornly stared at the breadcrumbs stuck to the leather. Knocking on the canteen, she confirmed that at least she still had water left.
Silver linings, or so they say.
With a snort of simmering anger, she slung the backpack around and into its place as she muttered venomously.
“I hope you choke on it, wherever you are.”
Now she’d have to hunt whatever lived inside the forest or one of the weirder biomes if she wanted to eat, not to speak about how she had almost zero idea about creating or nurturing a fire besides some basics she had seen on the internet in some of her stay at home winter afternoons.
Alice took a fortifying breath as she stared at the alien canopy before her, pondering where she should go. With a shrug of helplessness, she strode straight ahead and deeper into the forest. The other biomes near her looked a bit too intimidating for her tastes. Forests were familiar, if only slightly, and she’d have something to hide behind if any beast spotted her.
Walking deeper into the shrubbery, she started to relax slightly. She didn’t feel as on edge as she had felt while within the Blood Blossom. The idea of some tree just standing up and trying to eat her regardless of if it was night or not had been a worry that constantly weighed the back of her mind, even if she never had voiced such worries.
It was hard to feel even mildly at ease when you had been told the very ground itself wanted nothing more than to drink your blood and chew on your bones.
In contrast, the strange-coloured forest felt almost peaceful, trunks from all shades of blue and purple populated it, their colourful leaves rustling on an unseen wind. Focusing on the latter, she noticed how all the light that did its best to spread along the cavern and towards an unseen ceiling came from said leaves. Individually, they emitted almost no light, but together they managed to light the whole ground layer of the massive cavern.
Spotting movement to her left, Alice crouched down in a flash. In front of her, around sixty feet away, was a strange kind of monster. It walked on four thin legs positioned in a way that brought it maximum stability. Its torso was comprised of some nightmarish fusion between a deer and some other strange monstrosity, an elongated snout filled with dull teeth cautiously took a bite out of one of the trees’ bark, two eyes on each side of its face constantly in a swivel for predators. Thankfully, it hadn’t spotted Alice.
Choosing to use [Oppress] straight out of the bat, Alice prepared herself to cast when a massive thing leapt from the canopy above, revealing a spider with way too many legs and two forefront limbs that almost looked like a pair of hands. These forelimbs were thicker than the rest by a large margin, and Alice gulped as the monster used its powerful appendages to grab ahold of the other monster’s neck, and then spin around it perfectly, all its directional momentum instantly converted into centrifugal force between one instant and the next, immediately breaking the other thing’s neck.
Gulping, Alice slowly stepped backwards, not wanting to alert it.
A branch beneath her foot snapped, and Alice felt the irresistible need to punch someone in the face.
The monstrous spider screeched, then leapt towards her.
“I hate this place!”