Chapter 70: The Fate of Your World
The portal to the library lit up, filling with the white paper-like surface. Nara stared at the empty white arena, spattered with her blood. The mimic’s blood had vanished up in rainbow smoke, so hers was the only bloodstains left. The light from above never shifted direction, so Nara’s sense of time once again failed her.
It was a rather strange sensation akin to killing someone in a mirage chamber. It was a doubly odd sensation to kill, no, destroy something that looked, thought, and spoke like herself. The Guide notification had said it was an illusion, and she had looted it, like a monster. She hadn’t killed a person.
Magic activated in the room, healing her injuries and cleansing her afflictions.
Wouldn’t want successful examinees to croak after the fact.
She didn’t have any injuries to heal, only mental exhaustion and her afflictions. Towards the end, even a single scratch was fatal. After her injuries had healed, she stepped through the portal.
*****
The next chamber was a vast library, open to the air. A large tree grew in the middle, sheltering the bookcases in gentle shadow. Odd as it was, it was a picturesque outdoor library. Almost outdoor, if not for the large glass atrium dome surrounding the indoor garden.
The library was massive, practically the size of a football stadium. How anyone was expected to find what they wanted in three days was an impossibility, unless there was a helpful librarian. Clear glass walkways and ladders led up to higher tiers of books, out of reach.
Two awakening stones dropped out of thin air, falling into her hands. Another Awakening Stone of Judgement, and an Awakening Stone of the Avatar. It seemed two was the bonus for the final trial.
Small clearings interrupted the rows of books. Some had comfortable tables and chairs, like the one Nara had portaled to. They were plush and soft, and made of the same wood as the massive tree that filled the stadium sized library.
She saw a familiar face there, waiting for her.
“Sen?”
He looked up, surprised and relieved.
“Nara. I’m glad to see you are alright.”
Nara wearily sat down in a chair, her exhaustion catching up with her. Suddenly, she glowed with a grey light, matching the color of iron spirit coins.
“A Racial Ability evolution?”
“Seems so. Want to see?”
Sen nodded.
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Racial Ability: [Tribulation of Self]
Transfigured from [Resilient]
Increased resistance to afflictions and all damage. This is a legacy effect of [Resilient].
Ignore rank disparity in resistances and damage reduction.
Gain immunity to afflictions that originate from you or your abilities, including afflictions duplicated from your abilities. Gain increased resistance to hostile effects that affect your abilities such as ability duplication, ability theft, ability nullification, and cooldown increase.
This effect cannot be duplicated by any ability or effect, including inherent abilities of magical creatures.
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Immunity to her own afflictions was an extremely niche effect, but the second half was more practical. One of the most dangerous effects against an essence users was abilities that could manipulate or cancel other abilities.
Not only had she been fighting bronze rank monsters this entire time, but she had fought a diamond rank illusion mimic. Unless it was diamond rank, a duplication ability couldn’t copy her appearance, personality, ethics, morality, abilities, equipment, and racial abilities. Eufemia had several abilities that created a similar effect, but none touched upon the mind and memories.
Mind reading was impossible. But if the mimic became her, it was more or less the same thing. Nara was reminded again that even what she thought were hard rules had ways to be bypassed.
“You didn’t get one from fighting the mimic?”
He shook his head. “Racial Ability evolutions are induced by different experiences for each person. It was not the case for me this time.”
“Where’s Aliyah?”
“Within the library. She hasn’t stopped reading since she got here.”
“Specter?”
“Yes, miss Edea.”
The silver robe of an astral being materialized in the air beside Nara.
“Sen, could you call Aliyah over, there’s something important I need to do. This…won’t be so much of a discussion as a declaration.”
*****
“So,” Aliyah said, gently shutting her book and setting it down, “You intend to free the astral being that has been trapped here, serving as a guide for this test for thousands of years.”
“Yes.”
“We cannot change your mind.”
“Nope.”
“And the mimic we all fought was an illusion created by a diamond rank mimic.”
“That is how the final trial is designed, miss Sahar,” Specter said.
Aliyah thought for a moment, parsing the facts.
“Even if the illusion created was matched to our iron rank power, the magic that created it was still diamond rank. Hence, when Nara looted it, she received diamond rank spirit coins, but no monster core.”
“It is more substantial than an illusion,” Specter said, “It created a body with perfectly matching capabilities, as physical and real as it’s target.”
“Diamond rank magic shaped into iron rank power is still diamond rank magic.”
Specter glanced at the three, a little hesitant. Her head (she had no eyes), shifted to a location towards the stadium’s perimeter.
“Then…if you have not changed your mind, I will show you the way. Please, follow me.”
The three followed her past bookshelves and small gardens, eventually reaching the far end of the stadium library. Specter pressed a few small runes in sequence, like a keypad entry. A wall section of the wall opened up, and they entered.
They progressed down the long white corridor, lit up by strangely natural lighting despite the absence of a glass roof. Since she saw the keypad, Nara had a feeling the cult of the Celestial Book may have a significantly higher level of technology and magic than the natives of Erras.
“How was the cult here destroyed?” Nara asked.
“It is more accurate to say the cult was partially destroyed and partially abandoned,” Specter said as they continued down the corridor. “They were besieged by a few forces of this world as well as an external force.”
“An external force? The messengers?” Sen asked.
“No, a different faction. They call themselves The Advent.”
“The Advent? I haven’t heard of them before.”
“They go to great lengths to keep their presence unknown until they feel it is fit to reveal themselves. In the cosmos, there are several civilizations known for their imperialistic culture. The Messengers seek to subjugate all other races, who they consider beneath them, turning entire worlds into servant worlds and races into servant races. The Advent seeks to undermine worlds to create unity. The trial is in part to prevent those of The Advent from freely accessing the library even after the cult abandoned the astral space. If they are limited to 3 days, per entry and per success, then they cannot hope to collect it all. The cult was limited in time to set up countermeasures, so they had left the trial they had already designed in place, turned it on permanently, and connected the library to the trial space. The Messengers are born at silver rank; they could not enter the trial at all.”
“To undermine worlds to create unity? How does that work?” Nara said.
“The Advent believes that all others besides them are violent and argumentative. That other cultures and races, due to their unavoidable conflict with others and monsters, cannot bring themselves to peace. They strive to achieve harmony and unity through any measure, no measure too great. So, they profess themselves as the impartial third party, capable of unifying worlds under a great alliance.”
“Do they?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Worlds under the Amity of the Advent do have harmony and peace. They are without starvation and strife. People live fulfilled lives, learning, creating, relaxing, achieving, and exploring. But…”
“But, what?”
“But they are a beast plucked of their fangs. Once a world relies on The Advent, there is no way to regain their independence…perhaps only with great difficultly not worth the cost. The Advent is genuine in their pursuit of harmony and fulfillment. Worlds under them become great hubs of peace and advancement. However, warriors, they are not.”
“Let me guess, those of The Advent and their organization are the warriors,” Nara said.
“Yes. They believe that if given the chance, integrated worlds will return to savagery. Only those that have sworn themselves to the mission of The Advent are trained.”
“Is The Advent after this world?” Sen asked.
“They’re after many worlds, mister Arlang. It is their mission to spread peace and harmony, through any means possible.”
We are here to help. Do not resist.
“Why attack the cult of the Celestial Book? That seems counterproductive,” Aliyah said, “Great research often can lead to peace.”
“A common method of The Advent to integrate a world is to subvert their technology and research. The Advent introduces themselves to a stagnated world with wonders of Magitech that only they understand and can maintain. The world accepts this new technology and joins the Amity for their protection and benefits.”
“What John mentioned…Maybe The Advent is behind the death of researchers and inventors?” Nara said.
Sen glanced at Nara and nodded.
“The Advent will encourage strife,” Specter said, “The greater the strife, the most desperate the people, the more easily worlds fall.”
Like the divine hand of a god, bestowing peace and light onto a starving and bloodied world. Civilians dead in the streets, cities destroyed by the fights of strong monsters and essence users. If a group, benevolent in their charity with capabilities beyond the people’s wildest imagination offer their safety and protection, the adventurers may refuse, but they would have the hearts of the people. The day-to-day concerns of an essence user and a normal person are completely different. And although adventurers would have protected them for thousands of years, an ordinary person would choose the ones that offer a higher quality of life and greater protection for a cheaper, yet insidious price.
It was a competition the adventurers could not win.
But ordinary people cared not if their world no longer had fangs. If they had free comforts, care, safety, education, and entertainment, all for free, what did they care about if there were no more essence users, no more combatants? They were free to pursue their ordinary dreams, or do nothing at all.
If Nara hadn’t stepped onto the path of the essence user, she would have grasped that hand. That’s all she wanted on Earth, and then some.
The thought made her blood run cold. Even with her new life, she understood both sides.
“The Messengers are a far simpler enemy,” Sen said, “They may not be easy to best in combat, but at least it is only combat.”
“You may consider that The Advent may not even be your enemy,” Specter said, “The do provide for their worlds. As a path a world can take, it is one of the gentler paths. The Advent will protect their worlds against Messengers and monsters. Messenger rule is, in contrast, one of the worst fates a world can suffer.”
Sen’s said nothing. His grey eyes were stormy, ruminating.
“What do you think, Specter? Is that what you would encourage?” Nara asked.
“…No,” Specter said, “I would not.”
“Why?”
“I do not advise leaving the fate of your world in the hands of others. As genuine as they are in protecting those beneath them, they will with equal ease sacrifice a world to protect the peace of the others. To them, there is no price too great, no action too atrocious for harmony. Perhaps it is the correct choice to sacrifice one world for the preservation of all others. It is the correct choice, but it is not the right choice.”
It was the tyranny of the greater good.
*****
“The artifact is through this door,” Specter said, gesturing.
It was another plain white room. A single artifact, around the size of a marble statue, stood in the center of the room. Lines of growing runic magic extended from it, as if it was a single spoke in a super massive magic circle.
Aliyah circled the artifact, looking at the magic on it with her perception ability.
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Ability: [Mana Perception]
Essence: Adept
Perception
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Perceive the flows of Magic.
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“There’s a standard suite of magical protections on the artifact,” Aliyah said, “Anti-teleportation, anti-dimensional displacement, damage protection, and some others.”
“Can you get around them?”
Aliyah shook her head, “There’s some additional protections that would make dispelling these rituals time intensive. I could eventually work my way through them, but not in 3 days…maybe. There is a chance it may be possible to disable enough that it could be removed.”
“Then I only have my final resort,” said Nara. “A maybe isn’t good enough.”
She opened up her domain door beneath the artifact, and it dropped inside. She then deposited it into her inventory from there. The door domain was connected to her Astral Domain as a projection of it. Once it was in her door domain, it was already as good as in her inventory, magic protections be damned. She didn’t so much as teleport it as shove it through the dimensional membrane directly into her Astral Domain.
“That was anticlimactic,” she said, staring at the empty node where the artifact once was. She had expected it’s anti-dimensional displacement properties to prevent the artifact from falling into her door. Perhaps the domain door didn’t count as dimensional displacement (was it was closer to a temporary astral space?), or it couldn’t be entirely anti-dimension since it was in an astral space library already, or anti-dimensional displacement couldn’t win against the power of gravity.
“It was,” Aliyah agreed, a bit disappointed she didn’t get to try her hand at high-stakes extreme speed ritual dismantling, but relieved to get back to her books.
Specter stared blankly at where the artifact once stood. She could feel that the tether that kept her chained to reality had disappeared, cut off by whatever the iron ranker had done. She had been chained here for so long, that her sudden freedom surprised her more than it surprised Nara. In the lifespan of an astral being that did not die, if but the flicker of a butterfly’s wings, but a long life did not make the day-to-day pass slower. In this realm by herself, the excruciating boredom that abated only when adventurers came to pass the trial every half year… she was free from it all.
“Dimensional displacement… No. Something else? But how?” She muttered to herself, “Whispers of the astral… some sort of domain…”
“You’re still here?”
Specter was startled from her contemplation.
“There is no longer a physical object binding me to this location,” Specter said, smoothly transitioning to her professional demeanor, “but I still have this diamond rank form crafted for me. It will be some time before the form is forced to naturally disperse with no artifact anchoring me to reality.”
Specter bowed, “Thank you, my benefactor.”
“Don’t do that,” Nara said, “I don’t bow to anyone, and nobody bows to me. Since you’re still sticking around, can you lead me on the fastest path to get my eyes on every single book? I have this convenient ‘bookkeeping’ ability. If John was here, his ability was even better. He could just take a picture of the library shelves.”
“Of course, benefactor. It would be my pleasure.”
Aliyah sighed, handing Nara the book she was reading to record into her Archives, “There isn’t much point to reading this now. I may as well walk with you. If you will have all this information stored within you, then this astral being is by far the most interesting being here.”
“I always enjoy company on a nice walk through a dimensional pocket library,” Nara said, reaching down briefly to scratch Thanatos behind the ears, who was walking beside her.
Sen joined the two, and the group of three plus two astral beings took a slow stroll around the library. The library was massive, but they had three days. It was best Nara didn’t miss a book, although any casual glance was enough to record anything within sight.
“So how did the two of you pass the final trial?”
“We used a rather simple method,” Aliyah said, “We both used an ability stone before the trial.”
“An ability stone?”
“The mimic cannot grow in capability,” Aliyah said, “For a freshly awoken ability, it will always be the worst at using it, whereas we will have the quickest improvement.”
“Oh. That sounds a lot easier than whatever I did.”
Their method required a basic mastery of ritual magic and memorization (or a ritual book) of the awakening stone ritual. Sen’s ritual magic training had paid off—it was not a tactic everyone had access to. It was limited to those who could use skill books, or those who had at least basic ritual magic training.
“So what ability did the two of you awaken?”
“Sen used an Awakening Stone of the Moon,” Aliyah said.
“Strang choice for his combination.”
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Ability: [Weight Manipulation]
Awakening Stone: Moon
Special Ability
Cost: Low mana-per-second
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Manipulate the weight of yourself or your equipment. This can increase or decrease the weight of weapons and armor, making them heavier or lighter to wield, changing their characterization from a heavy to light or vice versa. Allows for reduced or increased falling speed and water walking.
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“It awakened something rather unusual, so the choice paid off,” Aliyah said, “This weight manipulation is actually the manipulation of gravity, is that correct?”
“Gravity? I guess John must have explained it to you.”
“My curiosity lies with what it has to do with the moon.”
“It sounds like you have a theory already.”
“I do have a theory,” Aliyah said. She looked up, but there was no sun or moon in the atrium sky. “I will leave it at that, for now.”
“What did you awaken then?”
Aliyah showed Nara.
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Ability: [Force Vortex]
Essence: Gathering
Conjuration (trap)
Cost: Low mana-per-second
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Create a core that generates a vortex of pulling force, sucking all enemies nearby towards the center of the vortex and dealing continuous rending damage. When the core is destroyed or displaced, a wave of force explodes outwards, dealing a burst of rending damage and knocking all targets away from the core of the vortex.
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“I used an Awakening Stone of Wind.”
“Seems like the type of ability with less room for nuance.”
“That’s true,” Aliyah admitted, “There was just enough nuance that I managed to win, by utilizing the pulling force of the vortex to displace my mimic at a key moment.”
“Have any of the others arrived?”
Nara shook her head, “I haven’t gotten a Guide notification yet. They’ve either backed out from the trial, are still attempting it, or...dead. Hopefully, not the third.”
The string of notifications constantly indicated another book was added to her archive. The books of the Celestial Library were semi-corporeal. They could not be removed from the library or added to an inventory. They were temporary constructs of magic that disappeared when removed for too long from their place. Aliyah’s own book had already faded, reappearing back where she originally took it from. If Nara took a book and put it in her Astral Domain, the library would likely create a new one. She could preserve the book from dispersing in her Astral Domain. That was unnecessary. Nara just recorded the books instead. She could make her own temporary conjurations later as needed.
She saw a few other essence users, scattered throughout the library. Even the less-than-studious Vallis had settled into a chair, reading a book that interested her.
“While I’m waiting,” Nara said, “I may as well use my final three stones.”
“What do you have?” Sen asked.
“I got an Awakening Stone of Creation, The Avatar, and another Awakening Stone of Judgement from the trial. Then, I looted an Awakening Stone of the Doppelganger from the mimic.”
“Four stones but three abilities. That’s a pleasant problem to have. Which ones do you want to use?” asked Aliyah.
“The Creation and the Avatar, for sure,” Nara said, “Those two are legendries. I know they aren’t better, but I still want to use them. I’m split between the other two though. I’ve already used a judgement, but Doppelganger seems ill suited for my abilities.”
“That’s true. It would probably awaken an illusion or double, but your abilities want your opponents to attack you. If it was used earlier in your set, you may have awakened abilities to synergize with an illusion or a copy.”
It was common knowledge that most illusion or doubles only gained full abilities of their target at diamond rank. Until then, the illusion would always be a lesser copy of Nara. She didn’t need the mobility that something like Echo Spirit provided, and she wanted enemies to directly attack her, not confuse them with her illusion.
“I think its best with Eufemia, or someone else. I’m saving it for her, if she wants it. Otherwise, I may just hang onto it. It is epic, so I could give it to my family when I see them.”
“So you’ve decided on Creation, Avatar and Judgement? There are benefits to using multiple of the same awakening stone. It often produces abilities that synergize.”
Eufemia had used two Adept stones, the second of which worked extremely well with abilities she had already awakened.
“Seems like the answer naturally arrived,” Aliyah said, “I’m curious; we don’t see the abilities of many legendary awakening stones.”
“Isn’t there a whole bunch from this trial?”
“There is,” Aliyah said, “but even that is a small percentage compared to all abilities awoken worldwide. While some adventurers will take on the trial, many wait for the trial to end, and buy any extra awakening stones for a lower price. It’s by far the safest and most inexpensive option.”
“There is always a surge of new essence users after the trial in Sanshi,” Sen said, “New essences and awakening stones that are found or looted end up on the market.”
Nara held out the first stone in her hand, the Stone of Creation, and used it.