Chapter 425 - Unfettered Joy VI
Claire slowly caught her breath as her monstrous foe finally fell to its knees. The panther continued to twitch even after it collapsed into the snow, its copper-green blood seeping from both its broken neck and its severed head. The fluid was certainly curious, but not allowing herself to be distracted, she set the thought aside and drove Boris into the monster’s back.
Finally, the panther fell still and relinquished its experience. Ignoring the felicitations voiced by the box, Claire walked over to a tree, leaned her back against it, and closed her eyes. The level up that followed the large cat’s death had covered up most of her exterior wounds. But perhaps because it had dug its fangs into her neck, or perhaps because its claws had raked open her chest, her body was still more sore than not.
“You should probably take a break.” Sylvia appeared on one of the branches overhead. “It kinda looks like you’re getting a bit tired.”
“I’m fine,” said Claire.
“Yeah, but you’ve been fighting for hours!” said the fox.
“I can keep going. Vella’s trials lasted for days.”
“I know, but still!” Sylvia dropped onto Claire's head with a huff. “You’ve been focusing super hard.”
“Stop worrying. I’m fine, really.”
“I know you think you’re fine, and I know you can totally keep going, but you’re already starting to slip a bit.”
Claire paused. “Not really.”
“Yes really! I mean, it’s just a teensy little bit, but you’re totally getting sloppy! Like uhmmm… you know when you ripped off that guy’s head?” She pointed at the dead panther. “You did your math wrong when you calculated your vectors, so it came off at a bit of an angle instead of going straight up.”
“I did?”
“Mhm! You were off by like half a degree.”
“Oh.”
“And plus, it doesn’t have to be a long break. You’ll probably be rested enough if you just sit down and look over your stats or something.”
“Fine.” Breathing a sigh, Claire grabbed the fox off her head and pulled her into her lap.
“You might wanna spend your points while you’re at it,” said Sylvia. “I’m pretty sure you’ve got a whole bunch stocked up by now.”
The lyrkress shook her head. “I’m going to hold onto them until I leave the mountain. It’ll be better training this way.”
“Yeah, but you’re totally gonna get yourself killed.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Mmmnnnn, you say that, but that cat nearly ripped out your throat. The only reason it didn’t is ‘cause its teeth got stuck on your spine.”
“Because I needed it to stay still. Now shush. I need to focus.”
Pinching the fox’s cheeks, Claire popped open her status and quickly looked over the numbers.
___
Claire Augustus
Health: 1634508/1634508
Mana: 30721640/30721640
Divinity: 339611/339611
Health Regen: 412.7/second
Mana Regen: 8364.8/second
Divinity regen: 9.43/second
Ability Scores [x1.09] - 200790 Points Available
- Agility: 71796
- Dexterity: 84438
- Spirit: 41808
- Strength: 104892
- Vitality: 34907
- Wisdom: 110859
Racial Class: Caldriess - Level 692.15
- Cataclysm Convergence - Level 399.51
- Realm of Eternal Frost
- True Ice Manipulation: Level 215.19
Titular Class: Witch of the Seventh Tempest - Level 47.01
- Catgirl Affinity - Level 25
- Essence Manipulation - Level 315.10
- Heavenly Annihilation
- Spirit Sorcery - level 94.11
Unclassed Skills
- Artifact Manipulation - Level 15
- Cadrian Court Etiquette - Level 25
- Digging - Level 14.89
- English - Level 25
- Fishing - Level 23.98
- Llystletein Authority++ - Level 38.47
- Marish - Level 20.04
- Napping - Level 105.46
- Singing - Level 80.72
- Sneaking - Level 49.10
- Weapon Mastery - Level 401.98
___
Visiting the Langgbjerns was clearly the right choice. She had gained fifty racial levels in the five hours she spent wandering around the base of the closest mountain and fighting everything she could find. Her titular class had grown fairly significantly as well, but only by its own pathetically slow standard.
Her wisdom had overtaken her strength at some point following her vector magic’s restoration—a gap that would likely only continue to rise as her circuits continued to heal. Last she checked, just earlier in the week, her magical throughput had recovered to 5.03% of its total, though the numbers hardly told the whole tale. The spells she cast assisted by Alfred’s medicine bolstered the efficiency of her magic by far more than a mere twenty times. That much was clear from the pain and effort it took each time to forge Flux’s statues without the extra help. Granted, it was mostly a function of their size. Alfred’s gate was dozens of metres tall, and the sculpture had to be much larger in order to obscure the gate without compromising its aesthetic.
Spirit sorcery aside, all of her eligible skills had grown significantly. She wasn’t sure why her spirit animals remained unavailable. It wasn’t anything to do with her magic. Headhydra was the only guardian who had been present when she drank the celestial’s brew. Her childhood spirits had simply vanished, and she had never quite found any others. The river was the closest thing she could think of. It had certainly given her the impression of a spirit, but she had no idea what it was in reality.
“Okay. I’m done,” said Claire, as she got to her feet.
“Huh? Already? That was like thirty seconds!”
“There wasn’t much to look at.”
“Really? Haven’t you like, gotten any new skills or something?”
“Nope.”
“Huh? Wait, really?”
“Really.”
“That’s weird,” said the fox. “Don’t you do all sorts of acrobatics and stuff all the time? I’m pretty sure you didn’t have any skills for that last time I checked.”
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“I think it might’ve been bundled into my racial skill.”
“Maybe? That’s where your swimming and martial arts and stuff went too, right?”
Claire nodded.
“What about alcohol tolerance? Didn’t you drink a whole bunch while we were in the castle?”
“I didn’t drink much. And alcohol tolerance is bundled into Cadrian Court Etiquette.”
“That’s kinda weird,” said Sylvia. “I can’t tell if it’s better or worse that your skills are all bundled up.It kinda sounds like it means you can do a whole bunch of random stuff to boost your combat abilities, but they’re probably really slow to level.”
“They’re a little slow, but not that bad,” said Claire. “I think. I haven’t done any direct comparisons.”
“Maybe we can ask Ciel when we meet up after all this mountain stuff? She’d probably be happy to share.”
“Good idea.”
Claire gave her shoulders a bit of a stretch as she glanced in the direction of the sun. It was starting to set, though she doubted it would make too much of a difference. Sure, the precise makeup of the monsters was likely to shift, but her ability to see in the dark left her otherwise unconcerned. If anything, she was confident that the accompanying silence would allow her to better detect any enemies nearby.
“I’ll get us a stick,” said Sylvia. She climbed up onto Claire’s shoulders and reached for the nearest branch, but Claire shook her head.
“Don’t bother. I already know where to go.”
She quickly stretched her arms before retrieving Boris and starting up the mountain. The whole river situation aside, she had yet to encounter anything that was strong enough to easily prey on the other local species. Some of the monsters might have appeared as predators—case in point the dead big cat—but in reality, they were relatively weak. Again, the dead cat was the perfect example. Claire was confident that it would have been ambushed and killed by the giant mushroom had the two happened to cross paths, and while it could have easily snatched up a lone herring, it surely would have failed to pick off a healthy member of a larger group.
“Are you sure? Heading up seems kinda risky when you’re already struggling with all the stuff down here.”
“I’ll be fine. I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“Mmk. But I’m stepping in if you get too hurt.”
“I won’t.”
Giving the furball one last scratch, Claire turned straight north and got to walking. As she had noticed while running away from the river, the uphill environment was no different from its downhill counterpart. It was nothing but a monotonous stretch of boreal forest. Rocks, trees, and snow for days. Perhaps in the summer, it might have been different. But in the winter, the undergrowth was plastered in a thick layer of white.
Though the day had started with a brilliant clear sky, a light flurry began to blow as the sky turned orange. It was only a few hours past noon, but so far up north, the daylight was much scarcer in winter. Only two weeks into winter, there were seven, maybe eight hours in a day. By the time the solstice came around, that number would be reduced to five, perhaps even less were she to venture deeper into the Langgbjerns.
As one could expect from a set of monster-rich mountains, encounters were irritatingly frequent. Even discounting the stragglers, Claire found and avoided over a dozen different groups of monsters by the time the sun vanished beneath the horizon. All of them appeared to be prey species, and all of them travelled in groups. Herrings were the most numerous by far, with each of the seven groups she found containing a few thousand individuals.
Coming in second were large, winged giraffes known by the system as fangshrews. Like herrings, they tended to travel in large groups made up of a dozen-odd males and a few hundred females. Encounters with them were only less common because they didn’t take up nearly as much space as the fish. They bundled together, often stepping over each other’s bodies as they made their way through the mountains.
And then there were the bears. Their groups weren’t quite as common—Claire had only spotted two of them—but the communities themselves were just as big as those of the herrings. Claire was still unaware of their species name. Unlike the other two types of prey, they bundled too closely for her to think that it was worth picking them off, even if they comically scrambled up the trees as soon as they felt like they were in danger.
It was a wonder as to how all the different animals were keeping themselves fed. The trees might have been edible, but the lack of damage seemed to indicate that they had few predators if any. It wasn’t like there was much to forage either. The plants buried beneath the snow had no nutrition to show. They were entirely devoid of leaves, and there wasn’t any fruit in sight. One might have assumed that the pine trees would produce cones and nuts alongside them, but Claire had spotted exactly zero. The entire ecosystem was nothing short of inexplicable.
Or at least that was what she thought before the heavens turned dark.
The whole mountain range almost seemed to come to life as the moon crawled her way up into the starry night sky. To say that the evergreens blossomed was but the most absurd of understatements. The iridescent astral projections that erupted from their roots were brighter than the heavens. For though they were coniferous in body, their spirits were those of magnolias, vitexes, and dogwoods.
Petals of all shades and colours descended each time the wind blew, blending in with the snow and abscised pine needles to produce an illusory bloomfall possible only in the midst of winter.
Not to be outdone, the rest of the forest soon followed suit. The jagged peaks grew gentle, round enough to lie atop while the snow transformed into a physics-defying frozen lake. Though it sat on a slope partway up a mountain, none of the water flowed downhill. Held in place by a series of gravitational distortions, its position was further solidified by the giant sheet of ice that served as its lid.
So perfectly translucent was the frozen tarp that it was almost difficult to perceive. It was thin enough that it looked like it would shatter at the lightest touch, but it remained stalwart even when she thwacked it with her tail. Like the water, it was strangely distorted, almost forcibly maintained by the divinity that flowed through the mountain.
It was so thick that she could see it.
Wisps of gold sparked through the night. It was almost like the air was filled with electricity. Every once in a while, there was a crackle, a burst as the divine power jumped from one place to another.
There was far more pressure in the mountains than there was in any church. And yet, Claire felt none of it. If anything, the divinity was uplifting. It filled her with energy and strength. It almost felt like she could sling as many spells as she wanted without having to worry about her body. For the whole mountain had become a giant magic circuit.
The joy appeared to be shared by the monsters as well. Their transformations were even more drastic than those of their wooded surroundings, for they had shed their base forms entirely. The herrings that Claire had been watching turned from muscular sharks to the tiny fish their names suggested. Mushrooms became jellyfish and bears were made into finches. Giraffes shrank into small rodents, vlasches became tiny turtles, and wolves and panthers were reborn as cats and dogs.
There was no more fighting.
The animals were singing and dancing, holding hands as predator and prey enjoyed each other’s company in turn.
“What the heck is going on?” asked Sylvia.
When Claire looked at the fox on her head, she found her in her fairy form, stumped and naked as she looked herself over. Mimicking the action, Claire realised that she was turned into a tiny snake-moose, and that the local animals were waving to her with all manner of nuts and fruits gathered in piles nearby.
“I have no idea,” said Claire.
They were accompanied by large gourds, filled with what seemed to be some sort of alcoholic drink in which the monsters were happy to partake. Their faces grew red and their temperaments more merry. There wasn’t a single bad drunk. The liquor spread nothing but joy.
“It’s almost like we’re under some sort of spell,” said Sylvia. “But it doesn’t feel like any of this is an illusion, and I’m pretty sure my head’s still working right.”
“Your head is never working right.”
“Oh, shush!” huffed the vulpine fairy.
She threw on a set of clothes as she leapt off the lyrkress’ head. “So what now?”
Claire paused for a second to scan her surroundings. “This is the perfect chance to gain some more experience. Nothing has its guard up.”
“I dunno. That kinda seems like it might be a bad idea.”
“Why not?”
“Everything else stopped fighting instantly, so whatever this is probably has its own rules or something. And uhm, I don’t really think you should piss off whatever’s in charge if it’s strong enough to do all this.”
“Not yet, at least,” said Claire.
“Uhmmm, I dunno if you really should ever,” said Sylvia. “It’s probably a god.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.”
As with Panda’s declaration, Aurora made for the most obvious candidate, but again, Claire highly doubted that it was her. While the goddess of the frozen wilds was a firm believer in inner beauty, so too did she abhor the thought of masking or otherwise modifying one’s outward appearance. Given the phenomenon at hand, any other god would have made for a much more likely choice.
“Oh, actually, it’s probably the divine collective! This totally seems like the kinda thing they would do.”
Claire paused for a second before nodding her head. “Maybe.”
The divine collective referred to the many who came together to represent the arts, and the combination of the spell’s wide-ranging nature and the overall aesthetic made for a convincing guess.
“So are we gonna join them?”
Claire shook her head. “That seems like just as bad of an idea. It still might be a trap or illusion, even if it’s the divine collective’s work.”
“Oh, come on! Now you’re just being paranoid.”
Shrugging, Claire grabbed the tiny fairy with a vector and continued on her way. By indulging in unfettered joy, the monsters provided the perfect chance to press deeper into the mountains.