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Welcome to the Circle of the Lich.
—
“Momo?” Sumire shouted. “Momo?”
Where did she go?
Sumire strained her neck upwards. Above her was a sky full of blinding light, an endless expanse of blank, milky whiteness, like the headlights of an oncoming car. The wind, too, was frightful; it blew her hair back in fierceful gusts. She struggled to keep her feet on the ground.
The others felt it too. Viktor clutched Baryte in his arms and held desperately to the machine, Grimli—who had been busy singing, as one does to fend off the apocalypse—swallowed large gusts of air down his esophagus, causing him to cough and hiss like an engine.
But the wind was not the only sound barreling her eardrums. The clicking of heels resounded from all around, ticking like beats of a metronome. Casting [Eyes of Light], Sumire’s pupils turned translucent—allowing her to see through Jarva’s blinding sun rays. What was revealed to her was hundreds of men and women, draped in yellow and purple armor, walking in clockwork unison towards the central plaza. They brandished the flag of Kyros above them.
Sumire recognized that formation. That insignia. These were knights—knights of the Holy Resistance—who had been laying in wait outside the city. But there was something unusual about them. Their eyes looked dead, muted; their movements were robotic. She squinted, and became disgusted at what she found: tentacles, spindly and purple, were rooted in their backs. They had become nothing but brainwormed puppets. Completed robbed of agency.
The sight flipped a switch in Sumire. It turned simmering, stove-top anger into molten lava.
“You absolute sicko!” she screamed at Jarva. But it wasn't really him she was yelling at it. It was the god lurking inside his skull, piloting from afar. Anger simply bubbled out of her. “I don’t care if it's blasphemous. You’re a disgusting piece of a shit. A poor excuse for a god. Nothing more than Morgana’s scraggly, good-for-nothing barn cat. And I’ll have you know—”
“Silence,” Jarva bellowed, his voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. “Aren’t you a Holy Knight? You should know the rules of the covenant. Rule one. Do not speak ill of the master."
He paused.
"Punishment for violation? Death.”
His single working tentacle shot straight down from the clouds, extending like a neverending, murderous rope. It was as quick as a whip, its speed making it almost imperceivable. Finding her within seconds, it struck to kill. It nearly succeeded—nearly bisected her neck from her torso. But something intervened; something black, and feathery, and cold.
“Don’t touch her.”
Sumire could see it clearly now—the thing that had come between her and imminent death—it was a giant wing, bristling with sharp black feathers. The tentacle had struck the wing and immediately recoiled, as if it had touched a live wire.
“Are you okay?” a faint voice asked. Sumire could barely hear anything over the blood pounding in her ears. She had tasted death many times before, but never so hotly. “Sumire? It’s me. Come on. You can still recognize me. Right? Right? Okay, now you’re just making me nervous. I know, first it was the horns, now wings, but I made the System promise it wouldn’t mess with my face. And look, I can do this.”
The wing receded. In its place was Momo, looking spectacularly like herself: blushing cheeks, bowed head, anxious frown. She was wearing different clothes now: black, silk chiffon robes that fell languidly over her legs, pinching at the waist. A large hair clip with Morgana’s insignia—three circling dead koi fish—was entwined in her white hair. A silver rapier sat on her right hip, and both her hands were stained oily, Nether black.
“What class did you…?” Sumire started, her pupils dilating.
“Nether Demon,” Momo said, shrugging modestly. “Well, the purified, I’m-actually-a-decent-person-instead-of-a-world-ending-monster edition. Hence the angel getup.” She spread her wings to their full wingspan. “For a long few seconds, I thought I was going to pick Void Artist, but then I realized I’d only be doing it because of who I used to be, you know? Art was the only thing I had back on Earth—the only thing that felt like myself—but that’s not true anymore, is it? I’m a lot more than that now. At least I want to be.”
She looked down bashfully, her cheeks coloring. Sumire rarely heard Momo talk about herself so frankly. “I want to be someone who protects people,” she continued. “God, that sounds so stupid. I don’t know. It’s just that, when I first arrived here, when I first got my necromancer powers, I had this dream of having a little farm of undead animals—cats, dogs, cows. I think I want the same thing now, only bigger. All-encompassing. A pasture for all the wayward souls and bony cats and awkward little people. I want everyone to feel safe and loved and important. Believed in. The way this world made me feel believed in.”
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As Momo spoke, something strange happened amongst the encroaching soldiers. Their steps had halted. Confusion, terror, bewilderment overtook their features. In Momo’s ear, a little voice informed her of the phenomenon. The message kept repeating itself over and over.
[Aura of Utter Bewilderment] has stunned Holy Knight #1, Holy Knight #2…. Holy Knight #423 for 5s.
[Aura of Utter Bewilderment] has stunned Holy Knight #1, Holy Knight #2…. Holy Knight #423 for 5s.
[Aura of Utter Bewilderment] has stunned Holy Knight #1, Holy Knight #2…. Holy Knight #423 for 5s.
Momo grimaced. It was that damn skill she got from Zephyra. It stunned anyone with a low Intelligence score for five seconds. Apparently, it worked in a way that if she continued speaking, it would reset itself. It was obvious in the way that the knights would stare blankly, then move an inch, then freeze and stare blankly again.
“Okay, enough about me,” Momo said, turning on her heel to face the mob. She flourished her rapier, and it gleamed in the harsh light. “How should we deal with these guys? I could easily wipe them out, especially while they’re stunned, but I don’t just want to kill them outright. They haven’t even done anything yet.”
“Sever the tentacles.”
“The what?”
Sumire gestured to the tentacles protruding from their backs. “Chop them off. From what I know about how Jarva’s mind-control magic works, severing the connection will cause them to regain self-control. They’ll be really dazed once that happens, though, in a total stupor. It’ll put us in a good position to knock them out while you deal with the big guy upstairs.”
Momo nodded towards her. “Got it, captain.”
“What are you buffoons doing?” Jarva bellowed at his paralyzed troops. He was nursing his tentacle, recovering from the sharp cut it on got Momo's wing. “Serve your lord—your eternal master—or I will turn you into more than mindless husks!”
Momo began to stalk towards the mindless mob.
“Listen to me,” she said, then talked continuously as she walked, making sure to keep them stunned. Judging by what her System had said, there were four hundred and twenty three of the knights. This sheer volume of enemies—even stunned as they were—would have been a problem for her five minutes ago. But now…
She smiled widely.
“System, review my new blade skill. Audio courier only, please.”
[Infinite Blade of the Nether Demon]: Use the Nether to extend your rapier’s blade infinitely in one direction. The blade will maintain the same sharpness as your rapier, so if your rapier is dull, then so will be the Nether blade, and vice versa.
She grazed her finger along the length of the lithe blade. Her fingers—now dark with Nether and flickering, almost holographically—didn’t bleed, but only because that part of her was no longer human. She knew the blade was impossibly sharp.
There would be no problem cutting a little bit of calamari.
“Get her!” Jarva screamed. “Do something, you weaklings!”
Using her new [Shroud Form] ability, Momo became a cloud of black. Moving like water vapor, she infiltrated the knights’ ranks with ease. They were organized in a phalanx, with a narrow hallway of space between each rank, giving Momo just the room she needed. Flitting out of her cloud form, she brandished her rapier dead ahead, aiming for the squirming extremities sticking out of their armored backs.
She squinted, locking on. There could be no room for error, or else they’d all die in an instant.
“[Infinite Blade of the Nether Demon],” she whispered.
The blade shot out like black lightning. It passed each knight in milliseconds, vaporizing the tendrils. As soon as the tentacle left the knight, sentience washed over them; their eyes bugged large, their mouths dragged open. Some immediately fell to their knees; others just stood there, blinking and drooling. Jarva wailed, feeling the instant loss of connection.
“Useless—useless!”
Momo catapulted through the crowd, repeating the attack over and over. By continually babbling out loud, she was able to keep the knights perfectly stunned, inanimate. She worked with a surgeon’s accuracy as she freed them from their puppet strings, lining up the blade just right so as not to sever anything but seafood.
For the knights that were a little bit out of sequence—and at risk of getting shivved—she cut them down manually; with the liquid speed of her [Shroud Form], she could practically teleport through the battlefield, her body transforming into flashes of black, gray, and gleaming white. As she sliced away their slave collars, a question began to form in Momo’s head. An inconsistency.
If these are the knights of the Holy Resistance, where are their leaders? Where’s Nia, Komodo, Trent? I know Sera and Kyros are working together, although it seems that Kyros decided to go rogue in the end—but just how rogue? Did he dispose of the leaders and take the knights?
The thought caused a shiver to run down her spine. As much as she didn’t like Nia, she didn’t want to imagine what Kyros would have done with her. And poor Vivienne, if she found out…
“Mo, I think his Mana is full up again!” Sumire shouted out. The crew—Grimli, Nyk and the rest—had begun to use their respective skills to knock the dazed knights out cold. Up above, Jarva had his greatsword raised once more. White light was bubbling around the handle. “Leave the rest to us, okay? None of this will matter if he decimates us in one go.”
Momo flashed her a look of concern. “You sure? But if the knights come out of their daze—”
“Go!”
Momo nodded, chastised. Sumire wasn’t just her girlfriend, after all. She was her Military Advisor. Her strategist. When she said go—Momo went.
She took a breath in, flourished her wings, and launched off the pavement.