Isil’s eyes wandered around the room, a prickling feeling on the back of her neck. Something about this place made her feel like she was being watched. It made sense logically, as a divine avatar was likely to be able to watch the entire ruins. However, there was something different about the feeling. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she didn’t think it was the divine avatar that was watching her.
“…! …!”
Isil stopped and whipped her head around, searching for the source of a sudden sound. The surroundings remained silent, and after a minute, she relaxed. Dismissing the sound, she continued to undress, tossing her clothes into the storage pendant. After a few moments of fumbling around with the robes, she was finally back in her normal outfit. She also released the disguise spell she had been using since meeting the ARA. As soon as she released the spell, it felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
Disguise spells were outrageously complicated, which made it much harder to use other spells while using one. Luckily, Isil was already able to -
“…!”
‘Okay, what the fuck is that?’ Isil thought to herself. She strained her ears and listened closely, but the sound didn’t seem to become any clearer. At a loss, she reached out with her magic, trying to sense the source of the sound. While she wouldn’t be able to understand anything from it without structuring into a spell, she could feel its origin, at the very least.
Unfortunately, she had to stop before she could reach the source, as it was too far deep into the ruins. Noticing the ineffectiveness of simply extending her mana, Isil tried to think on what spell she could use to amplify the sound. While she did, she continued deeper into the ruins. As this was the evolution of a game world, she did not have many utility spells. In fact, the only ones she did have were enchanting spells, and those could hardly even be considered spells. As such, she decided to try constructing a new spell. Of course, it was likely to explode in her face, so she took the necessary precautions of resistance spells.
Creating a new spell was no easy feat. With very little actual study of magic and its nature, she wasn’t exactly sure how she was supposed to do it. However, she knew some basics of spell structure and could make a few rough estimates from her previous experiments. She had already compared spell layers with others and figured out the structure of the sound element. While she knew the intended effect, actually creating the spell was undoubtedly difficult.
-_-_-
After a time of spell making, Isil was ready to test her first prototype. She waited for her summoned ethereals to finish off the undead monsters before starting the testing. According to her heavily uneducated guesses, the spell should amplify all sounds within roughly ten meters, and transmit them directly into her ears. As she could still hear the weird noise she was tracking, it was likely that the spell would pick up on it.
“Here goes nothing...” Isil sucked in a deep breath, and activated the prototype spell.
For a moment, nothing happened. Isil was about to dismiss it as a failure until a sudden burst of intolerable sound was blasted into her ears. It felt like someone had begun a rock concert in her ears, but had amplified the volume many times over. The sudden pain and noise cause Isil to scream in agony. Disoriented, she tripped over her own feet and fell to the ground. Thankfully, the noise ended as soon as she ended the spell, allowing a welcome silence to arise.
“Jesus Christ, what the fuck was I thinking?” Isil said to herself, her ears still in great pain.
“Wait...” She suddenly froze. “What the hell’s wrong with my voice?”
Isil removed her hands from her ears, noticing bright red liquid on both her hands.
“Don’t tell me my eardrums exploded from that? Shit, will healing magic fix that?”
In a moment of panic, Isil cast an Omega healing spell, which allowed her hearing to return in a single second.
“Testing, testing… oh, good.” Isil breathed a sigh of relief.
Isil got back onto her feet and brushed the dust off her robes. Undeterred by her deafening failure, she went about analyzing what went wrong with her spell. But before she did so, she refreshed her summoned ethereals. Ethereals sounded grand and mysterious, but they were simply a category of summons. They were basically just ghosts of animals or ancient warriors.
This type of summoning bordered on necromancy, but was not defined as such. Summoned ethereals couldn’t linger in the world of the living for too long, while most undead or ghosts could. The summoned ethereals also had to agree to the summoning first. Of course, in the simple-minded animals ethereals, this consent wasn’t hard to obtain, but was much harder in the more intelligent ethereals. Necromancy was essentially slavery, consent didn’t matter, so long as the necromancer was powerful enough.
Having ensured that she wouldn’t be interrupted by undead or other ruin-dwellers, Isil returned to spell-making.
-_-_-
It was only until Isil had been taking a rest on a dusty chair that she had gotten the spell to work. Like her other attempts, she was momentarily met with quiet, before the many sounds became amplified and projected right into her ears. Thankfully, it was not too quiet, nor did it rupture her eardrums. It had finally worked as intended, and the sound she had been searching for was made clear to her.
“Come to me… Come to me...” The voice repeated.
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‘I think that sounds like Belleb’s avatar, but I can’t be sure. I haven’t heard his voice since…’ Isil’s thoughts slowly began to fade out as a profound sense of emptiness overtook her. It felt like something had physically been taken from her, and it began to leave a gap. Suddenly, she snapped out of her daze and became alert.
She didn’t know what exactly had happened, but the empty feeling began to weaken until it was finally gone. It was only after one of her summoned ethereals returned to the Fade that she finally relaxed. She quickly summoned it again and refreshed the others as well. However, the empty feeling still lingered in her mind. For reasons she didn’t really understand, she pulled up her menu.
It was nearly transparent, and the information on it was undecipherable. Isil touched it to trigger some reaction, and react it did. It instantly snapped out of existence, and she suddenly felt something wrenching away from her. Isil doubled over, feeling her stomach roll violently. She kept her vomit in her stomach, but she continued to feel something being removed from herself. She didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t from her body.
Isil felt it in her soul. Like fabric coming unraveled, and choice strings being tossed into the wind. The feeling of order dissolving into chaos. The Falling of the Crescent, as depicted by the guild’s emblem. The wind being knocked out of you without the pain. Feeling removed, feeling gone from the world.
Isil didn’t know if it was painful, after all, it was as if all her body’s senses had shut down in light of the unraveling within her soul. She couldn’t know how long it was either, but when it finally ended, and she could perceive the outside world once more, the slight ache in her knees from hitting the ground didn’t pass yet. More than just a little frightened, she checked her pulse, but felt nothing abnormal.
She spent a few minutes checking over her physical state, but couldn’t find any problems. At this point, Isil was positively terrified. She attempted to perform an examination of her mana pool, but found it hard to sense much detail. However, she noticed something was missing from it. She was unsure as to just what it was, but she knew that something that was in her mana pool in her last examination was not there now.
As her mind was rampant with fatal possibilities, she wasn’t exactly eager to use magic again. Upon seeing one of her ethereals wink out of existence, she realized just how disastrous not being able to use magic was. Her physical abilities were unimpressive without the support of mana, and she would be at the mercy of basically every enemy without it. She couldn’t let others know about the questions she wanted to ask, nor the answers she wanted to get. More importantly, she didn’t want to be weak in this world as well.
Thus, steeling her nerves, Isil conjured a simple Mana Ball. It was a Novice level spell, and hardly any danger. Thankfully, there was no catastrophic explosion, or sudden disappearance of her mana reserves. In fact, she could feel nothing unusual. She slowly relaxed as the spell showed no signs of abnormalities.
“Well… that was weird,” Isil muttered to herself. “What the hell was all that? Did it actually do anything, or just make me feel… well, I don’t know how to describe that.”
Isil continued to brood over the mysterious sense of separation and refreshed her ethereals. She continued to hold the Mana Ball. The Mana Ball was a weaker version of the Mana Bolt, which was a Practitioner level spell. The only real difference between the two was their power, as her class bonus had elimina-
“Wait a fucking minute.” Isil stopped her train of thought.
Isil dismissed the Mana Ball by throwing it at a slumbering undead, which instantly sent her ethereals into battle mode. She ignored that, and cast another Mana Ball. Though it was insignificant, she felt a little drain on her mana. It was next to insignificant however, so she shot the ball at the undead she had shot at earlier, blowing open its head. It still continued to swing at her ethereals without its head. This time, she cast a Mana Bolt, feeling a far greater drain on her mana than the previous Mana Ball.
‘So that’s what happened!’ Isil realized. ‘When I created my own spell, it was something outside of what was already in my menu. It clearly violated the rules of the menu, which caused it to self-destruct prematurely. My class must’ve been stripped away as well, and now I don’t have any class bonuses!’
“… At least, I hope.” Isil murmured darkly.
As for why her mana pool was not affected by the class removal, it was because of the permanent bonus attached to the class of Dynast Mage. This meant that even if she changed her class, or became classless, she would still have the permanently doubled mana pool. Luckily for her, this continued to apply.
“Right, let’s follow this sound...” Isil said, once again using her new spell to track the sound.
-_-_-
Isil stood at the foot of a large door full of intricate carvings. She assumed it was meant to tell some sort of story, but she wasn’t adept at deciphering carvings. She took a deep breath, her listening spell leading her to believe that the voice was behind the door. Not that there was anywhere else it could be, considering it was one of the few rooms she hadn’t searched. Once again, she refreshed her summons. Then, putting a hand on either side of the door, she pushed with all her might, the ancient hinges creaking and groaning as the door opened.
As she began to open the door, the voice suddenly rose in intensity. Hearing this, she stopped powering her spell and continued to open the door. She gave it one final push and walked through the doors. The doors hit the walls, causing an echo in the large, empty chamber. This was the boss room for the Elytron Ruins, and also the place that held the divinity’s – Aeteur Belleb’s – avatar.
Indeed, the avatar of Belleb was there, sitting on its throne, high and mighty. Though the throne had clearly not withstood the test of time too well, it remained functional. Above the throne, painted on the wall, was a pair of shiny, variegated insect wings. On either side of the chamber were two long tables, obviously meant for holding banquets or feasts. In front of the steps to the throne platform was an intricate altar, with a few candles still left burning.
Isil walked around the altar, wary of Belleb’s avatar. The avatar took the form of a wizened old man, wearing ceremonial robes of dark green and bright red. The ornamentation on the robes were quite opulent, so much so that it seemed like the old man shouldn’t even be able to stand with all of it all on him. As Isil put her foot on the first step, the old man’s eyes snapped open. A bright green light shot from his eyes, heading straight for Isil.
Isil thought quickly and cast a shield in front of her, causing the attack to bounce off and smash into the back wall. With this attack, Isil began to climb the stairs. The decrepit avatar shot green eye beams at her for every stair she climbed. Her shield continued to deflect the eye beams as if they were nothing. However, the power in those eye beams were actually quite threatening – the only reason Isil could withstand them was because she was even more powerful than the avatar itself.
When she finally reached the second to top level of the stairs, the eye beams stopped. The avatar brought his hands in front of his chest, leaving them only a few centimeters apart. A crimson ball condensed between his palms. Isil shut off her shield and extended her arms. A silver, glowing mist began to roll off her extended hands. Isil continued to walk forward, though much slower.
As she set foot on the first step to the throne, the crimson ball turned into a beam, directed at Isil, who met the beam with her bare, mist-covered hands. Surprisingly, the beam was forced to stop before it met her hands. Isil gritted her teeth as she put more mana into the spell, and began to climb the steps once again. Every step was a challenge, as the crimson beam pressed down on her with a monumental amount of force. It was only ten steps until she reached throne level, but the effort required to scale a single one was equivalent to scaling a mountain.
Isil managed to push through it, and landed her foot on the ninth step, just a single step away from the last one. She was covered in sweat, and her mana pool was more than half depleted. She took a deep breath and pushed forward once more. When her foot hit the tenth step, the old avatar spoke up for the first time.
“Begone.” The voice was accompanied by a burst of crimson energy, which nearly pushed Isil back down the stairs. It also caused damage to her summons, returning them back to the Fade.
With this, Isil gave one last push, and landed her foot on the throne level. As soon as she did, the crimson beam ended, and the old man returned his hands to the armrests. She ended her spell and breathed a sigh of relief. She walked up to the throne uncontested, and stood before the avatar of Belleb. Before she said anything, she pulled a water bottle from her storage pendant and took a deep swig.
“Aeteur Belleb,” Isil spoke after returning the bottle to her pendant. “I am Isil von Caligo. I have come in -”
“It matters not why you’ve come,” The avatar spoke up suddenly, his hoarse voice spooking Isil. “You would’ve come eventually. If not me, then to the others. After all, it is we who hold the pieces of your desire.”