Free Web NovelChapter 15: Divine Intervention
Somewhere else.
Far beyond the veil of the Mortal plane, in the silent Vastness of the Astral World.
A figure stood amidst the sea of drifting stars.
’She’ wore a black classical dress that shimmered like the night sky itself, with countless tiny points of light twinkling within its folds, as if ’She’ had woven night sky into silk.
A black veil obscured the upper half of ’Her’ face, though it did nothing to hide her otherworldly beauty--
If anything, it deepened the mystery as it framed the elegant sweep of ’Her’ jaw, ’Her’ smooth, luminous pale skin beneath, with a pair of full red lips.
’She’ watched in a specific direction, ’Her’ gaze pierced through the layers of the world, setting on the young man with short black hair and ghostly grey eyes lying in the forest.
’Her’ lips subtly curled up in amusement.
"Not even at the level of Tier 2, yet you have already managed to attract quite a lot of attention from ’Them’."
’She’ murmured in an ethereal voice as ’Her’ lips curled up even further.
"Perhaps...."
"I’ll help you out a little, just enough to keep you away from ’Their’ prying eyes." frёeωebɳovel.com
’She’ raised ’Her’ slender arm, and a colorless sphere shimmered into existence in an instant, hovering a few inches above ’Her’ palm.
From ’Her’ pale fingers, a dark smoke with shimmering lights in between coiled outwards.
It slithered into the colorless sphere, turning it completely pitch black.
Suddenly, the pitch-black dissolved into the sphere, turning it colorless once more.
She turned her fingers gracefully, and the sphere hovering above her palms disappeared.
Her gaze returned to the distant Mortal World.
"Don’t disappoint me. I have high expectations."
She said softly, ’Her’ voice echoing across the infinite space of the Astral World.
*****
In the Mournwood Thicket,
Mikael froze midstride as he saw the grey translucent notification window shimmer in front of his eyes.
[Divine Intervention Detected....]
[Forcefully Reconstructing your Essence Core]
’Divine Intervention??!!’
He knew what those words meant.
A Deity was personally intervening, going completely out of their way.
To do what? Help him?
But why would ’They’ even bother....
Before he could even think more, he suddenly felt a massive suction force near his sternum-- pulling essence from the air around him in a sudden invisible tide.
In its wake, he felt a bone-deep chill slam into his chest.
It was as if someone had directly placed a shard of frozen void into his sternum.
The cold feeling spread outwards from that single point, reaching into every meridian like frost crawling across glass.
He could feel the tiny channels inside him-- the pathways for essence seizing up one by one.
His meridians weren’t really freezing.
But it was the sensation that it felt like, an illusion of absolute zero, that made his muscles lock.
Mikael felt the surrounding essence streaming through his skin, like an untamed power pouring directly into the hollow where his core used to be.
But the vast majority of the essence stayed and escaped as quickly as it came.
His body was like a broken vessel, due to his curse - [Soul Drought]
The permanent affliction that had made the original Mikael the worst character in the game.
The pathways that should have guided the essence and held it in place were spasming and were too brittle to contain the pressure.
The resistance -- the battle between the divine intervention and his mortal frailty was pure agony.
Mikael bit down the scream... he thought he was getting used to the pain.
He was wrong.
And yet.
It was still nothing compared to those three agonizing years of isolation trapped inside Liren’s memories and her emotions.
Against that, this torment was nothing.
He convinced himself.
And he gritted his teeth.
He forced his falling legs to fold beneath him, lowering himself to the ground until he sat.
He didn’t know which deity was directly intervening, going all ’His’ way out to offer him back his core.
He didn’t trust them...
Not one bit.
But he would be damned if he let a golden opportunity like this slip through his fingers.
He could feel it.
The deity was only helping him shape the core.
He still needed to fill it with essence.
Due to the suction, he was already overflowing with essence, but it was escaping, leaving his body.
He needed to stop the overflowing essence and guide it towards his core.
So he closed his eyes and focused.
He could visualize it now....
The torrent of essence was flooding his sternum, but only a fraction was being used for the reconstruction of the core, and the rest was simply spilling out.
He tried his best to contain and stop the overflowing essence, but his curse made it even harder for him to control the essence.
Still, he didn’t give up.
The outer shell of the core slowly took shape, like a thin, colorless crystallized glass.
As it formed, he threw every scrap of his will into pulling the essence towards his core.
The effort sent fresh spikes of pain through his frozen meridians.
His curse fought him every inch of the way, turning what should have been a simple act of containment into an all-out war.
The world around him faded until nothing existed but that colorless sphere and the escaping stream of essence he was desperately trying to dam.
If he had to calculate.... every 10 parts that flowed in, he could only contain 0.01 of it.
That was how bad his circulation of essence was... courtesy of his curse.
Fifteen minutes crawled by.
Mikael fought to hold onto consciousness..... but exhaustion and his injuries were slowly dragging him under.
Then, all of a sudden, the suction stopped.
The colorless sphere in his chest solidified, shifting to a dull grey as thin wisps of grey essence swirled within it.
He slowly opened his eyes.
[You have successfully formed the ’Essence Core’]
[Essence: 0.86]
He stared at his essence stat.
’0.86’
He didn’t feel disappointed when he saw those numbers.
In fact, it was a lot more than he expected.
Before the ritual... his essence was 0.9, so he had almost gained what he had lost. The other method to restore his essence core would have forced him to start from zero again, so he was more than satisfied with the result.
After resting for a while, he pushed himself up, his joints screaming in protest.
Now that the agony and freezing sensation were gone.
His thoughts calmed a little, and he began to reflect on what had just happened.
Divine Intervention.
From all the fragmented memories he inherited from the original Mikael and also from the game, he had never heard of a deity reaching down to help a Tier 1 mortal without a price attached.
Deities didn’t operate on kindness.
The very idea of a kind god or goddess was a comforting lie, a fairy tale whispered to the desperate.
They were nothing like the benevolent guardians the church priests preached about with such fervent faith.
In truth, deities were ancient powers who moved through the worlds like chess players moving pieces.
Every so-called miracle had a hidden string leading back to their own unfathomable goals.
Even the neutral Gods had their own cold motives.
As for which Deity had helped him.
He could only think of one.
’Goddess Sableth.’
The Lady of Night and Darkness.
He had prayed to ’Her’ before the ritual.
’Was ’She’ watching him from back then?’
’Was ’She’ still watching him?’
The thought prickled against his skin, and he glanced around, feeling self-conscious.
He was also certain now.
’She’ was the one who had helped him escape the Spirit World, shielding him from that massive red eye.
But the question that gnawed at him was....
Why?
Why did ’She’ decide to help him?
Was ’She’ simply curious? ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
Or was it something else entirely?
It was not like he was ungrateful for what ’She’ did in the Spirit World to save him.
He was genuinely grateful for ’Her’.
But.
It was just that...
Deities didn’t deal in charity.
Everything had a cost, even if the bill came later.
Sabelth—if that was truly ’Her’—had just invested in him.
That meant ’She’ expected something in return.
He was now in her debt, and he didn’t even know the terms.
Nothing in this world was ever free.
And the kindness from the deity was the most dangerous kind of all because it disguised a transaction as a gift.
He would have to be careful.
Whatever she wanted, he would find out eventually.
And when that moment came, he hoped to have enough strength to decide for himself whether to pay the price or find another way.
As he was in his spiral of thoughts, a cold wind suddenly brushed against his cheek, and his eyes widened.
He looked up.
Above him, a little more than an arm’s length away, a figure was taking shape.
The air shimmered and coalesced into the form of a young woman.
She wore a black dress that hugged her curvy figure, with skin as pale as porcelain, and her hair fell past her waist in waves of silvery white that caught the twin moons’ light and scattered it into a soft halo.
On her head was a circlet of thorny branches woven around dark blue roses.
The thorns pressed into her scalp, and thin rivulets of blood traced delicate lines down her temples.
Slowly, she opened her now greyish-blue eyes, the bright blue they’d once held faded.
Her eyes found and stopped on Mikael as her lips subtly curled up, so faint that anyone watching from a distance might miss it entirely.
"I missed you.... Mikael."
*****
