Unbound

Felix stumbled, his heavy Body hauled through the small door and into a chaotic briar patch. Thorns stabbed at him, cutting through his skin with ease before he slashed at the Roots binding his waist. His talons only chipped them at first, but a second strike broke them apart.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded.

Survive.

The System said nothing else, but instead let the Roots do the talking. They clustered around him, tangling across his limbs in a rapid succession of thorns and fleshy ligaments. Felix flared Sovereign of Flesh sheathing his vulnerable skin with hardened plates of scale just as more thorns scraped against it. He pulled, hauling back on the clutching Roots, and the thorns scraped out a keening noise but did not let go. The Roots were strong, gleaming with a colorless radiance that imbued them with incredible durability. The radiance wasn’t white but clear, like seawater, and provided the only light in the chamber. freewebnøvel.coɱ

It wasn't a large place, but it was hard to tell. The Roots clustered and crowded around him, so deep they choked off everything else—including himself. Thorned Roots wrapped around his armored neck, yanking him back even as his arms and legs were yanked in separate directions. Felix pulled back, flaring his Strength. He tore his arm free, then a leg, quickly dragging his talons across his neck to split the Roots there too.

More Roots came for him, lashing out faster than he expected. Despite his Agility, they were quicker and he had nowhere to move. His claws slashed through them repeatedly, ceaselessly, a whirring blur of attacks that would have killed a dozen Princes and even Kings—but the Roots were unending. More scraped across him before the last was cut, lashing across his middle as the thorns gleamed with that colorless light. They pierced straight through his plates, cutting his armored scales and slicing through his Sovereign of Flesh and Lay of the Unfallen.

Pain, fresh and bright, shook against his Will. His Crucible was proving more annoying than ever.

"Felix!" Pit screeched from just outside the door. "I can't enter! There's a barrier!"

Sure enough, a shield of colorless energy had coated the small opening that remained in the doorway. Pit beat fruitlessly against it.

"Wait, I have an idea! Convergence!" Pit flashed, his Body vanishing into white light—only to have the colorless energy surge. Immediately he returned, kicked back from the door. The bus-sized tenku fell, sprawling into the corridor with a muffled boom.

Just as the magelights turned blood red. One by one, cracked statues flushed with Mana, their eyes smoking like bonfires.

You have Attempted To Interfere With A Sanctioned Trial.

Punishment Authorized.

Felix craned his neck, slicing at the Roots that never stopped. Through the small crevice in the doorway, he could see the statues step off their pedestals.

Punishment Trial Begins.

"Pit!"

The silver door slammed shut, and the Roots closed in.

Sonata of Dominance!

Felix seized the Mana across the entirety of the room. Earth and life Mana shuddered to a sudden stop, his Will absolute—yet it slipped off of the Roots entirely. Thorns dug into him and Felix changed tact, altering the pitch of his Skill until he seized upon shadow, light, even water and poison. Yet no matter how he commanded, the Roots were unaffected. He spun, whirling in place as he slashed through any striking Root that had bound him.

Unseen Beholder!

Felix's eyes widened. The Roots, unlike everything else on the Continent, did not exude Mana. They had power and strength, but it wasn't the same as everything else.

Of course they don’t!

Felix kept moving. His strikes tore through Roots and thorns every time, but it was taxing his Strength and Endurance. His Health had already started to dip, barely recovering as his Sovereign of Flesh fought to keep the thorns out of his hide. The Crucible held him back, forced him to work harder. Felix was tempted to take it off, but the Roots didn't give him a moment's respite. They chased after him in the small chamber, a tide of serpents hungry for his blood.

His Agility burned in his core as much as his legs. He couldn't evade them forever, and he couldn't slash them all to pieces. They extended from every wall, pushing through them—no doubt Etrionn’s corpse was littered with the things. It would take him days to eradicate every single one. Felix blinked.

He didn’t have to.

Sonata of Domination!

Mana flooded from him in a liquid wave, shifted into a purple-white haze. Ice followed, a mist congealing in the air as it met humid air before it slammed into the Roots, slowing them down with a coating of rime. Felix flared his Skill, pouring more of his Mana into it. A wave of near-solid power ripped from him, an expanding circle that crashed into the walls of the chamber. The Roots stopped, held fast by thick, frozen sheets of ice.

Crouched in the middle of the room, panting and bleeding, Felix bared his teeth. Wait. He glared at the silver door. I won. Why didn’t they open back up?

Ice coated them, thick as anywhere else in the room. He reached out but winced, noticing for the first time that his bicep had been shredded. He was healing, but the Crucible made it slow work.

"Damn it!" Felix lifted a foot and aimed it at the ice-locked door—only to jerk his leg back in surprise. "Ow!"

Something had bitten him.

Felix slapped his left hand down on his thigh and felt something crunch.

You Have Killed A Needlefly!

XP Earned!

In the palm of his hand was the shattered remnants of a tiny, iridescent shell and six twitching legs. “A bug?”

A hum in the air made him look up. At first, all he saw was the blackened ceiling—the only part of the room not touched by the ice—but it writhed. Pieces of it caught the light wafting from his ice, glinting like flecks of metallic dust. An entire swarm of Needleflies.

They surged toward Felix, their Affinity roiling with hunger.

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Crap!

Sharp pains struck him in the neck, shoulder, and leg almost simultaneously. Felix caught the flies every time, killing them instantly, but dozens replaced them. His talons flashed, slicing through them in droves, but the Needleflies were too small to hit accurately. The swarm poured around him, the hard-shelled terrors tearing through his armored scales with teeth that felt like daggers.

Status Condition: Mana Drain!

Stored Mana will reduce by one point per second. This Condition is stackable.

Status Condition: Essence Drain!

Stored Essence will reduce by one point per second. This Condition is stackable.

“Hey!” Felix blurred through the air as his hands clapped again and again, crushing hundreds with a single blow. It wasn’t enough. More got through, attacking his face and neck, chest and calves. Already his Mana was down to half and he’d barely used it, while his Essence seemed to leak from him in streamers that looked like blood.

Warning!

The Needleflies Have Contracted Feeding Frenzy!

The bugs swelled, many of them visibly fatter than they were moments ago while the faint sound of drug-addled glee filtered across his Affinity. They loved the taste of everything Felix.

"Fuck you," he growled. "That's mine."

Sonata of Dominance!

Fire burned around him, searing away the bug-like things in their swarms. Those closest died instantly, and the rest fell soon after. A wash of XP poured into him, enough for thousands of the creatures—but he wasn’t done.

The buzzing above him swelled. More gathered there at the apex of the chamber, but their numbers had thinned enough to reveal a monstrously fanged face that had been carved into the ceiling. The bugs poured from its eyes and mouth like a plague.

Felix pulled at his sonata, sounding it within his core and seizing the heat in the air. A drip fell on his face. He blinked. The ice was melting. "Shit."

With a sound like shattering glass, the Roots broke free of the ice, surging forward toward Felix and tightening around his limbs all at once. Thorns dug into his muscles and scraped bone. The bugs descended. Health, Mana, and Essence poured from him like a leaky sieve, the stores in his core space vanishing faster than ever as he tore with all of his strength at the Roots. But somehow they banded tighter and tighter, the Roots braiding with one another to stop him.

"Fine," he muttered. Empyrean Embrace!

The Roots vanished, ripped apart by ethereal jaws, same as the insects around him. They burned into him, a kick of power he had never felt before. A kick of power that he recognized. Mana and Essence, even bits of his own Health that had been stolen away, poured back into his Body, rolling through his Aspects as they were restored.

Empyrean Embrace is level 142!

…

Empyrean Embrace is level 145!

But other than that, there was no Mana or Essence inside the Roots or insects themselves. Instead, there was only a weight, a dense significance held in each and every tendril and bug. It sank into him, a leaden weight, a leaden stone that pulled at the very bottom of his core space. In an instant, everything was gone.

Trial Completed Successfully.

Congratulations, Inheritor!

Standby For Rewards.

The scorched ground flashed as three items manifested from thin air. The first clattered to the ground, ringing like metal, while the others were more of a clank and thump respectively. Wearily, Felix crouched down and inspected his haul.

The first item was a hexagon made of silver, only stretched out lengthwise until it was the size of his forearm. Pieces of one edge were chipped and cut away, forming what looked like the teeth of a key.

Name: Authority Key

Type: Key

Lore: Carved directly from Authority itself, these keys are meant to be absorbed into one’s own Authority and have not been in use since the fall of the Golden Empire.

Huh. Alright. What’s this then?

A brass pot was next to the key, its outside molded to look as if ivy was crawling across its sides and bearing a long, narrow spout. It was also filled to the brim with clear water.

Name: Ritual Cask

Type: Container

Lore: Formed from the husk of Etrionn, given of their free will, the cask is a vessel for the simplest ingredient for all life.

The last of the three was a cloth bag approximately the size of Felix clenched fist topped by a drawstring inscribed with silver sigils. The side of it was inscribed as well—a golden array that spread across most of one side.

Name: Sachet of Fecund Offer

Type: Container

Lore: Stitched from the fibers of the kava plant and inscribed by a skilled Magi, the sachet holds a gift.

His Magus of the Grand Design parsed the array as a preservation enchantment. The same was etched into the bottom of the cask as well. Felix wasn't sure how well it worked, because the bag at least stank to high heaven.

“Eugh. What’s all this for?” The System had no answer for him. Instead, the silver door behind him groaned as it opened up, no longer blocked by ice or Roots.

Felix abandoned his prizes and rushed through, but drew up short when he saw the devastation. The hall was torn apart. Chunks of stone were everywhere, and the walls bore signs of savage impact. Claw marks tore through tiles and pillars alike, while the smell of blood and ozone was sharp in the air.

His foot kicked a severed head. It was of a woman, a Sylphaen judging by its eyes and cheekbones. Felix kicked it properly, and the precious stone chipped, its lightless eyes turning blankly to the ceiling.

A groan sounded from across the room.

"Pit?" Felix leapt over the remains of another statue. Their bodies littered the hall like corpses, each fallen into organic poses that baffled him. They did not resemble figures carved from rock.

Pit was beyond them. Laying on the ground on his side, he was bleeding, but a quick look at his Status indicated he was more than fine, just healing slowly. Without hesitation, Felix reached for his Crucible.

"Don't take it off,” Pit said through a rasping wheeze. “I'm healing fine. Plus, I think it's helping my Resilience." The rasp turned to a whine of pain. "It better be, anyway."

Pit blinked large golden eyes up at him. "You don't look much better. You're covered in blood."

Felix grimaced as he took himself in. "I've decided I hate bugs."

Pit laughed. "I'm not a fan of statues right now, either."

"Did you kill all of them?"

"No way. I got like thirteen before your Trial ended. Then the rest just went and fell like puppets with their strings cut off."

"Oh, damn. Yeah. Good timing, by the way."

Pit grunted as he rolled onto his belly. "But I guess I gave good showing. Got some stuff."

He nudged a pair of items toward Felix. They weren't huge, but they gleamed with a familiar bronze sheen and resembled nothing so much as clawed boots. Both of them fairly pulsed with an aura of matter so thick it was nearly solid.

Unseen Beholder.

Name: Claws of the Sentinel

Type: Weapon (enchanted)

Lore: Forged from the corpse of the Stellar Wolf and tempered by the hide of Etrionn, the Claws are a weapon meant for one thing: war. The dire strains of the Wild Threnody shake through its construction with every strike. Earned by defeating more than five of the Elysian Sentinels in deadly battle.

Wild Threnody XI – Accesses the songs of war buried in the Grand Harmony, amplifying the destructive nature of all attacks.

Self-Repair X – Repairs damage to the weapon by absorbing ambient Mana.

"Oh, what?" Felix clucked his tongue. "All I got was a smelly bag and a watering can."

"Really?" Pit's chest shook with silent joy.

"Laugh it up, bird boy, and put on those claws. We might need them."

Pit did so. The small shape of them expanded as his paws approached, stretching to latch onto his forepaws like a second skin. The bronze plates gleamed against his dark fur, extending well over halfway to his elbow. Pit flexed his paws, and his crystalline talons slipped through the points, but Felix watched as the Crescian Bronze flowed over them like liquid before solidifying.

Pit dragged one of them across the floor. Tiles split without strain as if he were cutting into a block of room-temperature cheese.

"Cool." Pit's tongue lolled from his mouth. "Where to next?"