A hundred skeletons lay dead around me, a dozen are already rising again on Amelie’s strings, and yet more crawl from the ground. But they’re slow, already, and as I open the floodgates, they slow even more.
My attunement loop decreases in power, and I let my mana spill out of me in a grand [Suppression]. It’s crushing, driving some of the undead to the ground, easily. My solidified mana-needles pierce through their empty eye sockets, and the remnants of animation fizzle out.
They die a second death, and I grow, the tower witnessing my superiority.
[Level Up! 57 > 58]
Three more points go into my vessel, and it trembles as it grows. More mana courses through me, when the ground properly cracks.
Dirt splutters into the air as a hand of not just bone and meat reaches from it. Instead, it’s covered in a ghostly green light, a facsimile of flesh and skin, woven from my necromancy. I watch with curiosity as the thing rises from the ground, wearing a long cloak of ghostly green.
[Revenant lv. 52]
It’s strong. And it clearly bears a mantle, even if it’s corrupted by whatever is reanimating the corpses. I stare at the thing, and feel its mana move. Its vessel is cracked and weakened. It leaks mana with every motion. But it’s also huge.
Shards of mana-glass constitute a core almost twice as large as mine. It must have been much stronger when alive. I see those animated eyes fixate on me, and even more mana leaks out from it.
A thin haze of dark green spreads in the chamber, and I feel it pressing back against my suppression. It’s not even a skill, just raw mana. Which makes me laugh. A small laugh at first, then slightly louder, as I pour more power into [Suppression].
My blue-grey clashes with the mist, forcing it low to the floor. Mana pours from that cracked vessel at a phenomenal rate. It should overpower me, but it can’t. Because it’s inefficient. Raw mana against a skill? That’s no way to win.
So the revenant changes tactics. It steps towards me with a blindingly fast movement, and I feel a rapier stab into my shoulder. Instantly, rot infects me, and my flesh begins to decay - and then I focus. [Selection] and [Observation] latch onto two patterns, the one for the sword, and the one for the poison.
The weapon is simpler. A manifestation, kind of like my [Solidification]. I figure it out in a heartbeat, and the weapon shatters. The poison resists those attempts, and starts to spread, but before it can, my mantle waves around my shoulders. Geometric sigils flash on the invisible fabric.
My shadow, Kuro, wraps around the revenant when it tries to step back, and I conjured a mana needle, then infuse it with the remnants of Philia’s golden flames. The green necromancy screams as the gold approaches it, and I watch it fall off the revenant’s body.
Again, it tries to step back, tearing at the shadows… but Kuro has grown. They’re keeping up. They, too, made it to the fourth floor. They carry a mantle as well. And so, the shadows tighten their hold, and I burn away the necromancy with holy light that I rightfully stole.
Then, I wait.
The revenant conjures up their sword again, and I shatter it. It tries to spit poison at me, and I pick that skill apart, too. Half an hour later, when I’ve exhausted every skill it has, and recorded their remnants in my archive, I finish it off.
[Level Up! 58 > 59]
[Class Up! Nullmage 19 > 20]
I breathe a long breath as my vessel grows. The poison breaks apart underneath my skin, and I heal the wound shut with a torrent of mana. With the roadblock cleared, I kneel down to work on the enchantment again, and fall over as my knees give in. “Ah, dang,” I say quietly.
Then I black out.
- - -
[You have been granted a possible epitaph. Accept?]
[Epitaph: Perpetual Pursuit]
“And what did you learn from this?” Amelie asks me, exasperated.
“Absolutely nothing,” Opal replies with a snicker. “Look into those eyes. Do those look like learned eyes? No! I bet there was some kind of shiny reward.” They lean over my shoulder, as if trying to get a look at my menus.
With a small sigh, I make the notification visible to them, and they give a whistle. “Whoowee. There is a reward! I knew it!”
Amelie groans and rubs her eyes. “I can’t believe it,” she says, the words muffled by her hands across her face. “I can’t believe it.”
[Epitaph: Perpetual Pursuit (Heart)
Perfection the traitor, a goal to surpass.
Heart beats fainter, still we last.]
“So? What’s it say?” Opal asks with a grin. Once more, I make the window visible to them, and they read it out. Amelie frowned, but Richard gave me an upbeat smile.
“It suits you,” the hiy’ht said. “Very much.”
Norman scoffed, leaning against a wall. “Yeah, it does. Maybe then you can work yourself to death without dying.” Despite the coldness of his words, I find myself amused. Because he doesn’t want me to die - he just can’t say it. Softie.
I smile faintly, reading the lines again. A Perpetual Pursuit, to always strive higher… Almost on instinct, I look upwards. Isn’t that a funny metaphor for the tower itself? That I want to climb all the way to the top, and see what’s beyond. It definitely suits me better than my other offer, Hunter’s Heart.
With a small nod, I decide. “Accept,” I say out loud.
[Epitaph Etched.]
One moment to another, my skin burns. A change ripples across me, and I feel heat and cold course through my veins at once. A hiss escapes my teeth and my insides writhe. It feels like when Kuro first tried to eat me - or at least just as invasive. It’s not painful, not exactly, just supremely uncomfortable.
And then, in a blink, the sensation is gone. I sat there, twitching in my chair for five minutes, and then it disappeared, and time seems to resume. I draw in a first breath, and the change is almost violent. In its comparison.
Air floods me easily. I can feel the way that the exhaustion bleeds off me. My heart thumps almost loudly in my ears, blood rushing through me. Everything feels easy, as if some invisible weight was lifted off me. I call up my status.
Name: Snow Okiyama - Ion
Floor: 4
Class: <Nullmage> - 20 (II)
Job: <Imbuer> - 17 (II)
Mantle: Architect of the Assembled Archive
Lv. 59
Heart: 52 - Perpetual Pursuit
Power: 26
Vessel: 307 - Abiding Apathy
My stats have grown again, by themselves. Especially my heart. That’s… what, 20 points of growth? Did etching the epitaph push it up? Maybe that was why this one felt like a more intense change than when I got Abiding Apathy.
“You look better now, Snow,” Thatch notes with a smile. He was always the most perceptive, and I return the look.
“I feel better,” I say. Then I finish another bite of food, get up, dust off my clothes and shrug. “Which means it’s time to get back to doing some more enchanting.”
A lot of palms met a lot of foreheads as I headed right back into the basement.
Two weeks later, explosions start rocking the surroundings.
- - -
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