Nephthys descended the lavish stairs, polished mahogany, making not a sound on the plush blue carpet. Banisters and their railings were carved with sculptures of intertwining snakes, their support posts gilded at the joints. Bas-reliefs of landscapes were recessed into the walls, all concealing a snake of some kind.
The staircase ended, and the marble floor, polished to a reflective sheen, extended out in a half-circle. Grates of gold arrayed in arcs every ten-or-so feet cast an orange glow around the room as magma boiled and crawled beneath them. Columns throughout the room followed the banisters' themes, though this time depicting snakes twining around the columns, biting their own tails.
The vault door was massive, at least thirty feet tall, and it dropped from the ceiling like a portcullis. It was made of starmetal, with red crashglass inlays that functioned as channels for the extensive array of enchantments protecting it. The magic over the door was so thick that it glowed subtly.
"My lady, just one last time, I apologize sincerely—" Ramose started.
"Ramose…I understand that it frustrates you, but I do not blame you for not knowing that Akhenaton was fully submerged in the Altar. I—nobody would expect you to dive in and check. The only person disappointed in you is you, so you will have to work on that. However, your profuse apologies are becoming burdensome," Nephthys said, her tone as close to a sigh as her body would allow her.
"Of course, my lady. I am terribly sorry that I have burdened—" Ramose started, but he quieted when Nephthys turned and stared at him.
After a moment of pointed staring, she continued down the final steps to the vault's entry.
"You know, perfection is impossible, Ramose. If you hold yourself to an impossible standard, you will be crushed beneath your own impossible expectations," Nephthys advised, speaking from personal experience.
"...Thank you for your wisdom, my lady," Ramose responded, after a moment of silent contemplation.
Okay, fine. It wasn't the wisest thing I've ever said, smartass. The sentiment was at least legitimate.
Her suspicion of Ramose constantly looking down on her was pushed to the back of her mind as a fog began to gather around the hall. The fog thickened, glowing orange and red from the various light sources around the room, and vision was restricted to a few feet in any direction. It was an intimidating sight, but Nephthys smiled. This was something she had been looking forward to.
Out of the fog emerged a figure she recognized: it was her, Nephthys. Or, it was her prior to the ascension and all the 'Celestial' business. A carbon copy of Nephthys the Djinn floated over. She had glowing blue eyes, pale blue skin, and long black hair that faded to an ocean-blue at the ends. This was what Nephthys should have looked like when she awoke in this world.
Nephthys had always been confused why players on her server never noticed the obscene, game-breaking abilities, skills, powers, and glitches available in Prelude. She thought it might have something to do with the game being a survival-craft game. More people tended to want to build their bases and engage in guild warfare than min/max individual player abilities.
Whatever the case, Nephthys loved logistics like that. One of the most broken spells was, at first glance, rather innocuous. The spell was another combination of necromancy and summoning, and it bound a spirit called an 'Echo Revenant' to the player's service temporarily.
An echo revenant was a spirit of return that would copy the stats of the person or creature that killed it last, up to seventy-five percent of the target's efficacy. That did not sound great initially—why would one ever want a summon that had to be killed to become only seventy-five percent as effective as the thing that killed it?
Nephthys had thought it broken, and her tests confirmed it. The devs either planted a small bomb when they made the spell, just waiting for players to discover it, or the spell's ability was a major oversight that was never fixed. The effect of copying stats had no restrictions, meaning that if she summoned it during a boss fight, the boss would kill it, and suddenly she had a summon with seventy-five percent of the stats the boss had.
It was only slightly balanced by the fact that every time it was summoned, it would reset the stats. Meaning that if one summoned it with seventy-five percent of a boss's stats and it did not get killed, it would unsummon and lose those stats for the next summon. This was easily worked around, though. Nephthys thought it was nowhere close to balanced.
The real game-breaker came when she tested a hypothesis she had during a particular raid in the Gloam, the area south of the Peaks. This land was dominated by a special type of fungus that could infect and take over the minds and bodies of nearly anything, even spirits.
As expected, the echo revenant was no exception, and Nephthys found herself aligned against her own summon
And then, she killed it.
Suddenly, she had a summon with seventy-five percent of her stats in her pocket, just waiting to be unleashed. This was one of her trump cards in PvP. When situations grew dire, which was frequent in her earlier days, she would pull this summon out and have a devastating teammate.
This strategy only grew more effective as she reached levels far beyond what the devs likely intended, and she ended up with a summon possessing seventy-five percent of her level 999+ stats just waiting for use. Of course, there were no situations where Nephthys was threatened by that level, so the summon fell out of use.
She eventually had the idea to use the summon glitch to make this particular summon her guild's vault guard. It made perfect sense that someone completely overpowered would guard her most valuable possessions.
Of course, this echo was not an exact copy of Nephthys. It did not possess all her skills, spells, and abilities. It was limited to undead-specific magic. Any other magic it could cast would be the most basic of basics, such as a general fireball spell rather than something stronger and more specialized.
Originating from a level 999+, it would definitely possess physical abilities to rival max-level physical fighters, though, and undead magic was not to be looked down upon. It was unbelievably powerful, just not as diverse as its progenitor.
"Nebet'Khara, I am pleased to see you well," Nephthys said fondly.
The girl floated over until she was just next to Nephthys, who petted her head. She did not expect a response. Revenants were intelligent by undead and spirit standards, but they were far from sentient. She viewed Khara as she would a beloved pet, as strange as that felt when the 'pet' was wearing her face.
"Something wrong, Ramose?" Nephthys asked, noticing him fidgeting behind her.
"Ahem—no. Nothing, my lady," he assured, straightening his collar.
Nephthys thought she saw him wipe sweat from his brow, but that would be strange considering how cold the fog was. Well, there were magma streams running through the room, so perhaps her body was just too strange to notice temperature changes unless they were extreme now.
"We are going to look in the vault. Would you like to join us?" she asked.
Khara simply floated away, the fog disappearing behind her. Nephthys shrugged and walked for the door. Khara was the guardian, so it probably made sense that she was unwilling to leave her post. Nephthys noted a relieved sigh from Ramose before he started after her—what was up with him?
As she approached, the door slid silently into the ceiling. The sight of such an incredibly heavy structure moving so fluidly, without a sound, was almost eerie.
The atmosphere changed immediately and jarringly as she entered the vault proper. The lighting changed to a pleasant yellow, reminiscent of the afternoon sun. There was a faint smell of lavender in the air, and a pleasant melody echoed out from a large music box in the center of the room.
The room itself was circular, perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, with a staircase down occupying about a fourth of the space at its center. It was at the head of this staircase that the music box sat, its appearance vaguely similar to old record players, though the glowing enchantment lines lent it a fantastical quality.
Lining the wall were alcoves filled with a wide assortment of objects. There were armors, weapons, books, glowing crystals, and all manner of precious things. This was the showroom portion of the vault. Nephthys had made it to wow, and wow it did. Even one unfamiliar with the objects on display would likely feel their power filling the room.
"With your permission, I will begin an inventory, my lady," Ramose said, bowing.
"Of course," Nephthys replied distractedly, a book drawing her attention.
On one of the farthest pedestals, positioned between two wall alcoves, was a book with an inornate cover. Perhaps its mundanity was what drew her attention, contrasting sharply with the rest of the opulent displays. She picked it up and examined it, receiving the expected information injections.
[Strange Book]
[A book written in incomprehensible script and with even less comprehensible ideas.
Was the writer mad or a genius? Is there a difference?]
Right, this was a collectible she found during a rather obscure delve into a deep, uninhabited cavern. It was strange because there were no enemies to slay, no puzzles to complete. She simply ran all the way through the cave, found some strange stones, remnants of some long-buried ruin or other, and picked the book up.
She had thought the cave unfinished or cut content at the time, keeping the book solely for its uniqueness. She liked collecting unique items, regardless of their utility, and this book was no exception.
Nephthys opened the weathered book, its cover feeling somehow both fragile and sturdy in her hands. She picked a random page somewhere near the middle, but the pages seemed to turn themselves, flipping wildly to one near the back.
"Is there a draft?" Nephthys wondered, looking around. She could find no source for a wind strong enough to turn pages, however.
Below her was the first page of a new chapter titled "From the Side." Contrary to the item's description, she found the writing comprehensible and the sentences structured correctly. She began to read.
"How does a flank perceive below. Does it even know? Is a coin still a coin if all that's visible is the origin? Is a coin its observed order, or is there something inherent to the entity that defines it as a 'coin', no matter the aspect?"
Alright, so 'comprehensible' might have been a stretch, but it was mostly understandable, at least—if esoteric. She continued reading.
"What about the vector of scale? Large in this measure, slender in another, and nonexistent in the beyond. Where does subsistence come from, exactly? Up? Down? Left or right? Forward or backward? What if the Observer changes perspective? Now they view the Vellanth from the side. All exists simultaneously. Does each existence nullify the previous or enhance it?
"Did you even understand what Prelude was, girl?"
Nephthys dropped the book, leaping back from it in shock. She held up her shaking hands and breathed to steady them. The book sat limply on the ground, just like any other. Why was she afraid of it? She had moved entirely on instinct, a sort of primal fear taking hold of her. It was the kind of fear you feel when you notice eyes in the bushes.
You have been seen.
Nephthys carefully approached the book, her mana circulating, a hundred spells crackling at the tips of her fingers. Extreme discomfort rattled her mind, though it wasn't solely due to the unsettling nature of the book. It was also the logical portion of her mind's confusion at having had such a visceral, unconscious reaction to it.
The fact that her body knew something about it instinctively, that her mind didn't, set her teeth to grinding.
Picking it back up, she opened it once again. This time, there was no mysterious wind guiding the pages. They simply flipped open to...
Incomprehensible lines and runes. They traced themselves across all the pages in complete disregard for margins and format. Smooth circular lines, harsh angled lines, and runic pictographs were scrawled across nearly every section of the page.
She failed to understand any of them. She closed the book delicately and set it back on the pedestal. This was...a puzzle for another time. Yes, leaving it for now was the logical thing to do—nothing to do with her still-shaking hands.
With quick footsteps, she went over to Ramose to inquire about his inventory. Yes, some logistics would do her good right now.
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