Grey pursed his lips when he heard the voice because there was something about it that sounded a little too familiar. His eyes narrowed for a moment, then widened as he looked up toward the golden halo floating in the distance.
"Hey, isn’t that you?" he asked the angel lady.
There was no response.
Grey reached over his shoulder, pulled The Virtueless free, then held the rod out in front of himself and gave it a few shakes.
Still nothing.
"If you don’t answer, I’m shoving this up the next guy’s ass the moment I get into a battle. You know how many battles I get into, it probably won’t even take that long."
Silence.
Grey nodded slowly. "Alright. You know, I’ve been waiting for a chance to test out those sex theories I had about the Dormaji. The big guy over there might give me a chance—"
"Will you shut up?!" the angel lady hissed directly into his mind.
Grey blinked.
Then the world changed.
A violent pressure descended from above, so sudden and overwhelming that Grey didn’t even have time to think about what it was. His instincts moved first, his hand sweeping across his face as he summoned the Helm Frame for the first time in what felt like forever.
BOOM.
Grey disappeared.
So did Elowen, Mauve, Brad, Xerchen, Legan, Modric, Lloron, every noble, every disciple, and every other person standing within their circle.
Then the destruction continued.
The Melix Region was no more.
—
[You have died. Better luck next time. Oh wait, there won’t be a next time. Toodle-oo.]
—
**
Grey’s eyes opened.
He was standing exactly where he had been before, The Virtueless still in his hand, his fingers curled around the rod so tightly his knuckles had gone white. His lip twitched over and over again as his mind caught up to what had just happened.
That death was not a fucking coincidence.
The smite had come the exact moment the angel lady spoke. Actually, judging by how quickly she had snapped at him, it almost felt like she had known exactly what would happen and had only spoken because she wanted to prove a point.
"See what happens when you don’t use your head?!" her voice snapped in his mind.
Grey sighed.
He looked up.
His hand swiped across his face.
BOOM.
—
[You have died. Better luck next time. Oh wait, there won’t be a next time. Toodle-oo.]
—
**
"Alright, I fucking get it. You’ve proven your point."
Grey pinched his brows, his headache thankfully duller than it normally would have been after suffering multiple deaths this quickly. That was probably thanks to everything his soul had gone through recently, and the rebirth waters certainly hadn’t hurt either, but Grey wasn’t stupid enough to think that meant he could keep stacking deaths forever.
More importantly, the cost of his rebirth had gone up again.
Prometheus had managed to fenagle its way through both deaths because Grey still had enough lingering blue credits and high-level Cyber Core energy left over, but the Helm Frame was starting to pay the price for it.
Grey could feel cracks running through the mech’s internal structure, subtle distortions in the circuits that hadn’t been there before, and if he had to guess, it would only survive one more death like that.
’Fuck.’
Prometheus’ ability to revive him was ultimately dependent on the energy available within its Vessel. Before, Grey had only needed around 10,000 energy units to trigger a rebirth, but now that number had climbed all the way to roughly 50,000.
The Helm Frame couldn’t even hold that much.
Its normal capacity was only about a fifth of what Grey needed now, so Prometheus was essentially brute-forcing its way around the limitation every time he died, pulling power through methods the mech had never been designed to withstand. It worked, obviously, or Grey wouldn’t be standing here bitching about it, but circumventing the limit damaged the Vessel every single time...
Grey glanced down at the rod.
He should probably be annoyed at the angel lady for killing him a second time. He had already understood after the first death that her voice was the trigger, he wasn’t a fucking idiot, and he definitely didn’t need a practical demonstration twice.
Then again, she probably didn’t understand how the Helm Frame worked.
And repairing it wouldn’t even be difficult. With Prometheus’ current phase and Grey’s new understanding of mech crafting, patching up the damage should have been simple enough.
The trouble was whether he should.
Grey looked toward the halo again.
The voice coming from it was identical to the angel lady’s.
Identical.
And the angel lady had once been his enemy too, or at least some twisted, corrupted version of herself had been. So what exactly was this halo? Another fragment of her? Another version? Some leftover piece from whatever she had been before ending up chained to The Virtueless and the rebirth waters?
If Grey used Prometheus openly to repair the Helm Frame, would she recognize it?
There was a difference between Prometheus activating after Grey’s death and dragging his spirit backward through time, versus Grey manifesting the little flame and using it directly like some portable welding torch. If this version of the angel lady had enough awareness to recognize Prometheus, Grey could end up exposing one of the most important secrets he had to an entire arena full of people.
Or, more accurately, this close of the angel lady. She was the real problem here. If she was sensitive enough to sense another version of herself while it was speaking in his mind, then she could definitely feel Prometheus if he used it like that.
That left him in a pretty shitty position.
He could repair the Helm Frame and risk exposing Prometheus.
Or he could leave it damaged and behave as though he only had one life remaining.
Grey sighed inwardly.
’My luck is really shit.’
The halo’s voice spread across the arena again.
"First, I would like to say that the Gods are thankful for your service in holding off the forces of evil. The Alliance of Empires has held firm over the years, but the weak have no place amongst the strong. For the coming phase, we need only the best, and will accept nothing less."
The golden halo brightened.
"Prove yourselves."
Grey stared at it, his expression slowly flattening.
One life left, an arena full of alien monsters...
And apparently the fucking Gods were involved now.
Not fake gods like whatever the fuck that Empress thought she was. Real gods. The kinds with husbands that held up skies.
’Yeah...’
His luck was definitely shit.
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