Chapter 450 - Reign of the Crowned XII

  A faint white mist escaped Lucius’ body, radiating from every single part of his skin as he took the realm into his ogreish lungs. He barely felt the cold. Though he stood up atop a mountain far above the clouds, though they were in the deepest depths of winter, he found his insides unbitten.

  In fact, there wasn’t a single part of his bare-naked body pained by the icy winds. He was entirely resistant, immune to the element that fueled his nemesis.

  His shape had changed dramatically. The bugling abdomen that defined his species had been removed from his frame and replaced with a pair of humanoid glutes. He was going to miss his stinger, but he had to admit, it was of little use in battle, and aesthetically, his rock hard muscles were far superior. With his skin still the same darkened green as ever, he almost appeared as would a mutant orc.

  Of course, focusing on the finer details revealed a myriad of differences. Though orcs had massive tusks, their teeth were nowhere near as sharp and jagged as the fangs that lined the bee-ogre’s jaws. Orcs had only one standard set, two straight lines of teeth that matched the curve of their jaws. They lacked both the spirals that ran along the grooves in Lucius’ mouth as well as the second, pharyngeal extension that could rise from within his throat. Their eyes were, likewise, standard, barely functional when compared to his compound mirrors.

  There weren’t quite as many of them as there had been back when he was an ordinary hunter, but each of the six pupils that filled his eye sockets were sharp enough to render the world in full. Shapes, colours, and shadows were covered, of course, but there was so much more. He could see magic in its purest form, heat atop a monochrome layer, and even fluorescence—traces of past interactions given shape by his rule-bending sight.

  Just as the past was reflected, so too did he see the future. The ability would take some getting used to, but he could experience up to a second of distortion.

  It wasn’t just his face that differed from the usual green fodder. His muscle fibres had been completely refactored, changed to better adhere to his insectoid nature. Though a tad bit smaller—his body had shrunk by roughly twenty percent—their efficiency had increased a hundred fold. He was strong enough that ordinary materials would crumble at the slightest touch.

  That was why he was naked. Simply by stretching his body, he had completely obliterated his clothing.

  It was fortunate then that his god had prepared a changed set. Floating in the space in front of him, just within reach of his fingers, was a priestly habit. It warped onto his body as he touched it, becoming a part of his flesh, capable of regenerating in much the same manner as the rest of his body.

  The very same phenomenon was repeated with a full suit of armour. Integrating with the very essence of his being, the dark glimmering metal coated every last part of his body. It was unremovable, forever adhered to him on account of its soul-binding property, but so too did it provide the utmost protection. It bestowed an ability that would allow him to eliminate Claire Augustus, even in the unlikely event that she managed to overpower him.

  And oh so unlikely it was.

  For Lucius Hyacinth had finally broken the limit.

  As his form had suggested, he was no longer a thorae. According to the system, he had finally gone above and beyond, reached the point where his personal race was no longer of any importance.

  For he was the aspect of the scrying eye.

  In just a few months, he had broken the 850 wall and become a force of nature. He had left all the nations’ old lords in the dust and achieved in less than a single annum what they had failed in over a thousand. Granted, it was only made possible by his divine support. Without Kael’ahruus and Olethra, he would have remained as one of the weak. But he had been chosen, chosen to wield the might of the great hunter and deliver to him his prey.

  Under Lucius’ newfound dominion lay the power of observation. One of his newfound racial skills, The All-Seer, bestowed upon him the ability to do exactly as its name described. There was nothing that could sneak past his perfect vision, nothing that would escape the hunter’s eyes. By invoking it, he could intercept the signals that went through his targets’ visual lines and reproduce them within his own.

  And so he did just that.

  Closing his eyes and invoking the skill, he found an old oak oar. Information filled his head as soon as he looked upon it. He knew, all of a sudden, that it had come from a 17 year old tree that stood by the southernmost section of the river Angjorniea. It had three small cracks throughout the length of its interior structure, and it would certainly snap were he to use it in a building's construction.

  And so too did he know its precise future, that in just under a third of a second, it would fly diagonally through his field of view and strike a poor fisherman right over the head.

  A dozen question marks flew through his head as he caught his target’s reflection. He had commanded his divine sight to mirror all seen by Claire Augustus. And yet, in the flooded colosseum, there was mirrored only a four-eared fox. For a second, he thought he might have intercepted the wrong freak of nature. Or at least that was what he understood before his visual filters kicked in. They unraveled the spell and revealed her massive true form.

  The magical instruction set was surprisingly complex, a carefully woven override with a hundred layers of functionality and a thousand more of security. It fought back against his inbuilt decoder, but in the end, it failed to hold before his god-given ability.

  But all that meant was further confusion.

  He soon realised that his sworn enemy had forgone the idea of bettering her abilities to play a game of Fishermen and Freebooters.

  Lucius couldn’t believe his eyes.

  It made no sense.

  She was supposed to be up in the mountains, preparing for their final confrontation. But there she was, out on the water, lightly smacking the citizenry as if to enjoy the winter solstice.

  It was like she didn’t care, like she didn’t see him as a threat in spite of his well-laid plans—a thought that dyed his mind in a shade of red. But as much as he wanted to scream in frustration, to remind her with a distant arrow that her fate would soon be unraveled, he chose to stay his hand.

  Her folly would only tighten the noose around her neck and ensure that he would emerge the victor.

  Nodding to himself, he prepared to unlink their vision, only for a chill to run down his spine. All of a sudden, she was looking into the water, staring directly into her eyes—his eyes. For a moment, it looked like the illusion was broken. Her pupils narrowed into serpentine slits as they swirled with red and gold, but everything was back to normal before he could determine if any of it had really happened.

  Blinking rapidly, he shrugged off the impossible fear and returned his vision to the mountain range before him.

  It would be morning soon.

  The perfect opportunity to test his newfound powers.

  ___

  Chloe’s eyes snapped open at the crack of dawn. Despite her concern, she was pleasantly surprised to find that she spent the night undisturbed. The jittern king still creeped her out—he continued to stare throughout the morning—but surely enough, he followed through on his word and led her to the stable soon after breakfast.

  The mount he offered was particularly bizarre. It was effectively a magic carpet, albeit one with a soft, pillowy seat and three chihuahua-like heads in front. Its rear sported a matching trio of tails, all of which wagged excitedly as she approached. According to the king, who continued to create illusions with his oddly paced speech, the creature was an arbvard. Their species was docile even though they were born above level 3000. They specialized in speed, and it was precisely because of said speed that they were capable of transporting her through the mountains.

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  Surely enough, the tri-pup followed her instructions exactly and carried her northwards, covering a full week’s worth of time in just a single day. None of the local predators were able to slow it down. It zoomed right past them, running over the hills and far away before they could even think of approaching. The one time it stopped was at night. It shrank as the sun fell, becoming a full pack of pitbulls connected by a series of ribbons, each louder and more ravenous than the last.

  They demanded both feed and attention, forcing Chloe to spend half the night on sating them before they finally let her rest.

  They sped off again the next morning. The world grew colder and emptier as the day went on. Chloe had to throw on a large fur coat, which she discovered in the luggage that the jittern king had provided. The design was questionable, ugly at best given the many pug faces stitched directly into the fabric, but it managed to keep the winter from eating her alive.

  The local wildlife met much the same fate. The trees started to thin. There were two types among those left behind: the blooming pines who had adapted to the cold and won against the spirit of winter, and the frozen seedlings who found themselves unable to resist the frozen wilds’ embrace.

  The fauna was no different. Creatures grew more scarce, and those that remained were often more ferocious. Giant phoenix bears, mice with mechanical wings, and elementals made purely of ice, just to name a few.

  Everything up north was different, changed, unfamiliar.

  Everything except for the blood that stained the snow.

  Splotches of dark red dyed the once-pure sheet, glimmering beneath the light of the evening sun. There were larger spots around areas where there was clearly conflict, as well as a trail that followed a set of tiny prints. Chloe didn’t think much of it at first. After all, the markings were peculiarly shaped. They formed a series of long, thin lines, almost like something left behind by a group of snakes. But as she got closer, as the wind carried the scent to her nose, she found her heart pounding.

  She knew that blood.

  Its sweet taste still lingered all over her tongue from the rare instance where she could partake. Because, though it contained far more magic than usual, she knew at a glance. She knew from a whiff. That it belonged to her mistress.

  Arciel was bleeding.

  The long lines were from her tentacles.

  And the splotches situated beside them could only have meant that she continued to leak vital fluid as she limped away.

  Chloe gulped. It felt like her heart had stopped in her chest. The blood was at least a few hours old, but it was impossible to draw any conclusions. She simply didn’t know enough about how the substance behaved in the cold to pinpoint the conditions or timeframe. But whatever the case, the trail was bad news. It was impossible for her mistress to leave any such print lest she lost a battle.

  It wasn’t just because the level-ups would have long fixed her. She could easily mend her wounds by drinking any blood that wasn’t her own. She surely would have recovered each time she felled an enemy. But she didn’t. She had continued forward, pressed on whilst bearing an injury severe enough to have undone her transformation and caused buckets of crimson fluid to spill from within her. Arciel had lost against whatever she fought, and then she had fled. She had fled whilst marking her steps with blood, so that her enemy could follow.

  The only possibility that came to mind, no matter how hard Chloe thought, was that the hunters were first to arrive, that they had laced their arrows with poison, and that their sights had found her.

  It was just as she had feared, just as she had dreaded.

  Despite trying her best, despite pushing forward, and despite arriving ahead of schedule, she was far too late.

  Her lips trembled, her fingers shook, but Chloe took a deep breath and followed in her mistress’ steps. She followed them almost halfway up the mountain, her concern only growing as she discovered a cave. The tracks led inside, continuing even as the world distorted. And not in the way it would have, had she entered a dungeon.

  Arciel was desperate enough to enter a crowned domain she knew nothing about.

  The maid gulped.

  She knew it was probably a trap. Arciel’s trail was the only one. Their enemies had either left no prints, covered them up, or opted not to pursue her.

  There was even the off chance that her mistress was already dead, that they had just dragged her corpse along to lure their allies into rushing in. But so too was there a chance that Ciel was still alive.

  And as long as that chance remained, she knew that she could never give up.

  Nervously curling up her tail and stiffening her wings, Chloe took a breath and flicked the dog-chair’s reigns. The magical sofa-carpet, however, was reluctant to advance. It shook its head and whined, so Chloe leapt off its back and pressed on alone.

  When she entered the domain, she found herself standing atop a lake. There wasn’t any ice on top of it, nor was it quite shallow enough that her feet could reach the bottom. She was simply standing above the water, never entering it save for when she made the conscious decision. She didn’t have the slightest clue as to how exactly it worked, but even her mistress’ blood was still present. It floated atop the surface. Like patches of oil, the goopy blobs clung together, forming a veritable streak that marked her journey across the lake.

  It was only then that Chloe realised just how big the reservoir really was. No shoreline awaited beyond the trail. In fact, no shoreline awaited in any direction. The ruined temple in front of her aside, all she saw was lake and sky.

  There was some distance yet between the maid and the distant ruin, but she pushed forward on her own two feet, with her own strength and speed, and pursued the tracks again.

  They led up the temple’s steps and through its missing door, past its broken altar and into its sanctified dungeon, down its eerie passages and past its bloody pits.

  The whole path was stained with Arciel’s blood. It wasn’t just hers. There was plenty of monster blood mingled in, but the path was devoid of corpses as ever.

  It didn’t make sense.

  It had to be a trap.

  Still, Chloe pressed forward, never once straying from the crimson path.

  She kept her pace fast but steady, proceeding around corners, down steps, and through narrow corridors as quickly as she reasonably could.

  Until she heard a distant banging.

  Her ears weren’t nearly sharp enough to make out any of the specifics. At best, she could tell that there was some sort of ongoing conflict. That much was clear from the way the ancient temple shook. The violent impacts continued as she drew closer, becoming ever more apparent with every step she took.

  So rapid was the pace that she couldn’t help but fear for her mistress.

  Arciel’s opponent was fast, likely too fast for the queen to handle, and even the open rooms were too small for her to take advantage of her range. She had no doubt that the queen was stalling, buying time whilst looking for a solution to an otherwise deadly encounter. So she picked up the pace. Ignoring any pain that appeared in her legs, she boosted to her maximum speed and did away with the distance.

  But even so, she found the battle concluded upon her arrival.

  A glimmering, golden golem shoved its mechanical blaster inside of a giant squid’s mouth right as the maid entered the room. It pulled the trigger before she could so much as react to the scene and tore a hole straight through Arciel’s mantle.

  Chloe gasped, screamed, cried as the buster rifle melted her mistress’ flesh and fried the many vital organs hidden inside of her core. Only then did she notice the glimmering headpiece that sat atop the golden statue, the ornate circlet even larger than its humanoid face.

  Her mistress had challenged one of the crowned.

  And she had lost spectacularly.

  Or at least that was what she thought until the statue disintegrated. It broke to pieces, crumbling to dust as the vampire squid’s wounds were healed.

  And with it, went the world around it.

  The crowned domain was shattered. Broken. Returned to oblivion, just like the master that ruled it.

  And yet, Arciel was unresponsive.

  She remained face down in the snow, unmoving until her body distorted. Her flesh frothed and bubbled. It almost seemed to melt away in the moonlight, to boil and vanish as if to never return.

  It wasn’t the usual camouflage. Chloe had watched her mistress transform many, many times before. But never once were there any similar phenomena.

  She could only imagine that it meant her mistress’ undoing, that Arciel had eliminated the crowned beast with her dying breath.

  But soon, she was reforged.

  She suddenly appeared in her humanoid form, stark naked and shivering in the snow. Her body was mostly translucent at first, but she became more opaque with each second that passed. Before long, she was back to normal, whole again in all of her sublime beauty.

  There wasn’t a word exchanged between them.

  But just by looking at her, Chloe knew that she had changed.

  Right before her eyes, the queen of Vel’khan had achieved her fourth ascension.

  And become the aspect of the stolen light.