84 Chapter Eighty-Four – Ten (1/2)
Skittering subsonics, creeping movement against the stone, almost levitating, it was so light. Insectile feet ghosting across brick and mortar, angling to get into position for a swift kill.
Very surprised when Tremble came plunging through the brick wall into her guts, wreaking rather nasty harm on the skulking slayer. I slugged the brick and plunged on through the hole a moment later, while the red-skinned figure writhed upon the floor after convulsing off Tremble's point from the lethal wound.
Mercy wound, of course. I had a use for a Mantissari daemon, one of the best assassins of the Evilborn.
My fist came down, popped an insectile eye, and stopped the frantic writhing. Then I broke off both of her mandibles, sucked on the truly nasty poison politely as I nailed her to my Dexterity Mark and burned her away to the Seal around it…
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”Mmm. You know, Brilliant Weapons are designed for dragon-slaying, right? Do I look like I have any natural armor?”
My opponent was a ghaele ahren, which shocked me… until I saw the ragged, raw edge about her, stains at the edge of her shininess, which meant she'd Fallen. The Curse had no problems sucking in a supposedly-Good creature that thought it was doing a great deed by getting rid of the soul of a Hag…
”You are a tainted soul, a thing of mortal and immortal filth, that needs to be cleansed forever!” she exclaimed, shrill even as her voice two-toned melodiously, pointing at me with one of her two blades of hard light. ”The light will find you and purify you from existence!”
I mentally went, Oooooo-kay. Not off her rocker or nothing, is she? Does she even know that if I die, she becomes the new soul? No? Was the Curse being cruel, kind, or just judgmental, killing her off with me?
”Do I Bane for this?” Tremble asked softly.
”I guess so,” I murmured back, looking at the remaining greyed-out warriors behind her, all of a generic sameness that blended into one another, while still somehow remaining different if you focused on one of them.
Einheriar from Limbo, probably the Realms of War, following a fallen ex-Chaotic Good Celestial who had lost herself in the fight, instead of the reasons behind the fight.
The light sabers – really, they were sabers made out of hard light, not plasma – came scything in to do their thing in a dance of twinkles and streams of motion. She was trying to glow hard enough to blind me, which was useless with the devasight from my Mask.
Tremble sang softly to meet her, while I bent my attention to her combat form and the martial style of Celestials, and how it compared to mortals.
If she turned into a big ball of light, I probably couldn't catch her, but I could tell after the first ten seconds that killing her actually wasn't going to be all that hard…
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”Wow. That was probably the most depressing day I've had in here,” I mused aloud, watching as the devastated city once again faded into gray mists as Renewal came through and reset everything.
I glanced down at my hip, where the Speed Mark had an orange light around it. No, I hadn't Sealed her, although I'd destroyed her. As a greater ahren, she should have reformed in the Celestial planes. Having gone through vivus, this entire incarnation of her should have been wiped, and hopefully she'd be back to the freedom-loving type of person the ahren were at their core.
If not, another ahren should have been promoted to her place. Still, never excepted to fight a Fallen Celestial in here. The Curse was just showing that it could happen to anyone, I guessed.
I looked up as Fido and Shirley came out of the mists, wagging their tails in greeting and resurrected once again. I waved them over to give them a good ear-scratching.
”It'll be a bit before we head out again,” I told them, and they growled in response, looking around to find a place to sit down. I had forging, Investing, and alchemy to do, and needed a couple hours of meditation.
After flipping the levers.
I ticked over Melee/10, and Human/4, Atlantean Human.
Power swelled inside my soul, seemed to be bursting against the edge of my skin, as if it had hit some kind of hard limit. The Second Ceiling at Ten, the one that had never been broken in the game.
It could be broken. Everyone knew it could be broken, but nobody had managed to do it. We didn't know if it just wasn't coded, or what. There were Feat Chains and Advanced Classes, even Masteries, that couldn't possibly conclude until after Ten.
Still, I was at Ten, the top Level of the Classes that I knew of.
Basic reward for reaching Ten, +1 to all Stats.
Sustained, reflected to mirror Stats, effectively +2 to all Stats.