TVisTV: Chapter 33 (RAW)

Chapter 33 - The Long Game

Patience is not simply the ability to wait—it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.

- Joyce Meyer.

Of course, pressing on would mean actually trying—digging deep, bleeding effort—and Seraphina had had much too much of that recently. The knot between her shoulders had loosened; the steady pressure that had driven her down here in the first place has been greatly alleviated. Most of her pent-up frustrations were spent in a wash of song and steel. So, back up it was. She would come again after a quick rest to recover her Mana and maybe a light snack or two—something sugared, she decided wistfully. She regretted, absurdly, that she had not brought a book; a few quiet pages beneath the standing stones would have been a decadent little rebellion against all the general gloominess of this place.

But retreat did not mean leaving without a parting shot.

She stilled herself for a moment, ignoring the sounds of unnatural gaits. Her lantern’s Zajasite heart breathed its cold blue across the bones of the passage. She sheathed her smaller blade and pressed her gauntlet to her armored chest and reached inward—past the bright, bell-clear place where the Covenant had carved a place for itself. She sought the seed of the other art.

“I ask the spell—who are you?” she said, the words slipping into the world and also falling, softer, into the vaulted halls of her mind.

The answer came on a sound like frost forming: a hiss that wasn’t a hiss, the whisper taking shape.

I am the beauty—perfection in logic and clarity. I am the fang of the first nightmare.

Of course it had to be dramatic. The powers of this game-world had a poetic bent. So very cryptic, so very mysterious, Seraphina thought, and the corners of her mouth tugged despite herself.

Unbeknownst to most Magisters, Crystal did not condense from air, earth, or even the ether; it came from nothing, defying every law the universe admitted—natural or otherwise. The other elements gathered because some part of them lay everywhere. Crystal was different: an afterimage, an ancient echo from the first hours of the world’s creation.

Or so the lore of this world insisted.

Her magic answered at once. Pink shot through with gold budded along the estoc’s tip, lengthening into a glass-bright lance. Crystal Spear accreted from absence—her will given edge, a paradox made tangible. However, she had no time to wrestle with its metaphysics. Seraphina simply loosed the screaming shard down the tunnel as a parting blow.

It sang as it went, caroming from wall to wall; each strike burst fresh splinters that scythed the dark like a storm of knives. The ringing faded by degrees, leaving only drifting glitters, the hush of dust, and the memory of something that should not be.

You have slain Unknown. 23 experience gained.

You have slain Unknown. 17 experience gained.

You have slain Unknown. 31 experience gained.

You have learned Crystal Spear (lvl.2)

A few more random kills—barely worth the effort. Still, she smiled; every little bit helped. The extra level in Crystal Spear was just the cherry on top.

With a slight skip in her step, she hummed and started toward the surface. She would do the very naughty thing: rest a spell, slip back down, scythe through the boss’s minions with a few blasts of the Covenant, then rinse and repeat. The master of the Barrows might be able to raise again anything she took down with Crystal magic—but the Undead silenced by her Wail of Judgment stayed down. Permanently. Eternally.

Cheap? Absolutely. Borderline cheating, even. It was certainly not the way the game was meant to be played. But it was efficient in the way a whetstone is efficient—slow, steady, inevitable. The noblewoman would shave his numbers to the bone, cycle by cycle, until only the master remained. If she was feeling particularly generous, she might even bring her escort to hurry the process along; there was no rule saying patience couldn’t wear spurs.

Two could play at being inexorable bringers of death.

***

“Welcome back, Lady Seraphina!” Frest snapped, offering a crisp, slightly shaky salute and a smile that did its best to hide the cold’s bite.

“You and the men will make camp here. This may take longer than I planned,” she said, brisk as a blade.

“As you wish, milady.”

That was…worrying. Where was the quip? The token resistance to orders? Was the man finally learning? Miracles, it seemed, did happen.

She took a seat on a small jut of rock and watched the Knights set to work. The lesser dead could wander beyond the Barrows, yes, but without a guiding will they were little more than feral carrion. Only within the Barrows could the Liche—or whatever foul mind ruled them—command them effectively at a distance. If it pushed a counterattack onto the surface, it would be marching straight into ground she had prepared. Though weaker, day and day out, sunlight purified so that even the memory of it on the stones, reduced the dark energies of the Barrows to a ghost of its strength.

Either way, she would win. She had a few tricks yet up her sleeve—and she hoped the Liche did too. It would be a shame to have a boring victory.

Once the men had a proper fire crackling from bundled wooden faggots, she had them brew a simple tea. She got Sir Smith to fill up her bag with a few stones. Thankfully, he did not grumble. 

Her high Constitution blunted most of the cold, but that didn’t stop Frest from laying a thick bearskin over her shoulders. She thanked him politely and let her eyes drift half-closed.

Mana rose quickly in her, boosted by the activation of her Rest skill. Her new helm had also pushed her Mana Regeneration by three levels, giving her level two Improved Mana Regeneration. She could hunt for more Mana regeneration items, the effects often stacked, but that would slow the growth of her innate skill. The price of progress. 

Her thoughts turned to the Living Saint. The hussy, Este Lize, was probably sitting at level five Improved Mana Regeneration, or if she had actually tried and put in a bit of effort, was also more than likely to have reached Advanced Mana Regeneration.  

At times like this she really hated the person who coined the phrase that comparison was the thief of joy. What utter, useless tripe. Sometimes, it was only through comparison to others that you had any measure of actual and real progress.

She sipped some pleasant tea from a chipped mug and caught Filippe watching her with an odd expression. Later she discovered it was his precious mug. Being the epitome of grace that she was, the young noblewoman apologized and thanked him afterward with one of her radiant smiles. Secretly, Filippe resolved not to wash it for a very, very long time.

When her Mana reserves were full once again, the young noblewoman descended again—just deep enough to trigger and bait the Barrows’ defenders, but not so far that she could not bull her way back out. She slaughtered a great number of the undead and retreated back to the surface. With her area-of-effect abilities, it was child’s play to rinse and repeat the same tactics. By the third run, a little after a light lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, one of the men finally worked up the courage to ask her what exactly she was doing.

Seraphina, humble bragging, simply replied that she was merely accomplishing what the great Ecclesiarchs of the Church of Avaria had never bothered, or had simply failed, to do: cleansing the Palipula Barrows of its malevolence. It was, she said, simply her duty to the Kingdom, et cetera. Nonplussed, her men could only scratch their metaphorical heads.

Then it happened. As she mowed down ranks of undead with the power of her voice, and the occasional screaming shard of Crystal, the universe acknowledged her handiwork.

You have received Gift: Undead Exorcist.

This just made it so Seraphina would just win even harder. Now, all attacks, even those attacks that were not of the Covenant had a chance, the potential, to grant a “true” death on a “killing” blow. It made even mundane stones potentially lethal against creatures born from Necromantic arts. It was a clear sign of the Goddess Avaria’s favor.

Even the Divines, it seemed, had to acknowledge her.

However, the young girl was still mildly miffed that slaying Balalazanga, the Mother Dragon, had not granted her a Gift. Perhaps there was a condition she had forgotten about and needed to clear before the system would acknowledge her general efforts to the continued survival of the species. Oh well, at least the conditions for unlocking Gifts were retroactive; she would not, for instance, need to slay a second true Dragon to acquire it.

It was the little absurdities like these that made her doubt, truly doubt, the reality that she now stood in. Breathed in. If this was only a game, what was the point?

The point is what it does to you, whispered a secret voice in the quiet of her heart.

She rejected the thought at once. Nonsense. Objective reality is not defined by one’s opinions of it.

Regardless, she would take the advantage and turn the screws on her enemies.

On her next descent, the Barrows behaved wonderfully, predictably. The Master of the place had given up on luring her deeper. Its minions waited instead, massed near the entrance like a clot of rot. Some bore ragged standards scrawled with the sigils of the dark arts, marks of things that hoard resentment and resist the call of the Shallow River—a lattice of blasphemies meant to blunt the powers of Holy.

She answered with neither Covenant nor Crystal.

She answered with her sling and stones that most definitely could break bones.

One of the simplest of weapons, and in her hands became even more lethal for it. Stones were everywhere in the hills. She had set a whole bunch of them into the enlarged leather cradle. She spun up the sling and let loose, the stones flying with a force that would rival; the cords purred, then screamed. The release cracked like a whip. The stones punched clean through a banner’s dirty, impure cloth, the sigils unraveling like spilled intestines. Another whistled through a skull and showered the ranks behind with chalky shards. Reloading from her satchel, again and again she threw. With her unnatural Strength, each throw was a meteor; unholy standards snapped and Undead destroyed.

More experience poured in and she realized with a faint smile that she was already more than halfway to her next level. 

Then the girl added insult to injury. Her Wail of Judgment poured out—bright, merciless, perfect. The air vibrated; ancient armor rang in protest and bound bones, now completely unprotected by the dark sigils, turned to so much powder and dust. The Undead collapsed into drifts of ash, their animus, the Curse within them, burned away by her power. 

This, she knew, would surely sting and weaken the ruler of this place. A few more attacks like this would force the Master from its hidden chamber below the graves of a long-dead people. For the energy of the Curse here might be near-limitless, but raw materials, bodies, and bones of the dead were not.

The master would strike soon, she knew. But when it did, it would  do so on the ground of her choosing.

I am really taking this far too seriously, she scolded herself and smiled. I really should at least give them a bit of a fighting chance. When I am done with this place, I am going to turn it into a tourist attraction.

Already she could picture the merchandise and the facilities she would raise on these once barren hills. Families would picnic here, nobles would come here for a getaway from the city.

As the last and final insult, she would remake this place from a temple of darkness into a shrine to capitalism. And, of course, there would be a statue dedicated to her glory.