Chapter 89: Chapter 84: Redemption

I stared down the daemonium vindex I was facing in the arena, another red-skinned humanoid demon. It was only a head taller than I was, wearing nothing but a few metal plates strapped to his body. A codpiece did at least do something to protect his modesty, but I couldn't help but feel like it was the male equivalent of bikini armour. It certainly did nothing to hide his beautifully chiselled abs or biceps.

If I was into men at all, I might have been tempted.

The biceps were made even more impressive by the way there were four of them. Two hands held long swords, while two were empty. All four arms were equipped with heavy vambraces, running from his wrists to elbows, that were gently curved for ease of parrying. They looked like they'd be as hard to pierce as any shield, and my sword mastery skill informed me that my skill and single sword were not going to be able to breach his defences.

A gong signalled the start of the match and, as expected, he didn't charge at me. I always made sure to appraise my opponents, after all, and despite the swords, I knew this one favoured magic. Sure enough, a pair of fireballs came flying at me. I ignored them, letting them slam into me. I hadn't fought one of these before, so it would probably count as an achievement.

Evolution conditions met: Heat immunity ranks up to heat absorption
Fire is one of the more common elements of magic, and is used by mages and monsters alike, but magic isn't required to create excessive heat. Maybe an adventure will take you to a desert, or a lava filled dungeon. You have survived the fiery breath of an adult draco rubrum, major internal burns carbonising important parts of your body, sticking your arm into a torch of black flame, the attacks of a hydra igneus, the heat of the abyss, being plunged into the boiling acid of a hydra igneus stomach, a bath in a lake of lava, extensive mana burns to your entire body and the fire magic of a daemonium vindex. For these achievements, you have earned this upgrade from immunity to absorption. This skill allows you to thrive in the ambient heat of any natural environment, to absorb mana from fire based spells and draw strength from flames of any temperature.

Oh, bonus. I gained something from my failed void tolerance training attempt in the catacombs after all.

It wasn't until the demon gave me a thumbs up that it occurred to me that my tolerance skills didn't extend to my clothing, and my nightie was not as flameproof as my skin. There were even a few wolf-whistles from the spectators, mixed in with the usual jeering, as the flaming scraps of fabric fell off me, leaving me naked in front of an audience of thousands.

"You'll have to do better than that," I goaded, ignoring my indecent exposure. The demon slammed his empty hands into the ground, which instantly froze over. The spell washed out from the demon in a circular wave, speeding past me. My feet froze before I had the chance to get off the ground and the ice tried to climb up my legs, but my maxed nullification prevented the spell from turning me into a frozen statue.

Evolution conditions met: Cold nullification ranks up to cold immunity
While less common than its opposite, fire, ice magic is still a relatively common choice, largely due to its simplicity. Or maybe magic wasn't the problem, and for some reason you decided to go adventuring mid-winter while naked. You have survived the ice of an aranea regina, major internal frostbite, the chill of the blight, the chilling breath of a daemonium grando and the freezing magic of a daemonium vindex, earning you this upgrade from nullification to immunity. This skill renders you immune to the ambient cold of any natural environment, and strongly shields you from dangerously low temperatures.

Wow. That's two for two. With the skill evolution, the ice ceased its climb up my legs and even started retreating, but it was too late. A glance down showed that my feet were a lost cause, the flesh black and the skin simply gone. I spread my wings and took to the air instead, my feet snapping off above the ankles and remaining frozen to the ground where I'd stood.

"Better, but still not quite good enough," I shouted down, following it up with a lance of my own ice, the demon's appraisal results telling me he was highly resistant to fire himself. Thankfully, the skill evolution let me do so without immediately freezing my throat shut.

He dodged and rolled, far too fast for me to hit him in small bursts, and longer bursts would cause me to self-destruct.

"You'll have to do better than that," he yelled up.

"Oi, that's my line, you thief."

He raised his hand and pointed at me, but the mana seemed to fizzle out without doing anything, causing me to look around in suspicion. "What was that supposed to be?"

"Me doing better," he replied, just as perceive mana started kicking up a fuss.

Perceive mana advanced to level 14

I looked up at the large glowing runic formation that had appeared over the top of the stadium. "Oh poo..." was all I could manage before the lightning struck.

New skill gained: Lightning tolerance
Lightning strikes aren't something the average individual needs to worry about. Perhaps a particularly foolish adventurer would be stupid enough to wave a long metal sword around over his head during a thunderstorm, but for those with common sense, such things are barely a concern. There are, however, monsters that deploy electricity as an attack, or druids with the capability to control the weather, or mages using magically generated lightning. This skill offers a small amount of protection, should you encounter such a being.

Back at the statue, I had a smile on my face. Yes, I'd lost, and rather badly at that, but I'd gained two evolutions and a new skill. It seemed a reasonable trade.

Rather than returning to the arena, I teleported back downstairs. The church was as I'd left it, free of the corruption of the Void, but stepping outside and looking about with my new understanding of how reality worked, I could see the fraying of the world all around. The fabric of space was torn, flapping in a wind that couldn't be felt on the skin. The Void was leaking in.

It wasn't a mistake. Bob had talked about the difficulty in sustaining the world, and how I wouldn't have survived had I been used as the anchor. This world was unnatural and unstable. A forced creation. The holy sword might be powerful, but it wasn't an energy source. It couldn't sustain the world against the pressure of the Void that was trying to consume it, to return it to the nothingness from which it came.

This floor was the engine. The power plant that supplied the world. It drew in mana from the Void, and used it to sustain the existence of the upper floors. Despite my earlier complaints about smoke and mirrors, I had to admit the design was genius.

Mana toxicity resistance advanced to level 20

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Ah well, my run of good luck couldn't continue forever. When my only achievement was standing around on this floor waiting for the mana to burn my lungs out, it stood to reason I wouldn't get the next evolution.

I spent some time exploring the floor, but aside from this single humanish settlement, there was nothing other than the flat surface, a disk fifteen or so kilometres wide, and the rifts. I stayed well away from them. Perhaps dangling down into one would count as a separate achievement for mana toxicity resistance, but it wasn't worth the risk. With my class-granted knowledge, I knew that Bob hadn't been joking in the slightest when he'd warned me about them. Falling into one would mean falling out of the world, and even with my new class, I'd struggle to get back in.

Floor explored, it was time to return to the arena. The simple problem I had was that I wasn't a battle maniac. Fighting for days on end just wasn't something I could work up any enthusiasm for, but it needed to be done. I had a world to save.

I concentrated on daemonium veneficus and daemonium praecantator, powerful magic users with little in the way of physical offensive or defensive capability. The veneficus had a form similar to the daemonium grando, except with the positions of eyes and mouths reversed. Each eye cast spells of a different affinity. The praecantator was another humanoid one, and used more traditional spells with chanting and lots of hand waving. They were a bit rubbish, really; the chants were long enough that as long as I prepared a bow and arrow before the starting gong, I could hit them before they fired.

The daemonium veneficus were tougher, and wonderful for my resistance levels given their wide array of eyes. The only pity was that some of them were never used offensively. But both types shared a common factor; they contained powerful magic crystals, worth an average of seven hundred mana each. My last level cap increase happened at five thousand mana, so I decided to collect up ten thousand mana worth. With the sizeable crystals, it didn't take long.

Desecrating the corpses of my defeated opponents seemed impolite to me, but no-one reacted. The audience tended not to react to anything, once the match was over.

And so, after a period of time that only felt like a couple of hours to me, but was probably more like a couple of days in reality with all the time I spent dead, I returned once more to the fox-kin's shrine. How was I supposed to do this? Could I offer them one at a time, or would I need to do them all at once for it to count? Would it accept them at all, given that the statue was intact already? Would I get any rewards even if it did accept them, given that I didn't have a quest?

Only one way to find out...

"Katie? What are you doing here?" came a voice from behind me, causing me to drop the crystal in my hand and spin around in panic.

"Oh. Do'myrith," I said, relaxing. She was on her knees, facing the statue, and I'd teleported in with my back to her. Presumably she was praying for the dead or something. "I'm... apologising for being a racist arsehole, I suppose."

She raised a quizzical eyebrow, but I didn't feel like elaborating. I went with a different tack, instead.

"Your arch-mage was wrong, you know. You do all have souls, it's just that they aren't here."

I was hoping she would consider that good news, but instead I felt a burst of anger from her. "So now you're delving into soul magic too?" she asked.

"Not at all. My latest abilities simply gave me some insight into how this world was constructed."

My denial took the anger out of her. "Then would you mind sharing... what we are?"

"You've met the other me downstairs. You're like her. A second mind, supported by the soul of an original somewhere in the world I came in from."

Do'myrith sighed. "You just can't help picking at scabs, can you?"

Now it was my turn to raise a quizzical eyebrow, or at least I tried my best. My eyebrow control was still sorely lacking.

"I mean the way you keep coming back. Have you not considered just staying away, and never interacting with us again? Before the fall of the town, that seemed to be all you wanted, but now you keep returning, shaking the foundations of our beliefs each time you do. Don't you think it would be better for everyone, yourself included, if you just stayed away?"

I stared at the priestess. Once again, I felt that the world was spitting in my face with its pure unfairness. It was what I wanted, and they were the ones who wouldn't leave me alone. Even if not for the arch-mage, that would likely still have been true.

Turning my back on Do'myrith, I drew my collection of mana crystals from item box, all ten thousand, three hundred and twenty mana's worth, and tapped the statue.

There were no notifications, but the statue shone with a radiant light as crystal after crystal decayed to dust. The clean section of rock burst outwards, beyond my vision, rubble and debris pushed away without resistance. The air grew dusty, great clouds of fog appearing and coalescing around us. Crystal walls grew, sprouting up from the ground and forming from the dust. Gaps in the walls were filled with growing coloured glass. Light crystals sprouted, along with pillars and decorations. In little over a minute, rather than standing in an open cavern, we were left in an exact replica of the original fox-kin temple.

Almost exact. The building was silent, the great hall unoccupied by anyone other than me and Do'myrith.