Chapter 42: Chapter 42: Elseworlder

Quincy was still snoring so loud Nay thought the noise was going to crack the ice walls and bring them crashing into the sea when Ilyawraith got her out of bed.

The beds were upraised portions of ice with layers of what Nay thought was polar bear fur. It was so comfortable she didn’t even remember falling asleep.

Ilyawraith led her to a chamber towards the lower half of the iceberg. There was a pool where the cold sea water was coming up through the bottom. The spinal column of the beast were visible in the walls.

The cultivator led her to the edge of the pool, where she had set up seaweed mats. There was a steaming kettle and a wood cup on one of the mats.

They sat down and Ilyawraith poured her tea.

Nay took the cup and took a sniff. The steam rising off the surface was crimson. There was an antiseptic and coppery smell to it. The strange odor wasn’t entirely appealing.

“What is it?” Nay said.

“Coldblood tea,” Ilywraith said. “Your veins absorb it and it helps me see the state of your vigor.”

“Like it gets into my bloodstream faster or something?” Nay said.

Ilyawraith shook her head. “Not those veins. Your spirit veins. It’s the spiritual pathway on which your vigor travels. The stronger and more extensive these pathways are, the stronger your vigor usually is. Go ahead and drink.”

Nay took a sip of the hot tea. Even through her ruined taste buds, the sourness still got to her. She puckered her lips. “Do I have to drink the whole thing?”

Ilyawraith nodded and reached out and tilted the bottom of Nay’s cup up so she would keep drinking. “It’s goes down easier the quicker you drink it.”

Nay grimaced and kept drinking.

It was like downing a hot bowl of sweet and sour soup except there were no noodles and no sweetness. She reached the bottom of the cup and she set it down.

Her stomach cramped up and she groaned. What the hell? She looked at Ilyawraith with an accusation on her face.

“No, I didn’t poison you,” Ilyawraith said. “Drawing out your vigor veins can sometimes be painful. Especially if it’s your first time.”

Nay fell to her side and gasped. “Jesus Christ.”

She curled up into a ball, wrapping her hands around her knees as the pain spread up and down the inside of her torso. It felt like her nervous system was set on fire.

“It will pass,” Ilyawraith said. “This is necessary so I can do a proper scan.”

Nay groaned. “Does everything that has to do with cultivation involve pain?”

“Pain is temporary, girl,” Ilyawraith said. “Transcendence is eternal.”

“I feel awfully mortal to concern myself with a concept like transcendence,” Nay said. The pain started to fade and her insides no longer felt like they were being crushed. She sat up.

“All of us start that way,” Ilyawraith said. “It is the natural condition. But look around you. There is vigor everywhere for the taking.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Nay said.

“Quincy hasn’t explained what vigor is to you?”

“I mean, I get the general gist. It’s like my spirit, right? My life force?”

At that, Ilyawraith floated into the air.

The chamber seemed to drop a few degrees and the pool of sea water started to splash, spilling over the lip of the ice. Her hair seemed to blow in an invisible wind.

“Vigor is not just inside of you,” she said, her voice deepening with import. “It is all around you. It dwells in the air you breathe, it waits in the ice you stand on, it’s in the water of the sea, the birds in the sky, the worms in the ground, the trees in the field! Vigor is everywhere, not just giving you life, but it’s an expression of the soul of everything around us! Everything beautiful and everything terrible. In the end, when we return to the dust, our vigor remains.”

Ilyawraith floated back down to the ice. The invisible wind died down. The temperature rose a few more degrees and the sea water in the pool calmed.

“I have some theories about your development,” she said.

“You do?” Nay said. “Because I’ve been wondering myself about some of these…tools I’ve had ever since I got here. Did Quincy tell you about the magical word prompts I can see? And my mini-map and quest logs and all that?”

“Your vigor has helped you adapt to this world, giving you abilities for simply being an Elseworlder,” she said.

“Like a handicap,” Nay said.

It was clear from Ilyawraith’s expression that she didn’t know what Nay meant.

“Like, in all fairness, I was dead to rights as soon as I got to this world,” Nay said. “I shouldn’t have survived at all when I first got here. And what you’re saying is my vigor helped me adapt and it gave me this tool-set…this interface…because it knew I probably didn’t stand a chance in this world without it.”

“Tell me everything you can do,” Ilyawraith said.

“Does it not show up in your scans?” Nay said.

“Oh, I can see it all clearly. I want you to describe it to me. In your own words.”

Nay thought for a moment. “Okay, well, there’s the mini-map, obviously. I’m not sure what the range is. But in the right corner of my vision, I can see the general layout of the area. Sometimes when I get quests, I can see the locations. Oh, because I can Detect Marrow via my Hierophant skill tree, I’ll see those show up on the map if I’m nearby. It would be nice if it could do other things, like adjust the range or track people at will. But it’s still been helpful. I don’t want you to think I’m complaining about it.”

Ilyawraith nodded, observing her, like she was peering into her very soul.

“What else?" Nay said. "There’s the fact that I can understand and speak the languages here when I shouldn’t even know them at all. That includes written language, too. Sometimes, I get a prompt about auras. Like, I can detect certain auras from Marrow Eaters if I’m being affected by it. But I can’t with you.”

“I’m too high of a rank for you to detect my aura,” Ilyawraith said.

“That makes sense. Let’s see. I was able to detect and activate a Delicacy. Tongue of the Hierophant. It’s how I got my ability tree. I was told that this shouldn’t have been possible because only Epicurists have the ability to prepare and activate Delicacies.”

“You were told right,” Ilyawraith said. “They need the ability tree, which requires consuming a Delicacy. That’s how the DMA controls Marrow Eaters. They control who can cook.”

“I mean, if I was going to try and control who can become a Marrow Eater, I’d do the same thing I guess.”

“What would you do if an anomaly like you appeared?”

Nay felt the heaviness that came with this question. “I’d probably be very interested in this anomaly.”

“It’s good that you’re self-aware.”

Nay was reminded of something then. “Oh, so here’s the weirdest thing about my stuff, this interface or whatever. It feels like there’s someone behind the scenes assigning these quests or describing abilities and objects to me. Because sometimes there’s an odd sense of humor in the writings. Like this person is watching me in these situations and getting enjoyment out of guiding me along. I’ve been calling them the Quest Giver in my head. Like I don’t know if it’s just another odd manifestation of my vigor, but it feels like I’m connected to someone or something else in a way. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe.”

For the first time since they were down here, Ilyawraith showed a sense of puzzlement on her face.

“I almost forgot,” Nay said. “I feel like this Quest Giver gave me loot after I helped the Gloom Rangers.”

What looked like a green gummy candy appeared in her hand out of nowhere. It was about the size of an apple. And it was in the shape of a tadpole.

It was the Boon of the Mewlipped Tadpole.

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In her other hand The Mirkwood Eye trinket appeared.

Ilyawraith’s look of puzzlement turned to one of astonishment. She was one who wasn’t easily surprised. “Where…”

“I forgot to mention my interface also has an inventory system. That’s where these were stored. I can pull them out instantly, at will. Same thing goes for storing them.”

The boon and the trinket both disappeared from her hands.

“Weird, right?” Nay said. “I’m not sure how much I can hold, like if there’s a limit. But I stored so much food in the inventory for Quincy and I we don’t really have to worry about going hungry. Not for a long while.”

A burrito appeared in her hand. She offered it to Ilyawraith.

The cultivator just looked at it in bewilderment.

Nay shrugged and took a bite of the burrito.

/////////

“I’m going to surmise that when some Elseworlders end up here,” Ilyawraith said, “some of them develop Elseworlder abilities to help them survive.”

“I mean, the theory makes sense to me,” Nay said.

“But, it’s impossible to be sure because Elseworlders are so rare. There’s simply not enough of you to collect and compare knowledge.”

“Quincy used the phrase Worldtripper.”

“Again, there’s so little of you there’s not an official phrase,” Ilyawraith said. “Although I’m curious what the Veritax refers to your kind as.”

“The Veritax?”

“In their vaulted library in Verudae City, I’m absolutely sure they have records of Travelers from other worlds. Their monks have been watching and recording events here for a millennia.”

“You’ve never met someone like me? An Elseworlder?”

Ilyawraith shook her head. “Never met, but of course I’ve heard of your kind. The one I heard about was supposedly very powerful. Which doesn’t surprise me. If you’re able to come here from another world or plane of existence and survive, it requires the accumulation of power along the way. It requires the accumulation of vigor.”

Nay wondered if anyone from her world had ever ended up here.

“So,” Ilyawraith said. “Your spiritual veins are growing, hungry for more vigor. That’s a good sign. It means you have the pathways to obtain it. So the next step is obtaining it and holding onto it, absorbing it into your veins.”

“How do I do that?”

“The same way you have been doing it.”

“Completing quests?”

“By breathing.”

“Breathing?”

“Except I’m going to teach you a method for breathing in a more efficient way. Seeing as how Quincy hasn’t even taught you that, yet.”

“He’s never so much as mentioned breathing.”

Ilyawraith smiled and her pink pupils flickered.

The ice floor shuddered beneath them and a fracture appeared in the frozen surface. It moved around them forming a ring, then the disc of ice started to descend through the iceberg.

The place rumbled as cubes of ice began to shift and move around them, as if they were descending through an intricate puzzle that kept forming and reforming.

Ilyawraith seemed to be half concentrating, manipulating the architecture of the berg.

Their descent slowed and below Nay saw a rectangle carved out of the ice.

It looked like a white open grave.

Soon the lip of the open grave was at the same level as the disc.

“Climb in and then lie down,” Ilyawraith said.

Nay looked between the ice grave and the strange cultivator. “Down there?”

Ilyawraith nodded and tilted her head to jump in.

Nay wasn’t feeling it. “Nah, I think I’m good.”

“Do you want to advance to Iron Rank or not?”

Nay bit her lip, uncomfortable. She was unsure. But Quincy trusted this woman with instructing her.

He wouldn’t lead her into something he didn’t approve of.

So she lowered herself into the ice compartment.

She lied down as if it was her coffin.

She felt a cold wetness underneath her, nipping at her legs and back. There was sea water trickling through the ice below her and into the grave. She did a double-take and realized the ocean was on the other side of the ice.

“Hey!” Nay said.

Ilyawraith continued to stare down at her, unconcerned, as ice crystals started to form in the air above Nay, spreading and interlinking and solidifying.

There was a tinkling sound as a roof of ice formed above her, closing her into the ice grave.

It was just a few inches from her face.

Nay pounded the underside of the ice with her fists. “Hey! What are you doing?! Hey!”

The sea water rose, half immersing her.

But it didn’t stop there. It kept rising, submerging her head, only stopping at the ice cover above her.

She was trapped in a tomb of ice.

Nay screamed bubbles.

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