Chapter 153: Chapter 149: A Paladin goes fishing for information and uncovers a wormy situation.

 

When the party split up she and Falaen headed towards the manufacturing district with the artificer continuing out of the city towards the quarry. Veronica remained in the manufacturing district casually going through the clay making shops acting as a merchant looking for goods. What she found out from the shops was that the city used the clay from the nearby quarry to produce two main products in bulk. These being pottery which in her opinion was of pretty good quality, and the other being clay tiles which adorned most of the roofs within the city. There were numerous workshops producing both of these within the district, so she was surprised to find one workshop producing something else for a change.

What this workshop produced was actually various musical instruments. The merchant she was speaking to called them ocarinas and they had several varieties of them. The old man mentioned that had already sold dozens to other merchants who were taking them throughout the kingdom to sell. He seemed convinced that Veronica was a merchant, so he was giving a great sales pitch on why they would be great products for her to sell. He took the time to show each product and demonstrated how to play them. Unfortunately, the man was quite awful at playing them making her wince as he hit wrong notes. Even so she was impressed with their quality and beauty.

Just after he finished one set of music a sudden blue flash came to from her left side. Glancing that way, she discovered a brilliant blue beam of light coming down from the sky. She instantly recognized it as originating from Jack with a hint of divine power as well. It was coming down in the direction where the quarry was making her frown in concern for her friend. When the light had faded, she glanced around and found people were quickly fleeing indoors and leaving the street that she was on. There was a loud thud behind her and when she looked back she saw the merchant had fled inside the shop and was quickly closing up. Within a minute he had fully shut everything up and had put a closed sign on the door.

Three Order of Purification monks came running past towards the direction of the quarry and she sent a warning off to Falaen about what was coming and received a reply thanking her. Now that all the shops had closed, she wasn't sure she could easily investigate this area anymore without drawing attention so she was considering leaving when she noticed movement next to her. Looking down she found a little boy standing next to her looking at her with an incredibly sad look on his face. Just as she was about to ask him what was wrong, she spotted that there was a gaping hole in his chest, and she realized this boy was in fact a ghost.

He opened his mouth in a silent scream with black tears beginning to fall and pointed towards the musical instrument workshop. Then black flames began to rise over the poor childs ghostly form and he began to sink into the ground. Unsettled by the ghost's appearance she took another look at the workshop. Each workshop within this district consisted of complexes with several buildings within each of them. A small shop was located on the front of each where merchants and others could come by and place orders. Yet looking at this complex before her, she realized something was off with this place.

First off it was far larger than it really should be given what they produce. The musical instruments themselves while interesting, surely did not have a huge demand that required such a massive complex to produce them. In fact a nearby clay tile shop was half this place's size. In addition most of the other places were built in a more open manner then this place was, a wall surrounded most of the complex with the parts that didn't have walls that were blocked by two buildings. Feeling that there was something off about all of this, she knocked on the door a few times wanting to speak with the old man from before. After trying for a few minutes, she failed to get any response.

As the door was locked, she went around to the wall and saw it was eleven feet high. On top of the wall was nasty looking rusty spikes along with sharp broken ceramic pieces. Definitely not something that would be easy to climb over. Glancing around and making sure no one was watching, she activated her spirit body skill. Instantly she felt her spirit energy take a massive draw on it, and the world became an inverse colored version. The change had gone quick and she was standing as a ghostly form now, which felt incredibly cold to her as the heat from the sun simply passed through her. She quickly stepped through the wall and shut it off so as to not waste her spirit energy.

Snapping back into her physical form she breathed a sigh of relief when she felt the warm sun on her skin again. Glancing around she spotted five buildings set in square around the middle. In the middle of the complex was a large well with a thick metal bucket hanging above it. The building off to her right was a receiving and shipping storeroom, and she could hear several workers currently moving about in it. On her left was the sellers building where she had just been in front of. To the back were two large kiln buildings from which one was producing thick black smoke. The final building was a bit out of place with the others. The others were constructed from stone bricks with this one being constructed from wood and off the ground. To her it looked like some sort of administration building.

Seeing a clear window on the sellers building she snuck over to it and carefully peered in. The old man merchant from before was arguing with a female monk who was yelling right back at him. She said a final curse word and stormed off, and seconds later Veronica heard the slam of a door nearby. Keeping close to the wall she spotted that female monk head across the yard into the kiln that was not working at the moment. Glancing back through the window she saw the old man was now quickly packing several bags with ocarinas, only to accidentally drop one causing it to shatter.

When that happened, she noticed something crawling in the debris and the old man cursed. Whatever it was he carefully picked it up and placed it into a nearby bucket, and then continued to pack the bags. Confused about what she had just seen she slipped towards the kiln where the female monk had gone. As she passed the well, she heard something large moving down in the water of the well. As it was too dark down there she didn't spot what it was, but it did sound large and unpleasant. When she got to the kiln, she found the monk had not fully closed the door in her rage. Peeking in she found to her complete shock several people, mainly children had been chained to the wall. All of them looked to have been severely beaten and looked on the verge of dying.

The monk was shoveling coal into the kiln muttering curses and she realized that this monk was going to burn these people alive. Wanting to get some answers she examined her just to make sure she was a threat she could safely take on.

 

 

Luckily this Wren was not much of a threat so she pulled her sword silently and snuck into the room being sure to close the door behind her. The female monk failed to spot Veronica until it was almost too late. She attempted to shout out an alarm, but Veronica used her energy shield to knock the woman onto her ass.

Before the monk was able to recover, she had run up and pressed her palm onto the woman's head and activated the skill soul reader. It was an intense shock for her as energy began pouring through her hand and began to probe deep into this foul person's soul. Sadly most of the woman's soul was barred to her as it was too heavily corrupted to safely look through.

The monk woman was resisting this process with all of her being making this search incredibly painful for both of them. Veronica struggled to remain in control of the woman thrashing beneath her while her brain felt like it was about to ooze out of her nose. With a last grunt of effort, she managed to rip a small set of memories from the corrupted monk and got a clear vision. It was of this monk participating in a ritual with other monks at night surrounding the well.

At an altar they had a man tied up in terror and then the monk woman jabbed a blade deep into the man's chest, cutting it open. When the man had bled out, she reached into his chest and ripped out the man's heart and tossed it into the well calling out horrific words of prayer towards the thing that lay deep in that well. From deep underground came a rumbling sound and then disgusting black worms began to crawl up from the well. These were gathered with reverence by the monks who placed them into buckets, and with that last disturbing image the vision ended.

Blinking she found that the monk beneath her had gone into an unconscious state from the invasive soul probing and would not awaken for a while. It had also given Veronica a massive headache, and she found blood dripping from her nose. She didn't think she could do that again, at least not until she had recovered from that. The touch upon that corrupted soul had felt absolutely awful and she shuddered to think of what a fully corrupted soul would feel like.

Standing she made her way up to the chained up people and found that they were currently drugged and unresponsive. At least each seemed to be alive, if in a rough state. The restraints that held them to the wall was made out of strong materials and was locked preventing her from getting them down. Returning to the monks collapsed body she rifled through her robes. Thankfully she managed to find a set of keys that went to the bindings and she then quickly unlocked all seven of the prisoners. With them free it was time for her to consider her next move. For some reason that old man had wanted to kill these people right away. Perhaps he thought the order of purification might perform a check so needed to get rid of the evidence.

Whatever the reason she couldn't leave these people alone with these psychopaths. She also didn't think she could carry all of them out of this complex by herself. So she needed to deal with the corrupted people here before getting help. First she dragged the unconscious woman to the bindings and chained her up. While she may be corrupted, Veronica was not going to murder her while she was unawares. She made sure the woman couldn't reach the others if she awoke and then left the kiln.

She then snuck towards the other kiln and found the door was open letting out the blazing heat that was inside. Glancing inside she spotted two large men who were moving around sheets of ocarinas onto racks to get them baked. She took a moment to examine both of them and found that they were low corrupted but were far weaker then Wren. As such she strode into the kiln taking them both by surprise. She waved her hand causing an energy field to pop up and slam the one to the right into a wall.

Drawing her sword she said "Surrender or die."

The man simply grunted and charged towards her. With the fire in the kiln roaring no one could hear the short fight that occurred inside and so she was able to finish both of these corrupted scum with ease. Wiping her blade off on the robes of one she went outside and crossed over the yard to the large receiving building. Several open doors allowed her to enter quietly where she spotted three workstations where workers were currently making ocarinas from clay.

One worker had just finished an ocarina, he then took it to a bucket. With a quick movement he grabbed a long dark worm from it and inserted it with a look of absolute happiness into the ocarina. The ocarina let out an unsettling glow before returning back to normal. Then that worker then placed it on a rack with several other wet ocarina's waiting to be taken to the kiln. She wasn't sure what that worm was but it sure as hell didn't look like it was a good thing.

In total this building seemed to have seven workers within it at the moment. Each of them were in various stages of corruption though none past moderate and all were fairly weak. Still taking all of them at the same time would be tough, so with care she found one having gone alone to move some boxes. When he had turned his back, she dashed in and separated his head from his body with a swift swing of her sword. Before his body could hit the ground, she lowered it and moved to the next one who was relatively alone in a corner getting more clay.

Slipping behind him silently she slit his throat, unfortunately his blood shot out splashing onto the ground alerting a nearby worker. This man cried out in alarm when he saw what had happened to his comrade and ran to get a metal pole to use as a weapon. The others quickly swarmed in and attacked with improvised weapons. Engaging them, it soon became clear that none of them had any training in fighting whatsoever. Even so, their reckless attacks and swings were dangerous if she wasn't careful. She warned them several times to surrender, but they simply refused to listen and attacked more viciously.

With a grunt she blocked one attack with her shield and ran one of the men through with her blade. Yanking the blade out she spun and dodged a swing from the metal pole and slammed her blade into the skull of the man wielding the pole. He collapsed just as another came in with a sculpting tool aiming for her face. Grabbing his arm, she kicked his legs out from beneath him then jammed her blade through his face. The other two launched their own attacks on her at the same time. She blasted them away with turn unsystem which caused them to lose their footing allowing her to easily dispatch both of them.

She did a quick run through the building to make sure she had dispatched all of the people within. With that she was satisfied that there was no one else, she went up to the wet ocarinas and examined them.

 

 

This made her shudder to think that these ocarinas must be out there infecting people with these horrors. She would be sure to bring this to the attention of the Order of Purification. She exited and decided to take out the old man merchant before going to that last building. It had an unsettling aura to it ever since she had ripped that memory from that monk. Making her way to the selling building she opened the door and came face to face with the surprised old man. Even with him surprised he reacted surprisingly fast reaching into his cloak and pulling out his own sword to meet her oncoming blade.

With this first clash she immediately knew that this old man had extensive training with the sword. With a flourish both of them separated and began to circle one another in the tight quarters of the shop. While he was not as fast as her, when he did strike it was a heavy blow that pushed her back making their blades sing in metallic rings. Luckily her style of fighting with the sword was a perfect counter to this man, allowing her to both parry and strike at him at the same time. Soon he had several gashes on his sides and was starting to breathe heavily. He backed up a little and just as she was about to go in for another strike he kicked a stool right up into her face.

Dodging it, she found that his blade was striking right towards her neck. Barely in time she managed to raise her shield up blocking the blow and shoving him out the front windows into the street. Jumping out the broken window herself she pursued him into the street. Before she could re engage him however, there was a big explosion nearby that nearly made her lose her footing. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a pillar of dark smoke begin to rise along with a whiff of corruption. With a roar of anger, the old man shot towards her and began to strike furious blows towards her.

She barely managed to deflect each of them and she found herself getting pushed back. From a nearby street came several monks in armor, when they spotted the pair of them fighting one yelled "Lay down your weapons, you are under arrest. If you fail to comply, we will execute you with prejudice."

The old man gave her one last heavy strike knocking her towards the monks and roared at them. While she was getting back to her feet, she saw that his head began to split apart and then a thick ugly black worm popped out from the front of his face. It let out a blast of smell that was of corruption and rot. A monk next to her said "What the fuck?!"

"Kill the corrupted being!" Yelled the leader of the group.

The worm somehow screamed despite not having an apparent mouth, the sound was incredibly unpleasing to listen to making her wince in pain. From the surrounding buildings people came charging out wielding a variety of weapons. Their heads began to shake, and more black worms began to push out of these peoples skulls. With a single mindedness they charged towards the monks and her, and it soon became apparent that they were clearly outnumbered by at least ten to one. Thankfully only the old man worm was skilled with a weapon, as the others were mostly just swinging their weapons wildly.

Not wanting to be surrounded she yelled at the monks to get moving towards a nearby wall so they can at least keep their backs protected. The Old Man worm not wanting this to happen came charging in at her and swung his blade down upon her. She reached up and caught his blade with an energy shield, which allowed the monk next to her to stab the man deep in his chest. Scrambling back, the old man worm squealed as blood and black ooze began to leak out from it. As it backed up, several other worm people took its place pressing them back against the wall.

While she was defending herself from several strikes she happened to spot one worm lower its head towards her. A disgusting bulge appeared at the end and she got a bad feeling so she brought up her shield, just in time to block a foul black goo that shot from the worm. It formed an oozy web like structure on her shield. Looking around she saw it was not the only worm doing this and one of the monks wasn't able to dodge in time. He was wrapped in the black goo screaming in sheer terror which turned into screams of pain.

To her absolute horror she could only watch as the man's flesh began melting under the black goo. Then the worm began pulling the slime back into its body along with the poor monk. It's head spread open clearly aiming to swallow the monk whole. The other monks seeing this attempted to rescue him, but the other worm people simply fought harder against them. The worm people fought on despite taking what would have been lethal blows for anything else. Just as the man was about to be swallowed there was a flash of red light and the worm man had been cut in half freeing the now disfigured man from the black ooze.

A monk clad in armor, which looked really banged up at the moment, came in through the mob of worm people slashing them down with ease. With every slash one of the worm people would burst into flames and fall to the ground. The red stone blade cut through them like a hot knife through butter, not even metal blades were able to stop the cut. One of the monks shouted "It's the commander! Rip these fucking corrupted freaks apart!"

The monks upon realizing their boss had come, went into a berserker frenzy and began to truly lay into the surrounding worm people. Soon the odds which had been fully against them switched to the worm people starting to flee. With her surroundings clear she spotted the old man worm attempting to leave and gave chase engaging it in another fierce bout of sword fighting. As she fought with this menace, she could see the commander practically dancing with their blade slicing through the crowd. With every slash they took another worm man's life.

With her own flourish she managed to disarm the old man worm from its blade and was striking towards it to kill it when the ground began shaking fiercely. She at first thought it was another earthquake as she nearly lost her footing. Then the ground began cracking, and the musical instrument compound began to fall apart into the widening crack. There came an incredibly massive roar and a towering form of a black worm pushed itself out of the ground and reached up into the sky. Gawking up at it, she estimated it to be at least fifty feet tall, and that was only what was above the ground.

When it appeared, the great worm unleashed an aura of pure malice and corruption. This pushed down upon her with a heavy pressure, and she struggled to stand up against it. Focusing on her connection with Jack, she found herself barely able to push back against this unholy creature's energy. Some of the monks nearby fell to their knees with tears of terror falling down their faces. Wanting to know what that roaring creature was she examined it. Which oddly produced two different status screens.

 

 

 

This was confusing for a moment before she realized this evil spirit was actually attempting to possess this decaying avatars body. However, something was preventing that takeover from fully happening and the worm was fighting with itself causing boils and it's flesh underneath itself to roil as it screamed it's defiance to the heavens. Then the smell coming off its body hit her like an unpleasant shower of foulness. It stank of corruption and of ancient old decay to the point it almost made the air around her almost too toxic to breathe.

As it fought with itself numerous boils on its mass began to pop sending worms raining down onto the ground below. She quickly brought her shield up covering her and the monks from the foul worms. Most were of the small size she had seen being put in the bucket in the memory. But a few of them were the size of cows and when they landed they practically exploded sending black goop everywhere. The commander taking this in suddenly dashed up one of the buildings and leapt towards the hulking worm monstrosity.

Even though the commander was practically an ant to this monster, the damage they did was substantial. Massive cuts were placed within the beast and were lit on a fire that caused the worm to scream insanely. The commander was practically flying around the beast as they grabbed on and ran around the massive creature dealing blow after blow. Fascinated with the battle she almost didn't hear something coming towards her from the right.

Glancing that way, she barely managed to dodge a heavy strike from the old man worm who had managed to retrieve his blade and was once again attacking. This time it was not using any skill in any of its attacks, it was simply striking in pure fury towards her. In fact as she fought to keep from being bisected by him, she could see all the remaining worm people had gone into a rage with the appearance of the giant worm. Unfortunately, for the monks they were having a harder time fighting, given the pressure pushing down at them. Even so they had not given up and were fighting valiantly against the mad worms.

Just as she was in the middle of trading blows with this old man worm, the giant worm let out a roar of pain and agony and a shadow fell over her. Flicking her eyes up she realized with horror that the massive worm was falling directly on top of her. Seeing she would not be able to run away in time, she activated her spirit body skill. It was just in time as the worm fell and crushed everything beneath it. She found herself inside of the giant worm now. It was quite horrific as even though everything was inverted and she was not substantial she could see just how rotten the interior of this worm was.

Great hollows filled with black ooze and writhing worm children lined the flesh of this beast. Strange nodules appeared from the ceiling and spat foul liquids towards her, however since Veronica was not solid it simply passed through her. Turning around wanting to get out of this corrupted nightmare flesh she found as she stepped there was something pulling on her. As she struggled to break free, she found that she was being pulled towards the center of this beast.

It was pulling on her spiritual form, and she dared not release her spirit body inside of this worm beast. So she found herself dragged into the decaying spiritual realm of this Avatar of an ancient evil worm god. With a snap she entered a massive room that was filled with a white mist which pretty much obscured everything within. What she could see were sharp and jagged pillars jutting from the ground like some ancient teeth. Even though she was still a spirit, she found that she could still smell the overwhelming stench of corruption.

Hesitantly she began to move forward through the mist when it began to roll back revealing a massive throne upon which lay a dried out husk of a worm. This must be the remains of what had been the connection to the Evil god which was now dead. Even though that connection was long gone, she could feel an immense amount of energy still remaining which allowed this dead body to still be active. Even though it was rotting, the energy would continue letting it move though there was no intelligence behind it.

What was controlling it was revealed when she heard the sounds of fighting and found two groups fighting for control right in front of the throne. On one side was a black mass that was reaching for the remaining power from the Evil god while fighting off a figure. She realized this black mass was in fact actually the Evil spirit she had examined. The other group consisted of four spirits each filled with corruption. Three of the spirits were sending their energy into the fourth which was fighting with the evil spirit and also reaching out towards the Evil gods Energy. Taking a moment she examined the leader of this group and saw:

 

 

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What is a spirit clone she wondered and a blue screen popped up to explain.

 

 

With this information and watching them fight, it soon became somewhat clear to her what was going on here. It also filled some of the holes in the memories she had pulled out from that corrupted monk. From what she could piece together, this cult of corruption must have stumbled across the dead body of this worm Avatar. Seeing as they could use this worm to greatly increase corruption they must have created these spirit clones to take control of the worm. However one spirit clone was simply not powerful enough to fully control it, so they were sacrificing people to it to allow them to gain full control over it.

But this Evil Spirit must have found this body and began to try and take it over for itself. Where that spirit came from she didn't know but it must have just recently entered this body as she could see that it was still adjusting to this spiritual realm, unlike the spirit clones. Even so it was still strong enough to overpower the spirit clones, which is why they were currently pumping their leader with their energy. With both of them fighting and neither in full control it had created a vacuum that pulled her into this spiritual realm.

To her frustration this was an incredibly dangerous position for her to be in. Once one of these groups were to gain full control of this realm, they would snuff her out of existence. Taking them on was risky for if she managed to kill one of them it was likely the other would take control of the worm. If she attempted to take both of them down at the same time, they would likely gang up on her and kill her. Not wanting to stick around and wait to see who won she focused on the boundary of the spirit realm and attempted to force her way out only to frustratingly find herself falling right back in.

At a loss of what to do she glanced at the SP she had remaining and found she only had about fifteen minutes left before she transitioned back to her real body. She wasn't sure of what would happen where she would regain her real form right away, other than it not being good. As she was contemplating contacting Jack and asking for help, she saw something small waddling through the mist in the back of the chamber. Alarmed she went to check it out and to her surprise she found a statue. It was of a sword being thrust into the body of a worm. On the pedestal was an inscription that she could not read and hurt for her to even look upon. Confused as to why there was a statue here she examined it.

 

 

For some reason she found it fascinating to look upon, when she heard a voice say "Psst, over here."

Looking around for the source of the voice, she found it was in fact originating from behind the statue. Going around it, she found herself down at a strange looking bird. It had a black and white smooth feather on it, and had a small, little bowtie on its neck. It was looking up at her with a curious expression and said "Glad to see your not like those psychopaths over there." It nodded its head towards the people still fighting. "Like me I see that you have gotten yourself trapped here."

It gave a little waddle and came next to her and patted her leg with one of its wings. "Don't worry, we'll get out of this mess together, what do you say?"

A little set back by the appearance of this bird she asked "Who or what are you?"

"I'm Phil the Void Penguin. I'm a traveling merchant of the void. Now I was passing this region by a short time ago when I happened to see this region of space was getting more active. That can mean a great amount of profit, so I came around looking for a great deal to be had. Then someone started to mess with some void object. It ripped a hole in the void causing me to fall right into this world. What's worse when I attempted to flee back to the void I got pulled into this right old mess. Luckily those cultish freaks didn't notice me hiding back here."

"I don't suppose you have a way to get out of here?" She asked.

"As a matter of fact, I happen to have thought of a way to get out of here. The problem is I'm not much of a fighter. I'm just a travelling merchant. But you seem quite the fighter, I can sense you have a strong core of determination just what we need to get out of here."

"Thank you for your flattery, but there is no way I can take both of them on. I would get crushed, especially when they start using that Evil God's energy."

"Don't you worry about that. You needn't fight them directly. All I need you to do is get that Old Evils gods spiritual energy all riled up. Once you do that we will be able to escape, or rather we will be pushed safely out of this place."

"Uh-huh." She said skeptically. "How exactly am I supposed to get that energy all riled up when it's not even responding to the two groups over there attempting to siphon it's powers."

Phil looked sneakily around and said "I have a certain product that should definitely do the trick. However, they need to be activated directly on the old worm spirit body, so you will need to get past those freaks and toss them onto the remains and then wam-bam we will be kicked out."

Reaching to his side he pulled open a bag that she had not seen before on him. He rummaged around a bit pulling various weapons out and putting them back in while muttering. "Ah here they are, forgot I had put them with the Ki Sabers." He pulled out two strangely symmetrical objects and offered them to her. Taking them from him, she found that both had an unsettling weight to them, like she was holding onto something incredibly foul. Examining them she found out why and she nearly dropped them when she saw what they were.

 

 

Frowning she looked up from them and said "Did you make these? You know these are banned? How exactly is blowing up the spiritual corpse supposed to work?"

Phil chuckled nervously and said "Oh you recognize those? Didn't think folks out here would. Don't worry this section of the multiverse is not covered by that treaty banning them. I didn't make them. I just happened to stumble across the one who did and brought them to sell them out in this area. I happen to deal with weapons, mostly more of the 'exotic' weapons if you catch my drift. For how this is supposed to work, you see that dead old worm god up there has no mind to it, but it still retains a sense of self-preservation. The way those freaks are going it won't set it off, but if you toss those up there I assure that worm energy will be right mad."

Given the weight of these things she would have to get pretty close to throw them. "How big exactly is the range of these things? I don't want to get caught up in the blast of them."

"They are fairly weak for what they are. It should just about take up all of the throne area. Of course the big hurdler will be you getting past those freaks to the throne."

"Do you happen to have anything that could help me with that?"

Phil scratched his beak in thought and said "I'm afraid I don't have much in stock in the way of defense. Most of my weapons are unsuitable for your use either. Though I have just the thing now that I think about it."

He dug once more through his bag and pulled out a gray crystal and handed it to her. She examined it and saw:

 

 

"I suggest not getting in a drag down fight with them." Phil said.

Nodding she said "Alright, I don't have much time left so let's get this show on the road shall we."

Quickly she jogged towards the throne with Phil waving at her back. Glancing at her Sp, she saw that she didn't have enough to turn invisible, so she would have to make a dad dash to the throne. Giving one last prayer to Jack, she began to focus all of her remaining mana through the crystal and into forming a thick shield around her. The very air trembled as the shield took shape forming a thick crystalised blue shield around her and when she finished the crystal shattered in her hands.

She took off towards the throne, as she approached the two groups still locked in battle they noticed her and both sent attacks her way. The first to hit was the attack from the Evil Spirit. It had simply pulled a bit of the power from the Evil god and used it as a blunt attack on her. Even just a little of the energy was massive compared to her and it slammed into her shield and caused a huge portion of it to shave off. She even took damage just from that impact. Still she managed to push through that attack and right into the one from the Spirit clones.

Their attack, while not as powerful, was far more controlled and had been focused to a needle point. The shield while weakened managed to block most of the strength behind the attack. However, it still managed to pierce through and strike her in her chest. Immense pain blossomed throughout her spirit body, and she stumbled nearly collapsing. Had she not had the shield she would have died at that moment. With a grunt of effort, she pushed herself past the two groups towards the throne.

With a squeeze she activated the eyes and chucked them as hard as she could towards the Dead Worms Spiritual Energy. As they flew through the air, she could feel another set of attacks being formed from the corrupted lot behind her. But before they could unleash them the eyes went off. Twin blasts of chaotic energy tore through the throne and blasted her backwards. Through the fighting of the two fierce energies, she saw that the corpse of the worm rear up letting out a sound of pure rage. The space around them began to tremble, and she spotted the Spirit clones took this chance to attempt to gain control of the worm.

However, the spiritual energy of the Dead god was not having none of that and sent out an intense beam of energy which struck the spirit clones and ripped them apart screaming. The Evil spirit seeing this fled and then a fierce wave of energy pulsed out from the worm and she found herself being flung from the spiritual realm. Within seconds she found herself falling through its body and finally breaking through to the outside falling towards the ground.

It was not a moment too soon as her SP ran out while she was landing and found herself once more in her body. She was injured and felt incredibly weak. The worm behind her let out a mournful cry of anguish, and she began to move to prevent being crushed just in case it fell towards her again. Looking back she saw the state of the worm, while she had been inside of it the commander had done serious damage to it. Huge chunks of it had been carved off leaving flaming trails and dark black blood around.

The commander was nearby, their armor slick with foul juices from the worm and was even more battered then it was. From the way one arm looked, it was obvious that they were injured and on the brink of exhaustion. With no one directly controlling the worm, the dead worm laid back down and began to slither slowly away. The commander wasn't having this raised their blade and she felt a surge of energy start to coalesce around the blade. Soon a tornado of fire began to appear around the blade and then the commander slashed down towards the dead Avatar and sliced completely through it.

The Worm gave one last howl and began to burn completely, and several smaller howls came from the street around her. Looking around she spotted several worm people suddenly just drop dead as the Evil God's Avatar began to burn to ash. She felt a patting on her leg and when she looked down she found Phil was looking happy and he said "You did an impressive job kid. You have my thanks for helping me get out of that mess. I shudder to think that I might have had to spend the rest of my life in some dead worm god."

The commander nearby recalled the energy back into their blade and sheathed her. Then they began to approach Veronica. She stood straight up and looked into this commander's eye. Well the slit in the helmet for the eyes anyway. As they got close, she realized just how tall this commander was. They were nearly a good head taller, though some of the height must come from the armor they were wearing. Even battered, there was a strange imposing nature to it that made one want to bow. The commander stopped right in front of her and she could feel them staring at her when Phil spoke up and said "Excuse me, that was a very impressive display of martial ability. That sword is very interesting. Would you by chance allow me to take a look at it?"

The commander glanced down at the penguin and must have given the bored a very intimidating glare because Phil quickly said "On second thought, you seem pretty busy just ignore me."

At that exact moment the ground began to tremble again. However quite unlike before with the worm this was shaking the entire city. She could see several buildings start to collapse under the intense shaking. Tired as she was, she nearly fell onto her ass but was caught by the commander before she did. Phil fell onto his bell and began to roll about. Just as the earthquake began to die down, there was a massive boom towards the center of the city. A massive pillar of flame shot up into the sky coming from the direction of the well.

Even when the earthquakes had died down, the pillar of flame still raged. What's more large chunks of flames began to peel off the pillar and fall back down as large fireballs exploded when they landed. The commander seeing this took off towards the center of the city. As the commander ran she got a message from Jack asking them to join up at the location of the order of Purification's hideout ASAP. Just as she was about to leave Phil said "Wait a second."

"What is it?"

"This place looks to be pretty dangerous for a merchant like me, so I'm going to head out. Before I did so, I thought I ought to give you something for your help." Phil said, digging through his pack. "Unfortunately, like I said most of what I have is not well suited for you. But I remembered I picked up something a while back that I didn't have any use for. However, someone like you would be able to use it quite well."

With that he pulled out a rather rusty looking rapier and handed it to her. "I know it doesn't look like much. But I assure you that their is a good blade beneath all that crud."

She examined it and saw:

 

 

"Thank you Phil." She said.

"No problem. If you go into the void, hit me up. I'll have plenty of new things ready to sell." With that Phil waddled off and a rip in space occurred and the penguin merchant slid on his belly into the hole which closed up after him.

Gripping the blade, she looked towards the pillar of fire and began to run towards her Lord to aid him.

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