BleedingTears
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Arcanist - Chapter 61
🕑 Added 2025-03-30 18:55:04 +0000 UTCValens blinked wearily as the outside influence forcefully cut his connection with the Lifeward and flung him away back into the giant hall, the surroundings a blurry mess of wavering lines, golden lights shining, outlines of armored figures taking form. It took him a painful moment to feel the solid ground underneath his feet—a painful moment and a sudden slap of a cloud of poison still lingering in the air.
Uh…
His insides were turned up and twisted about through the mad journey he’d experienced in just mere seconds. It left him with a sharp pain stabbing at his brain and soreness around his muscles as though he’d wrestled the tendrils of the Weeping Horror with nothing but his arms.
A meager price.
Meager indeed, to his thinking. He’d take soreness around muscles and some pain in the head to being ripped apart from the inside by the insidious needles of the creature any day now.
Seems like that’s the sort of deal I’d get in this world from now on. What happened to the creature, though?
He looked up with one hand pressed over the side of his chest, Lifesurge threads sprawling almost intuitively about his body, and saw the giant creature that covered most of the hall with its fleshy limbs.
It was burning. Ashes drifted off from where the holy lights of the Templars set the creature aflame, swept away by a furious wind that flapped the tails of Valens’s coat to his back. Tap. Tap. Tap. Was the rhythm of the uncomfortable coat, but there was relief in its simpleness. A relief and fresh air that was being cleaned by that wind.
Interesting.
Valens perked up when he tapped into the Resonance to feel the frequencies of the Terror. There was nothing. That giant body and the burning tendrils, the eye underneath the lid… None of them were there over the Resonance, as if the sprawling form of the creature was an… illusion.
So that’s what happens when you cut the connection off. The real Terror was still… there in the Spiritum. Its reflection, however, has been erased from Haven’s Reach.
There were many things strange about that land of frequencies, but one thing was made quite clear to Valens. If he were to face the Terror in its true form, his soul would’ve been torn apart before he could even begin to think about mounting a resistance.
Better to take the win than think too much about it. That’s what I’ll do.
Taking in a long, deep breath, he leaned down, wincing toward the ground, swept a little space clean of big pieces of broken tiles with the back of his hand, before sitting down. He was sensitive around the skin, the head, and every other place he could think of, and while the Templars were busy dealing with the rest of the work, he decided he might as well take some time off.
There were a lot of notifications.
[You have managed to defeat Weeping Horror (Remnant) - level 300] For killing a creature above your own level, you are granted bonus experience.
Your 1st Trial hasn’t been completed yet. The gained experience will be stored.
Your 1st Trial hasn’t been completed yet. The gained experience will be stored.
…
…
The moment he thought about them, a flood of them appeared before his eyes. Magical words hung in thick letters, and not all of them were about the experience he got from dealing with the creature. There were different ones as well.
Ding!
[Inferno (Adept) has reached level 11!]
[Gravitating Earth (Master) has reached level 8!]
[Lifesurge (Master) has reached level 15!]
[Lifeward (Master) has reached level 15!]
[Identify (Basic) has reached level 2!]
The Class Skill ‘Hexsurge - Basic’ has been registered into your skill slots.
Remaining Skill Slots: (0/10)
Valens blinked against the flurry of notifications. Dozens of them hovered before him, and picking them one by one was hard work. The skill levels he’d gotten on his most used spells didn’t come as a surprise, but the change in Identify and his new skill was a different tale. He could now feel the intensity of the frequencies not just when he gazed around him, but also when he focused on the spell formulae in his mind.
The skills he had registered to the System until now were spells he’d used in his old world. They were his own, and save for Inferno and Fireball which he learned recently, the rest of them demanded years of work for him to learn. But now, there was a new skill. Not only that, he had no idea how he earned it.
[Hexsurge (Basic)]: The ancient masters weaved the Spiritum from the reflections of the material worlds, and perfected their masterful precision through painstaking effort. You have only grasped the means with which they started their journey. Your hold around Void is basic, but you can now influence the Spiritum and its beings.
The skill’s description revealed itself the moment Valens focused on its complex spell formula. He nearly yelped at the sudden information since this had never happened before when he was working with other spells. He could only see their levels and his mastery over them, but not sentence-long descriptions of what they truly entailed.
Is it because I’ve gained a level in Identify? Can’t be… You’re telling me that there’s a distant possibility that if I gain a bunch of levels in Identify, I could get paragraphs of descriptions of anything?
If that was the case, then this skill could be one of his most important tools in this world.
There was only one problem, though.
How can I gain more levels in Identify? Just by… staring at things?
He’d been doing an awful lot of staring since he came to this world, but only after gazing into the eye of a Terror and witnessing a part of the Spiritum did he gain a level in Identify. If that was an indication of the spell’s progress, then just walking about in dreary stretches of Melton wouldn’t be enough.
If I can return to the Spiritum, though, then that might just do the trick.
Talking about that dreamy land, Valens had a few notifications about his little experience in there. Notifications that gave him some important, albeit limited, information.
[You have arrived at the Spiritum.]
[You have felt the presence of an Ancient One.]
[You have no Authority upon the Land of the Fated.]
He paused. So that strange place beyond the prison of the Weeping Horror was the Land of the Fated, where he felt an all-encompassing presence press upon his soul. And even that endless stretch of frequencies seemed to be only a part of the Spiritum.
The whole thing might just be bigger than my imagination.
Trouble was, it wasn’t just a place to explore to his own satisfaction. Horrors lived there. Beings that he felt so little against. Not only that, the moment he set foot in the Land of the Fated, he knew he didn’t belong there. He was a stranger, an uninvited guest who forced his way in and tried to stay his welcome until he was banished.
That place… I want to go there again.
The notifications didn’t end there. There were more.
[You have interrupted an Ancient Ritual, and sealed the Weeping Horror (Remnant).]
For sealing the Weeping Horror (Remnant), you are granted a Cursed Artifact.
[The Gate of Surges has opened.]
[The Cursed Artifact has been stored in the Vault of the Surgemasters.]
For sealing the Weeping Horror (Remnant), you are granted the title [Bane of the Shadows.]
[Bane of the Shadows - Title]: Your ancient presence is a threat to the Damned. They have no Authority upon your soul, but not all shadows are intelligent enough to heed the warnings. Lesser Damned will now be drawn to your scent. They will not be able to resist the temptation of the forgotten. Greater Damned will be more cautious in engaging you. You gain resistance to shadow-based attacks and become more sensitive to their presence. You gain the ability to influence their thoughts.
Valens sucked in a deep breath. His mind worked overtime to process such an amount of information before he decided to check the gate within his chest cavity. The name ‘Gate of Surges’ sounded interesting, and the mention of Surgemasters sent a shiver down his spine.
After all, the Undead Lich, Lord Zahul had called him ‘young Surgemaster’ in their secret little conversation.
What do we have here—
Strong steps sounded as Valens saw through his sound vision a figure walking toward him. Captain Edric seemed like a mighty pillar still standing strong, one hand resting over the sheath of his sword, the other waving gently by the side of his golden armor, stubbornly clean even after dealing with all that destruction.
I’ll take a look after we’re done here.
Unwilling he might be, he already lost himself in the string of notifications to the point that he forgot where he was. He would have time to go over them later. Pick each one of them apart, and… Valens looked down at his body. Pick some new clothes, as well.
Not the Templars, no. It’s always the Healer who needs another set of clothes. I wonder if I should take that as a message? Perhaps shadows can’t breach the ranks of sacred warriors, but have no qualms about taking a chance against the Healers?
Looking at his coat and trousers, Valens guessed there had to be some truth in there since his new clothes and the boots had braved the Weeping Horror’s assaults with nothing but courage. There had been a time when he was fine walking about a cave with bare feet. There had been a time when that was his normal.
But now, a part of him died when he saw patches of wool hanging stupidly down from his clothes.
Surely, I deserve better than this.
“We’ll get you some new clothes,” Captain Edric said when he came nearby, managing a little smile upon his lips that didn’t give an indication whether he was relieved to see Valens was still alive, or that he had doubts about his origins and didn’t quite know what to make of him.
Can’t blame him now, can I? I didn’t know I had an ancient soul as well.
“Might as well go with some quality leather this time, captain,” Valens said with an equally small smile to match Captain Edric’s unreadable face. “Or plates. I’d love to get my hands on some plates, golden or silver, for this whole journey has taught me one painful lesson."
“Oh?” Captain Edric cocked his head. “Go on, tell me what it is.”
“You can never have too many armor,” Valens confessed.
“It’s my fault,” the captain said heavily, the smile slipping from his lips. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. It was a trap meant for us.”
“And you walked right into it,” Valens said. He didn’t know much about Captain Edric, but after what little he’d seen until now, he could fairly say that the captain wasn’t a senseless man, nor was he the type who would put his team purposefully into a deadly situation. “You must’ve had your reasons.”
“Reasons?” Captain Edric shook his head. “We don’t have much use for them, Valens. It’s our job to walk into traps, to either cleanse the filth or get swallowed by it. Every Templar knows the risks. You, however, didn’t. I’ve been a fool to think I can protect you in case things went wrong. A damn fool, indeed.”
“I—”
“And I’ve been a fool to believe you’re just a man with few secrets who happen to share some qualities with Hexmenders,” Captain Edric cut him off sharply. “I know what you did,” he said, face hardening. “You have faced the Remnant with your soul. Opened your core against it. Your whole being. It could’ve devoured you. One single crack upon your shell, then it would’ve seeped in. You were a fool for trying that. An ignorant fool lucky to live to tell the tale.”
“Strange that it’s always the ignorant who gets lucky,” Valens said to him, facing his sharp gaze with calm. “I guess there’s a reason for that. Once you know too many things, you start thinking too much about the possibilities.”
“Shadows take you. You could’ve died, kid!” Captain Edric stared at him as though Valens proved a way more stubborn rock than he’d thought—one that would break right away. “Or what, were you thinking that little mark you carry in your pocket would earn you the glory you seek? You think there’s honor in turning into an Undead to fight in the Eternal War?”
Valens felt his left pocket of the coat. Resting inside was the little mark the Undead Lich, Lord Zahul gave him when they were done with the Rift. The Lich told him that this mark would bring him to the Depths when he died. Valens could still remember the eagerness with which the Lich uttered those words, and that silent conversation they had together… Lord Zahul knew this would happen. He felt the blazing desire inside of him.
“I appreciate the concern, captain,” Valens said simply, coldly, as he raised his chin. “But there seems to be a misunderstanding. You didn’t force me to come here. Nobody did. I wanted in. I wanted to see the reason of that sickness. I wanted to become a part of this. And I have no intention to put any blame on anyone here, because there’s no blame to be taken from any of this."
“What do you mean?” Captain Edric narrowed his eyes.
Valens raised a finger toward the dead husk of the creature. “There’s no blame, because thanks to you, I got what I wanted. The sickness is no more, and those Miners can now sleep sound in their precious little town. That’s enough for me.”
Captain Edric went silent as he gazed at him. Seemed as though he was trying to see through Valens’ intentions, to understand whether he was sincere in his words, to find a way to silence the guilt in his heart.
Valens smiled at him.
It was true.
He had gotten what he needed from this forgotten crypt. A lot more than what he hoped, if he was being honest, but nothing was more important than that little change in his Trial.
Evercrest… I don’t know who you are, but at least I know where to find you now.
……
Comments
Denizcan Uçuran T4icho
Eh, I didn't really go for a cheap cliffhanger in this chapter by mentioning the change in trial. It's just that... There was too much stuff already, and going deep about the Trial stuff would've doubled the chapter's size. That's why I've decided to mention it a little.
Ink's Muse
Mentioning the change to his trial right here at the end of the chapter just kinda makes me feel like an idiot who missed something and had me skimming back through to the last mention of his Trial to find out how it changed... I presume it's a teaser since I couldn't find anything of the sort. This isn't really going to be a problem for anyone who reads it without stopping here on the cliffhanger but it might be worth considering for future cliffhangers that the way you present them does matter :P (To me!) the way you've written the end of this chapter basically feels like it should be the beginning of a chapter. Uh--also worth saying, very much enjoying the story!
Jouni Osmala
Well, its suitable for archmage to mostly have his class skill slots filled with spells. But he still has plenty of general skill slots available. Chapter 2 showed two different type of slots.
Jouni Osmala
The trial sounds like he should hunt down something specific that Templar's would hunt down if they knew how. That would be interesting conversation. And if she points to Evercrest that would make it quite awkward, if someone asks about his trial. "I think my first trial means hunting down and silencing the Evercrest.". On the other hand having another level in identify could mean more information in the trial text. Another thing going for his character in the eyes of the church are his titles. The probability that big evil's of this world are criminals banished from his world in ancient times, would be another conversation if his otherworldly nature became known. Also their reaction to the fact that Arcane healer is really advanced specialization of Archmage would be interesting.
Stephen Pearson
Thanks for the chapter! :-)
EclecticReader
It was an odd move. Rather than building anticipation or working as a cliff hanger it made me think I missed the notification somewhere Even weirder when the notification text could have made an even better chapter end. Hopefully we get to see it next chapter
Caleb Reusser
Little irritating that we don't get to see what his trail text is at this time. He is aware of the change so it being hidden from us is nothing more than an artificial cliff by the author.
BlastYoBoots
Change in his *Trial?* That's interesting... Lemme look back at the exact wording... "[Trial of the Arcane Healer - I]: She watches from the depths of the crimson waves, her court silent and waiting. Nigh is the time she’s meant to awaken, but one must silence the whispers before they become a scream." I wonder if this means Valens now figures the "She" is this Evercrest... will be interesting to find out.
