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Arcanist - Chapter 60
🕑 Added 2025-03-29 19:35:41 +0000 UTCBlazing fury and the heat of flames muted the uncertainty and fear, removing the possibilities from his mind. There was not much else to it—not much else, indeed, now that he thought about it.
The sheer size of the creature scarcely mattered. The presence with which it choked the giant hall was a mere weight upon his shoulders. So long as it was of flesh and blood, of life even if it was wicked, Valens could find a way in.
He sprang forward, breath rasping in his throat, heart thumping in his chest. Emotions rushed at him. He embraced them as he had never before. Turned deaf against the painful desire that had told him to reach for Apathy. There, it said to him, awaited a cure for the unexpected breach through the steely net that protected him.
Valens refused.
Light Feet carried him toward the wriggling cloud of tendrils ahead, through the broken flesh and spurting blood, into the chaos ahead as the Templars ripped a way open for him with their golden armor shining and sharp swords biting, stabbing, and hacking. He also felt the thrill in the depths of their hearts and heard the tune of their Resonance like the sound of mad laughter echoing in the darkness.
Frequencies came back to him in pieces as his hold over the Resonance grew stronger when he tapped into the mana pool in his chest, pulling the valuable source from the gurgling river and letting it pour into the flames of the Inferno burning high. He stretched a tongue of it with the back of his hand and caught a sneaky tendril making for him just before it reached his chest.
The stench of burnt flesh filled his nose when the Inferno ripped into the fleshy limb. The outer shell cracked, and black blood dripped down from the little holes burnt across its surface. Yet it was strong, resisting the spell with layers upon layers of condensed foul mana, slowly chipping away at the flames and worming stubbornly toward him.
That was when Valens understood.
There might be fear in that giant eye’s gaze, but it didn’t feel pain or try to escape. It was as though it knew Valens was no different than a dangerous, insidious thought that once seeped into its mind—he would take away something precious from it. That was why it couldn’t let him. That was why the Weeping Horror had to silence that thought before it could become real.
However, there was one thing the creature didn’t know. Valens needed not to hide in a Shrieker’s core or spread his presence to find a way in.
No.
For him, a single touch was enough.
He moved with steely dedication, one hand stretched out toward the tendril working its way closer to his chest, the other hand keeping the Inferno fueled to stave off the other limbs about him. One touch, then he’d be in like a poison this creature had never felt before. Only one touch—
A tendril exploded from the tiles underneath his feet with blinding speed and drilled halfway across into his right thigh. Crimson blood spurted out from the wound. Pain bloomed in the Resonance and pressed on down toward his unprotected mind and into his thoughts. Muddling his resolve. Trying to break him apart now that it had found a hole to dig in.
Valens ground his teeth and choked the scream piling into his throat. It hurt. It hurt everywhere from his thigh to his mind, his ribcage rattling as a tremor ran through him. He barely found within him the will to draw his hand back and send a Lifesurge down the wound. He washed the area with waves of lifemana as tiny needles from the tendril sprawled inside his body like a venomous web.
Sounds echoed in his mind: Templars roaring, Templars fighting still, Captain Edric growling, and a light growing sharper over the din. In the corner of his mind, he heard a melody, a rhythm of unknown origins, formed from a string of words as they reverberated in the giant hall, trying to reach further beyond the ancient crypt as though a prayer meant for someone above.
He then looked in. To himself. There was no one for him to believe in, no one for him to call out to. His Master was gone, and he was alone in another world.
But that was a bargain he’d agreed upon. That was the deal when Master Eldras granted him the Void Sphere.
Breath wheezed weakly out from his lips. His chest heaved. Lifemana waves hissed against the foul mana the tendril pumped into his body, washed it off like dirt over the walls, and forced it back and back again until it returned to the mass of the creature. Finally, with the foul mana gone, Valens felt the creature’s touch around his thigh.
And then he was in.
‘No…’
The giant mass of the Weeping Horror shifted as a Lifesurge seeped in through a single tendril. Lifeward followed hastily after it as Valens blinked to regain his focus. The creature’s Resonance slowly revealed itself in his sound vision, its twisted anatomy laid bare like a detailed painting.
It was a maze of flesh stretching into corridors of corroding acid and dark blood. There were lingering presences inside, hundreds and thousands of them laying in a lull, whispering the tales of their unsolved mysteries, still trying to call out to their children as if believing with unwavering certainty that there was still hope.
They are gone.
‘Evercrest!’
‘She lied!’
The Weeping Horror growled in a hum of frequencies so strong that Valens felt each of the notes in the back of his teeth. His skin crawled when he nearly lost control of the Lifesurge and Lifeward pair weaving toward the giant eye. Like sharp daggers, the frequencies stabbed into Valens’s heart
But he didn’t bleed.
All throughout his life, he relied on Apathy whenever a mother came seeking his aid for her child. All throughout his life, he fixed people and demanded nothing in return. It was his job.
But here, no one needed saving.
Here, there were only monsters.
‘She used me!’
The Terror screamed.
‘Mother!’
It shrieked, and its voice sent waves of crushing agony to every part of its body.
‘It wasn't you…’
It labored with a breath that sucked in what air was there around the hall.
‘That woman deceived me!’
An enormous shadow covered the hall, bloating the golden lights still shimmering in the darkness. There was little air left to breathe, and then there was no air at all. Only an absolute presence intent on crushing them flat across the broken tiles.
[The Weeping Horror has no authority upon your soul.]
A loud bell rang in the Resonance.
The pressure shattered.
Valens came wearily to himself, managed tight control over the Lifesurge and Lifeward pair, and finally reached the giant eye with his surges.
The outside world became silent. Pain alleviated to a weak sting that pulsed like the distant beatings of a heart too far for him to hear. The frequencies cleared away, and there, within the giant eye of the Weeping Horror, he saw a sea of foul mana.
Floating over it was a giant, round-shaped shard with a single crack upon it.
The core.
Carved atop its surface were familiar murals depicting the Weeping Horror, but there was no sight of the women this time. No, in the first few murals, the eye was alone in a deep stretch of nothingness, gliding stubbornly on with its tendrils spread out around it as it pushed forward. It passed through burning seas of light ahead, crushed rocks and spheres bigger than the mountain it had once been. All for a single purpose. All that agony just to reach the five giant pillars hanging from the edge of that nothingness.
Wait. Those are not pillars…
Valens froze as it dawned on him. Those were fingers of a hand, curled gently as if beckoning the giant eye to come closer, gleaming with tender lights as though they belonged to a mother who wanted to see her child succeed on its own.
They are infinitely more massive than this giant monster. Who? Does that hand belong to Mother—-
He started shaking and trembling as voices began flooding his mind. Thousands of them mumbling senselessly. Mixing into a chorus of murmurs that got louder the more he stared at that last mural. It was as though the mere sight of those fingers overwhelmed him. It was as though the very act of staring at them was a terrible sin.
Valens forcefully tore his gaze away from the murals and instead focused on the Resonance of the core. Once he caught the hum of the frequencies, calmness washed over him. It wasn’t the Apathy. It was the deep familiarity he felt all throughout his life with the songs of the world. They were his to hear. They were his to control.
With minute precision, he singled out the frequencies, picking them apart one by one like he was operating on a dying patient until he came across a strange find. The creature was incomplete. Only a part of its frequencies managed to ooze out from that single crack on the sphere, while the other, greater part remained locked inside, being held there by the hard shell of the core.
Wait. This thing isn’t a core. It’s a… prison.
His breath caught in his throat when it occurred to him that he was just about to break the cage and release the creature’s true form to the world outside. That would’ve been a terrible mistake, as even dealing with a small part of this monster was only possible with three Templars by his side. It was they who kept his body safe while he searched for the core of the creature. It was thanks to their aid that he could focus on the Resonance.
What do I do? I can’t break the core, and there’s not nearly enough mana in my mana pool to cleanse this giant creature. I have to find another way. A different way…
There was only one way. He turned his intent on that single crack upon the sphere, and, chest heaving; he sent the Lifesurge and Lifeward pair into that endless prison.
He expected resistance, perhaps a sudden force that would threaten his control over the spells. Surely, the creature wouldn’t just let him inside. Surely, it would fight back.
It didn’t. Valens’s surges slid swiftly in through the crack as though drops of rain sliding across the tilted tiles of a roof.
The Resonance changed and changed with it the scene Valens witnessed in his sound vision.
[Ancient soul, you have arrived at the Spiritum.]
There were frequencies. Layers upon layers of them sprawling endlessly until they surpassed the limits of his sound vision. What few acres he could see of this strange land were riddled with twisted shapes moving silently about. Some pulsed brightly, others shimmered soft and slow, like dying embers in a hearth long since abandoned. They floated across nothing, and yet Valens felt their weight. Each fragment of a song, reflecting presences both human and not, but none more present than the one hung all above them.
It belonged to a form giant beyond logic. Valens couldn’t see the end of those tendrils, but one of them was near him. Close enough that he could feel the familiar foul mana inside of it, passing through him and reaching toward somewhere behind him. Curious, he turned his back and came across a giant door with a sigil carved upon its surface. That sigil... belonged to the Mother of Venerable Fates.
Where am I? What is this place?
He felt himself grow weightless when he gazed at that sigil. A force yanked at him from a place he couldn’t see, and then a presence fell heavily over the Lifeward as if to silence it. His Lifesurge threads were barely holding on as strange frequencies hacked at them. The distant pain returned and spread a blinding agony all across his being.
He winced. He tried to claw away at the presence but failed. He wasn’t strong enough to even begin to influence this force, let alone dismiss it. He had to release the Lifeward to stop the connection because to whoever this force belonged; it was clear that it didn’t want him here.
I’ll take one last look. There has to be something.
There was a crack in the door. Almost too small that he nearly missed it. The tendril that went through the Lifeward’s Resonance was being sucked into it. Grinding his teeth, Valens focused on the lifemana scalpels, and as if severing a necrotic limb from the body, he forced them to cut into the tendril’s frequencies.
The Weeping Horror screamed in agony.
The frequencies of the strange land muddled and mixed into each other until they became nothing but an unrecognizable mess. A fleeting dream, growing distant by the second, slipping from underneath Valens's feet.
Notifications started raining in.
He only had time to catch one of them before the force pulling at him grew stronger and flung him out from this strange land of frequencies.
Ding! You have learned the Class Skill ‘Hexsurge - Basic.’ Do you want to register it in one of your skill slots?
……..
What a place to end it, eh? Tomorrow's the aftermath of the climax. We have mysteries and notifications to go about. I'll see you round, then.
Comments
Denizcan Uçuran T4icho
You know what? You're right. As I read the chapter once again, it occurred to me that I had to add some things for the overarching plot to make sense. That's on me since I wrongly managed your expectations. Won't happen again, though, I promise!
Elle
I think you over hyped me on this chapter. Mentioning the climax was next chapter, but then ending, "Notifications started raining in," and, "He only had time to catch one of them." Is 100% a cliffhanger instead of a climax. After that I was left wondering what hexsurge was. As a cliffhanger there is an understanding hexsurge may be something big, but as written i don't understand.
Stephen Pearson
Great(ly mysterious) chapter, thanks! :-)
