Chapter 465 - A Refrain of Broken Chains IV

  It was almost morning by the time everyone finished receiving their rewards. The sun wasn't quite visible just yet, but it wouldn’t be much longer before it crested above the horizon. Still, Aurora extended her hospitality and provided each guest with a room.

  Cire closed the door as soon as she entered. Fox in her arms and her outfit turned into a nightgown, she flopped into the bed and buried her face in the pillows. Her experiment hadn’t proven nearly as successful as she’d hoped. She had exhausted most of her ideas, and the only thing she’d gained from the experience was truesight.

  She was tempted to sit up and get right back to her research, but she couldn’t be bothered. There was too much on her pte already for her to waste any more time on something as inconsequential as the ability to see through walls. Squeezing her fox just a little bit tighter, she retracted her wings and closed her eyes.

  Sleep took her in an instant. Wrapping her up in its embrace, it picked her spirit from her body and escorted it into the abyss. There, she found the usual scene—a series of doors floating in the darkness, waiting to be opened. The sole difference was in the portal that led into the phantom’s mind. Cracks ran all along its frame—thick, lightless cracks that revealed the empty space behind it.

  Cire only stared at it for a moment before continuing to her destination.

  She was expecting Rubia to be asleep, but she found her in the midst of painting when she entered her body. The particur scene came straight out of the original’s most recent experiences—the moment she finally met her mother again.

  Smiling, Cire watched for a few minutes before escaping as a spirit. After taking a few minutes to pace through the empty halls, she phased past the castle’s ceiling and erupted into the sky. She flew above the shield that guarded the pace, through the clouds, and back up to the manor where she had spent her childhood.

  She could practically see her younger self walking through the gardens as she held her mother’s hand. She watched as she studied under the rabbit’s instruction. And she watched as she sat alone on the roof, sobbing quietly as she lost all sembnce of hope.

  Another smile crossed her lips as she stepped off the manor’s floating base and turned her back to the sky. Opening her arms wide, she fell from the floating castle. Her speed grew and grew without restraint. Ignoring all the rules that could have possibly deyed her, she crashed into the pnet with a cheshire grin. She passed through the paved roads and went past the sewers, the dirt, and water reservoirs that sat beneath Valencia. And then, after hitting the bedrock, she whisked herself away.

  The next time she opened her eyes, she was in a dark cave, filled with faint blue rocks and rge mats of moss. She walked straight through the halls, ignoring all the walls and monsters, as she made her way to the spiralling corridor and into the colliding worlds. Racing through it, she sought the horn, climbed the mountain, and found the fiery whale within.

  The pce where her path first diverged from his.

  Whereas her other self—the version of her that Vel had wrongly predicted—had stolen the whale’s heart and embodied the primordial fme, she had taken the caster’s staff and found her strength in the cold.

  Touching the spike in her chest, she shook her head and walked back down the mountain. It wasn’t nearly as intimidating as it was back then. As her feet phased through the snow, and as she id her eyes on the infinite sky that y far beyond, she found herself enjoying the view.

  But of course she did.

  It wouldn’t have become her realm if all she held was fear.

  Borrok Peak was the first pce where she first came to terms with everything from her mother’s death to her father’s behaviour. It was where she finally came to accept herself, even if only partly. And it was where she had learned the joy of emerging triumphant.

  She almost wanted to stay and observe it for just a little longer, but gave herself a bit of a kick and continued on her way.

  Heading through a vertical hall completely filled with water, she emerged on a familiar cliff and unched herself right off it. She dove deep into the ocean and observed the foxes hunting in its depths before flying over the citadel and noting the chains that held it to its surroundings.

  And then, she closed her eyes again.

  Opening them in Vel’khan, she stood in front of the ruined fort where she had found her cat. She smiled softly, recalling the way that her orange-brown hair swayed in the wind as she marched down the road. Chasing Lia’s shadow, she crossed Farenlight’s den and climbed Catnap Hill before looking down on the city that had become her second home. There was the inn where they’d stayed for so long, the castle that married nd and sea, and all the niche little restaurants and shops that they had discovered together.

  She watched over the eldritch birds, stared at the distant castle, and gave the shop one st look before slowly drifting her way across the sky. She headed northwards, slowly passing through every nation along the way before stopping for a moment to gaze upon the city that had fallen at her hand. Only then did she return to Valencia, the Langgbjern mountains, and finally her body again.

  It was morning by the time she rose from her bed, but she didn’t wake the fox or even climb out from under the sheets. She simply held a finger in front of her face and poured her mana through her circuits. Mingling in just a little bit of divinity, she turned the resulting spark, the faint candle fme, into its primordial form.

  And then, chuckling, she blew it out, released the fox from her arms, and crawled out of bed.

  Their journeys had shared the same critical path. They went to all the same pces, met all the same people, and fought all the same monsters. And yet, she was far better off than her other self.

  The result had little to do with the fact that he was a man, and she was a woman. That particur change had done almost nothing at all.

  At most, it had deyed Sylvia’s affections.

  Even if she were a man, she would have picked ice over fire. Even if she were a man, she would have denied the retionships that her companions had offered. And even if she were a man, she would have never degenerated into the god-hating demon that awaited him at the end of his path.

  Because she was not the person that Vel had predicted.

  Her mother had put far more effort into ensuring that she felt loved. Her father had done his utmost to spoil her before her mother’s departure. And he had compensated by becoming a thousand times harsher thereafter.

  Whereas the man who never existed was buried in expectations he was genuinely expected to fulfill, she was presented with a set of impossible standards that she could have never achieved.

  Because her mother was still alive and kicking, squirreled away beneath a goddess’ wing, while his was dead and buried.

  She wasn’t him and she didn’t for a second want to become him.

  Still, she accepted him, embraced him. For despite having never existed, for despite living only as one of Vel’s delusions, he had paved her path.

  And it was only by rejecting his affinity for fire, by shedding her temptation to borrow his strength, that she knew she was finally ready.

  Cire assumed her true form as she flew out of the window and settled between a pair of hills. Curling up her body as comfortably as she could, she took a breath and closed her eyes.

  Her divinity swelled. Strength bubbled up from her core and flooded her circuits as the system responded to her call.

  She neither waited for Flux nor called upon the system for aid. With her own power, she pulled together all of the traits that she wanted and forged her st mortal css. Her focus was strength. She wanted her strikes to carry enough force to threaten a more powerful foe. Her eyes and her breath filled the gap now that her circuits were healed, but they were insufficient. She wanted more casual strength, strength unreliant on a special ability.

  And with that strength followed the speed to deliver it. Her skeleton provided enough defense against lesser foes already, and their greater counterparts would be unobstructed regardless. Defensive builds required heavy specialization on top of the btant stupidity to tank hits for no reason. Cire was much better off evading, but her ability to predict her opponents could only take her so far on its own. She needed to be faster if she wanted to best her father.

  She had long arrived at both conclusions and thought up her next css well in advance. Still, her mind wandered as she worked. She couldn’t help but consider what it would be like to pursue an alternative path.

  So she prepared a few of those as well.

  Having registered the entries with the system, she took a deep breath and worked her divinity. Opening another of the box’s menus, she accessed the ascension subsystem and requested her body’s duplication.

  Log Entry 930942Transient Replication has failed. (Error Code: 7a30. This action cannot be performed in this location.)

  Cire paused for a second before rising to her feet and snaking out the portal that served as the goddess’ front door. Once out of her domain, she found a nice, ft piece of mountain and repeated the request. Her second attempt was much more successful. Four bodies perfectly identical to her own appeared in a line in front of her.

  The whole exercise of summoning and mutating them was outright extraneous. The floating boxes rendered her creations in pixel-perfect detail, but she didn’t feel right without the live demonstration. And even if she did, she knew she would have done it regardless.

  Going through the motions was fun.

  Even if entirely pointless, she felt like it made the process more memorable, and it was only once in the eternity ahead that she would ascend to aspect.

  The first snake-moose began to warp as a smile crossed her lips. Seated on the far left, it grew a bulkier frame. It wasn’t quite a dragon, but one could have been easily convinced by looking only at the upper body. Rather than the typical two-legged frame supported by the upright lizards, she had a long, four-legged shape attached to an even longer tail. It was as much of a compromise as she was willing to make. Her jaw was more defined, a little less thin and elegant than it was at present, and her cws were modeled like Builledracht’s. She had a pair of wide leathery wings to accompany the towering, thirty-meter frame, but they were easily retractable, built so Boris could repce them at a moment’s notice.

  The st thing to note was the colour of her mane. It was whiter, closer to her father’s colour, but it reflected faint shades of red and blue beneath the morning light.

  She opened her log and reviewed its qualities again, looking them over one st time before she made up her mind.

  Aspect of Frozen FmesSomewhat interesting css that borrows many of my other self’s ideas. Decently strong, acceptable true form, reasonably attractive humanoid form, but kind of bori—

  The box cracked apart before she could finish reading the entry—the very same behaviour exhibited by the space before her. Through the fractured splinters entered Flux, whose lips were curved into a violent frown. Builledracht followed soon after, stepping out of the rift with his eyes focused on her test creation.

  A glowing pink leg poked its way through the rift as well, but Flux kicked it back in and closed the gate behind her. Without a word, she walked up to Cire, wiped the box’s contents with a swipe of the hand, and filled it in with text of her own.

  Aspect of Frozen FmesTo become the aspect of frozen fmes is to embody restraint in passion. She is the pgue of reality spshed atop a childhood dream. She is the great equalizer that transforms zealous fervour into fear and regression. And she is the spear that shall descend from the heavens and seal the inner fme. Chaotic in nature, she applies her judgement only to those unlucky enough to garner her attention, for she is as much a victim as any other. Her permanent, accelerated view of the world leaves her even more incapable of extended focus and commitment. It takes a special kind of sick and twisted person to come up with a css like this. Consulting a mental health professional is advised.

  Aspect of frozen fmes’ maximum level is 5000. Further ascensions are no longer guaranteed and cannot be known at this time.

  Cire gave the entry’s author an unamused frown before turning her eyes to the next snoose in line. Not-Cire number two began to change as soon as she was presented the spotlight. Her body began to wither as she opened her mouth and craned her neck towards the sky. From within her throat crawled a mass of fleshy hands.

  The ball of limbs made an audible spt as it hit the floor, its blood seeping into the snow as it changed its shape again. The arms formed a flower around the heart that was her core before presenting on a runway of fingers the shape she took at the start of her journey.

  Changed into a being of ice.

  It was almost like one of the options presented upon her first ascension, only her heart was clearly visible beneath the protective rime. Pumping, it filled the lines that ran through her body with a well of rampant divinity. It was not red or gold like any of the divinity she knew, but dyed in a brilliant blue. It was the colour it took when integrated into the endless supply of mana derived from her newfound flesh.

  Aspect of the Vergs HeartThe aspect of the vergs heart is a disciple of the god of death. Cold as stone, she wanders the nd for one purpose—to murder all that inhabit it with the utmost efficiency. Those who know of her coming will vacate their homes and abandon everything they’d ever established, for there is nothing but destruction in her wake, and no one to stop her rampage. She hates all that is living and wishes for even her own torch to find itself extinguished.

  Aspect of the vergs heart’s maximum level is 5000. Further ascensions are no longer guaranteed and cannot be known at this time.

  Cire blinked as she looked over the description again. Admittedly, it did come from a bit of a darker pce, an alternate future where she was unable to ward Vel off, but Flux’s description was probably an overexaggeration. Probably.

  Shaking her head of the morbid thought experiment, Cire tasked her third copy with stepping onto the stage. And surely enough, she did just that. While the first two transformed their bodies, becoming new things entirely, the third simply formed a halo above its head and made itself a little more translucent. It wasn’t quite a spirit, but it was close enough to the border that it was functionally immortal.

  Aspect of the Sauntering SoulNone are quite as absent minded or otherwise mentally defunct as the aspect of the sauntering soul. A veritable ball of chaos, she does precisely as she pleases, abiding only by her twisted sense of reason. Sadistic, cruel, and eternally carefree, she wanders the world in search of entertainment in hopes of one day overcoming the numbness that has eroded her heart away.

  Aspect of the sauntering soul’s maximum level is 5000. Further ascensions are no longer guaranteed and cannot be known at this time.

  It was another alternative born of a hypothetical—the all-too-likely case that she simply gave up and stopped caring the moment Aurora’s mirror expined her father’s behaviour. It was a lot more likely than she would have liked to admit. The st thing she had wanted to know, let alone acknowledge, was that her father had her best interests at heart.

  Cire number four took the original’s ment as her cue to transform. Her hind legs turned to cws as her body lengthened, and her already thin snout grew even sleeker. Her body followed suit as full fledged wings grew from her wrists and ankles. Though not quite Boris-level, they were made of bdes, sharp enough to mow down her foes, but not so sharp that they cut her when she retracted them.

  Unlike the other forms, which sported either one or no horns, the fourth had four. Two grew from each side of her skull, with one pair facing forward and the other twisted behind. Both sides were pointed like a bull’s, but sculpted to divine perfection.

  Aspect of Chaotic DelightThe aspect of chaotic delight is an ill-fated creature fueled by a self-centered delusion. She births joy from strife and rage from happiness, strength from nihility and pleasure from pain. A walking singurity, her very presence destabilizes the system. Glitches are more common in her vicinity, and the ws of causality lose all meaning. Probability becomes more a matter of choice than chance, and even the ws of thermodynamics find themselves cast to the wayside. Psychotic and utterly unstable, the aspect of chaotic delight is precisely the end of reason.

  Aspect of chaotic delight’s maximum level is 5000. Further ascensions are no longer guaranteed and cannot be known at this time.

  And with that, the evaluation was over.

  All of the Cires had completed their transformations and put their abilities on open dispy.

  All except for one.

  The st Cire to change was the original. The first mutation was subtle, barely noticeable to anyone not paying the utmost attention. Though their appearance remained seemingly identical, her scales grew sharper, harder, and a tad bit more translucent as they were forged anew. Their frames were changed to be made of true ice, or at least the substance that had started its journey there as.

  True ice was defined by its purity. Divinity was used in its creation, it didn’t, couldn’t have much beyond precisely what it was. It contained magic, and even a rge chunk over fifty cubic centimeters in volume could hold only five points of divinity. Such was the material’s standard.

  By becoming a part of her body, by producing the blood that ran through her veins, and by bearing the constant burden of her divinity, it had gone far beyond its original specification. But even noting its change, noting its integration into her body, Cire, Flux, and everyone involved had been happy to refer to it as the base from which it had been derived.

  Because even without explicit recognition, the nameless substance had continued to grow.

  It worked its way into her hair as it finished enhancing her scales. Each strand was reforged, remade to be tough as diamond. During the day, the change had little visual impact—the individual threads were just a little bit bluer and easier to see through—but her hair was sure to glow if exposed to light at night.

  The lone horn that sprouted from her forehead retreated back into her skull. Perhaps such a feature would have been natural had she been a qilin like Flux, but as a snake moose, it served only as a nod to her other self. It passed its thunderbolt shape to her shard instead, sharpening and strengthening it beyond the point of reason.

  Her wings tripled in number. Her snout grew the tiniest bit sharper, her hooves were repced by the same taloned cws that accompanied her forelimbs, and the tip of her tail was sharpened, refined into a jagged bde still hidden beneath an elegant brush. For a brief moment, her sclera bckened and a series of glowing marks appeared all over her body, but both traits vanished as soon as they manifested.

  All in all, she looked almost the same. But of course she did.

  Cire was content with her appearance.

  It was everything else that needed to change.

  Log Entry 930943Your ascension is complete. You have become the Aspect of Forsaken Fetters.

  Your base health has increased from 100000 to 50000000.

  Your base mana has increased from 500000 to 100000000.

  Your ability scores have increased by 50000.

  The efficiency of your ability scores has been increased to the system’s upper limit.

  Cataclysm Convergence has evolved into Cataclysm Convergence II. Health and mana regeneration are now based on their maximum values instead of their missing values. Divinity and divinity regeneration have been partially unified. Divinity regeneration has been set to 1% of its total value per second. Regeneration is now based on the faster of perceived seconds and real seconds.

  Your hidden racial skill, Phantom Blood, has become empowered. The realm of dreams bends more easily to your will.

  You have acquired the Ultimate 0x000000001cf6a523 skill.

  Your skill is currently unnamed. You may choose to override the system default of Ultimate 0x000000001cf6a523 with whatever you choose. If the default system name is retained, it may be changed by another entity at a ter point in time.

  You have unlocked a quinary css slot.

  A smile crossed her lips. Everything was exactly to spec.

  Aspect of Forsaken FettersYou stand as an embodiment of freedom, as one who has broken from her bindings and sought her own path ahead, and it is precisely that which renders you an aspect of chaos. Released from the shackles of your past, you exist only to impose your own twisted view upon the world. Ironically, your powers remain bound, frozen by Flitzegarde’s constraints. It is difficult to argue that you are deserving of this title or concept. And yet, true to its core, you have ignored all accompanying errors and staked your cim regardless.

  Aspect of forsaken fetters’ maximum level is 5000. Further ascensions are no longer guaranteed and cannot be known at this time.

  Flux had completely bastardized the description, but Cire was happy with the css regardless. Strength welled up from within her core. She felt like she could finally hit hard enough to punch through Olethra’s defense. And her newfound ability only made it even easier.

  Ultimate 0x000000001cf6a523Ultimate skill. Your enemies may no longer activate or leverage any abilities or concepts reting to defense in your presence. When computing systemic damage, you penetrate 100% of your enemy’s defense and ignore all damage reduction. Additionally, your attacks can no longer be blocked and instantly destroy shields and armour.

  Log Entry 930944Ultimate 0x000000001cf6a523 has been designated Unfading Star.

  The ultimate wasn’t quite as almighty as the description made it seem. Only strict blocks were negated; her opponents could still dodge and parry her attacks. Still, it would certainly prove useful, especially against the unsuspecting.

  Log Entry 930945Your titur css, Witch of the Seventh Tempest, has consumed your quinary css slot. You may no longer select a quinary css.

  Your titur css has been enhanced. Heavenly Annihition has been enhanced and css-relevant ability score growth has increased by 100%. Consequently, you have gained 7478000 ability points.

  You are no longer affected by vectors produced by other entities, lest you elect otherwise.

  You have acquired the Horizon’s Grasp skill.

  Inspecting heavenly annihition only widened Cire’s smile even further. It had gained the ability to fire smaller, less-world-threatening projectiles—a way to escape Flitzegarde’s rules and make it at least somewhat useful. She hadn’t even pnned for the particur boon, but the system had given her exactly what she needed regardless.

  Horizon’s Grasp - Level 1Spells and abilities that require physical contact can be freely cast within a distance of 3.1 meters (3 meters + 0.1 meters per level.)

  With her fourth ascension complete, she had all the tools she needed to face her father.

  It was only a matter of mastering them before they met in battle.

  ___

  Cire Augustus

  Health: 184306600Mana: 276897960Divinity: 10769833108

  Ability Scores [x1.12] - 15451542 Points Avaible- Agility: 145146- Dexterity: 154451- Spirit: 111182- Strength: 240568- Vitality: 199755- Wisdom: 263135Racial Css: Aspect of Forsaken Fetters - Level 1000.00- Cataclysm Convergence II - Level 1500.67- Realm of Eternal Frost- True Ice Manipution - Level 965.10- Unfading Star

  Titur Css: Witch of the Seventh Tempest - Level 3740.92- Catgirl Affinity - Level 25- Essence Manipution - Level 657.87- Heavenly Annihition- Horizon’s Grasp - Level 1.00- Animus Magicae 0x00000000001f99a2 - Level 967.42

  Uncssed Skills- Artifact Manipution - Level 15- Cadrian Court Etiquette - Level 25- Digging - Level 19.89- English - Level 25- Fishing - Level 27.31- Llystletein Authority++ - Level 38.81- Marish - Level 20.12- Napping - Level 144.02- Singing - Level 99.37- Sneaking - Level 65.70- Weapon Mastery - Level 1967.00