Chapter 469 - The Land of the Listlessly Lethargic

  Cire craned her neck and stretched her shoulders as she turned her eyes on the horizon. Though she stood atop a towering mountain—one of the many jagged peaks that dominated the Langgbjern range—there was little scenery for the lyrkress to absorb.

  The world was muted with white. A fierce blizzard raged, blotting out everything from the sky to the mountain to the frozen goon down below. It didn't help that the snow was wet and heavy. The end of winter was still a way’s off, but even so far north, there was the odd day where Primrose stirred, briefly rising from her hibernation to replenish her energy reserves. And it was precisely on days like those that the world half melted.

  Though unbothered by the cold, Cire found the accompanying moisture to be a minor annoyance. The storm clung to her body and left her cloak glued to her skin. Her hair was no better off. The updo with which she had left Aurora’s castle had turned into a sloppy mess. She could have easily solved the problem by making her cloak water repellent or perhaps pushing the storm away with her magic, but she didn’t feel the need. She had chosen to venture into the blizzard’s embrace, and she wasn’t about to change her tune on account of a minor inconvenience.

  Even obscured by the heavy fkes, Cire’s resembnce to Rubia was clear. They shared all the same features. But of course they did, with Rubia being born of her blood. The few differences had stemmed from the growth that followed the homunculus’ creation; Rubia’s hair only went down to her shoulders whereas Cire’s was almost knee-length. Their silky, flowing locks shared the same arctic blue colour, but Cire’s had taken on a slightly translucent quality. It was most obvious at night, when the moon illuminated the frozen strands with a bewitching, ephemeral glow. The original was also a fair bit taller, and her chest had gone from negligible to eye-catching in the two years she’d spent away from the manor. She won out on the ear front as well, though both their fluffers extended to the point of absurdity.

  Cire was as proud of the enormous, triangur appendages as she was the bde of ice embedded in her chest. Shaped like a bolt of lightning, it served not only as a stunningly beautiful decoration, but a reminder of the time she had spent in Llystletein. It was a startling, eye-catching window into her body’s interior. And yet, it wasn’t quite as notable as the talons that had repced her hands. Each of her four fingers was tipped with a cw, the accompanying scales of which ran all the way up to her elbows.

  Still, it wasn’t the most obvious difference. That particur title belonged to their tails, or in Rubia’s case, the ck thereof. Cire’s fifth limb was over two meters long. Its base was as thick as her thighs, but its tip was thinner than her fingers—not that it could be seen beneath the fluffy tuft that crowned its furthest extremities. The rest was covered in a set of rigid scales that almost made the limb look like it was inflexible, but it was every bit as dextrous as every other.

  Their simirities, however, only applied to their exteriors. As a homunculus, Rubia’s body was made of a viscous, malleable slime, while Cire’s was flesh and blood—not to say she wasn’t peculiar. Where another creature might have had a digestive tract, Cire had nothing but muscle. Her bones were made of the same material as her ice shard, and even her lungs were practically vestigial. Without the need to breathe, the air sacks were only present to facilitate her breath attacks and aid in calming her nerves.

  As, she found neither of those things necessary as she continued to take in the world. Sure, she was about to leap into an army of monsters, but she was without a hint of fear. Even if led by one of the Langgbjerns’ twenty crowned creatures, the orniferins were easily dismissed.

  Case in point, their inability to spot her.

  Not a single one of the thousand-odd creatures noticed even though she stood out in the open. She, on the other hand, could see them loud and clear. While the storm certainly might have blotted out her regur vision, Cire saw just fine by listening to the world around her. She didn’t need to project her voice and await an echo. Simply by raising her ears overhead and focusing her divinity within them, she could draw the world in her mind. And her prey was hardly exempt.

  The creatures’ heads were shaped like crabs, while their bodies featured an unsettling number of segments and legs. Covered in carapace, they looked like something between a shrimp and a centipede, with far greater resembnce to the tter. Size was the main disqualifier for both comparisons. The smallest mature orniferin, the king that ruled over the crowd, was over five meters long.

  It was not because he was one of the crowned that he was smaller, but rather because he was a he to begin with. Females started no longer than a human thumb, but they molted and expanded as they grew older, their final forms nearing lengths of a hundred meters. Males, on the other hand, were stuck in the shapes and sizes that they had at birth. In the first pce, their growth was effectively unnecessary. The average buck perished within a month from the time of his birth. They lived only to supply the females with the material they needed to mix up their genes. Their whole lives were led as tools, objects that their oppressors exploited for gratification.

  The king was the only one to have survived the cycle. He broke free, slew his former masters, and took up his position as his people’s leader.

  Under his rule, no more males were birthed. The tormentors-turned-sves were disallowed from producing the special eggs that brought the smaller sex into the world. All the children that stemmed thereafter were perfect copies of their mothers—not that many children were born to begin with. Most of his serfs were dungeon monsters, individuals that arose from the abyss beneath the frozen estuary.

  Cire was familiar with none of those facts. The species’ history was as irrelevant to her as its purpose or creed. When she looked upon the king’s visage, she saw nothing but a wad of experience. Her instincts were telling her that the orniferin was easy prey, a free kill just waiting to be cimed. It was the perfect opportunity to test drive Heavenly Annihition in combat, given its recently loosened restraints, but she refrained from enacting the orbital bombardment. Getting used to her body was of far greater importance.

  The snake-moose had spent all of her ability points right after ascending. She put roughly forty percent of her points into wisdom, sprinkled a few points into dexterity and split the rest between agility and strength. Vitality and spirit remained where they were. Her newfound rapid regeneration did more than enough for her resources already.

  Originally, she had hoped to hold onto the extraneous power until she faced her father, but it didn’t take long for her to realize that she needed time to adjust. That much was obvious even before she ascended. Olethra’s death had left her with an uncontrolble mass of divinity that leaked wherever she went.

  The same phenomenon applied to her body. Suddenly increasing her agility stat roughly ten times had completely thrown off her proprioception, and the accompanying dexterity boost hadn’t helped. Nothing was ever exactly where she expected. Sure, her control had improved in the time since she’d acquired her ascension, but she still found herself needing to consciously track her limbs.

  Doing just that, Cire leapt from the mountaintop and dove headfirst towards the crab-centipedes. The heavy snow deyed their reaction, but the king was not so careless as to be caught off guard. He turned all eight of his eyes around after she closed forty of the fifty kilometers between them. A metallic creaking sound escaped his gnashing jaws as he drew a line with one of his pincers. The arcane trail bubbled into a magical bst—a sharp bde of impossibly hot water.

  It melted through the storm, swallowing all of the snow in its wake as it grew a thousandfold. In the half second it took for the bde to reach her, it had already become a tidal wave in the shape of a sword beam.

  Unflinching, Cire grabbed the spell and crushed it between her talons. The orniferin immediately prepared another spell, but it was far too te. The intruder suddenly ramped up her speed. She dove into one of his servants and smashed it into the frozen goon.

  So heavy was the impact that it shattered the winter barrier. The ten-meter-tall ice sheet that covered the surface was blown to bits, and her unfortunate target was no better off. Its shell burst with such violence that its neighbours shared its instant death. Shards of broken chitin bored through their shells like shrapnel and eviscerated their internals.

  The haphazard opening move was immediately followed by the orniferins’ extermination. Some, she seized with her vectors and ripped apart. Some she detonated with frozen blooms. And some, she simply absorbed.

  The life faded from their bodies even though she never touched them. Those killed in such a way found their spirits barred from returning to the cycle. Their very essence was broken apart, deconstructed and converted to power beyond the experience they granted.

  Enraged, the orniferin king summoned the might that all of his legs contained and charged her. He swung the cws that came off the side of his face, one grasping with its bde-like teeth, and the other clenched to deliver blunt force. It was a practiced, killer combo that left the crab assured of certain victory. Both attacks looked perfectly ordinary, like standard strikes pulled straight out of a textbook and delivered with perfect form. But of course they were. Like every crowned monster, the orniferin had all the levels he needed to become a celestial. But technique, strength, and speed alone would never grant the absolute confidence of a certain kill.

  Nay, that stemmed instead from the added enchantment.

  Each of his hundred legs projected a magic circle right before his attack nded on target, providing a powerful but short-lived enchantment. The simpler ones bolstered his speed, padded his strength, and filled his body with mana, while their more complicated counterparts appended concepts to his attack. He gained the ability to separate water from anything that contained it, the right to move without particute interference, and sovereign dominion over the concept of currents.

  Altogether, his many enhancements transformed his strike into one that would phase through anything that wasn’t its mark and chase until it nded on target. From then, it would drain the target dry and transform it into a shriveled husk.

  For something that had started off looking so ordinary, his two-pronged attack was miraculously deadly.

  And yet, it was deflected.

  A pair of bdes suddenly appeared in his path. One was a puny dagger no rger than his fangs, while the other was an armbde that served as a pale imitation of the ornifern’s cw.

  Though confused by the weapons’ sudden appearance, the crab monster continued his assault without a care in the world. It didn’t matter if she tried to block. She would never be able to overcome his almighty offense.

  Unsurprisingly, she foolishly moved to attempt just that.

  Stepping forward and digging her foot into a piece of ice, she met both his attacks head-on.

  His confidence spiked.

  But none of the damage inflicted was his.

  Her bdes ate through his shell without resistance. They tore apart his flesh and cut straight through his tendons.

  The only part of his body that struck her was his bright blue blood.

  He backed away immediately, but it was to no avail. She grabbed him by the neck with her tail and jammed a dagger into his chin. Once again, the bde went straight through his natural armour. It sank into his skull and dug through his frontal cortex. He didn’t die immediately, but his body spasmed uncontrolbly as bloody bubbles frothed from his mouths.

  A roar escaped his lips as he tried to break away, but again, his efforts were moot.

  Cire ended him with a twist of the knife, a frown on her lips all the while.

  He’d died so quickly that she was left to wonder if the trip was worth her time. She felt like she got more practice just doing her forms.

  Evidently, the system agreed. Not a single level had accompanied his death—any of the orniferins’ deaths. Nine hundred and fifty kills had earned her one percent of a tempest witch level. Her racial css’ experience meter was even worse off. It didn’t even seem to budge.

  Sighing, Cire released the weapons she had in her hands and gave her head a shake. One of the weapons vanished before it hit the ice, while the other turned back into a metal iguana. Boris, Cire’s pet and weapon, yawned as he zily sprawled himself out in the snow. He was totally rexed, not at all bothered by the fact that he was still covered in blood.

  Though a little annoyed at first, his master soon adopted his mood. She shook her head and gazed off into the distance with a tiny smile returned to her lips. Cire was certainly disappointed that the crowned orniferin couldn’t serve her purpose. But at the same time, she was better off with the problem than not. It served as a testament to her growth, proof that her journey had changed her into something more than the trembling little girl with no control over her fate.

  Still, she needed another solution, and fortunately, she had just the thing in mind.

  Cire magically pulled Boris back into her hands and shot above the storm. After taking a second to find the sun, she turned her eyes northward and started towards her destination.

  There was a nd beyond the mountains, a mysterious pce of which legends were told. Known as Elysium, it was a forbidden paradise barred off from the rest of the world. Most considered it a myth, a pce that had never truly existed outside the collective imagination, but Cire had long confirmed its presence. She saw it from space when Griselda sent her around the pnet and marked it in her mind as an eventual destination.

  No one knew much about the strength of its monsters, but they must have been worth something if they lived in such close proximity to the Langgbjerns, especially when so many of the ley lines seemed to be flowing from further north.

  Cire was raring to go, ready to cross the sky at a moment’s notice. But first, she needed to return to the winter castle.

  The others would no doubt compin if she left them behind.