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Volume 1, Act 2, Chapter 9: Those feared and fearful arise.

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  This building, a manor no less luxurious than any other noble estate of the island, is a kind quenched in the cool climate of Northern Ranesairan, just like the unwelcoming territories of the Durass-Paren Dukedom, if not even harsher as this city was located many lengths further north than the other Ducal household.

  In this maze of dark rooms with not a single light to push aside the empty bleakness was one particular bedroom that bore the most importance — the master room itself, where the curtains were permanently open.

  A youthful woman of exceptional appearance laid under the blankets of the broad and soft bed with artisan sheets and luxury pillows. Her long black hair was slightly disheveled, the lips were parted barely, letting occasional groans and sniffles past the teeth as the face twitched once in a while. However the room had not been solitary in its arrangements, as two mains were posted within the bounds of it. Their eyes were closed and their breathing shallow and quiet. One of the maids stood at the entrance door, just off to the side, and the other stood next to the mistress at her side beside the bed.

  The servants took a deep breath and opened their eyes slowly, exhaling through their mouths once the lady's own eyes were first ajar, and promptly fully revealed.

  They were bright green, but not emerald, as the pigment was darker than the prized gen, but they still possessed a nice shine to the irises, and that made her face quite a charming sight.

  The mistress let out a deep, guttural groan as she sat up in the bed. Not so charming anymore. And as the bedsheets slid from her form, it was revealed that she was dressed in a white nightgown, and her arms rose for a stretch as her neck rolled from one shoulder to the other, a few cracks sounding from the neck and back.

  The servants perked up and now seemed fully aware, "Good morning, madam Kr?stek." The maids said in unison, standing put to the best of their abilities, their expressions maintaining a neutral disposition as the woman turned her head to face the maid by the side of her bed, a slight tilt to the end of the motion, the eyes appraising the servant thoroughly, "Hm, good enough." Both maids did not show any reaction, and so the woman stood up, continuing her stretch.

  With the cold shooting up her legs, Kr?stek felt the need to rise to her tippy-toes, then separately pushing each ankle forward and around. "For how long was I asleep?" Madam stretched to her toes and asked the question past the action. The maid at the entrance spoke up to answer: "Two hundred and six days." Kr?stek straightened out and glanced at the servant briefly, letting a slight smirk creep up her face while the eyes wandered to gaze at the white chaos beyond the windows, "Tsk-tsk, Tula, that is far too long." Madam called up both maids to come closer with the wave of her right hand, "Let's change my clothes already, chop chop."

  It was not a lengthy ordeal as the maids quickly went away towards the wardrobes by the wall, Tula lazily pulled off the nightgown and threw it to the ground. "Hurry there." The madam yawned, the sound quite clear against the partial silence of the bedroom, save for the shifting shoes of the maids that were in a rush to assemble a pleasing outfit for their mistress.

  In that yawning mouth of the mistress was an impressive array of straight and shiny incisors, the canines long and pointed with the premolars appearing no less imposing than the threatening fangs closer to the front. Afterward of her tiresome display, she drowsily resisted a second yawn as the servants returned from the wardrobes.

  As the maids stood with their choices spread along their arms, the madam appraised the clothes that they had chosen for her, thoughtfully rubbing her chin with squinted eyes. And in this moment, she had to lean down in order to face the maids on level.

  The women were graced with a contained nod. "Satisfactory." Tula replied, and the two servants made haste to cover the exposed figure of their master, the outfit comprising rather tight trousers of brown colour and a loosely styled silk shirt embroidered fancily, all with silver at the hems of the sleeves and the collar.

  Next came the mistress's jewelry: an array of pure silver cuff earrings that covered most of the length of the outer ear, and a pair of long and heavy earrings that hung low from the earlobe, the aggressive shape still harmonious with the rest of the getup of metal.

  However, Tula did not reach for the many rings that one of the maids held carefully and statically in her hands, it was the one that stood by the bed before. "Give me your handkerchief." She told the maid that used to stand by the entrance, who now stood in front of the mistress, the servant obliged and shortly provided the item of which she was asked. Kr?stek rubbed the piece of fabric between the fingers of her right hand, feeling the folded sides gliding against one another smoothly.

  Then, in an abrupt motion, her left arm was raised, the middle and ring fingers of the hand lodged deep past the eye of the maid to her left.

  It did not take long for the servant to fall limply to the floor, the rings that she held up scattering audibly across the parquet in a shimmering and expensive mess, the muted thump of the body accompanied by the soon arriving sound of the cranium impacting the wood.

  Meanwhile, the madam only took great care of wiping the blood from her fingers, thoroughly tending to one finger at a time as only a few drops had the time to fall from her skin. "Who told you that you could speak for others?" The annoyed voice of Tula and the scoff that followed thereafter turned a disturbance to the escaping breath of the now deceased maid, "I believe I posed clearly that only those I speak to may open their mouths, was my question just then addressed to you?" She raised one eyebrow, staring out at the remaining person in the room.

  And that one remaining servant did not move, her face was kept as stoic and blank as before. "No, madam Kr?stek." Tula threw the soaked handkerchief at the maid, the wet fabric sticking to the woman's face for entire moments, before sliding down and onto her chest, leaving a streak of blood over one of her eyes and cheek, "So you knew after all.” The madam continued, tapping her right middle finger on the clean side of the maid’s forehead, “Then, perhaps, you should've kept that disgusting maw shut, and, if that were to be the case, even I could've spared this awful creature another month of this year." She said, her infuriation clear as the weather, though not in the north.

  With a scoff, the madam moved away from the scene of death, scoffing during the process of departure. "Prepare that body and clean up the room, test my tolerance any longer and you'll be tomorrow's breakfast just like that." Tula kept talking as she walked towards the entrance doors, the feet lacking in shoes but in protection of soft socks.

  The door creaked to a close, and as soon as it did — the remaining maid fell to her knees, the bloody handkerchief dropping onto the floorboards, her left hand was clenched over her chest, the body tensing repeatedly as the maid suppressed gasps, stupendous amounts of sweat dripping from her face like rain.

  After a short reprise of stifled gasps, her left hand lowered to the floor as well, and the head dangled between the stiff arms, deep breaths forcefully quiet.

  Tula sat alone at a large table in one of the open halls within the building. A single chair at the long wooden expanse, reading a paper document with a bored expression, a butler standing to her right.

  She raised either eyebrow at some points during her reading session, flipping the provided pages back and forth, glancing over the contents. Tula slapped the paper multiple times, the loud sound echoing in the room. "Is this right?" Tula asked blatantly, her expression stuck between a direct image of disgust and something akin to disbelief and confusion, "It is, Duchess." The butler replied, his tone just as subdued as anyone else's, "Well it sounds like complete rubbish to me, who confirmed this?" Her hands worked quickly to get to the end of the documents, but carefully so as to not tear the pages. "Her Ex—" Tula rolled her eyes before the butler could even finish, "Aaaah... I see, if it's the snake and the lizard, then it's true."

  Tula tossed the papers aside, and the butler caught them just before they hit the ground, trying to move with little noise but failing to get rid of most tribulations in the air. "Scram."

  The Duchess moved her eyes over the hall, expectantly licking her teeth, the servants that were hoisted in the room dared not to show their discomfort. The butler who previously caught the papers hurriedly removed his face from the scene entirely, to his own delight. Soon, however, the desired meal of the madam arrived — a fairly luxurious and regally presented roast of meat, mushrooms and chopped potatoes covered by a sauce quite caramel in colour. Tula stretched her hands in front, cracking the joints of her knuckles, and then cracked each of the phalangeal joints separately. "Splendid meal I see! I wonder if this one tastes any better than the feed from the last time I woke up." After lifting a piece of the silverware laid beside the plate on the platter, she examined the two-pronged fork for any signs of blemishes or non-uniform scratches; the same she did with the knife, and the napkins were only given a momentary glance.

  The one who brought the platter of food was the very same maid from the bedroom, her composure back in full force from what it had seemed. The Duchess slowly sunk the prongs of the fork into one of the dices of meat, visible streaks of liquid butter and lesser streaks of melted fat escaping from the tissues. After lifting it up to her face, she spun it on the fork, opening her mouth and tentatively placing the meat onto her tongue with the halt of the observation. She rolled the tip of the tongue back, pulling off the piece of meat from the metal, the lips curling around the cool surface. The fork was moved back away from the face, and the Duchess's jaw began to move, and although her mouth was shut, the sounds of muted chewing could be heard faintly even in the far end of the hall.

  The madam’s eyes closed, the nose filled up with air as Tula spread the now mushed meat over the roof of her mouth, then swallowed. "Huh." She exclaimed mellowly, "This is garbage." Followed after, as her perfect posture got replaced by a slouchy and a bored look marred her face, the fork travelling across the plate in circles with loud screeches, the free hand now supporting her disappointed head.

  In this bored state, Tula spoke a question: "How old was this one?" No-one replied, a slow blink of the madam followed, and the eyes looked up at the maid to her side, "This time I am talking to you." Tula rehearsed, and the maid that brought the food stuttered before replying, "A-eh-ehm-about twenty years old...?" The Duchess put a slice of roasted potato in her mouth instead of the meat, "No wonder she has the flavour profile of scum, I shouldn't have expected a great taste from a filthy servant in the first place." She spoke while chewing, this time going past the profiling ordeal.

  Kr?stek released the fork, sighing deeply and leaning back in the chair, moving her lower jaw side to side, which made some rattling sounds with her teeth that were now partially bared. Her eyes looked down, one leg over the other at the knee, nodding slowly. "My wake-up meal had been soiled." Everyone in the room flinched, now frozen in place as the pause carried for a painful while, "And so was my mood." This time everyone present almost gagged.

  The maid that stood beside her was stone-faced, but she was sweating bullets just a little less than back at the bedroom, clenching her jaw, otherwise it'd be jittering audibly.

  The Duchess turned her face towards the maid, the second time today that she had done this. "Why are you nervous? Am I scary? Did I frighten you?" The tone of her voice could only be described as severely restrained, a perceivable tint of disdain playing at the syllables, "Clearly that was not aimed at you, was it? Then why are you so scared?" The maid took a chance at replying, "Oh-of-ahf-of course not, madam! H-how could I be scared of you??" Tula's brows furrowed, and the creases of her lips turned to a frown, "So now you are mocking me, what disrespect; a repeated offense no less." Her body turned towards the maid, and her right hand lifted up.

  In a deliberate and calm motion, Tula put her index finger into the mouth of the maid, and her thumb pushed her upper lip out of the way, the eyes of the servant quickly overrun by watery fluid. As the mouth was being gradually opened, the teeth of the maid were appearing quite abnormal as well, though largely different from madam'sz: only the canines formed long fangs, around one of which Tula’s index finger was wrapped. "Look at this." She calmly stated, pushing her middle finger in as well, pushing the lower jaw down and opening the mouth of the maid wider, "I allow you vermin the rights of slaves, and all I get in return is this lackluster treatment? Is that all the thanks I will be receiving for my benevolence?" Tula pulled the maid to stoop down entirely, all by pulling on the tooth.

  The servant resisted many gasps, the sweating quite persistent, and the eyes resisted the urge to shut the eyelids and shield themselves from the view before them.

  All the while Tula breathed slowly, biting the lip, then rolling it to the other side of the mouth, only for it to part ways as she spoke. "You parasites are no more than feed, simple sustenance and yet you..." The Duchess’s nose scrunched as if a foul smell was just procured in front of her, "You are permitting mistakes to be made in my presence?" The Duchess shot a brief glance at her socks, lifting one foot and rotating it slightly, revealing a minor build-up of dust on the sole of the pristine fabric. "First you callously interrupt my questions to other servants, show a distasteful attitude, and the last thing I know: the floors are no longer spotless."

  The maid's breathing gradually turned rugged, and the thumb that propped up the lip retreated, only to be placed at the tip of the fang that was held. "You kept your little pinpricks, I allowed all of you to keep those disgusting fangs, but I am starting to reconsider my old decisions." The servant swallowed hard with her mouth open, the entire face wincing.

  As if by a flip of a lever, the Duchess's tone turned from disdain to disappointment. Just as swiftly, she had snapped the fang of the maid and pulled her hand away from her mouth. Somehow, there wasn't a scream, but a groan did escape. The maid put both of her hands over her mouth, her entire physiognomy scrunched in agony while the madam wiped her fingers on the maid's very dress, the snapped part of the tooth laying in the food on the table. "I got both my hands dirty in one day, what a drag... Get someone to clean my digits." Tula waved at the servants — no-one in particular — and so all of them hastily rushed.

  The shoes began to shuffle in the hall again, the many feet scurried in search of water and a bowl. During that event, Tula slid the plate of food across the table, so it would be in front of the still wincing maid. "Make it spotless, if you cannot keep the floor clean, the least you can manage is lick the plate until it is shiny." Her voice was as detached and bored as it was before, "And don't you annoy me anymore, I won't guarantee that you will be the only one I'll marinate if you were to get on my nerves another time."

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  Huffing and gasping, the maid moved closer to the table and leaned over, the eyes teary with the broken tooth bleeding profusely. "Don't you dare sully the floor with your blood." Such the maid reached for the fork, and with great effort began to eat, gagging each time the meat touched her tongue.

  "Huuuuuuuuuh... How much I hate waking up early. The air feels significantly different today, I suppose this incident was the reason for my awakening after all."

  Tula eyed the servants that came up to her with a bowl of water and a towel, she lazily hung her appendages in front of the group and they made haste to wash the pure skin of the Duchess's hands.

  "What a predicament, I had not expected something of the kind to happen while I was in slumber, the details described in the records are truly bizarre and outlandish. I should've read it more thoroughly, no doubt there were many important points that I skimmed past."

  The servants were just finishing up the swift cleaning process, and the madam shook the excessive wetness from her hands. She pushed her feet into the floor and slid back in the chair, throwing her feet onto the table and tilting the chair backwards to a degree. With the accompaniment of the unfortunate maid's gagging but compliant meal time, the monologue that the Duchess had facilitated in her mind was a continuous roll.

  "No chance that Grodon and Kiserhi keep their mitts to themselves in this situation, some time had already elapsed since this event commenced.”

  Kr?stek turned her head towards the maid, taking a deep breath in the process.

  “The initial shock must've blown over by now... so what comes now is a whole lot of work and effort, but surely I will not be left alone in this mess."

  "Chew everything thoroughly." Tula nudged the maid with her foot, and as such the maid was forced to mull everything over in her mouth, procuring a stronger response from her gag reflex. "And you, what are you standing here for? You are stinking up my air." The other servants who still stood to her side moved away. After getting back her free space, Tula let out a chuckle.

  "I would absolutely love to get involved. Who should I visit first, the snake, or the lizard? Old friends can't go for long without greeting one another from time to time."

  In a tranquil forest somewhere in Entaux was a patch of even ground, where many trees were severed, the ground charred and the grass leveled, was a crater that appeared to be a week or many old. The crater was not round, but long and stretched out, deepening around the end, the trees behind the trail decreased in height and growth the closer they got to the crater's trail, the places at which they were torn were rugged and feathered. But even with all that destruction, it seemed as if nature had already fully come to terms with that circumstance, ignoring the result of a cataclysm that shook the locality not too long ago.

  The birds flew overhead, worms already poked out of the overturned soil at the edge of the crater, and the grass was more firmly set beside the crater. In fact, it would seem that the critters, the insects, as well as the grass and nearby trees that were left mostly untouched by the event were fuller, heftier, more vigorous in a sense, quite a bit more vital than their brothers and sisters to left and right.

  The peace settled in this wooded area, but a disturbance awoke in the very same crater: it was an arm, one made of only bones that were broken and cracked, it rose from the depth of the crater, the bones snapping into place and the joints growing new cartilage whilst spilling a certain amount of synovial fluid. Thick, gold liquid soon spewed from the bones and joints as material kept forming as if from out of thin air, the places where the gold concentrate landed instantly flourished in case there was a single seed, the dug-up eggs of insects in the open soil instantly burst with adult bugs, but those bugs that were already adult simply froze in place, as if tension within them had grown too strong.

  Then the arm was swiftly covered by muscle, the gold liquid as a front to the advancing fibres, the tendons and countless vessels oozing the gold without hitch as the structure was reconstructed and rebuilt. With the muscles came the pained groans from beneath the revealed arm, the tendons that just appeared already spasmed and the muscles turned to stone as each and every one of them strained. Soon, skin enveloped the bare muscles, fascia barely faster than the grey wrappings, a refractive sheen coating the surface of the skin and a faint shine of rainbow permeating from the warp as the perfectly smooth and round nails sunk into the soil, pulling with all their might. A figure gradually emerged from under the dark blanket of dirt, the otherwise quiet nature of the commotion felt loud next to the relative silence of the forest. The last bits of skin and hair popped up before the figure managed to give the surrounding wildlife a traumatising sight.

  Completely nude in form, with ideal texture but a strange grey tone to her skin, it was a young woman with an appearance no less perplexing than the very nature of her emergence from the now overgrown crater: Six ears atop her head, each rounded at the top and in shape no way human, were pointed further to the sides the further back they went, the hair, the skin, the eyes — like spirals without a converging point, the pupil forming gradually as she crawled out of the crater. Only past the bounds of the earthly depression did the centers of her eyes slowly wind until the lines of the spirals mended into pure black spots, the irises like lenses refracting the light across the trenches within itself.

  On all fours, she tried to say something, "Hurk—” But the creature was interrupted by her own vomiting as at least a bucket's worth of the aforementioned gold liquid ejected violently from her mouth, the grass that got coated in the gleaming fluid quickly overgrew and then withered away, only to grow again and then repeat the process until all of the gold liquid disappeared from sight, leaving the grass as it was before the contact, although a bit longer than the grass around it.

  It took several deep breaths for it to recover, the eyes eventually rising from the ground and the head swiveling in many directions, "Where...?" She leaned back and sat up on her own legs, raising her hands from the soil, the fingers clean despite having been deep in the soil, small bits falling out from under the nails without being bothered. She stood up, each of the six ears moving independently from one another and aiming at each accidental sound born within the woods, the eyes converging in hypnotic swirls every time they had to refocus. "Ahh, I see." It said, slowly turning a right angle to the left, briefly glancing at the forest floor.

  Without a word, the ground at her feet exploded, but in a very precise pattern: a shape of a compass, with the north labeled in the very direction that she had turned to. "So north is there." the ears on the left side of her head turned in the same direction simultaneously, looking directly along the crater and its trail, another line appearing on the depiction of the compass. That line looked the same way as the ears and the crater, "Uh-huh..." The woman also looked there blankly, but not long was her attention given to the direction.

  "So, uh..." The strange eyes rotated around the quiet space along with the head and the rest of the body, observing the body itself shortly after, from the toenails to the arms and the overall nude form.

  She took a gander around again. “It appears that I have been freed, how unexpected.” The creature rolled the toes of its feet in the grass, stomping a few times as if to confirm the legitimacy of this predicament. The creature’s right hand gripped at its nape, rubbing it from the base of the neck and until the base of the skull, “I know in what direction the Blade Vale is, but I would like to know where I am actually...” Her expression grew somber, but a faint smile did find its way onto the face, “At least I am free for now, and there are far more important things to note, currently.”

  Her right hand left her neck, and the left palpated the side of her ribcage, eventually going over the stomach. “The impodium changed, that is most peculiar, but I do not sense any other significant changes.” The creature sighed, briefly glancing back to the crater, “I can’t shake off the feeling that I might be on borrowed time.” A few blinks and she dismissively shook her head.”

  “A demigod talking about borrowed time, that is quite silly, Giltza.” She took another deep breath, though this time its goal was to savour the refreshing noise that stuck to everything in the forest, the eyes shut along with the inhalation. As the sort appreciation session concluded, Giltza opened her eyes and let out a light huff, “I must’ve missed a lot, I can barely recall the time I had spent in there.” The everchanging eyes looked to the right, at a bird that sat on a rugged stump of the tree that had been severely damaged, it stood right in the path of the crater, “Maybe it was a deliberate measure.” She walked towards the bird.

  The self-proclaimed demigod squatted by the stump, looking at the bird that did not appear scared of her, but it was not making any sound, too. “Did I destroy your home? I apologise.” Giltza rubbed the bird’s head, though it was more just poking with the tip of her finger, “I didn’t mean to do that, but I did not have control over this, so I hope that you’d understand.” Obviously the member of the Aves class understood none of the apologetic remarks, it only silently observed the being that was rather touchy with it.

  “Either way, if I am here, then she likely knows what could’ve happened.” Giltza carried on rubbing the bird, swirling the feather on its brown head, “I believe that she wanted to tell me about this exact theoretical phenomena before, I should’ve listened...” She took the bird’s head between her index finger and thumb, gently putting pressure on either side of its head, “I was really arrogant back then, that quick growth got too much into my head.” The creature sighed, gripping its entire hand around the bird, “But there isn’t a chance that I’ll speak to her again, all because of my immature displeasure of conversing with her, and the fact that I’d probably be actively hunt down were I to return to Ranesairan.”

  She slightly squeezed her hand. “Looks like this place will have a lot of trouble because of me.” When Giltza slowly unwrapped the bird from her grasp, it fell off the edge of the stump and rolled down into a rough crevice in the middle, posture limp.

  “...”

  Giltza looked at the body of the bird for a while, but then sighed, standing up from her squat, the eyes lifting up to follow a bird that passed the sky just then. “I shouldn’t have done that.” She looked at her right palm, “I’m sorry if I took away your chance to mourn, if you were mourning, that is.” But her regret did not mingle for a long time, as her attention was quickly averted to nature beside the crater and the perished bird. Giltza began movement, in direction away from the Blade Vale.

  “If I am to be hunted, then what should I do in the meanwhile? I had not participated in leisure for a long period of time.” She mused, “It feels rather strange to move unrestricted.” At that time, a single blade of grass shot up from the ground, all to be gripped by her hand. The green plant was examined thoroughly as it was clasped between the two refractive digits, but soon it began to peel by itself, many transparent layers coming off the blade like imperceptibly thin sheets and floating up from her hand. Giltza did not stop for this ordeal, her steps were kept constant, “Fascinating.” Those fluid pupils of her changed shape and drifted, looking at the small piece of local grass from all angles, each of the numerous thin sheets was examined, “Almost identical in appearance, but the internal structure and composition are nothing alike.”

  The pupils constricted into differently oriented slits, the process of study only stopping once the blade of grass had been fully deconstructed, the separate sheets were hard to see with a naked eye. “With that said, I do not have doubts that Ranesairanian creatures would be able to metabolise this.” The impossibly thin sheets of grass were released, and the eyes returned to their normal configuration, “This almost makes me think that it is not a coincidence.”

  With a leisurely stroll, the demigod thought aloud. “The impodium shifted, no matter the magnitude of the shift. It makes me think that it is indeed a different world.” A bored gaze was stuck on her face as she made way past the trees, “I am having a hard time convincing myself that a catastrophe of that scale could occur on a simple whim.” A tiny speck flew past her eyes, like she was walking past the trees, “Hard not to assume that someone is behind this. But there is hardly anyone I could point a finger to, not someone I know of.”

  The speck that was flying around her froze in mid-air, Giltza leaned forward slightly and took a better look at it. “A mosquito?” She said, and the specimen exploded into dozens of separate parts, and then it split into countless translucent, then transparent sheets just like the grass from before, “This place is curious.” She did not stop her walking, though, the entire ordeal took place during the march. Her eyes were keen to examine another specimen here, but it only took her half a minute before she discarded the dismembered and deconstructed carcass of the mosquito, the many sheets spreading quickly once they’ve been released from the invisible grasp.

  “This makes me think of what the Witches may think of this, besides, I cannot suspect her too, given how even Blade Vale wouldn’t have the potential needed to achieve something like this.” Giltza swatted another mosquito, this time taking no care in examining it, “It doesn’t fit her logic, too, she wouldn’t do something like this regardless of circumstance.”

  Finally, she stopped and looked rightward. Giltza rubbed her hands together while looking down at them, then squeezing the digits together a few times before extending her right arm. She pinched the air. “All that effort and I ended up being used as a tool anyway, no matter how you look at it, it is pathetic.” She gradually pulled back her hand, a white, smoky web spreading from her fingertips, “I should’ve considered other options when I thought of becoming a demigod.” Once her hand was halfway in that bow-string pull, the smoky web suddenly turned transparent like water, and subsequently compressed. The temperature in her immediate vicinity was dropping from the start of this action, those light-bending strings spreading even to the ground. “I did not expect that I’d have a need for expert combat techniques when I was just reborn in the Peclitalium, I’d call that short-sightedness.”

  In the instant that she let go of the air, it exploded instantly in a ball of plasma that narrowed and spread at ludicrous speeds across all the strings that were established. The shockwave spread as a wall of fog, quickly dissipating and taking many leaves and branches along with itself. The soil shot up and away from the epicenter, some trees that were nearest to the circumstance turned bald and a clearer view opened while the deafening echo of the explosion escaped past the ears' reach in the following long seconds.

  “Fancy tricks with disappointing effects. Quite flashy for a basic explosion.” As the echo of the explosion died down fully, Giltza gazed past the immediate scene and observed the white peaks of the mountains far in the distance, “I can’t put a candle to specialised magic. Is there a point to having a higher affection coefficient when you are utterly unmalleable?”

  Her arm lowered, “Demigods are not at all great, not to the extent people think.” Giltza sighed, looking to the side as the last of the leaves drifted down to the ground, “But I am the one who sucks the most among the existing demigods, I would call myself the unluckiest of the bunch, as the others are in possession of exceptional abilities.” Her left hand opened fully, and the palm split shallowly along the middle, the gold liquid oozing out of the wound, “Being practically immortal while only having mediocre capabilities can be a form of torture.” She chuckled, and the palm swiftly closed up as if it never came apart, but some of the gold managed to spill before the hand was back together.

  "My imprint must've been done on a very turbulent day for the Blade Vale.” Her hand has been lowered, and so were her eyes, “But I have never seen a single turbulation in the Blade Vale's atmospheric anomaly. She also told me that she herself only witnessed major changes in the Peclitalium and Blade Vale twice in her entire life.“ Giltza shook her head, “I don’t want to know how old she is exactly, probably way too old for comfort...”

  Giltza stomped out the overgrown grass that was affected by the spilt gold, seemingly disgusted with it. "If I had the ability to, I'd aim to become the second Fatuur." Her tone lowered and walking pace resumed, "Otherwise, I am stuck this way permanently. A particular failure of a demigod.” She ran her hand across a tree that she was passing, “I can't even be angry about it.”

  “I got to this point due to my own actions and decisions, the only thing that is left is to get the most out of this short moment of peace." Her gaze once more got affixed to the mountains in the far distance. "I suppose the solitary heights of the mountains would fit my preferences.” Giltza put a finger to her lips, nodding once, “Why don't I set off for a tour of these lands' nature? I'd be more than eager to remember my old hobbies, it would be ideal to exercise my mind after all that mind-numbing farce."

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