Chapter 889 - A warning (Patreon)

I wave the notifications and the rewards off to check them in a few minutes and turn to the others. One sweeping gaze confirms that everyone seems okay, though there are some smaller wounds Lily is already taking care of.

When she reaches me, I’m about to tell her that it might take a while because of my strengthened traits and further changes. I try, and almost escape, but she moves like a human-shaped snake and grabs my wrist in a vice-like grip.

I sigh in my mind in expectation of curses at my innocent person, and at the state of my body, but she doesn’t say anything and just glances at me, though she must have noticed.

In silence, her healing mana floods me, quickly adapting and changing, and she even raises her output a few times. Then she regrows my arm and restores parts of me, pulling from my body memory or whatever healers do to know how a part should have looked.

There are even hints at her triggering some sort of effect to replenish my missing blood, and even as it seems to want to put more strain on my body, she also does something else to help with that. So instead of strain on my body, her healing somehow lessens it.

Of course, it’s slower than before my pre-trait-strengthening messing around, but her speed is still incredible, and I’m sure this petite maniac will improve it further alongside her healing marks. She does that every time I look away for just a few days.

“Don’t touch it,” I warn Dennis, who stops nearby and stares at the arm stabbed through with the spear I made.

“It must be an Adjudicator’s, isn’t it?” Lily mutters.

In reaction to that, Dennis jumps a few steps back, even partially moving behind Maya, who tilts her head and looks at it curiously. On her, I notice more visible muscle and new sets of mana tattoos.

“Do you think she can regrow from it?” Min-Jae asks, worried, but as expected from group 4 lunatic, excited in a way.

“That would be fucked up if she could. There would be millions of them in such a case,” Sophie crosses her arms on her chest while she also stares at the arm.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they have that many of them stored somewhere,” I note.

“There is a reason everyone is scared shitless of them,” Sophie seems to agree before adding, “You could have tried harder to bring back that black box that they seem to have placed in the middle of their chest. According to Tess, it’s a controller, and I bet I could mess with it.”

“Sorry, next time I will try harder, as they keep throwing more and more of them at me. You know what? I will even try to ask nicely. Maybe they will just give it to me. When I fought them, I didn’t even notice the black box on the one I met. Are you sure they didn’t upgrade them since they recorded them for the setting of the tutorial?” I ask. “And aren’t you fancying yourself an army of near-indestructible clones of a Ruler? Blackie isn’t enough anymore?”

To my surprise, the tall figure entirely in red armor turns its head to me as if it’s listening or at least reacting to the name. The entire time it stands near Sophie and Izzy in a way that seems both protective of them as well as like a child standing near an adult to look for protection.

“Let’s say I wouldn’t mind one. And why the hell did you have to attack the Aurate Consortium? Weren’t other corporations enough?”

“I tried to avoid them, but they seemed to have some Article 5 bullshit kind of deal. It’s not my fault.”

“Aren’t we already abusing the fact Starless Sky will protect Earth? What does it matter if we steal some intellectual property from the Consortium?” Dennis gestures at the hand.

“Because,” Sophie emphasizes, “they are fucking scarier than most of the Rulers. Isn’t that enough? In 100 years we might get powerful enough or make defensive deals to take care of the other corporations, but surely not the Aurate Consortium,” she sighs. “But who the fuck cares? Lily, do you think you can learn something from it or regrow it for me to control?”

Our healer, done with healing me, squats in front of the arm and picks a stick from the ground. She uses it to poke the twitching hand and then shrugs.

“I don’t know,” she says, “but I will try.”

“They likely rigged it with feedback traps, remote triggers, and security measures to keep anyone from scavenging their property,” Min-Jae says.

“Well, it’s a good thing we are inside the tutorial, and their signal won’t reach us here, right?”

It’s difficult for me not to feel smug about it as I say it.

Of course, it’s the last thing I want to do to fuck up the entire floor setting by bringing an arm of an absolute to it. This is exactly what happened with Lycan’s hand, and it ended up with Biscuit losing his primordial energy and hurting himself.

It is something I had very, very strongly on my mind while facing the Adjudicator, as well as the fact it belonged to the Aurate Consortium. Still, in the end, I judged it safe and the consequences not outweighing the gains Lily could get from observing it.

And as Sophie said, I don’t think any of the corporations will mess with Starless Sky, which is likely more powerful than Wrath or Ruby. I wonder how he scales against Cinderbear, but based on the rules and customs of this universe, I give it a small chance he will challenge Pride fairly soon for some reason, and die.

That’s just how it seemingly works around here.

But even if Starless stops protecting Earth after 100 years, I should be powerful enough to fuck up some random corporation or two by then. Now that I think of it, is Starless Sky chilling somewhere on Earth? Does he protect it from a distance? Did he just leave a mark there as a warning to invaders while using the ancient Firmament to move around? And what the hell does the stigma he placed on Vic do? I need to know.

As for the Adjudicator, it is just a clone of Kindness. A weak one at that, possessing only a body and stats around the level of a Champion without any mana. Scary, but there are also Arbitrators, clones of Kindness as well, though those ones possess a body closer to the original's power. Still far off, but likely around the Absolute level.

I wonder what the best way would be to fight them. After all, they are without mana, without skills, and just that, a quickly regenerating body. Well, plus that heart-stopping bullshit trick.

My attacks are more of a wide-range and bombardment style. While I have an incredible piercing attack power by using a lance and my blood, what I lack is something powerful and mid-sized to erase these quickly regenerating types or damage bigger targets.

But I push these thoughts away as I turn back to the others and explain to them what happened to the floor, Lissandra, Myrra, the wyvern, and Biscuit.

At one point, Aaron telepathically joins the conversation to harshly criticize both Gwyn siblings for having the weird tendency of releasing dangerous beings into the wild.

I have nothing to say to that, so I stay quiet.

“For you,” a soft voice to my left brings my attention, and I look at Lily, who is reaching out to me with a very nice, smoothed-out, and round mana stone in her palm.

The others are meanwhile still arguing over something and going through the loot while Izzy is trying to stop Noodle from eating the hand.

“A bonbon?” I use the joke that sounds lame the moment I say it out loud.

Yes, she still snickers and pushes it to me, “Yup, it will help you with your severe mana deficiency. Please make sure to drink it down with enough water.”

“Sure,” I take it and peek inside, quickly recognizing that style of storing information.

Lily confirms it, “I got it by trading with Savant. It contains some information on primordial energies, fragments, as well as body modifications and item crafting methods that require you to solidify mana and such.”

“Huh, I see, thanks. Did you get scammed?”

“Not really? He just asked for some healing marks and a sample of my [Disintegration]. After you went with the wyvern, he left very quickly as Taci kept playing with Veto while looking at him.”

“I see.”

“Taci was very happy with the dagger.”

“I would also be very happy with something the value of a country or more.”

“I got offered a mid pristine item too.” Lily drops that bomb on me, and as I squint and stare at her, she smiles, “A few corporations offered me contracts that would be signed right after my tutorial. Some of the offers included mid pristine items, studying under their contracted Absolutes, and such. Though usually it would require me to sign on for more than 100 years with them.”

She pauses and shakes her head, laughing, “One of the offers would have had me sign a contract for 500 years.”

“Those fucking scammers.”

“Yup. Tess told me to reject everything and said that as the tutorial comes closer to the end, the offers will get much, much better.”

“I guess. Now I am sad. No one offered me a contract.”

“You are also well known, but usually you seem like too risky an investment. Though they know who you are a disciple of, and now that she is free, I think you will get much more interest.”

“Good, as it should be.”

“Do you plan to accept some contract?”

“Nope, but some good offers would flatter me.”

Lily flashes a smile. “I felt the same.” She then reaches towards me and starts poking my arm with the tip of her finger. With each powerful poke, her mana floods inside of me and places a healing mark there. I quickly notice that they are already modified and vastly different from the previous version. All that already adapted after she healed me once and observed my body.

Watching her faint smile as she keeps poking me almost sends a chill down my back.

“Of course I took plenty of ‘gifts’ they offered me. They all tried to act sooo mighty and so rich. So I acted in the way they expected, an innocent, wide-eyed healer on the brink of accepting their incredible offer.”

Lily stops poking me and glances at the arm surrounded by the other members of group 4. “Aurate Consortium didn’t give me an offer, but I saw Raga watching me. She and that special Adjudicator. Can I be a bit more honest with you and vent, Nathaniel?”

“Go ahead.”

“Sometimes I’m scared when I see all that interest in me. I don’t know what will happen if it gets over my head and I won’t be able to control it. But on the other hand, I like it a lot. I like people noticing and caring for me, even if it’s only for my abilities and not me as a person. Izzy said it’s probably because of how lonely I used to be as a child.”

“That makes sense.”

“Isn’t that weird?”

“Lily, you already know what I will say.”

“Yes,” she smiles.

“You once again want to hear it out loud?”

“Yes, from you.”

“So what if it is weird? Do whatever you feel like doing.”

“That’s a new version of that sentence.” She continues to smile, but lets it fade away before nodding. “It is weirdly calming to hear you say it with such confidence and your expression. Do you also want to complain about something to me? I will listen.”

“No true complaints for now, but thanks.”

“My offer stands. Also, if you find me annoying, go ahead and fire me and look for a new healer.” Not waiting for an answer, with pretended arrogance she twists around and with a straight back walks towards the others.

There she slams against Izzy and takes her into a tight hug, only for our empath to groan and try to push her away.

I’m sure that even if I fired her, she would still heal me, so just how silly is that? I think out of everyone I know, Lily feels the most… well… kind and selfless. In a way, even more so than Izzy.

It might be weird after I saw her use her [Disintegration] to erase people off the face of the world, but I still think that.

Well, whatever. I push these thoughts away and open my notifications, but first I glance over at my skills.

Active skills (9/10):

Focus - Lvl 86

Perception - Lvl 79

Redistribution - Lvl 82

Eclipse (Pride) - Lvl 77

Empyrean Lance - Lvl 68

Manifestation - Lvl 63

Weave - Lvl 49

Mana Manipulation - Lvl 88

Selective Adaptation - Lvl 36

How nice.

I want to see Nyssa’s stats. Or Lyraen’s.

But only if mine are better.

Then there are the rest of the notifications.

The objective of the cleared 11th Floor quest has been influenced by an unexpected occurrence, and your rewards have been altered.

You have acquired:

Passive skill combination token (up to low pristine rarity)

Ten-minute Disciple Communication token (x5)

A warning

Well, not good, not terrible. After all, we didn’t even gather talnium during the 11th floor, even if I found some I lost on the real Xyphos that these guys dug out for me. Even funnier is that I think I got a bit more from my last minute looting.

I can probably sell some to Crimson Forge and still keep some for experimentation. But I need to be careful not to get scammed. Just a packet of talnium is probably worth most of what Crimson Forge has, or close to it.

Simply said, I was rich, and now I’m disgustingly rich, well... only if I will be able to sell that talnium.

Let’s ignore the last “reward”.

Now, let’s see what this floor quest is about.

Floor Quest:

Help stop the end of the world

Rewards:

Decided by the Ruler responsible for the floor's setting

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