Advent of Eternity - Chapter 45 (Patreon)

“Help yourself,” Knell said. “You too, Stix. Anything these bastards have is ours. We’re pirates, after all.”

Stix, despite the disgust on her face, laughed. “That we are. Maybe the captain will have something interesting in his tent.”

“All yours,” Cyll said. “I got this skull and his sword. Big ole thing. Fits me perfect. After what you had to experience, you might as well get some of the better loot.”

“As if you didn’t take everything you already wanted,” Knell said, shaking his head.

“Guilty,” Cyll cackled, tucking the skull into one of the bandit’s bags and slinging it over his shoulder. It barely fit, but the skull looked to be pretty durable.

Knell and Cyll went about the rest of the bandits, checking what supplies they had. Meanwhile, Stix wandered into the captain’s tent. A minute later, a surprised yelp rang out.

Stix jumped out of the tent, holding a small blue box in her hands. Her eyes were even wider than useful, filled to the brim with excitement. “Look what I found!”

“A box?” Knell asked, peering at it.

“Food?” Cyll added.

“No,” Stix said irritably. “Look!”

She popped it open. A pristine white flower sat in the center, atop a velvet bed. Knell squinted at it. He’d never seen a flower quite that white before. Even more, it seemed to radiate a sense of calmness.

“What is that?” Knell asked. “It’s magical for sure. An artifact, maybe?”

“It’s a Yin flower.”

“That means absolutely nothing to me,” Cyll said. “But, judging from your expression, it’ll somehow be useful for your stupid Yin restricted class?”

“That’s one way to put it,” Stix said, too happy to be annoyed by Cyll. “This is incredible. A Yin flower draws in Yin energy constantly. This’ll make it so much easier for me to gather the energy.”

“So you can eat the thing and get all its power?” Cyll guessed.

“I mean, I could, but that would be a huge waste,” Stix said, shaking her head. “It’ll continue to gather energy. If I just draw in the energy around it but leave the flower alone, I’ll be able to use it as an almost permanent source of power for a long time. It’s still slow, but it’s much better than being completely unable to grow more powerful.”

“Sounds like this was profitable, then,” Knell said. “Good. Now I don’t have to worry as much about completing my commitment to you. I trust you can use that and your Path Upgrade Stone to achieve your original goal now?”

“It’ll take a few weeks, but yes,” Stix said with a nod. “Of course, if we happen to find any Yin heavy dungeons, those would be really useful too.”

“I’ll see what we can do,” Knell said with a chuckle. “Give me one moment. I want to check in on how things look for me after killing these fools.”

Name: Knell Coda [Age: 0]

Path: Scion [Rank Zero]

Magical Energy Level: 13

Attunement A: Foresight of the Vulture

Attunement B: Empty

Attunement C: Empty

Attunement D: Empty

Attunement E: Empty

Bloodline: Eternal Body [Epic]– Time magic bends around you, modifying your lifespan and granting you resistance to spatial magics.

Path: Epoch

Magical Energy Level: 9

Abilities:

Mental Clock – Use time magic to keep time or set an alarm audible only to you.

Slow – Impede the movement of a single creature by warping the time around them for a brief instant.

Anchor – Lock a target’s current state in the timeline, returning it to that state after 1 minute passes, reverting any changes to the target that have happened under the duration of Anchor.

Advent of Eternity (Passive)- You do not fall under the jurisdiction of time. With sufficient strength, it will bend to your will, and your existence is absolute. You were never born, and you will never die.

Knell dismissed the windows.

“Any new cool stuff?” Cyll asked.

“Not yet,” Knell replied. “I think Anchor was quite the boost. It might be a little until I get anything new, but that’s fine with me. The power I’ve already got is enough to do quite a lot. Still, it won’t be enough.”

“The Mount Bloodwater thing, right?” Cyll asked. “We’re still going after those pirates, I hope.”

“We absolutely are,” Knell said grimly. “I will not be crossed, and the loot we can get at Mount Bloodwater will have to be quite significant if everyone is that interested in it. We’ll be taking our cut. But, if we want to, we’ve got a lot of work to do over the next few weeks.”

“There have to be some other dungeons in the area,” Stix said. “And we still need to figure out what these blue crystals do.”

“One more thing,” Knell said, showing Stix the paper he’d taken from the dead bandit captain. “This says where the villagers were taken. They were sold to another bandit camp somewhere to the east.”

“Our next targets?” Cyll asked, his grin growing wider.

“Our next targets,” Knell agreed.