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Loop 13 finally wrapped up on RR today, I wonder what their reactions will be when they get to meet Chaos, lol.

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Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Sixty-Five

Chaos opened the second stone door, revealing another pedestal, this time bearing a ring. It was the one that was accessed by sacrificing Lucca. The ring was shaped like a black long-legged spider curled into a circle, and it had two orange-glowing fangs protruding from its head.

< < Unique Relic Obtained > >

< Spider Ring (Legendary) — Allows you to pick an additional Relic from Relic Chests | Throw a ball of spidersilk that tethers itself to the environment, creating a barrier that slows and entangles anyone it touches. 5-minute cooldown >

Adam would’ve salivated if he’d had the ability to. He immediately grabbed the ring and slid it over the index finger of his stone hand.

This should stack with the choice ring, I’m pretty sure.

“Are you a Greedling in disguise?” Chaos remarked, staring at Adam with a suspicious look in his large frog eyes.

“This will help me a lot, and you said you have a plan for dealing with the Flayed Lady, so I need all the power I can get.”

Chaos shrugged. His red glitchy tie had given up trying to strangle him and was now obediently shaped into a bowtie.

He went over to the last door and inserted a new orb into its recess. This was the one that Nova had said would be opened by sacrificing one of the moths, something that Beck had also verified in Adam’s last loop when the topic had come up.

When the stone disintegrated, there wasn’t any relic waiting inside. Instead, it was a plinth with a stone orb placed on top. It was smaller than the one that would normally appear in the centre of Interim Island, but was strangely absent after worshipping Chaos in this loop.

Adam moved closer to look. He could feel the potential energy of the altar and it made him remember something Emelia had told him about stage fifteen, back before they’d both died to the Apex Voidspawn.

It’s a Contributory Altar.

“This will let anyone get another Absolute boon,” Adam remarked, surprised to find such a thing hidden on Interim Island.

It represents so much extra power, no matter who someone is worshipping! And it means that someone could have two Absolute boons by stage six! It’s definitely a fitting reward for sacrificing one of the moths.

“Don’t even think about it,” Chaos warned, his voice turning dangerous. “I’ll curse you with negative luck for an eternity!”

“I’m not going to sacrifice the moths,” Adam replied. “I won’t harm any of the denizens. They’re my friends. Also, what would negative luck do? Is that what you meant when you said you cursed players?”

“That’s right! Not only does negative luck prevent you from getting good rewards and vendor options, you’ll also start missing your attacks and relics will break at random when you use them.”

Adam reached out to touch the altar. “What will I get when I use this?” he wondered excitedly.

“Nothing,” Chaos replied, right when Adam’s hand touched the orb on top of the plinth.

The potential energy dissipated into the air like vibrations and the stone itself turned to dust.

“What the hell?”

“I’m not allowed to give boons,” Chaos said. “Apparently I have a habit of ‘breaking’ the rules.”

Adam frowned. “But you’re like the hardest Absolute to obtain.”

“There are some more convoluted than me,” he replied, though he didn’t elaborate and instead said, “I can give you a small upgrade though.”

“An upgrade? Like what?”

Chaos grabbed Adam’s right hand with the shapeshifter’s claw.

“Like this,” he answered, a big grin spreading on his frog face.

The pale black-veined monstrous glove grew in size, the hand turning more bulbous, while the fingers enlarged like sausages. Then the texture became like latex, before its entire appearance changed, becoming a translucent neon-green.

“It’s a… balloon?” Adam asked, dumbfounded.

“Iiiiiiiit’s Frankie!” Chaos exclaimed like he was an announcer introducing a fighter in a cage match.

< < Unique Relic Obtained > >

< Frankie (Legendary) — Punches performed with this glove have tripled Damage and Impact | Activate to inflict Chaotic Misfire. 10-minute cooldown >

That’s pretty damn powerful.

“Why is it called ‘Frankie’?” Adam asked.

Chaos blew a raspberry with his big frog lips. “You didn’t pick the Jovial Madman evolution?”

“The one that makes me hear voices? Hell no.”

“A shame,” Chaos remarked. Then he lifted one of his webbed hands and put a finger on the side of Adam’s head.

Immediately, the entire cavern was filled with voices.

“Look at your ugly shoes, stepping on me like that, ugh,” the floor under Adam muttered.

Chaos’ red bowtie was whispering an endless string of expletives, the errant specks of dust in the air screamed as they fell down to the floor, and all of Adam’s relics were talking to each other like bickering old people.

“Dinnae gie a hoot aboot aw the losers, it’s me ye want tae focus on,” Adam’s new legendary glove said in a thick Scottish accent.

“Are you Frankie?” he asked the relic, lifting his hand up to his face.

“Aye, an’ yer a big fat shite. A pure skin-tint jobby. If ah could, ah wid boak.”

Adam frowned and looked at the Absolute. “Turn it off.”

Chaos pulled his hand away from Adam’s head. Immediately, all of the voices vanished. “See? That’s what you’re missing out on.”

“A blessing, really,” Adam said, looking back at the balloon glove. “Do all inanimate objects talk like that? All the time?”

“Some call it truth-seeing, others call it madness,” Chaos remarked.

“What benefit would there be to talk to relics that call me a big turd?” Adam asked.

“Friendship?” Chaos replied with a shrug. “Sometimes, the trees might tell you where to go, or they might tell you to fuck off. It depends on whether they like you or not. Look at it this way: you would never feel alone, even in a friendless universe such as this.”

Adam frowned. “So, what is the point of worshipping you if you don’t give out boons?”

“Aside from getting awesome relics? My fun carefree personality.”

“Right… Are you still going to give me quests?”

“Of course!” Chaos exclaimed excitedly. “That’s the best part of having adherents, after all.”

“What do I need to do in stage six? Get the dimensional splinter?”

Chaos put his webbed frog hands together, pulling them apart a second later to reveal a long list. “I’ll need the head of a Chaos Demon, the dimensional splinter from the top of the tower, and the core from a corrupted Eye.”

“You mean the core from one of the other players’ cubes? How am I supposed to get one of those? And if I do succeed, won’t the entire universe collapse?”

“Yes. Using Frankie. No,” Chaos replied curtly to each question in turn.

“Why not?”

“To which part?” Chaos asked.

“The last question. Why wouldn’t the universe collapse?”

“Parvillo has taken it upon himself to wield this universe’s dimensional core when he assumed the role as your guide. If he hadn’t, then the Flayed Lady would be quite a lot scarier than she already is. Giving dimensional power to her is something even I’m not curious enough to try. Of course, the dimensional power would be easy enough for me to switch off, but she might be able to inflict a lot of damage before I could get off the couch to do something about it.”

“The cubes can teleport, so how am I supposed to even grab them with Frankie?” Adam asked.

“You do know they’re not cubes right? But no, her ‘cubes’ cannot use dimensional powers,” he replied, doing air quotes with his webbed fingers. “You just need to reach out and grab one, but make sure to do it before you kill the player it’s tethered to.”

“About the Chaos Demon, how do I summon that?”

“You just have to use the splinter in a summoning ritual.”

“And I assume it won’t be friendly,” Adam remarked.

“Bingo!”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Oh yeah.”

Adam frowned. “Awesome.”

“I will have more fun objectives for you in stage seven, and then in stage eight comes to coup de grace to tie it all together and kick the Flayed Lady so hard in the gonads she’ll taste blood. You do remember how to speak Demonic, right? And how’s your whistling?”

“Whistling?”

“Nevermind, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

With a blink, they were suddenly back in the centre of Interim Island, next to the frozen Luvicidix and Parvillo.

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Chaos exclaimed. He was inexplicably turned back into the blue male moth humanoid again.

With a swish of his right hand, a familiar-looking blue pearl appeared in-between his fingers. It almost blended into the cerulean-blue scales covering his body.

“Thine eyes hold a power oft forlorn, oft forgotten to time, oft lost to conflict. An unclouded gaze is the key to a world of secrets and thine eyes are a gift from on high,” he quoted. “I mean, it was right there. It has been staring at you the entire time, pun in-ten-ded.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take off your mask,” Chaos told him.

Adam pulled the aristocrat’s mask off his slime head with a quiet slurp.

Then Chaos rammed the pearl right into Adam’s face.

< < Secret Relic Obtained > >

< Unclouded Gaze (Epic) — The wool pulled from your eyes, your gaze now pierces a world of secrets >

“Two eyes, the creepy dead smile of your mask, and a body that looks almost like a naked mole-rat. I think this is the best we can do for now,” Chaos muttered to himself, almost like he was critiquing Adam’s fashion.

Adam touched his hand to his left eye. Visually, nothing had changed.

“I hadn’t even thought to use the pearl in this way.”

“You’re welcome,” Chaos replied. “Although, I am a bit disappointed in you. I’m sure you can figure out the rest from here.”

“The rest?” Adam asked, but the blue moth immediately lifted into the air where the giant head of the feathered serpent awaited.

It chomped down on his body, erasing him from sight, and then its golden eyes flashed, before its entire body turned invisible, leaving behind the glow of its eyes for a moment, until that too vanished.

Adam kept looking up, expecting something else to happen, until Luvicidix stirred next to him, making a sound almost like a hiccup.

When Adam saw her, a shard of ice lodged itself into his brain. Her face flashed through different versions, each matching her siblings, as well as two more faces that were unknown to him.

Are those the faces of her missing siblings? Does that mean I need to find two more moths?

Then his gaze fell on Parvillo and he was suddenly flung out into space, with a massive planet-sized eye staring back at him, golden oceans lapping against a black continent in its centre. Fireworks went off inside Adam’s brain, wherever it was in his body, and it felt like he was being pulled by the gravity of Parvillo’s cosmic eye, tearing at him like a black hole from which he would never be able to escape.

Adam put a hand over his eye, cutting off the vision.

Holy shit. It’s like an ocular version of ‘Alepheria’s Mandate’.

I’ve gotta be careful with this.

Parvillo looked at Adam’s hand, specifically the green balloon covering it.

[I see you spoke to the Chaotic Convergence. I am surprised you survived the encounter, but it seems it was fruitful.]

“You expected me to die?”

[Yes.]

“Well, I’m fine. I’ve got a new objective to deny the Flayed Lady.”

Parvillo dismissed his words. [There is no need. The sooner you bring this Loop to an end, the sooner this universe may be safely collapsed. I desire to return to my original post, rather than being stuck here, chaperoning you.]

Adam was briefly wrong-footed by the idea that the universe would be abandoned and destroyed, but he figured they would have to go through Chaos to accomplish that, and given the task he’d entrusted to Adam, there was no chance of that happening before they’d succeeded.

He squared his jaw defiantly. “Sucks to be you then, because I have no plans to cut this loop short.”

[What can you do against the Flayed Lady? It is futile.]

“Just watch me, asshole.”

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