Chương 147: Chapter One-Hundred-and-Forty-Seven

On the way to the Judge's hideout, Adam checked their surroundings for secrets by using the compass. He was specifically seeking the closest ones, but given how the arrow on the compass didn't move at all, it was clear they were very far from the nearest one. Fortunately though, it wasn't far from the direction they were headed, so Adam kept checking as they continued on their way in the boat he'd sculpted out of flesh and surrounded by blood.

Since their mode of transportation stood out a lot, Adam kept them high in the air, far above the floating point. This, however, proved to be a mistake as they reached the north-western part of the map, because an enormous shape in the night-blue clouds above quickly took notice of their passing. Fuck, that's gotta be Sky Terror.

"Go faster!" Lasse shouted. Fortunately, Adam's flesh boat was fast enough to outrun the battle-hungry slug dragon, but it was no less terrifying to be pursued by it as they neared their destination. After twenty tense minutes, it broke off and disappeared back into the sky above. Sometime later, Adam dipped them down towards the floating point as he spotted the four small islands that Shiff had told them about.

"It really does look like an eye from above," Lasse mused.

"So, what are you supposed to do? Kill the False Judge?" Adam asked.

"I'm supposed to appraise him, but it did seem like I'd have to kill him afterwards. Apparently Messimer abhors those who make a mockery of his power or something."

"He must've had a field day with the bad attorneys on Earth," Adam mused. Lasse's expression hardened as they neared the islands. All four were covered in sand and palm trees, but one had a hut, another had a broken tower, and the last two each had a small pond in the middle. Near to the tower came a cluster of melodies, which Adam aimed them towards.

"You can stop here," Lasse said as they were still thirty metres above the island.

"You can see him from here?" Adam asked.

"Yeah. He's wearing a white curly-haired wig and a black officer's suit or something." A moment passed and Adam sensed the way Lasse's melody changed as he activated his appraisal. It was a subtle but unique tone. He hadn't noticed it before, possibly because it was so faint. I need to improve my perceptions a lot, he thought to himself, knowing he might've avoided this entire mess if he hadn't grown complacent.

"What exactly do you see when you do that?" Adam asked once he was certain the appraisal had concluded.

"It varies," Lasse replied.

"For Players I see their chosen weapons, their patrons, and usually things like age and such. Apparently it depends a bit on who they're worshipping. For example, I could see more about you and Julie than Jabari and Cathy."

"What about Ellen?"

"I saw a fair bit about her too."

"Such as?" Adam asked curiously.

"The names of the Players she'd killed, the names of her family members, her place of origin, desires, and other weirdly invasive things."

"Is that why you weren't worried about her?" Adam asked. Lasse nodded.

"Yeah, she'd only killed one other person, and her dream was to make her mother proud. She didn't seem like someone who'd be wilfully evil." Adam frowned.

"Yeah, I know," Lasse said, "but I'd like to think that she didn't doom us on purpose." Lasse stepped up onto the railing of the flesh boat and pulled out his bow. A golden gleam from the Ranger's Charm on his belt caught Adam's eye. Then he fired the arrow he'd nocked and it took an insane route through the air as it went down to the island, flying with impossible turns and much greater speed than normal.

"I think that Relic would work well with your barrage setup," Adam said.

"I know. I wanted to try it out against Sky Terror, but then…" Once one of the melodies vanished, Adam asked, "So, is that it?"

"Basically."

"I thought you'd have to pluck out his eyes or do something fucked up."

"Messimer seems like he's kind of above the brutal ritualistic stuff."

"He had you find an eye in the last Stage though," Adam pointed out.

"That's for a good reason," Lasse said. Adam scoffed.

"Bet that's what the other patrons say too. I had to kill someone in my last Stage for a 'good reason' as well. Pretty sure it's all bullshit. I think they're just tests to see if we're loyal."

"Well, regardless, thank you for helping me with this. We can leave the Stage now."

"Crap," Adam said.

"What?"

"I forgot about Shiff's sword." Lasse laughed. Then he pulled out another arrow and nocked it.

"There were about twelve other men down there. I can take them out with a barrage."

"Save your breath," Adam told him and hopped overboard. The boat followed him down, sticking to the edge of his range as he used his magic to control his descent towards the island. He landed on the sand next to the 'Judge' whose head had an arrow going in one ear and out of the other. Like Lasse had said, he'd worn a white wig, but it now lay a few metres away.

Before the pirates could turn their swords on him, Adam swung his way through them with a liquid blade of blood, growing its size with every kill until it was the width of a man. Once the Judge's crew was dead alongside him, Adam harvested them for parts before looking around for Shiff's sword.

There were a bunch of weapons strewn about on the sand next to the harvested skeletons, but it was impossible to tell which was the one they were seeking, especially since the one carried by the Judge was visually no different from the rest. Adam sighed and asked the compass to show him. It ended up leading him into the tower where the sword was stuck hilt-first into a makeshift toilet, like a really terrible brush.

Thank God I don't need to touch it with my hands, he thought as he pulled the weapon out with the blood under his command. Before returning to Lasse floating above him, Adam dunked the sword into the pond on the nearby island.

"What's that smell?" Lasse asked after Adam returned to the boat.

"Don't worry about it," Adam said, and set them on the course for Lenny's Landing. The direction of the nearest secret indicated by the compass was a bit further north than the settlement, but he hoped they had enough time to check it out briefly. If it was something unmanageable, they would just go past it and head for the Godstone Temple.

"Are you okay with another detour after this?" Adam asked after parking their boat in the air just outside of Shiff's quarters in Lenny's Landing.

"Sure," Lasse replied. < < Quest Complete > > < Shiff's Favourite Sword > < Returned the stolen sword to Shiff > Despite having clearly been woken up by their arrival, Shiff was ecstatic about getting his sword back, and he hugged and kissed the weapon a lot, which made Adam cringe. I guess he doesn't have a sense of smell… For their effort, they received an upgrade chest.

"That's it?" Lasse asked disappointedly.

"Better than nothing," Adam said.

"We didn't have to defeat a powerful enemy to get it, after all."

"That's true, I guess."

"You mind if I take it?" Adam asked. Lasse gestured to the chest.

"Go for it." < < Upgrades Available > > < Sigil Efficiency (Rare) — Reduces sigil activation cost by 15% > < Invocation Range (Rare) — Increases invocation range by 35% > < Bleed (Uncommon) — Attacks inflict bleed dealing 10% weapon damage over the course of 10 seconds > < Luck (Uncommon) — Increases luck by 2 > Just what I needed. < < Upgrade Selected > > < Luck (Uncommon) >"That puts me at 25," Adam said.

"Now all my options are guaranteed Rare." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Nice," Lasse muttered.

"I'm going back to sleep," Shiff announced, still hugging his stinky blade.

"See yourselves out, aye?" They quickly left Lenny's Landing aboard Adam's boat and went north-east to where the compass indicated a secret.

"How long do you think we have before the Cloud Leviathan is loose again?" Lasse wondered.

"Probably less time than we think, unless it's already free," Adam replied. After ten minutes or so they reached an area not far from where they'd fought the Golden Slug. There was a small island with a rock formation taking up half of its surface and the other was covered in dense jungle. A few animal melodies resonated with Adam's hand, but it was otherwise clear. Though of course that wouldn't rule out slugwhales.

However, when Adam neared the island, the needle of the compass spun around to point back to where they'd come from.

"Maybe it's below us," Lasse guessed. They both looked down over the edge of the flesh boat, but there was nothing.

"Above then," Adam concluded and took them up. They had to go up for a couple of minutes, but then they reached a donut-shaped island. Something hung down through the middle of the central hole and glinted in the light of the rising sun. The light meant that the third and last day had begun.

"Is that a fishing hook?" Lasse muttered in confusion. Adam took them up to the surface, and it was yet another sand and palm tree island, of which there were quite a few in the Floating Sea. In the shade of a particularly sturdy palm tree was a wooden lawn chair. It reminded Adam of when he and Emelia had used the compass and found the Gift-Giving Stranger. This time the chair was empty though. I wonder how I can find him again. I have a lot I want to ask him.

In front of the lawn chair was a long and simple fishing rod that looked to have been made from bamboo. It was planted into the sand and the line was tossed into the middle of the island's donut-hole. Adam looked down at his compass. It was clearly pointing into the middle of the hole, but there was nothing there except the fishing line. He lifted the rod and reeled in the hook, but no secret appeared.

"Try casting the line back in," Lasse suggested. Adam did exactly that. Then he sat down in the chair.

"Guess I'll have to wait for a bite…" Adam said.

"We may not have time for this." But before he could give up, there was a tug on the line and he yanked on the rod to pull it in. This time, something was stuck to the hook. It was a brownish-grey egg. < < Secret Relic Obtained > > < Fisher's Egg (Rare) — Wriggles with inner life > Emelia didn't mention this one. I guess she was wrong when she said she only needed one secret from this Stage.

"An egg?" Lasse asked. Adam handed him the rod.

"Your turn."

"You sure we can both get it?"

"No, but we may as well try."

"What does it do?" Lasse asked as he sat down with the fishing rod after throwing the line into the hole.

"If it works like the last two I found, then it will give you a new vendor on Interim Island."

"Interesting. What do you think it'll sell?"

"Well, the last two were called Weaver and Builder, and they did precisely what you'd expect, so I'm sure this one sells fishing supplies," Adam replied with a grin.

"Just what I needed…" Lasse said sarcastically. There was another tug on the line and Lasse pulled it in to reveal a second egg.

"I wonder what happens if you bring back two eggs," Lasse said. < < Stage Objective Updated > > < Obtain the Godstone before the Feral Cloud Leviathan devours the Temple of the Godstone >"Uhh…" Lasse said.

"We've gotta go!" Adam said and all but threw Lasse into the flesh boat before shooting them eastward. Adam spoke into the compass and it shifted to point them east-northeast. We shouldn't have taken a detour! he scolded himself. As they flew, Adam was seated at the front of the boat to meditate and get back Mana quickly while simultaneously throwing out loops of spidersilk in front of their vessel.

Their rapid travel across the sea of clouds was interspersed with the violent yanking motions caused by the sudden acceleration and deceleration from the silken rings, and while it certainly wasn't comfortable, they covered a great distance in a very short amount of time. Suddenly the compass turned and Adam knew they'd overshot it.

"It must be below us!" Lasse exclaimed, since there were no signs of anything above them. His bow was ready in his hands, a lightning arrow nocked to the string. Adam sent them plummeting down through the clouds, past the floating point, and towards the bottom of the world. Eventually, once they'd gone much deeper than Adam had thought was necessary, they saw the Godstone Temple. It was unlike any of the other islands, because there was no rocky or sandy ground supporting the dark-green bricks it was made from.

Instead it just hovered there on its own. But none of that really registered to Adam, because he was more concerned with the black tentacles wrapped around the edifice and the monster they sprouted from. He hadn't been able to appreciate the feral cloud leviathan's true scale with it flattened onto the island where it had been summoned or curled up around Iffen while petrified, but now that it floated with its hundreds of tentacles spread out around it, it was fucking gigantic.

It blotted out most of what they could see below, rising up from the depths of the Floating Sea like the fingers of Death come to pull them into the underworld. But there was one saving grace. Much of its body was still covered in large patches of stone, so it hadn't fully regained control of its limbs.

It was also clear that it hadn't been able to grow yet, since it was struggling to devour the temple island, although a portion of the northern stone plaza was already gone, with its central body latched onto that side and munching away slowly. It's no doubt an exponential thing. The more it grows, the faster it can consume, until it's impossible to stop it. They weren't far from where the leviathan had appeared on Starfall Island, so it had clearly just targeted the temple out of convenience.

Although, maybe Julie knew that Starfall Island was close to the temple, and that's why she picked that specific slug dragon to infect. All in order to maximise the chance of us all getting stuck in the Stage without a way to escape…

"Shoot its main body while it's distracted!" Adam told Lasse. He didn't need to be told twice, and his Barrage Master's Coat and arrow both started to glow, along with the Ranger's Lucky Charm. Then he fired off the lightning arrow he'd been holding onto. As the arrow flew, Adam sent them down towards the main part of the temple, where a large stepped pyramid rose up with a square building at the top that was clearly the entrance.

The lightning arrow spread out into 21 copies, and then split again, becoming over 400 in total. They each had a tail of lightning, and all together they made a sound like rumbling thunder as they zigged and zagged down towards the leviathan's massive body below. Then the effect of the charm really took hold, and the arrows all sped up while pressing themselves close together, forming a tightly-packed wall of projectiles. A loud thunderclap echoed up from the leviathan as the barrage struck right near its mouth.

The tentacles that were holding on to the island all let go as the current travelled through its body. It was just like with Rasal. The slug creatures are clearly vulnerable to lightning, Adam realised. I just don't know of a good way to get my hands on that element. Although stunned from such a massive dose of electricity, the leviathan didn't plummet back down into the depths, but they did have enough of an opening to land atop the stepped pyramid and rush inside the building.

The interior was much like Captain Hast's quarters on the Golden Fortress' stronghold island, except bigger, and in the middle of the space was a spiralling staircase leading down. Adam pulled the flesh and blood from the boat and used it to bolster his own physique. He could tell it disgusted Lasse, but the Archer didn't say anything out loud, since he clearly trusted Adam. No sooner had they reached the bottom of the stairwell than the whole temple shook.

"We don't have much time," Lasse remarked. Adam pulled out the compass and it pointed them towards the Godstone, allowing them to avoid three of the four chambers sprouting from the antechamber. As they ran through a series of rooms, they saw dead pirates and temple constructs littered around the place. All of the humans had been petrified, since the light from Iffen's attack had somehow travelled down into the depths of the temple, but the statues were unchanged.

It was a scary sign that Iffen's magic didn't obey the laws of physics, and was instead a living thing. It also explained why so very few had survived its effect, since only those completely sealed off from the outside had been untouched. I wonder if it's the power of some Absolute that he invoked, Adam thought to himself as they came to a larger chamber with a big door at the end. The door was a solid block of dark-green stone with a triangle-shaped hole positioned into it at head height.

Blocky patterns depicting a glowing stone, an army of animalistic humans, and other things Adam couldn't decipher, covered the door like a tapestry. Two large sun gems in the ceiling bathed the room in a yellow-orange glow. In front of the door, up on a raised dais, stood a large statue with the body of a human, four arms, a serpent as a tail, the head of a lion, and the wings and talons of a hawk. Its four hands each held a straight double-edged sword, and they were all covered in dried blood.

The victims of the statue construct lay around them on the floor, also turned to stone by Iffen. Like the statue they'd fought at Anchor Hole, this one had two glowing gems as eyes, but there were several more in its hands, feet, the eyes of the serpent tail, as well as on the tips of the wings.

"It's a Boss Statue Elemental," Lasse said after appraising it with his Scope of Insight.

"The base of the tail and root of the wings are structural weak points, but we've gotta destroy the gems to kill it." Adam was about to activate his Princely Raiment, but then the left side of the chamber burst open to reveal the enormous mouth of the leviathan. Its noxious aura quickly started to seep into the room and one of its tentacles moved into the hole inquisitively as the statue boss came to life.

No sooner had it stepped off the dais than the tentacle swooped forward and grabbed it, pulling it out through the hole.

"Fuck!" Lasse exclaimed.

"Shoot it with a lightning arrow again!" Adam told him as he ran towards the door, pulling the mechanism out of his backpack.

"And don't let the aura touch you, it'll kill you!"

"Okay, but it's my last one!" Adam reached the door and shoved the mechanism inside. He had to push it hard from the back to get it to go all the way in. Then a deafening thunderclap echoed through the room, making his ears ring painfully. Lasse came over to him while continuously firing off arrows into the wall of reflective darkness outside of the temple created by the leviathan's body. Thankfully, it really didn't like lightning damage, so it had retreated slightly. But it wouldn't last long.

The ground under them trembled again, but this time it came from the temple itself as the large door was slowly pulled up into the ceiling. Before it had even made an opening half-a-metre tall, Adam and Lasse were already squeezing themselves through, though Adam had to shed most of his additional mass to fit. On the other side was a chamber with piles of gold and jewels, and there were pedestals with various things, one of which seemed to be a magical cannon of some kind. That's gotta be what Captain Hast wanted.

There were also weird contraptions, strange attire and weapons that weren't possible for them to loot, and in the very back was a larger dais with a half-submerged humanoid statue reaching up one hand to hold a white-glowing spherical stone with a hazy outline of all the colours of the rainbow. Like Emelia had said, half of the stone was missing, as it had been sheared down the middle, splitting evenly.

Adam spoke into the compass as he and Lasse ran towards the Godstone, but it didn't respond to what he was seeking. He had specifically asked it to point him to anything in the treasure chamber, besides the Godstone, which would be valuable to him. I guess all of these other items are for the benefits of the various captains. Perhaps it's possible to come here, open the chamber, loot the Godstone, but then decide to stay and befriend the other factions using the items.

Lasse put his hand on the Godstone, and, just like Emelia had said, a golden tear appeared in the air right next to the dais. < < Stage Objective Complete > > < Traverse through the rift with the Godstone > Adam went over and picked up the glowing stone. At the same time, two tentacles broke through the hole in the chamber outside, thrashing wildly and making the ground jump and shake.

"Let's not waste any more time," Adam said, pushing Lasse through the rift with him.

"See you on the other side," Lasse said just before they were both swallowed by the light.

< < Stage Complete > > < Tallying Score > < < Score > > < 2 days 2 Hours 7 Minutes Completion Time > < 2 Players survived 400 Points > < 1 Player slain 500 Points > < 1 Captain slain 300 Points > < 1 Slug Dragon slain 300 Points > < 2 Elites slain 300 Points > < 2 Medium airships defeated 400 Points > < 4 Small airships defeated 400 Points > < — — — > < Main Objective Completion 4500 Points > < Defeated the Golden Slug 3600 Points > < Found the Golden Prince 900 Points > < Completed Song of the Slugwhales Quest 900 Points > < — — — > < 2000 Point Most Valuable Player Bonus added > < 2000 Point Defender Bonus added > < 600 Point Quester Bonus added > < 300 Point All Havens Bonus added > < — — — > < 30 Damage Received > < 17400 Points Awarded >