Chương 167: Chapter One-Hundred-and-Sixty-Seven

"How did Sofia not dodge the attack?" Adam grilled his cube.

"She was wearing a Relic that lets her dodge…" [It is not possible to dodge an attacker who is holding on to you while using the Skittish Skaters Relic, since the Relic moves the wearer's entire body.] Adam frowned.

"That's fucking bullshit."

"It's my fault," Luo said from where he was sitting next to Sofia's body.

"I should've convinced her to just leave."

"If anything, I'm the one to blame," Adam said.

"I relied too much on my blood sense to realise that the old woman was still holding her knife. I should've known better. I should've carried healing potions on me."

"Stop acting like everything is your responsibility!" Luo retorted.

"Sofia and I were always getting hurt, so we should've been the ones to realise that we needed to bring potions." Kat came over, holding the face of the Changeling, which she'd removed from the severed wooden head using her daggers.

"Neither of you are to blame," she said.

"In the real world, Sofia would not have died. Her bleeding was stopped. Her blood was transfused back into her body. I have seen this injury before, and the person survived because their wound was patched up and they received CPR until the ambulance arrived. Sofia died because the System designed the rules of its game to be incongruent with reality." She's right. The slimes from Stage One could kill someone just by bumping into their legs a few times, which is nonsense.

It's because of our stats and how the Trials treat damage as numbers rather than actual injuries. Luo took the mask from her offering hand. He looked like he wanted to throw it away, but to do so would be to disrespect Sofia's memory. Then Adam realised something. Even if Sofia had survived, there would only be one mask for the two of them. Unless it's possible to do all of that again, finding a second core and puppet. But it would've taken too long. Adam tightened his hands into fists.

At every turn, the Trials are designed to tear us apart, pit us against each other, and make us doubt everything we know. To have an old lady turn into a killer, and to use the kind face of a pious tavern owner as the disguise of the Patriarch… These are not coincidences. They are deliberate decisions, designed to undermine us from within and make us second-guess what we think is normal.

Even if the Flayed Lady didn't have a hand in the creation of the Trials, they are fuelling her power by making people paranoid and distrustful. The thorn in the side of the All-Seeing System is fuelled by its actions. No wonder that it seems like she can just break the rules however she sees fit. I'm sure Nwetrou and the other Absolutes aren't much different. While they may play along with the rules of the Trials, they are clearly not above violating those rules when it suits them.

Nwetrou showed he is capable of feeding information to Players to set them up as assassins that can take out anyone who goes against his schemes. The Flayed Lady is likewise okay with twisting someone clearly unwell like Juliette until she becomes a lethal weapon that can be aimed at anyone she sees fit. I say I won't let it affect me, but I killed Aeran, even though I had no proof he would try to harm us. Perhaps we would've fared worse with him still alive, or maybe we would've thrived.

Maybe he would've died instead of Sofia… They didn't want to leave her body out in the open, so Adam picked her up and took to the sky, flying to the church graveyard in the Pious district while Kat and Luo retraced their steps to the Patriarch's lair, running across the city and avoiding any place with people so as to not fall victim to a sudden attack again. Adam used his magic to tear open the dirt and made a casket out of hardened flesh that he buried Sofia in.

Before closing the lid, he looted her Relics, putting them in a pouch of flexible skin, since he didn't have enough space for it all in his backpack. Then he compacted the soil on top of her coffin. As a last step, he targeted the blood in her body that some of his Mana was still infused into and crystallised it. No one will be able to use her body for their perverted spells or feast on it like animals. Adam flew to the Market district and met the others inside Oiled Ollie's Eatery just as the sun set.

Jasper and his wait staff went through the building, quickly sealing all the windows and doors, slamming bolts in place and blocking out the night. Adam, Luo, and Kat went down into the wine cellar, locking the door behind them, before Adam opened the crimson glass door to the lair, closing it again once they'd crossed the threshold. The special effect from Kat's new weapon had yet to manifest itself, but Adam figured it was only a matter of time.

"Despite it all, thank you," Luo said. The humour from earlier was gone, and Adam couldn't blame him. If not for the fact that Adam still had a lot of killing left to do and secrets to uncover, he might've left the Stage with him. Kat wanted to stay to obtain more power, and part of Adam was glad that he wouldn't need to be alone for the next three days.

Adam brought out all the Relics and trophies he'd been carrying, giving Luo a third of the latter, which came out to 24 lesser and 5 mature fangs, as well as 12 ghoul's eyes. The trophies alone were worth 6, 650 Points, though if Adam had been the one to sell them, he would've gotten 8, 950 thanks to his deal with Lucca. From the Relics, Luo got to pick four, since Kat and Adam expected to find more and didn't need any of them except the Shapeshifter's Claw, which Kat had chosen.

Luo ended up taking the Cloud-Skimmer Jacket, Skittish Skaters, Captain's Cape, and Purple Slime Glove, though he didn't equip the last one since Adam warned him about how much it would hurt. With the loot sorted, Adam and Kat watched as Luo walked up to the crimson glass pedestal holding the red-golden and glowing Godstone fragment. He gave them a quick nod and then put his hand on the objective. An instant later he was gone. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Adam let out a deep sigh. He didn't need to be carrying all the loot, so he left the Relics they didn't need near the Godstone, along with the remaining trophies, which also included the large Mimic Tongue. Since Adam held the key to the crimson glass doors, Kat wouldn't be able to take the items and leave if she suddenly had a change of heart.

"Are we staying here during the night?" she asked him. Adam shook his head.

"We're going to the Matriarch Island," he told her, opening the way out into the abandoned sewer tunnel they'd seen earlier. Kat didn't seem to question it and followed him out, allowing him to lock away the Stage objective and keeping the key. No sooner had she emerged into the tunnel than she gasped and crouched down, steadying herself on her hands as her body began to take on a new shape.

She's turning into a Bloodfiend Beast, Adam realised, glad it was happening now rather than in the middle of their journey to the island. He backed away a few steps and quietly prepared for a fight, in case she suddenly became hostile. Kat's head elongated into a snout and her ears grew longer and pointed like blades, while her face became more angular and sharper. Her eyes turned into a mirror image of Adam's with black sclera, red irises, and pin-prick pupils.

Her skin also became bone-white, spreading up from her clawed hands, and her muscle composition changed as her arms and legs grew slightly longer. Just like the bloodfiend Adam had killed during the first night, webbed skin grew from her upper arms to the sides of her torso, almost like the patagia of a flying squirrel, except demented and vile. While he was sure it was meant to resemble the wings of a bat more, the structure of the webbed skin was too dissimilar he thought.

The yellow-green soul wing hanging down her back seemed to grow shorter as her spine bent and extended slightly, giving her a bit of a hunched back. The clothes she wore under her armour ripped and frayed at the sudden growth spurt, but fortunately her Relics adapted to her new shape, though they looked extremely out of place on her.

"That was unpleasant," she commented, her voice an octave lower than before. Adam appraised the melody emanating from her blood. It was similar to that of a bloodfiend now, though lacking the intense hunger and desire.

"You'll be able to pass as a vampire," he told her.

"Hopefully that means we can avoid detection during the nights. I really wasn't sure it would work and I don't think you would've liked the alternative I had in mind. I will still have to cover you in blood though, just to make sure you give off the right scent."

"I will endure. Do what you must." Adam went about spreading some of his gathered blood on her body, and then he used his leftover flesh to shape a thin yet sturdy boat, which he surrounded with blood pulled from his crimson shirt. He would have to refill it back to capacity again soon.

"I did not realise you were this proficient with your magic," Kat remarked.

"That's because I haven't shown off all my powers yet," he replied.

"They tend to creep people out."

"I have a strong stomach," she told him.

"What was your plan if my transformation wasn't good enough?"

"I would've had to manually shape your body to look like a bloodfiend. I have a way of eliminating the pain, but it would still have been uncomfortable."

"I see," Kat replied, not questioning what he'd just told her. From her melody, it was clear she would do almost anything if she thought it would make her stronger. She's definitely very determined.

"Are you still able to wield your daggers in that form?" he asked her. She pulled the weapons to her hands, and they seemed so much smaller now.

"It will not be a problem," she replied. Once he was fully done with shaping the boat, Kat got in the front. Adam had placed it on the floor of the dry tunnel and made it just big enough for both of them to fit. After coating the vessel in a layer of blood, Adam climbed in behind her. Even though he trusted her at this point, he wouldn't take chances by leaving himself vulnerable.

Adam shot the flesh boat out of the tunnel, pulling on the blood wrapped about the vessel, as well as the flesh it was made of, which propelled them forward at insane speeds.

He hadn't appreciated just how fast it was in the Floating Sea when he'd first come up with the trick, because there were very few points of reference besides the clouds, but in Moonport it was instantly noticeable, since they sped out from the eastern side of the Market district and almost immediately hit the boundary that Beck had mentioned, which spun them around and sent them flying straight back towards the island.

Adam quickly course-corrected and turned them southward, following the pointing arrow of his compass. Thanks to her transformation, Kat was capable of seeing in the dark quite well, while Adam struggled, though the small bit of moonlight from above, and the fact that they were leaving behind the night lights of the city, made it possible to see more than usual. Granted, most things he saw were featureless dark silhouettes, and the water they flew across just looked like an undulating black reflective floor to him.

After a bit, Adam pulled out the third eye he'd sculpted the night before, using its dark vision to properly gauge what was up ahead, since he didn't want to rely entirely on Kat's brief descriptions. It still took a few minutes of flying in their flesh boat before he saw the distant shape they were heading towards, but from just the vague features he could see, it was clear it wasn't much different from what both Emelia and Beck had both described to him.

The randomness of the Stages seemed to be more about location than shape, since Moonport's district layout was always the same, but the locations of taverns and other buildings changed, as well as of course the Patriarch's lair. Similarly, the Floating Sea was just shifted around so the same islands were always there but in new places. As such, he realised he shouldn't be so surprised that the descriptions of prominent places were the same between loops and different dimensions, even if their locations weren't.

Matriarch Island was an old fortification, similar to the fortress islands found in the Floating Sea, and it seemed a relic of a war-filled past. A high stone wall surrounded a quarter of the vaguely-tear-shaped island with the tail pointed towards Moonport, and it was open to vessels due to how the walls cut off around the pointed end.

There was a collection of two-storey houses made of pale stone and black roof tiles visible near the docks, alongside old barracks buildings and warehouses that may have stored food and artillery in the past. The openings in the high wall and empty placements around the dock made it clear that the island had once been heavily defended, but there were no longer any visible cannons or ballistae.

They couldn't see the heart of the island from their angle of approach, since the wall hid it from sight, but Beck had said it was like a generic medieval castle, while Emelia had compared it to the Château of the Carcassonne citadel. They both said that the castle had its own walls and defences, making it difficult to infiltrate, but the entire island was dangerous, given how it teemed with the bloodfiends of the Matriarch's coven, so just setting foot there was risky.

Before Adam and Kat could even reach the dock, high-pitched shrieks filled the air as the nightly attacks began. Pale shapes lifted up from Matriarch Island, flying over the high wall and towards Moonport. At the same time, shapes knifed their way through the black waters, a few passing right under their floating boat.

Kat tensed up, preparing for a fight, but the bloodfiends continued past them, in the sky as well as in the water, seemingly ignorant of their presence, or perhaps so filled with hunger and desire that they did not care that two vampires were going in the opposite direction. Adam couldn't make out most of the shapes that filled the air, even with his sculpted eye, but it was quite a number of them, perhaps as many as twelve.

It seemed a lot to inhabit such a small island, given that he was certain all the flying ones were third- or second-generation. The ones below the waves had registered to him as lesser bloodfiends, and though he couldn't see them, he assumed they used their gliding wings to move through the water. I'm glad I'm able to sense them in the water. Fisher made me believe that my blood sense would easily be defeated by going for a swim, but it seems she's just a peculiarity.

As they reached the island, Kat immediately hopped off the boat and Adam lifted himself out, before pulling all of its material back to his body. < < Secret Stage Objective > > < Defeat the Matriarch >