Abyssal Toll... I had gained this unique skill when I had cracked the frozen space that the Arcanist had held me with. In desperation, I had given the Hollow Avatar the freedom to push its emptiness deeper into my body, and it had done so, touching a part of myself that I had no access to.
This action had triggered the Demon Slayer Title in a way that I could not describe, but it had sent out a sound that was eerily similar to the foghorn from the Pyramid, and all thirty kilometres of the Pyramid had vibrated.
I had died before I saw the effect of this skill, but I could suspect what it did.
Unique meant one of a kind. It meant the system had no category for what I had done, no existing framework to file it under, so it had invented one on the spot. The same way it had invented Welded for my soul condition when the Hollow Avatar and I became inseparable.
I focused on the skill.
[Abyssal Toll — Unique — Broken-Celestial]
[Acquired by: sounding the Demon Slayer title’s resonance frequency through the hollow place as a weapon, rather than a distress signal]
[Effects:]
— When activated, the skill emits a pulse at the frequency of the First Earth Gate’s opening. This frequency is inherently repulsive to demonic entities and disruptive to Abyssal-anchored magic.
— Demons within the pulse radius (scales with rank, base: 50 metres) suffer immediate disorientation. Lower-tier demons are stunned. Higher-tier demons are slowed, and their Abyssal shields are weakened.
— The pulse disrupts resonance links. The effect is proportional to the target’s reliance on Abyssal-derived magic.
— The pulse can be directed, rather than omnidirectional, at higher ranks.
[Cost:]
— The pulse draws on Stored Essence rather than Anima. Current cost per pulse: 500 essence.
— The pulse also strains the hollow place. Repeated use without recovery time may cause the hollow to expand.
[Note:] This skill was not taught. It was not discovered. It was born from the collision of death, an ancient title, and a hole in the universe where a soul used to be. The system is still unsure how to classify it. You are the only person in recorded history to possess it.
One of the first things to catch my eye was the ’Note’ on the end of the description for this powerful spell. This seemed to be the System talking directly to me.
This was not the first time that this had happened to me, but now it was becoming more frequent. I knew that the System was said to be sentient, connected to the core of our world, but only those at the level of Sovereign and gods had access to it on a deeper level, and if there could be anything in the world that could detect the presence of the loop, then it had to be the System.
Still, I read the note three times.
You are the only person in recorded history to possess it.
The System had never said anything like that before. It had called Mortal Shell Broken-Celestial and noted that the skill was not meant for Acolytes. It had warned me that Hollow Avatar might not return what it borrowed. But this... You are the only one, was different. It was almost... proud.
Or maybe I was imagining things.
Five hundred essence per pulse. I had nineteen thousand stored. That was thirty-eight pulses before the title’s reservoir emptied. Thirty-eight chances to disrupt the Arcanist’s spatial binding, maybe to even tear Orath’s possession tether out of Rex’s dying body.
The cost was not the essence; with so many demons in the eruption, the cost was something I could pay, no, the true cost was the hollow place expanding. The cold space behind my soul, the darkness that had weight, the thing that wanted to fill the emptiness left by the old soul’s destruction, would grow with each pulse. And if it grew too much...
I did not know what would happen. The system did not know. The note said repeated use without recovery time may cause the hollow to expand. Not will. May. The system was guessing, and that did not give me much confidence in its description.
Was it possible that, on some level, even the system did not fully understand the full depth of a celestial spell?
I closed the status screen and sat with the uncertainty.
Outside my tent, the camp was waking up. I could easily hear the voices of my friends; with my senses, I could hear their heartbeat, even the flow of Anima in their bodies. They seemed so fragile.
I had changed, maybe on the surface, my body had not changed that much, but my aura was different, I knew it, and if I stepped out of my tent and they saw me, they would know that I was not the same... I was not the friend who had laughed with them yesterday before going to sleep.
I had thirty-eight minutes before the eruption, and with this new skill in my hands, could I stop it before it began?
No, that was not possible. I had believed that the eruption was created by Orath, but I was wrong. The Caelith Mourne Pyramid was opened three hundred years ago, and at this moment, there were Arcanist rank mages inside it breaking Seals for a so-called harvest that should be related to ascending the strength of the Conclave to another level.
This was not a small operation, and if I had any hope of stopping it, then I needed to be much stronger.
I stared at the staff on the other side of my tent, and I reached for it, and it fell into my hands. For the past few loops, it had been failing me; I had asked too much from it, and it had given me everything it had, but now, it was becoming more of a crutch than an aid.
But I did not want to give up on the staff, I placed the staff on my back and held it in place using a string of Threadwork.
After the last loop, I have decided to change the way I faced the loop. In the camp, I don’t think there was anyone who could stop me. Lightning Incarnate gave me speed that none of them could match, and so it was time for me to interrogate Orath, Rel, and anyone in the camp who knew what was happening.
The fight would happen in the camp.