The corpse at my feet was still trying to reach its sword, there was no anger in its yellow eyes, since there was barely any soul left inside the shell, and if this place had been running for as long as I think it was, then only creatures like this could be used here, even the long lifespan of a mage was nothing to an operation that had been running for at least nine thousand years.
I observed the undead that was struggling to move under my feet, and I did not know what to feel; mostly, it was just a profound feeling of numbness.
"There’s no one in there," I said aloud, knowing that the Hollow Avatar would hear.
"No," it agreed, peering into the empty socket. "But there’s that, " and my gaze fell to the glowing square chip in the skull. "The force that’s driving him is that thing, so instead of asking the glove, maybe you can ask the hand."
My right palm expanded, and I crushed the skull of the undead knight. With Titan’s Marrow now at the Adept level, the ease with which I could change my size had been enhanced, and as my hand shrank, I fished out the glowing chip from the crushed skull of the knight.
I brought out the first chip that I had seized and compared them side by side; they were exact, as if they had been forged from the same mold.
Placing these two chips aside, I looked around for a body that was still left with its head intact and had removed its guiding chip, and visually, it was still the same as the first two.
Now, my curiosity was ignited. Knowing that with Death Touched, it was practically impossible for me to be sneaked upon, I threads appeared from my fingers, and I attempted to cut the chip symmetrically, so I could see what was inside, and hopefully not damage it too much.
My threads created heated lines on the edge of the chip, but the cut it made was not very deep. If I continued like this, it would take me a while to cut through this chip, and I was not in the right place to be doing such a thing.
My attitude may seem relaxed, but I was at the knife-edge, with a finger to the suicide button. I was in a strange place, and everything I should be doing was figuring out everything I needed to do to leave this horrifying place.
Focusing on the chip I was cutting, I sent a sliver of Soul Forge flame across my thread, and it was enough to cut through the chip like a hot knife through snow, revealing two mirror pieces of the chip.
The glow from the chip faded, but it was okay if I needed more chips; there were more from where that came from.
Looking at the insides of the chip, my eyes glowed, a bit in excitement when I saw the complex inscriptions that were so small I would not have been able to see them without my new perception, and yet they were so complex it defied my imagination.
The Inscription I used in the creation of the floating silver orb that became the hallmark of my previous loop with the voice of Mel blaring from it only held about sixty scripts, and most of the scripts were those of air that were focused on keeping the silver orb afloat.
I had carved those inscriptions over weeks, and had failed almost a dozen times before I got one of them to work. I remembered how proud I was of that work, and my Inscription had become solidified on my status screen as an Auxiliary skill; however, looking at the dense amount of Inscription here on this chip numbering almost ten thousand, I went mute.
What level was the Engraver who made this chip? Adept, Arcanist... maybe their skill had reached the Sovereign level?
I did not know since I did not have any framework to judge. My Inscriptions were still in the Initiate Tier, and the only reason I was nearing the Acolyte level was that I had glimpsed part of the Inscription in Gate Warden.
I froze as this thought entered my head, and I placed the chip I had cut open aside before I brought out the first two glowing chips and looked at them. Was it possible for me to learn more about these things if I used that method?
At this moment, Death Touch gave me a weird signal. It was not the familiar cold response I got from approaching threats; this one was different, it was an all-pervasive chill that blew lightly across my skin.
The sensation confused me for a moment before I realized what it was... I was being watched.
Trying not to make any sign to show that I was aware that someone was watching me, I kept my motions within reason, and I began to dig through the heads of the knights, searching for any surviving chip.
"Hollow," I called out inside my head. "If there is a hand controlling all these knights, then it stands to reason that they are all connected, and in that case, there must be a network. If we can access these chips’ internals without damaging them, can you read what runs through them?"
The Hollow Avatar was quiet for a moment as if it was thinking, "My knowledge of this Inscription is tied to your own, and they are not familiar to me, but if there is a network, the Hollow can carry a part of our souls through it. However, the combined weight of our attention on such a well-calibrated network would be quickly detected, and whoever is watching us would be aware of our presence."
"Then we do it fast, and we close it fast." I crouched over the corpse of a knight while I held both chips in my two hands. I unspooled a single thread of the loom and pierced through the side of the chips carefully.
It helped that I had cut one open, and I remembered sections of the chip where there was a few millimeters of space, and my thread was able to open that gap.
"Ready yourself; our actions would most likely bring down the fury of this place on our heads."
"Do it," I whispered.