With Death Touched, I did not fear that I would be ambushed, and if I was being watched, I would know.
Opening my status screen at the beginning of a fresh loop was almost becoming a tradition at this point, and it had become its own sort of ritual that calmed my spirit.
With my status screen opened, I was right that there had not been much progress in my skills, which I expected, now that most of them were in the Adept level and pushing into the Arcanist level... I needed much more intense battles that could bring me to my limit and keep me there for a while instead of the fight I had with the Soul Flayer.
However, I was shocked in other areas, especially on the part of my Anima Crystallization that had grown a full seven percent.
[ Name: Elric Voss ]
[ Age: 16 ]
[ Titles: Storm Bearer (Legendary) | Heaven Beast Tamer (Mythic) ]
[ Available Titles: Demon Slayer (Epic), Death-Touched, Lightning Adept ]
[ Anima Depth: 89 (Adept) — Broken-Celestial — Crystallization: 50% → 57% ]
[ Disciplines: ]
Lightning Edict: 81 → 82 (Legendary) — Broken-Celestial
Loom of Lightning: 89 ( Epic) — Broken-Celestial
Lightning Tribunal: 88 → 89 (Legendary) — Broken-Celestial Heaven’s
Heaven’s Verdict: 40 → 43 (Epic) — Broken-Celestial
Stormstep: 38 → 44 (Epic) — Broken-Celestial
[ Attunement Skills: ]
Lightning Resonance: 101 → 103 (Arcanist) — Epic
Staff Resonance: 70 (Adept) — Rare
Force Resonance: 66 (Adept ) — Rare
[ Auxiliary Skills: ]
Endurance: 119 (Arcanist) — Broken-Celestial
Concentration: 92 → 95 (Arcanist) — Rare
Observation: 91 → 96 (Arcanist) — Rare
Anima Sensitivity: 90 → 91 (Arcanist) — Rare
Meditation: 88 → 89 (Adept) — Uncommon
Marksman: 75 (Adept) — Uncommon
Demonology: 95 → 99 (Arcanist) — Registered
Inscription: 27 → 39 (Acolyte)
First Aid: 52 (Acolyte)
Cooking: 16 (Initiate)
Cartography: 6 (Initiate)
[ Celestial-tier Skills: ]
Mortal Shell: 103 → 105 (Arcanist) — Broken-Celestial
Hollow Avatar: 90 → 93 (Arcanist) — Broken-Celestial
Lightning Incarnate: 84 → 85 (Adept) — Broken-Celestial
Soul-Forge: 78 → 80 (Adept) — Broken-Celestial
Titan’s Marrow: 47 → 50 (Adept) — Unique — Broken-Celestial
[Soul-Vessel: Stone Origin Shell — Initiating ]
[ Laws: Lightning Law Shards (4 / 9) ]
[ Heavenly Bond: Moon Fox — 2% → 4% ]
[ Stored Essence: 71,000 → 75,000 / 500,000 — Fifth Earth Gate ]
[ Blessings: Anansi Web (Consumed) ]
[ Soul: Welded — Condition: Stable ]
∞
My skills were growing, but several of them had reached the peak of Adept level and had not budged into the Arcanist tier.
The disciplines had crept up. Heaven’s Verdict and Stormstep more than the rest, because they were new and I had used them hard. Everything else had moved at a glacier’s pace, but overall, I was satisfied. With my present abilities, if I were outside this loop, this may have taken me weeks to acquire.
My channels, even though they were slowly being completed, were still paying me dividends in bulk as they were the chief reason I was growing this quickly.
I recall the stance I made that had pushed the completion of my channels, and I placed that aside for the moment, as I reached Inscription on my status, and I stopped.
From Initiate to Acolyte in the blink of an eye. Twenty-seven to thirty-nine. Twelve points, in a skill that had crawled one point a loop for as long as I could remember.
I had not carved a single script since the last time I looked at this screen; all I had done was look at the Inscriptions inside the chip, the golden door, and the Anchor, and the system judged that I had received so much experience from this that I was pushed into the Acolyte level.
Closing my eyes, I tried to review the knowledge that I knew about Inscriptions, and it came back to me in profound clarity. Connections that I missed before, and new ways to link the gaps in between, the carvings neatly slotted their way into my head, and a small smile touched the edge of my lips.
To test this knowledge, I looked at the knight below me, and it was still trying to reach for me; maybe it wanted to bite my foot. There was a time I would have been frozen for minutes contemplating what wretched fate brought this woman to this position, but that part of me was tired, weighed down by the weight of danger surrounding me, and I could only see the light by constantly pushing forward.
I had not killed the knight because I had a theory that the reason the Sovereign’s attention turned towards me was that I began to kill these knights.
I recalled that in the last loop, I had killed this knight, and not long after, I was attacked by a few dozen of them, and it was after killing those knights that I felt the attention of the Sovereign.
I had spent some time here, and there was no second wave of knights breathing down my neck, so it meant that some part of my hypothesis was correct. However, I did not think I had escaped without drawing attention.
A place like this had to be monitored closely, and I may not be able to avoid attention for long, but that was okay; I just needed as much time as I could get before the darkness came for me.
My fingers were itching to push the etchings in my head to metal, so I could see if these new connections in my head made any meaning. I glanced at the discarded helmet of the knight, and I reached for it with a thread before pulling it to me.
Now that I had the helmet in my hand, I took the time to observe it, and I noticed a line of script that was broken when I took it off the head of the knight. From what I could see, these scripts were connected to the whole armor, and if I was correct, it was one of the reasons why the shape of this armor was invisible to me until I was looking at it.
After the script was broken, this weird invisibility was gone, and my senses could detect the armor without any issues.
The Inscriptions were simple, and it was not hard for me to memorize the part that I could see, but I was not concerned with this one. Holding the helmet between my two palms, I expanded them and crushed the helmet into a ball.
Soul Forge did not burn but disintegrate, so I could not use it here, but it was a good thing that my lightning could become very hot.
With the crushed helmet in between my palms, I began to heat it by running lightning through the skin of my palms, and before long it grew red hot, and it did not take long before I could mould it with my palm into a rough orb.
I decided that I would recreate my first work, the alarm clock that had woken me more times than I could remember, and by all the lights in heaven, it was going to be announcing something else.