Chapter 277 |
My first thought upon regaining consciousness was that it shouldn’t have happened. was a simple skill. Clear cut. You could still sleep, be willfully or forcefully sedated, but no amount of pain, shock, or damage could put your lights out until your body or mind gave out and you died. Divine energy had struck me at the end of the last transposition, and despite being the most agonizing experience of my life, kept me lucid through it.
I wasn’t even the target.
It felt wrong. I collected myself and struggled to a sitting position slowly, taking stock. We were still in the boss room, but the mantis was nowhere to be found. There was a massive crater in the back that had destroyed the sliding stone door entirely, as well as expanding the back half of the room in an amalgam of charred rubble and dust. And in the center of the room, where the boss stood previously, was a small stone structure that put a chill through me. I’d only seen one other. But it had given me the mask.
I looked down to find Julian kneeling near me. A light glow encompassed him as he seemed to meditate, his expression slack and relaxed. Still pale. But somehow not dying.
“I’m alright.” He said without opening his eyes. “Just finishing up here.”
The perforations were closing slowly. There were still trace amounts of blood seeping from the wound, but far less than there should be. He was healing, or something analogous.
“Sure.” I licked my lips, mouth dry and stood shakily to my feet, still gripping tightly in my hand. “Take your time.”
I genuinely hoped he would. Because this might be the only shot I had at containment. There was no blood, no insect legs strewn around, no goddamn trace that the boss had ever been there. It’d been vaporized. The only remaining evidence that something had happened was the crater in the ground and the back wall. Even the wound on my leg was closed. A display of absolute power unlike any I’d witnessed, and that was a high-fucking-bar.
And the person who held that power was infected.
I gripped tightly, taking audible steps to the side before circling around silently, positioning myself behind him, blade at the ready.
His vitals lit up.
“Matt?” He said.
I didn’t answer, unsure of what to do. My proximity was too close to be explained away as anything other than threatening, so I held my tongue.
Julian spoke again, his expression conflicted. “There’s something I want to ask. I have no right to put this on you, but there’s no one else.”
“Go ahead.” I murmured.
He started at the sound of my voice, but didn’t move. “Tell Charlotte I love her. And tell her… that she was right.”
I scanned his vitals again, not entirely believing what I was seeing. Pissed off, frustrated, and confused, I stalked away. “Tell her yourself, asshole. The hell’s the matter with you.”
With that I started sorting through my notifications as Julian stared after me like he’d misread the room and had very little idea why.
“It got me.” He said.
“It did.” I agreed.
“I should definitely be infected.”
“You should.”
“But I’m not?” He cocked his head like Talia did when her ears caught a high frequency.
I sighed. “I have an item with an effect that highlights anatomy. Natural armor, vitals, and so on. Used it to scope out the mantis during my not-betrayal and got a solid read on what an infested creature looks like. It’s not subtle. The network of—whatever—is impossible to miss. You’re clean. No idea how, guessing it has something to do with the ability you cryptically hinted lets you shrug things off,” I said, then looked at him pointedly. “Just consult with a healer at camp? Guessing they have better diagnostic resources than a fucking magic knife.”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Annoyingly, Julian seemed chagrined. “I will. You’re very cross when you’re angry.”
“No. I’m cross when I’m confused and have no way to process or even remotely understand what I just saw.” I glared at him. “When I’m angry, it’s something else.”
He blinked. “I took care of the boss.”
“No. You one shot the boss.” I corrected.
If you could do that, why the hell did you wait so long and put us both at risk?
“And that makes you angry?”
“Not angry—you know what? Let’s just skip to the contemplative, quiet part that comes after a battle, shall we?”
I was being shitty, and I knew it. But I needed to get my head straight. Part of me—the thrumming drumbeat that always lurked beneath the surface—told me this might still be the best opportunity I had to deal with someone like Julian. Especially considering the reality that he and Nick might come into conflict over control of the court. And if Julian ever lost his mind, hardly an impossibility if he was tearing his hair out trying to parlay with every half-sapient creature he met, the rest of us were in serious trouble.
God knows he’s willing to fall on a sword at the slightest justification. Tell him you were wrong. The infection is there. It’s small, so small you missed it at first. He’ll accept that. Christ, he’ll probably thank you for it.
I frowned, double-checking my title screen to make sure I hadn’t somehow selected by mistake. After a few seconds, I confirmed that I hadn’t. was still in place.
The annoyingly gentle sound of Julian’s laughter floated through the room.
“You’re definitely angry.”
“Shut up.”
There was a long silence before he spoke again. “There are a lot of conditions, before that…” he cringed, “avenue is available to me. A whole laundry list I have to work through.”
I peered at him over the notification screen. “Glad to hear the tactical nuke has a safety.”
“It’s not like that.”
“The atoms of the boss you obliterated suggest otherwise.”
I forced myself to bring it down a few notches. I didn’t have any legitimate ground to stand on for keeping shit close to the vest. His power terrified me, but my power—my actual power—would undoubtedly terrify him as well. Sniping because I didn’t like the way he played this would do nothing at best, erode the good will I’d accumulated at worst.
I forced a smile that felt false. “We prevented a disaster. More accurately, you did. I’m a little freaked out, but I’ll be fine.”
Julian frowned. My answer hadn’t satisfied him, likely because I was too rattled to lie well, and he was too perceptive to buy it. He leaned back on his hands and gave the altar in the center of the room a long look. “What do we do about that?”
“Fuck all.”
“It’s a Shrine of Elevation. Priceless. They—”
“—Ascend a common-class item to something higher. I’m aware.” I hedged. “And we found it in a boss room of a tower floor also containing an eldritch monster with delusions of grandeur. Guessing the deity that put it there isn’t the goddess of cookies and good cheer.”
Just because I had various items with eldritch resistance and matching boon didn’t mean I was safe if something got through, and an eldritch deity—one with a justifiable bone to pick with me—would absolutely be capable of that.
But Julian could.
He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from the shrine. “Assuming the tower sequesters this floor, we probably won’t be the last people to come across it. Everyone knows how valuable they are. Wouldn’t it be safer to use it up?”
I swiped the notification screen with a groan and thought about it. Put my biases aside. He was right that someone else would eventually use it. Whether it was the Tower’s staff, whatever cleanup crew they sent up to salvage this floor, or some asshole who broke in out of curiosity. Didn’t like it, but Julian was, perhaps, the only person capable of depleting it safely without becoming a walking viral load.
“Look. I’m not conveniently immune.” I grumbled. “So I’m not touching it.”
Instead of calling me out or balking at the idea, he limped towards the shrine and circled it, studying it from all angles. “It doesn’t look evil.”
“That changes things, then.”
“Are you always this sarcastic?” He squinted, immediately moving on without waiting for an answer. “What should we, uh, elevate?”
“You’re taking the risk. Your decision.”
“I’m kind of geared. Nothing common on me.”
I scanned my inventory, not entirely displeased with that turn of events. “Pretty loaded myself. Some consumables that are common, but that would be a waste. Usually I pick up common drops just to sell them, but I offloaded everything earlier this week and this floor was a wasteland—”
Something at the bottom of my inventory stood out, and I froze. Because I did, in fact, have a single item considered common. I’d played with adding additional weapons to my kit as a method of delivering various magical effects and debuffs. Problem was, as I lacked magic myself, someone else had to apply the effects ahead of time. And not a single person I consulted with could figure a way to make the magic last long enough for that to be practical. Surface area and weapon-type didn’t seem to matter. I’d already sold a variety of knives, swords, bows, and crossbows back.
But there was a single knife left. A basic, common knife that I’d somehow missed, despite being sure I’d cleared everything out.
There it was again. That feeling that I was playing into someone else’s plan.
“I have one.”
