Chapter 397: A New Status

Home. A place filled with death and nightmares, but dammit, it was mine. Caught between the ravages of infinite choices, the one thing I held on to was that familiar feeling, and if I was torn away from it, who knew when I would be able to return."

My perception held on to that pillar as I fought my way across to it. I could not see my world in it, but I could feel a recognition, as if the pillar knew me, and underneath the recognition there was the taste of the loop.

Every death, every reset, every bloody conflict and every shattered dreams were there on the other side of that pillar, and it was a flavor I would know even in death.

I laughed, and the laugh came from a mouth missing part of its jaw; it must have sounded horrifying, but there was nobody to hear it.

I reached for it with everything I had. My channels blazed, my Anima burned, and I pushed against the force that was dragging me down. Every instinct in me was shouting at me not to take out my domain, but I had learned to distinguish the cries of total danger from those that were slightly less so.

With a ragged cry, I unleashed my domain, and I felt my soul being shredded to pieces as the pillars around me screamed, and I fought against them, their surfaces rippling, and their runes flaring with the pressure of my will.

I could not hold this place still, but my domain gave an extra boost to my Space Resonance, allowing me to push against the pull of these pillars.

Space Resonance: 55 → 57 (Acolyte)

Two pillars ran close, and I went between them and lost the whole of my right foot, and I did not slow down, because it was the last gap.

Space Resonance: 57 → 59 (Acolyte)

My right hand vanished. The wound was clean, as if it had never been there. My Adamantium Flesh fought to heal it, but the erasure was too complete.

[Adamantium Titan: 139 → 142 (Sovereign)]

I ignored the pain, and I focused on the pillar, on the warm, familiar light of my world, and I pushed.

The distance between me and the pillar was infinite and infinitesimal. The geometry of this place could not be measured in normal terms, but I had touched space, and I understood it now. I stepped through the fold, and I arrived.

The pillar’s surface rushed toward me, and I slammed into it with the force of a falling star. The runes blazed, and I felt the barrier between me and my world begin to give way.

I pushed harder.

The runes screamed. The pillar shuddered. And then, with a sound like the world tearing in half, I broke through.

∞

I emerged into open air, and my body was held in place for a moment that stretched to ten seconds as the forces of space still clung to me. They were tearing wounds into the air for thousands of feet around me, and a strange storm shining with green light erupted on all sides. Then the force loosened, and I was falling.

My perception had caught the edge of the falling sun in the west, so it was evening... good to know. This was my last coherent thought for a while.

The wind screamed past me, and I nearly wept at the familiar scent of my world and the fact that I could feel essence rushing past me. I did not care how much danger was here; I was never leaving home again.

But I was also falling, and I was falling fast. The forces of space still lingered on my body, and they were still driving me downward, so that I sliced through the air without it slowing me at all, and I fell many times faster than any falling thing should.

I tried to call on my lightning, but my channels were empty. My Anima was spent, my Marrow was drained, and my body was a ruin of wounds that would not heal. I had nothing left. Every shred of Anima or Marrow that was being regenerated was being spent in keeping me alive, and the ground rushed up to meet me.

Damn... I was coming too fast, and I did not know if my durability was enough for me to survive the impact.

I saw mountains below, their peaks jagged and black against the evening sky. I was falling toward one of them, a massive peak that rose from the earth like a clenched fist. There was no time to dodge. No time to do anything except brace with the broken scraps of a body that should long since have been dead.

I hit the mountain like a meteor.

The impact was catastrophic. The peak shattered, and I drove through stone and rock and ice like a blade through flesh. The shockwave of my impact flattened the surrounding peaks, and for miles, the earth shook. The last forces of space clinging to me were scraped away from my body, but as they dissipated they sliced into everything around me, pushing me deeper into the mountain.

I came to rest in a crater of my own making, buried deep in the heart of the mountain.

I lost consciousness, and I did not know how long I lay there before I woke. It could have been minutes or weeks. When I woke, my body was still broken, bones shattered, and my channels cracked... I did not even know that they could crack. This should have come from unleashing my domain inside that space.

I could not move and I could not speak, even to call out for help that I knew would not come. I could only lie in the darkness and wait for my body to remember how to heal.

Adamantium Titan: 142 → 145 (Sovereign)

A faint surge of heat radiated out of my bones from the upgrade in Adamantium Titan, and the Law of Flesh began its work, and I felt my bones begin to knit, my channels begin to seal, my flesh begin to regrow.

My body had been erased in so many places, and the impact from my crash did not help matters. I did not know how long it would take for me to heal, but what was important to me was that I had made it home.

Celebrate the wins... no matter how small.

My eyes had long since grown used to the darkness, and I stared through the deep hole I had made in the mountain. I could see a small part of the sky, and from my estimation of the pitiful light I could see, it was morning.

How long have I been here, and why has no one come to find me?

It was not as if my descent had been quiet. The commotion from space when I arrived was not small, and neither was the destruction I had seen the moment I hit the earth.

I gave a small groan as a new right hand slowly grew out of my shoulder, and decided to call up my full status screen to understand my real state, but the first portion of my status screen made no sense to me.

[ True Name: Druhg?_...Error]

[ Time Arc?: 1.9086.009.223.222 ]

[Faith: Unknown]

[Blessing: Broken]

[Soul Condition: Sealed. Unlock at the Temple of your Patron god]

What the...