Chapter 495 - 494: Undying Source Gold Ring

Chapter 495: Chapter 494: Undying Source Gold Ring

Silentrain whipped her head around.

The movement was so sudden she nearly threw Seraphina Sinclair from her arms. Silentrain scrambled to pull her back, but her arms clamped down too tightly, squeezing a faint, creaking sound from Seraphina’s ribs.

"...Loosen up a bit."

Seraphina Sinclair’s voice was still hoarse, but the desperation in it was unmistakable.

Silentrain obliged, lowering her head to stare at Seraphina’s face.

"You’re still alive?"

Seraphina Sinclair: "..."

A strange expression crossed her face. "Am I hearing a ghost, then?"

Silentrain opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Her expression shifted several times in just a few seconds, moving from shock to confusion, then to bewilderment, and finally settling on elation.

’No matter what, her unlikely teammate was still alive. That had to be a good thing!’

"What do you mean, ’don’t—’"

She couldn’t finish speaking, as the countdown finally hit zero.

Seraphina Sinclair saw a flash of white light. When her vision cleared, she was back in her mobile cabin.

This was the first time she hadn’t returned while holding Sunflower.

But thankfully, Sunflower had been teleported back as well.

As if realizing the instance was over, it shook its head and immediately returned to its original size.

Its brilliant golden eyes watched Seraphina Sinclair lying on the floor, seeming to ask, "Why aren’t you getting up?"

Seraphina Sinclair: "..."

The Gloom Hatchling was sound asleep, and Luna Jacobs was probably in the training room, leaving Seraphina Sinclair all by herself in the mobile cabin.

The floor was cold.

The chill seeped through her clothes, crawling up her spine vertebra by vertebra, like a cold snake slithering slowly up her back.

Seraphina Sinclair lay there, staring silently at the ceiling.

After a long while, she twitched her index finger.

Her fingernail tapped against the floor, making a very light, crisp sound.

Then her middle, ring, and pinky fingers. She bent and straightened all five in sequence. A faint ache bloomed in the joints, like the tingling itch of blood returning to frozen limbs after stepping from the winter cold into a warm house.

She turned her hand over, raising it before her eyes.

The skin on the back of her hand was impossibly smooth and clean. There were no burns, no blisters—not a single trace of where the dark green blood had seared it.

Not even a scab from a healing wound.

She examined it from every angle, then pushed up her sleeve to check her forearm.

It was clean, too. Not a single scar.

Her left shoulder moved smoothly, the bone nestled perfectly in its socket as if it had never been broken.

Seraphina Sinclair fell silent for a moment before slowly getting to her feet and moving her body experimentally.

Everything felt normal. She felt nothing like a person who, just over ten minutes ago, had had her shoulder crushed by an A-level Drake and her flesh melted by toxic blood.

Seraphina Sinclair frowned. She was certain of it—that feeling of being crushed by the Drake, of being pushed to the very brink of death, had been real. By all rights, she should be dead.

Seraphina could be so sure because she had experienced that feeling of approaching death once before.

The time in the mobile cabin’s graveyard, when Auric Young had died in her place.

But this time...

’She had no item on hand with an effect like Auric Young’s. What on earth pulled her back from the brink of death?’

Seraphina Sinclair took out all the items stored in the Silver Moon Earrings, laid them out on the stone table one by one, and used Insight on each of them to check their effects.

’The scrolls and certificates couldn’t have done it.’

’She knew the effects of her commonly used items, so it definitely wasn’t any of them.’

’Then could it be...?’

Seraphina Sinclair’s gaze landed on the ring—the one she had used so many Unsealing Hammers to free.

Her pupils contracted as she used Insight.

At some point, the page that Insight revealed was no longer just "???"

[Undying Source Gold Ring (Triple S)]

[Description: Source Gold has only manifested briefly within the fissures created by turmoil in the world’s laws. This is the only one ever recorded. Legend tells of its creation by a Demigod Craftsman, who fused the Half-God Remains of a comrade with Source Gold to forge it. Together, the Half-God Remains and Source Gold imbued the ring with a proud will; should an unchosen one wear it, it will cool into useless scrap iron within three seconds.]

[Ability 1: Source Gold Will (Passive) — When the wearer suffers a fatal injury, the ring will reconstruct the wearer’s body. This ability has no cooldown, but each use consumes the Source Gold stored within the ring. Source Gold cannot be replenished. Once depleted, the ring will turn into ordinary iron.]

[Ability 2: ??? (Locked)]

Seraphina Sinclair stared at the lines of text on the panel for a long time.

’Demigod Craftsman, Half-God Remains, fused with Source Gold...’

Every term pointed to the ring’s ridiculously epic origins, but her attention was drawn to the final line of small, gray text: Ability 2: ??? (Locked).

’An SSS-level ring, and before all I could see were three question marks. Was it because none of its abilities were unlocked?’

’And this time, because I nearly died in the instance, did I accidentally unlock the first ability, finally allowing me to see the ring’s Insight page?’

Seraphina Sinclair took a deep breath and turned the ring on her finger. The face of the ring still glinted with a cold light under the lamp, looking no different than before.

’Ability one was incredible, but the cost of reconstructing a body was consuming Source Gold—and the Source Gold couldn’t be replenished.’

’In other words, she was now holding a limited number of extra lives in her hand.’

’Each use depleted the supply. When it was gone, it was gone for good.’

Worse, Seraphina Sinclair had no way of knowing how many uses she had left.

’Oh well. Staying alive was what mattered.’

With a long sigh of relief, Seraphina Sinclair opened the regional channel to check the player count.

Sure enough, the instance had claimed quite a few lives.

Choosing to fight the monster together might grant a shared victory and better rewards, but every choice was predicated on one thing: survival.

She herself had died in there; what hope did the other survivors have?

Anyone still able to post in the regional channel was a survivor. Seraphina scanned the chat. Few had chosen to fight the monster together. Most, it seemed, were survivors who had opted to kill their teammates for a solo victory.

A few messages trickled across the regional channel, the tone of each one filled with the relief and lingering fear of someone who had just cheated death.

Perhaps because similar events had occurred in previous instances, those who were still alive had grown numb to the act of killing.

Many were even celebrating:

"Thank god we could kill our teammates to get out of it. Otherwise, we would’ve had to face the B-level boss!"

"Yeah, seriously! A boss monster! Isn’t that basically a dungeon boss? I’m just a nobody. Making me fight a dungeon boss is the same as telling me to go die. Thank god the system left us an out."