Chapter 187: Thousand cuts

Chapter 187: Thousand cuts

The orbs had started moving. All of them, in a circle around the obelisk, like the tiny planets they looked like. They were now in orbit.

They all moved slowly like small sluggish planets, barely a centimeter a second. That they moved at all made them infinitely harder to navigate through, however, and even worse to keep track of.

Sofias first reflex was to try to hide underground but the graveyard skill wouldnt even activate, as if she was currently in the sky with nowhere valid to use it.

If I stay facing the current, since they all move in the same direction, Ill at least not have to watch my back... This sure makes everything much worse. How do I find the damn thing fast? Clearly, brute force isnt a solution this time; Id be dead long before I could even touch a tenth of them

Maybe the pattern is a lure?

Sofia stopped staring at the orbs, as much as she could afford, and thoroughly scanned the obelisk with her mana sense. She found something there that hadnt been obvious before, a mana current. It would have been easy to think it was the cause of the orbs orbital movements, except it spun in the opposite direction.

This led Sofia to another discovery; some of the floating orbs were also spinning on themselves and around the obelisk. Some in one direction, some in the other. By focusing on these particular spinning orbs, one could notice that they had the same mana currents the obelisk had.

That lowered the possibilities. Now she needed to find orbs that had the correct pattern as well as the correct spin. With caution, advancing against the current, Sofia looked around everywhere for an orb with these features. All the while, the soldier skeleton lay on the ground to avoid touching any orb by accident. By the time Sofia had almost walked a complete circle around the platform, she had found one. A softly glowing green orb, it was about four meters high and on the outer periphery of the platform. One of the hardest orbs to reach out of the entire cloud. But it was engraved with the correct pattern she had found on the obelisk, and it spun in the right direction.

Unless Im missing something, this could be the one! It was so hard to find too.

Sofia was too focused on keeping track of the position of her discovery; as it followed its orbit, a red orb grazed her ankle.

The whole void flashed red with a buzzing noise.

Fuck.

Sofia was ready to block an incoming attack from the orb, but it plunged into the ground instead. Soon after, the temperature on the platform rose a lot, enough to be uncomfortable even with the protection from the princess set she got out of the first trial.

What if I pick the closest one to the obelisk, even if it ends up being wrong, and slam it into the hole before it can attack? Hmm. That doesnt feel particularly right, either.

Sofia desperately looked around for clues or patterns among the cloud of orbs but didnt find anything. As she pondered over her options, the whirring sound that had started when the orbs had begun orbiting the obelisk suddenly became louder. In turn, the orbs started moving faster.

Dodging them was still manageable, but focusing on anything else started to get hard.

Since it now seemed the orbs would only keep getting faster if she took too much time, she gave up overthinking and grabbed the first orb that she could reach that had the potential to be the key.

Wrong choice. After the usual red flash, the marbled pink and white orb changed into a flying sword. It charged to try stabbing Sofia in the weakest spots of her armor. Struggling to avoid the orbs moving along and only managing to stay standing up through the ordeal thanks to [Way of the fool], she wrestled with the flying sword. She eventually trapped it into the right arm of her bone armor as she controlled it to wrap around the wretched sharp flying stick. It kept struggling inside, causing some involuntary movements, but Sofia had enough arm strength to keep it in check.

Five more How can I even do this?

Sofia was starting to panic a bit. Between dodging the balls, making sure the flying sword and lightning arrows didnt free themselves, and trying to find the key, it was hard to keep track of everything. To make matters worse, her skeletons were useless, and worse even, they were a potential threat if they happened to miss a dodge and let an orb touch them.

The tip of her left wing bumped against a yellow orb, and soon, another lightning arrow was pursuing Sofia around the platform. At least it had the courtesy of avoiding the other orbs as it flew and turned, so there was no cascade effect. Sofia gave up trying to catch it and focused on dodging it when it came; after all, she was already dodging all the orbs. What was one more thing to avoid contact with?

She caught another one of the five remaining possible keys, a light blue one. It melted in her hand, and after a depressing red flash, hail started hitting Sofia from above. The hail in question was rock-hard chunks of ice, the largest of which were around the size of a head. They dented her armor as they fell and started gnawing at her health. At least she could reduce the amount that touched her by continuing forward. The crow skeleton was hit by a chunk of ice and died on the spot.

Sofia could only grit through it all and focus on searching for the next possible key. There wasnt much else she could try anymore, short of exploding everything with a bolt or summoning Pareth and triggering a tenth of all the orbs at once in the process.

She almost reached another possible key when it suddenly sped up and escaped her grasp.

The whirring had, again, gotten louder.

Where is this damned key!