Chapter 227: Taking The Blade

Chapter 227: Taking The Blade

Upstodatee from n(0)/ve/lbIn/.(co/m

...Im still down one.

I watched from my perch as The Grateful Ones arm flopped about, frustrated at my inability to fight. At my inability to do anything other than bite at my own tail. To keep myself alive.

I stared balefully at my enemy; at the back of the cavern, almost entirely hidden behind the bulk of its Corpse-Guardian, the Lesser Core pulsed with light. Got just a little smaller.

Not nearly enough - and even if it was getting smaller as its mana began to run dry, my mana was beginning to run dry, too. And once it did, I would die - and turn against the Great Core. Again.

I hissed in rage at the thought.

Below me, I heard the sound of the first disciples needle-spitter hitting the floor, a clatter of wood and [worry] announcing its fall. She lurched forward, one hand stretching out to wrap itself around her fellow disciples uninjured forearm, clasping it in a firm embrace. Pulled upwards.

Thanks, The Grateful One said, making sounds at Needle. They were off, slurred. Her stance was unsteady; maybe others wouldnt have noticed it. It didnt look unsteady, compared to most Coreless that I had seen. She was upright, on her feet, firm. Fairly.

But not entirely. Even I could admit that, despite her unfortunate case of legs, the way that The Grateful One generally stood and moved had always looked perfect. Graceful.

This wasnt that. It was justserviceable. Like any other leg-afflicted creature. The blow to her head as she fell must have been causing problems.

I couldnt do anything about that. It was all that I could do to keep myself going. The Coreless had their [Little Guardians Totem]s. That would have to do.

After a short exchange of incomprehensible jabbers, the two disciples parted. My attention returned to the ongoing fight - not the one going on in front of me, but the one going on inside me.

My mana was close to running out.

Elara gathered herself, still-blurry vision taking in the enchanted gem inlaid at her armors chest. It was low again, its formerly pitch-black surface more gray than anything else. A quick attempt to use the thing confirmed it; she barely flickered at all, only finding that floaty, weightless feeling of its activation for a brief moment.

One that disappeared all too soon.

She breathed in deep. Let it out slowly. The world sharpened just a bit, coming into focus; not entirely, but enough to help with what came next. She stepped forward, eyes narrowed. It helped with the light, but not the roiling in her gut - and she still couldnt focus enough to fix that.

The next time her stomach churned, nausea rising up, her hand rose with it - reaching for the hilt of a crystal-warped sword. A set of fangs skittered off her metal-covered arm. A horn rubbed against its side. Her hand wrapped around the hilt, gripping tight.

And a blade began to pull free, the motion harder than it should have been. Too hard, really. It took its concussed wielder by surprise, causing her overtaxed muscles to cry out in surprise. She pulled again, harder this time, confused by the odd resistance.

Above her, the nearest crystal pulsed, and the stubborn blade was finally released, crystal-laced metal exposing itself to the air. Bits of torn flesh were wrapped around some of its length like bloody ribbons. Before the sword could fall to any lower, Elaras hand shifted. Rather than arresting its motion entirely, she chose to direct it along a slightly different path; the falling blades downward trajectory swept outwards in a crescent, crystal-laced edge sweeping across undead flesh.

To her surprise, the blade pulsed with baleful, purple-black light as it made contact; when she pulled it away, it tried to pull away an entire corpse with it, the clearly-confused undead warped and wrapped around the crystalline metal like an unwilling passenger. The crystal it had been attached to pulsed in turn, battling with that given off by Elaras blade in an odd sort of tug-of-war.

The monsters crystal won, but not before the abducted undead it fought for found itself stretched apart like taffy and - well, ripped.

Huh, she thought, still struggling to focus. So thats what the sword does now. Its basically just another crystal.

Though she didnt really know all of what that meant, especially when cutting into bodies that werent dead, Elara did at least realize one thing. It could help now.

Now she just needed to figure out how to intentionally use what it could do, and how to get the leftover corpse off of the damn blade.

Which was hard when she was having so much trouble focusing in the first place. She shook it a little.

It, unsurprisingly, didnt work.