Chapter 193 - Talking about some 3 months
The pixie ancestors all collectively suddenly blinked. There was a problem. A big problem!
The realization hit them suddenly. They’d been so distracted by her behavior, by her bold claims and manic energy, that it had taken this long to notice the obvious.
She didn’t look like a pixie! No, it wasn’t a matter of not looking like one. This creature wasn’t a pixie at all!
Yet even as they recognized the truth, they hesitated.
Was it strange to say they didn’t hate her?
There was something about her energy, her attitude, her complete lack of fear in the face of ancient spirits that could obliterate her instantly. It resonated with something fundamental to pixie nature.
Still, if she wasn’t a pixie, they should kill her. That was the rule. Only pixies could enter the vault.
A tense silence rang out through the chamber.
For some reason, the ancestral spirits didn’t strike her down immediately. They just stared, their invisible gazes boring into her from multiple angles simultaneously.
Finally, one of them spoke. "You aren’t a pixie. Why are you here?"
Lena’s face shifted into a smug expression despite being held immobile. "Not a pixie?" She managed to flutter her wings slightly despite the binding magic. "What am I then?"
The question caused a silence to ring through the air. The spirits really couldn’t answer it.
What exactly was she? Was she supposed to be a human? That didn’t make sense, humans didn’t have wings. They needed magic or external tools to fly.
Speaking of wings, the wings she had looked awfully like fairy wings. So, was she a fairy? The problem was, that also didn’t make sense! She wasn’t a fairy! Fairies were smaller, and innately magically attuned. Granted, the girl was a magician, but...
They shared a couple glances, while subtly checking out various features of Lena. Ultimately, they came to the conclusion...
No, she wasn’t a fairy either.
Then that brought them back to their original question. What the hell was this girl?
Lena took advantage of their confusion and stated confidently with a grin, "I’m a better version of a pixie!" The declaration was so absurd that several of the ancestral spirits actually recoiled slightly.
Lena felt their stares grow more intense, like a laser upon her skin. She didn’t flinch. "I’m the new version of pixie kind! Look at me! Just look at me!"
She gestured wildly at herself. "I’m stronger! Smarter! Better! I’m an upgrade to everything you were!"
Then she delivered her masterstroke. "I’m less than a year old!"
The room went completely silent. Then, for a brief instant, the entire chamber fractured into overlapping reactions. One spirit audibly choked on its own disbelief. Another recoiled so sharply its presence rippled through the vault.
"Less than a year?!" one voice snapped. "That’s impossible."
"No pixie manifests at that level of power in under three years, let alone one." another countered immediately, already sounding offended at the implication.
A third spirit hesitated. "Unless... she isn’t measuring time correctly..."
"Or she is lying outright," another cut in. "Obvious deception."
Their murmuring and arguments slowly began to fade as they began to agree to a consensus. That she was lying.
Now, obviously, it was a blatant lie from Lena. So why did she say it? Because age mattered tremendously when evaluating potential.
The younger someone was when they achieved a certain level of power, the more potential they clearly possessed for future growth.
There was a massive difference between a pixie reaching level thirty-seven at five years old versus reaching the same level at one year old.
The younger achievement suggested exponentially greater talent and capability.
Obviously, the pixie spirits didn’t believe her. It was inconceivable to even think. Just look at her! Even if she was a pixie, which was still in doubt, if she was so young, how could she be so... big? They prepared to smite her on the spot for her deception.
Yet, before any of them finished their spell, they halted suddenly. Even though she was almost certainly lying, doubt crept in.
What if she was telling the truth? If they killed her out of reflex, and she really was a pixie, the they would be losing out big! There was a chance, even if it was a small one, that she really was some kind of evolution, a future of what pixies could become.
Luckily for Lena, one of the pixie spirits present was particularly well-suited to verify her claim.
An elder spirit that went by the name Maent had been a master of curses during life.
Now, there was something that had to be understood. Curses didn’t always mean simple debuffs or harmful effects. Any full magical path, when mastered completely, became self-sustaining and could be used for countless applications.
Curse magic could be used for investigation, for binding, and for revelation. It could force truth from lies, expose hidden properties, measure things that normal detection spells couldn’t touch.
Maent decided to use a curse to check the age of Lena’s body directly.
She rose her ghostly hands, threading the mana in the air and casting a curse upon her. It asked a question upon reality about Lena.
How long had this flesh existed?
The curse provided an answer. Not even a quarter of a year. That was less than three months.
Once again, there was a beat of absolute stillness. It was hard enough to shock these ancestors into silence once. Lena kept doing it. After a few seconds were up, the chamber exploded into overlapping voices.
"That’s impossible."
"No pixie body reaches that level of complexity in under three months, this is false measurement!"
"Maent, your curse is flawed. It must be."
"I felt the result as well," Maent replied coldly, holding her spectral hands steady. "The curse does not ’interpret.’ It records what is."
"That doesn’t matter!" another spirit snapped. "We are talking about a fully formed combat-capable entity with wings and mana channels. Three months cannot produce that structure!"
"Then explain the curse result," Maent said sharply. "Or explain why you believe reality itself is mistaken."
"That’s not what I’m saying-" the spirit began, but was immediately cut off.
"You are saying it," another interjected. "You are rejecting the only direct measurement we possess because it makes you uncomfortable."
A ripple of agitation spread through the chamber like a disturbed current.
"This is not discomfort," one of them insisted. "Think back! I’d call you all senile but we are all dead! We all lived long lives. Have you ever seen something like this? Have you!? It cannot be real."
"And yet," another added more slowly, "we are standing in front of it."
Silence returned again.
Maent raised her hand again, and the voices reluctantly tapered."The curse is stable," she said. "The measurement is unambiguous. Less than a quarter year."
Another spirit spoke more cautiously now. "If we accept that... then her level of power development is unprecedented."
A long pause followed. Finally, one of the older spirits exhaled slowly.
"Then we are left with a contradiction," it said. "Her existence violates expectation, but not measurement."
The spirits stared at each other. Slowly, they were forced to accept the result. Though they found it nearly impossible to accept, there was one key reason why they did.
Maent.
They all knew each other in life. They knew how powerful and reliable her curses were. It was enough to make them ignore even a result extraordinary.
As for how that result came to be...
It had to be remembered that their bodies, these player avatars, were made by the Dark One specifically for the game.
Biologically, Lena’s body was mature. It was fully developed, adult in every measurable way. That much was obvious, given that the Dark One would make combat ready bodies.
That was just a biological measurement, however. One had to look at what the curse was actually measuring. The curse measured how long the actual physical matter had existed as organized tissue.
And the answer was clear. This body was brand new.
So the ancestral spirits indeed got the real answer. Yet it was incredibly misleading, telling them something that would lead them to an entirely incorrect conclusion.
They were absolutely baffled. Was there really such a powerful new strain of pixie developing in the world?
A variant that could reach level thirty-seven in less than three months of existence?
That was unprecedented. That was beyond anything they’d ever witnessed, even in their own lifetimes when pixies were at their historical peak of power.
Right there, on the spot, they made up their minds.
Unless something went incredibly wrong in the next few minutes, they would support this new pixie variant called Lena.
She represented potential beyond anything they’d seen in centuries. If she truly was the future of their species, they couldn’t afford to destroy her.
The binding magic released. Lena dropped slightly before catching herself with her fairy wings.
The ancestral spirits’ tone shifted from hostile to curious.
"Tell us more about yourself, young one."