Chapter 16 - Door Guardian
The afternoon conversation was equally as tiring, but they all collectively managed to steer it in a progressive direction. Instead of everyone rushing headfirst towards the Sealed Tomb, they'd focus on clearing out the stronger demons in the ruins while mapping it out for themselves. Since the first layer of the necropolis had not manifested yet, and it wouldn't until one of them interacted with the boundary, Liesel wanted to be assured that whatever they faced inside, they'd have a safe passage back to the base, and no demon would be waiting to ambush them.
As no mortal had yet interacted with the necropolis, it was still a vague, chaotic realm with no sense to it. Only when it was encroached upon did it manifest itself as a challenge to keep the outsiders out. While the Chaos Realm itself existed perpetually for the demons that inhabited it, to outsiders of the Necropolis, it would appear as a hostile territory, with all its residing demons to keep the mortals at bay. The Soulheart, in its core, was what breathed power into all demons after all, and a Necropolis always defends it.
Of course, Liesel was under no delusion that they could function as one unit, especially her and Kurvam. It might lead to a disaster, so she offered to split the group into two teams. The leader was, of course, resistant, but he had to concede when he realized he wouldn't need to bear her presence the entire time.
Though not without a bitter red of enrage shading his face, Kurvam headed out with a team to the northwest side of the ruins, while Liesel took the northeast side.
Her team consisted of four more people. Fiya, the ranged support, and Yehia, a spearman and pseudo-warder. Garol Borran, who was the sole healer, and Sarkot, the swordsman archetype who was injured last night. Unfortunately, she couldn't secure the Observer for her team. Their team was well-rounded enough that Liesel didn't feel it was a fatal necessity, especially when they had a healer.
Liesel wanted to preserve his stamina as she was quite sure Kurvam's team would be battered by nightfall. They only had a warder for support, and he was loyal solely to one reckless man.
She always had the option to ask Auram, whose perception, even without any skill, was far beyond anyone in her team.
They encountered a few Day Walkers, nebulous creatures covered in white mist, with limbs that were as strong and sharp as swords. It acted slightly differently from the Shadow Stalker, but she'd put it in the same category in terms of strength. It was an appropriate creature to test out their effectiveness together. While Liesel wouldn't consider herself to have much coordination with anyone, the number of people and the assigned roles made it effectively impossible to be a bad team.
Unfortunately, the Day Walkers were too weak to be a metric of how good they'd be against a strong foe. Yehia's ward was immediately trapped, and Sarkot killed him.
Liesel was somewhat confident they'd be fine so long as she could make her commands heard, and that would be a problem when fighting multiple demons. Usually, people in leadership roles bought a skill that enhanced their voice with the power to stand above any noise while masking it from their enemies. Even if she had the Prestige Points, she wasn't planning to waste them for this one job. It was cheap, though. Only twenty Prestige Points, not even one-tenth of the Weaving Skill that she needed to save up for.
Her dominion was three in total, and the requirement for the Soul Weaving skill was three. One was already taken by the Soul Unravelling, so she'd need to raise it by one. At any moment in time, the dominion attribute couldn't be lower than the requirement of all affixed skills' total. It was not well explained in theory, but it might harm the soul in the short term and in the long term, even destroy the Ascendant's mind. Of course, it was rare for the dominion to fall without some kind of curse or parasite destroying your soul, but it was impossible to affix a skill unless she was at the threshold.
Liesel wanted to be alone. She didn't have the opportunity to fight once the entire time they were mapping the ruins. At the same time, yesterday made it clear that, sadly, she wasn't strong enough to be wandering the Necropolis alone. She had to stick with the team. And they could sense that she was upset about having to walk without any fight. Sarkot offered to switch places with her, but Liesel declined. She was at the back, in case a demon tried to take a cheap shot from behind while they were engaged in the front. That hadn't happened once, but Sarkot seemed like a guy who would be too focused on what was happening in front of him to do his job.
[Strength +1]
Seven hours later, the system screen manifested in front of Liesel's eyes. She had imagined it would function like that. If she was understanding the skill's function correctly, it was repurposing the energy absorbed from the soul into her physical body at a consistent pace. And only when it reached a threshold did the system inform her. The tenth point in any attribute was a threshold for using advanced Materiality Techniques. So the next time her strength went up, she'd be able to use another Enhancement Technique. She knew the theory, but it would require some practice.
Eventually, Liesel did kill a Day Walker who had snuck up on them. And she didn't hide that her sword was going to drink its blood. It was going to be an impossible ask no matter what, and it didn't necessarily mean much.
Fiya did ask about it, and Liesel shrugged, offering a vague explanation that it was repairing itself.
She didn't feel bold enough to show them her unique skill that she desperately wanted to try on a demon, to check if she'd need to wait the entire duration of absorption.
There was no real danger to her well-being because of the sword's unique nature. Many ascendants used weapons that they found in unusual places. She was already a subject of interest in the eyes of the Empire after her last job, so having an out-of-the-ordinary skill would most certainly draw the eyes of someone dangerous.
She knew herself well enough to fear that she'd eventually act recklessly and expose this little thing she wanted to hide in a much worse way than if she simply explained her skill with a half-lie, a convincing one. Perhaps she could say her skill allowed her to absorb the Materiality Core and use it as fuel. But they were not here for a single day. A month was a long time. They'd grow suspicious of her eventually.
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They eventually arrived at the edge of the ruins, before the boundary of the Necropolis.
"Did Vera not make it to the first layer still?" Garol Borran asked, peering at his own reflection in the translucent wall.
Liesel shrugged. "He may have found something of importance, I hope."
Fiya shot a wisp of fire at the translucent barrier between the worlds. It vanished instantly. "Who should touch it?"
That was another aspect of the Chaotic Realms. The one touching it would be quite literally shaping the type of danger it posed. It could range from the terrain being less accommodating for humans to the type of demon it threw at them. Of course, eventually, they'd need to face every kind of demon.
There's a chance the Tomb leaking energy already shapes the Necropolis, though.
"Let me do it," Liesel said. She approached the translucent wall. She didn't imagine the Chaos Realm manifested around her would be pleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but by the third layer, they'd start to feel overwhelmed. There, they'd ask her to manifest the third layer. They might believe it would be easier since she was the weakest member of the team on paper.
Liesel believed that, with everything wrong with her, she'd be manifesting one of the worst terrains and demons for the first layer, and she'd rather get over it now than wait until they reached the lethal dangers deeper within.
The expedition team stepped back.
Liesel took off her gloves and placed her palm on the wall. The world behind the barrier twisted and shifted visibly before her eyes, and the wall before her turned to mist.
The wall was soon just mist, and yet there was resistance. Something shifted beneath her palm. Smooth and cold. The resistance against her fingers vanished. Her finger pressed an inch deeper into the mist, and from the mist, six cold talons curled from between the gaps of her fingers. They clutched her hand and pulled her into the white mist.
Liesel clenched her hand too as she pushed Materiality into her feet and dug her heel into the ground. The Necropolis had accounted for it. The floor beneath her was ice, and she found no friction to stop herself. Even through her shoes, she could feel the cold seeping into her toes.
Liesel swung her sword at the arm. The metal clanged. She pushed the sword across the arm guard, unable to see anything still. It skidded over and then bounced off the fold at the end. Its strength was not crushing her hand, which was odd given how unimaginably stronger it was. Her hand felt as though it were captured inside a metal construct. It kept guiding her deeper into the mist.
She couldn't hear her teammates. She tried swinging at the head and the neck, and even tried to find the slit between the eyes. It never batted her blade away, but she found no opening. And her sword couldn't cut the metal no matter how hard she tried.
Beyond the mist, Liesel found herself in an ice ring, or probably a frozen lake, whose edges were hidden by the mist.
On the other side of the mist, there was a massive door covered in white vines and flowers.
The demon let go of her hand. And as she had imagined, it was entirely created from one sheet of metal that had been turned into very intricate and yet seamless armor. It had an angled face, but no slit in it to see through, no gap for its breath to pass. Fortunately, demons didn't have to breathe, so she couldn't wager on it suffocating. Only its hands were not entirely armored. From the wrist down, there were six-taloned claws.
The metal blades attached to the shoes allowed it to glide across the frozen lake. It stood in the middle of it. It unclasped the sheathed longsword and stabbed it into the ice. It simply stood there, resting its hands on the hilt of the sword.
It's waiting for me?
Liesel looked around her again once she was assured it wouldn't attack her. This was worrying. The armored being should not conceivably be an Ascendant demon, and yet, except for its hand, it was completely human in form, which only an Ascendant demon possessed. These demons would be beyond rank five, where the ranking of demons stopped, and they were then measured in the same way as human ascendants. But every demon was conceived with a Materiality core, so for their ascendants, it started beyond the condensed core. Even Kurvam was at the peak of Condensed Core, and not beyond it.
If it was really an ascendant demon, then the Seer had utterly failed to gauge its dangers, and he'd have to wait for the Imperial Army to create a passage beyond.
"What's your deal?" Liesel asked.
It didn't answer.
Liesel decided to wait for her team to come through. She took out an enchanted jewel from her pocket and snapped it. The green meant she was safe. She had two colors. Red meant they'd need to run for their lives.
After two minutes, the rest of her teammates arrived.
"Liesel!" Fiya shouted as she skidded past her. Liesel grabbed her by the collar before the mage broke her nose on the ice, or worse, went too close to the Door Guardian.
Liesel explained what had happened to the team.
"The door could be the entrance to the second layer," Yehia suggested. "Then, it's a much shorter journey... except we have to kill the ascendant demon."
"It's not speaking, and it seems too patient and lifeless to be an Ascendant Demon," Liesel said. She couldn't imagine a human Ascendant of that rank acting the same way. "It could be a parasitic form of demon that is using the armor as a host from the inside. I find it also believable that it could be an artificially controlled demon by something deeper within the Necropolis."
"Or there could be something hidden in the mist," Fiya looked around her. "Though I have no clue how we can find it if that is the case. My senses go numb in the mist. It's entirely Materiality."
"We could bring the Observer," Sarkot offered.
The healer had no interest in the conversation. He seemed rather interested in the armor itself.
"Doubt he has a better way to go about it," Fiya said defensively. "Why is it not attacking us? Regardless of whether it's a demon or a puppet, we are in its domain."
That's what Liesel was curious about. "I'll approach it and see if that gets any reaction out of it."
It was hard to find friction on the ice, and if they had to fight on it, she'd have a hard time. She had been trained to fight competently on many terrains, as was true for almost every Ascendant who had been to an academy, but ice was one of the trickiest ones without proper shoes.
Yehia prepared her barrier just in case things got ugly.
As Liesel had imagined, as soon as she was two meters away, it lifted its sword out of the buried sheath. It raised the sword over its head and waited for Liesel to get closer.
Liesel didn't. She instead retreated, and the armor sheathed the sword. Liesel looked at her teammates.
"I cannot cut steel with my sword, so there's no point in wasting any energy."
"What about its hands?" Fiya asked.
"I am not taking the chance." Liesel's sword used to be long, but now that it had lost over six inches, she didn't have the same confidence as she did against a human opponent.
"The fuck is this ice?" Kurvam's whining reached their ears before he did.
He was being supported by two barriers from the warder to keep him on his feet as he arrived, and yet he seemed proud about that.
Liesel shifted her eyes to the mage who was accompanying him. And as she had feared, almost every member of his team seemed to have sustained some kind of injury or burn.
"Can you hurt it with your magic?"