Leowynn dashed through the room, her brows furrowed. Something felt off to the elven spirit. Despite the fact that she was killing the enemies, it did not feel as if they were truly trying to stop her. Sure, they would fire targeted spells at her, such as ice lances or lightning bolts. However, at what point should they accept one or two people as sacrifices to kill an enemy in their midst?
Even on Dana’s side, there were still those enemies who would use larger spells in an attempt to stop her. She quickly slipped away from the more obvious ones, but couldn’t avoid being injured by more concealed spells.
Furthermore, there were hundreds of enemies, so why were only two or three targeting her at a time? Are they leading me? The thought did cross her mind for a moment, and she immediately shifted gears. Rather than attacking one of the archers that had fired a seeking arrow at her, she turned and ran a different direction.
Leowynn knew that she was undoubtedly the fighter with the most raw strength in this chaotic brawl. Even if Scarlet’s techniques were more flashy, and Dana’s more insidious, she should have been drawing a lot of fire. A thought which was almost confirmed when she stepped into Tsubaki’s battle, joining the kitsune.
Within moments, the pressure that Tsubaki felt was lessened considerably. Not because Leowynn was sharing the burden, but because people simply stopped firing their more dangerous spells in their direction. Something’s wrong. Leowynn mentally communicated towards Tsubaki, alerting the other in secret. They don’t seem truly intent on fighting me…
Perhaps they are. Tsubaki responded quickly, taking a moment to catch her breath and recover from her injuries. Use a burst attack around yourself. Perhaps there is something concealed from our senses that they don’t want to risk hurting?
Leowynn thought it over for a moment, and it made sense. If there was truly something hiding in her vicinity like that, then the enemy’s reluctance to engage her in mass combat could make sense. But, what would be so important that it would stop them to this degree, and why would it be tailing her?
Leowynn dove into a group of warriors, performing a quick spin while blades extended from her body in every direction. There were screams of pain as some of those blades slipped through the cracks of their armor, while others broke off harmlessly. However, she was keeping her senses focused, attached to each blade in order to look for one that seemingly broke for no reason.
Yet… all of the blades that made contact did so against one of her visible targets. There did not seem to be an enemy that was simply evading her senses. Just as that thought crossed her mind, Leowynn felt a sharp pain in her back. She tried to mobilize her energy, but found it no longer moving under her control.
“I suppose that means you noticed.” A feminine voice whispered into her ear, and Leowyn’s eyes went wide. The soft tone was one that she had heard before, from her father’s mirrors. The priestess that held the class Chaos Space, Fleece.
“Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to exit the stage.” Pain flooded Leowynn’s senses as a corrosive energy entered her body through the hand piercing her back. “You have a trace of the Keeper’s strength. Let’s see what we can do with that.”
Father! Leowynn grew more determined when she heard that, her mind struggling through the pain. She could feel the energy searching her, wreaking havoc as it scanned across her. She knew what it was looking for, the link between herself and her father.
This was not an energy that she had encountered before, but Leowynn was able to make a judgement on its power. This was an energy that existed only to destroy other energies. If it found the link between them, and traced it back to her father…
She could not allow that to happen. Her face grew calm, her head turning to regard the priestess that had attacked her from behind. She did not appear to be a kitsune now, but rather a human girl with short, black hair. Her eyes were like deep, black pits that went on forever.
So this is the power of the enemy’s god… Leowynn forced her body to shift, only able to do this one thing. She couldn’t escape Fleece’s attack, or mobilize her energy into a counter. But, she could shift her own body to a certain degree, and did so to fully face Fleece.
Under the surprised gaze of the enemy goddess, Leowynn wrapped her arms around her in a tight embrace. Even as her skin began to blacken, her hair crumbling to ash, she did not let go. “I’ll have to ask you to join me, then.” She muttered to herself, and the enemy’s eyes went wide.
Leowynn couldn’t muster her energy to launch an attack, but she could burn it. Burn it all. She thought to herself, igniting the core of her spirit. The pain flooding her body became stronger by several magnitudes, the corrosive energy thriving off of the amplified power. She didn’t know why nobody had come to pry the woman off of her, but the fact that they didn’t meant that she no longer had an alternative.
My eyes swept over the battlefield, trying to identify the power which was suppressing Leowynn and Tsubaki. Unfortunately, I could only do so in the visible spectrum. When I focused on looking for either magic or ki, I was almost blinded by the sheer amount of such energies being thrown around rampantly.
Yet, when I tried to gaze into the divine spectrum, thinking that this might be the work of an enemy deity, I was met with an altogether different experience. My vision had turned completely black, as if it was cut off the very moment it entered the room.
When the battle began, I tried to send in some of my mirrors to help Tsubaki, only to find that they would dissolve the moment they passed a certain threshold. The same happened whenever I used Tsubaki’s own Light domain to fire destructive blasts of energy. Although they were able to maintain their shape briefly, they would ultimately fizzle out before reaching an enemy.
Like this, my ability to grasp the field of battle became far more limited than I would like. A part of me thought about stepping in to enter the fray myself, but I was quick to notice the eyes trained on me. Nearly two hundred ranged attackers, judging by the weapons they held. None of them were launching attacks yet, but I could tell that they were waiting.
If they attacked, they would be drawing me into the fight on their own initiative. However, if I took any kind of hostile action, they would immediately fire their biggest skills at me. That alone wasn’t enough to make me pause. Rather, it was the fact that, as long as I did nothing, those two hundred specialized attackers would keep staring at me, and ignore the others. Like this, I was able to occupy over a fifth of the remaining enemy troops by myself.
As that thought crossed my mind, I suddenly doubled over in pain, clutching my chest. Something was hurting, from the very depths of my soul, almost as if it was breaking apart. My eyes lifted in a panic, searching the battlefield. However, the first thing I saw was the number of spells already arriving at my position.
These weren’t attack spells, but rather bindings. My energy became sluggish, chains forming over my body. Finally, when those spells had all landed, I saw Leowynn. I saw her hugging a girl with black hair. I saw her skin starting to blacken, and I saw her look in my direction with a weak smile.
“Leowynn!” I called out in a panicked, enraged tone, before she vanished from my sight together with the girl. The moment she did so, something snapped. A part of my soul broke off and vanished. I didn’t need to look at my health to know that I had lost half of my life. The half of my soul which had contained my daughter.
Why… the word filled my mind as I stared at the empty space where Leowynn had been standing. Why did I let her fight on her own? Why wasn’t I there to stop her? To save her?
My mind almost shut down when I saw the black-haired girl appearing again, though she had lost one of her hands. A relieved expression appeared on her face, and my vision went red.
“Leowynn!” The pained voice filled the battlefield, briefly stopping any of the conflict. Tsubaki turned her head in horror, having been the closest to Leowynn at the time. Now, she was unable to locate the elven spirit.
What have they done… She thought to herself, retreating back a step. Suddenly, a pulse of power filled the room, causing those less deft on their feet to stumble. The sounds of surprised gasps and shattering glass echoed from the entrance as the Keeper stood.
His face was calm, yet there were tears dripping from his eyes. When he stepped forward, the sound of his step seemed to echo throughout the room. This wasn’t an illusion created by the sudden stillness of the battlefield, but some effect caused by the Keeper himself.
“Dana. Tsubaki. Scarlet… leave.” His tone was commanding, and Tsubaki wanted to disobey it. She wanted to fight by his side, and stand with him. “Leave… and make sure nobody else leaves this room.”
She seemed to understand something, her eyes going wide. Without a word, she turned and ran for the door, scooping Dana up to carry her as she did so. “Hey, wait! I want to fight with him!” Dana called out, neither of them being stopped as they left. The enemies seemed frozen in place, their shoulders trembling as they struggled to move.
“We’ll only get in his way now.” She whispered to Dana, seeing Scarlet leave with a similar understanding.
What is a Keeper? What makes them stand above everyone in their world? This was something that Terra taught me back when I had only just gotten the title. A Keeper is the guardian and the guide. They are the strongest, for they possess every greatest strength of their world.
At the time, this strength meant levels. It meant that if there was a level fifty mage, I would always be at least a level fifty mage. But what does that mean, later on? When strength is no longer merely levels and classes? What strength do I gain now?
I’ve been fighting as a mage, a monk, and even a god. But that’s not what I am…
I’m a Keeper.
“Stand with me.” I muttered to myself, and broke off a small part of my energy to form an avatar. The field suppressing divinity in this room was preventing it from escaping past the user’s body. That’s why Tsubaki couldn’t launch any of her attacks. Leowynn couldn’t channel it because her divinity came from me.
As my avatar broke off, my main body shifted. My hair grew longer and red, my figure lithe. Soon, my main body had transformed into a red-headed elf with slender features. This was not the power of my mirrored self.
“My child, you have at last called for–” Ryone hesitated after saying that much, opening her eyes to look at me. “You’re not Jonas.” This was the true power of the Keeper. When men rise to become gods, what strength is left to gain from them, if not their domain?
I didn’t say anything, and watched as Ryone swept her gaze across the battlefield. “Dale… what’s wrong?” I had summoned her through the power of Jonas’s Community domain, so she could feel the disturbance, the pain in my energy.
“Dale…” Ryone seemed to notice something, her eyes on me. My ki was no longer suppressing the bodies of the invaders, yet they still didn’t move. There was an altogether different type of pressure now. One that radiated a deadly chill. “Where’s Leowynn? Where’s our daughter?”
My gaze shook at the question, and her eyes narrowed, having gotten her answer. “I see… thank you for calling me. We’ll bring her back later.” At her words, I saw a faint bit of hope. That was right, I could still bring her back in the Admin Room, as I had done with Ashley. “For now…”
Ryone turned to face the invaders. “An anti-divinity field. No… something more dangerous. You’re not suppressing divinity, you’re countering it.” There was a look of understanding on Ryone’s face as she thought of that. “I see… a fallen priest.”
This was a class that existed in my world, but it was one that I had never personally trained. After all, of all the classes, there were two which had consistently remained in the lower levels. These were the Fallen Priest and the Black Knight. I had never looked into the specifics of their abilities, because the fact that they were so unpopular made me believe that they were ‘failures’.
This was where the Community showed a stronger effect than my Mirror when it came to transforming into another. Community replicates their entire being at the moment you last knew them, meaning the last time I saw Ryone. Meanwhile, my Mirror domain only adjusts my own thought processes and powers to match the person I’m copying.
I might not know what a fallen priest could do, but Ryone did. More importantly, she should know how to counter it. “Sorry, dear.” She turned her head to smile at me, seeming to sense my thoughts. “Even a god can’t counter this, despite knowing what it is. This fallen priest has locked onto divinity. So, since divinity cannot enter this space… shall we fight with something else?”
Ryone turned back to face the invaders, and they suddenly fought through the pressure that had been keeping them in place. Now they were being targeted, and their instincts kicked in again. Spells and arrows flew towards us en masse while Ryone lifted her hand. “Stop.”
The runic word flowed from her lips fluently, and every attack flying our way froze in midair. Under the shocked gaze of the black-haired girl, Ryone simply smiled. “You are only stopping divinity from spreading through the air. You are far too young, child.”
Ryone’s Magic domain allowed her to use an almost unlimited amount of mana. I had once seen her stop a massive tsunami with nothing but an array of first-tier spells. I see… her divinity is being suppressed, but her mana isn’t. She’s simply using her domain within herself to generate mana, like how I used Jonas’s to summon her.
Ryone snapped her fingers, and a spell diagram flashed into existence around Fleece. This was a fourth level spell, and Ryone had formed it instantly. By the time that the other party had a chance to react, Fleece had already vanished.
While Ryone was dealing with her, the melee attackers came charging in. Since spells and arrows failed, they decided to settle this with fists and blades. At the same time, I quickly communicated to Ryone what I had learned about this guild, including Fleece’s ability to transport herself through space.
“It’s fine. I used a spatial lock. If she wants to break my spell, she’ll need to use her chaos to shatter it, which will buy us some time.” Ryone smiled, seemingly paying no mind to the army charging at her. “For now… I think it’s only fair we invite the others.”
I felt my consciousness rising in my main body again, Ryone slipping out and granting me renewed control. Now, the army wasn’t charging at her, but me. Thankfully, I knew what she had in mind. “Stand with me.” I muttered again, and there was a burst of power. This time, I was not calling someone to possess my body, I was calling them to join me.
“Huh?” “What’s this?” “Someone called me?” Startled voices spoke up in front of me. Who else would my Community be, but the gods and goddesses of the Admin Room?
“No time to chat, everyone!” Ryone clapped her hands, getting their attention. “Fight first!”
As soon as her words fell, the enemy was upon them. Keliope was the first to react, the ursa goddess catching a falling hammer on her palm and rotating her arm to parry it. “Well, this is new!” She called out with a laugh, bringing her knee up to meet the man who had attacked her.
“Dale figured out how to summon us with Jonas’s domain.” Ryone spoke from the backline of the deities, firing off blasts of raw magic to support the others. “Long story short, the invasion already started, we’re in the endgame, and our existence is being fueled by his divinity. Try to conserve energy if you can.”
“Understood.” Tryval stepped forward, his fists clenching. He broke into a charge, sprinting through the enemy line while his arms blurred. Flashes of red filled the air behind him as he accurately targeted the hearts of the enemy, ripping them out of their chest.
“Oh… and they killed Leowynn.” Ryone’s voice grew cold as she said that, and the deities almost faltered.
“They did what!?” Udona shouted, her energy flaring. Her hair stood on end as her gaze penetrated the crowd. “Sorry, Dale, this will only take a moment. We’ll wrap it up.”
I gave a small nod, but my eyes weren’t on her. Standing at the back, behind Ryone, was Leowynn. She had been summoned by my use of the domain as well, though she was likewise in the state I had seen her last. She smiled at me, even as half of her face was blackened, and walked over.
“What happened?” I asked her in a weak tone, feeling her arms wrap around me.
“I’m sorry… dad. She wanted to use our link to kill you.” Leowynn whispered softly into my ear, leaning her head against me. “I couldn’t let her do that. I’m sorry that I can’t play with anyone anymore, but I couldn’t let you die. Especially not because of me.”
I let out a choked laugh, hugging my daughter. “You silly girl… we can bring you back at home. Don’t treat this like a goodbye.”
“Eh?” Leowynn blinked, a bit of redness entering her cheeks. It seemed, like myself, that she had forgotten that death was not necessarily the end for her this time as well. “So… I can still join the others back home? Does that mean I’m going to become a god, too?”
“If you want to be one… I’ll make it happen.” I nodded my head. Resurrecting her as a companion in the Admin Room did not necessarily equate to turning her into a god. There was an extra step to take for that. But, if it was what she wanted… I would happily do that for her.
“Yes, please…” She muttered quietly, burying her head in my shoulder. “I’m sorry for worrying you, dad.” I could feel my divinity starting to drain. Not from maintaining this power, but from what the others had been doing with it. Udona seemed… particularly furious.
She walked through the crowd of enemies, and they simply fell to the ground without a sign of injury. Through our current connection, I could tell that she was using her Life domain to strip away the lives of those around her.
Irena wasn’t much different, walking a few steps behind Udona while holding her pen out. She was absorbing their souls into her ‘weapon’, making sure that there was no level of magic that would save them.
“What… what is this?” The enemy’s God of Conquest spoke in a trembling tone as he watched his forces being mowed down. He stood at the far end of the cafeteria, having not participated directly in the entire fight until now. Perhaps he was not suited for direct combat?
“Isn’t that obvious?” Terra asked, standing near me. Her own domains weren’t as much used for direct combat either. Or, perhaps she just felt like letting the others have their turn. “This is a Keeper’s battle. When you fight a Keeper, you are fighting their entire world.”
“You knew?” I asked towards Terra, but of course she knew. How couldn’t she know that I could do this?
“You always had it in you, Dale.” She said, directing a gentle gaze towards Leowynn and I. “I didn’t know things would develop this way… but I knew you would eventually figure it out on your own. And before you ask, no, I’m not ‘connected’. Jonas isn’t that good.”
It took me a moment to figure out what she meant. So, she isn’t connected to the system right now? I guess that would make sense.
As I was thinking that, the black-haired Fleece appeared in the room, her hair a dishevelled mess. Her eyes were glaring darkly towards Ryone, who responded with a playful wave. “I’ll kill you for that.” She growled out, her previously kind demeanor shattering.
“Everyone, focus fire!” Ryone announced. “Fallen priest! She should still be canceling magic right now, so have at her!”
“Close.” Terra grinned, her eyes on Fleece. “Fallen god. Same principle, though. Irena, pen!” After saying that, Terra held her hand up. With tacit understanding, Irena suddenly turned and threw her pen towards Terra.
“Have you learned her name, Dale?” Terra asked without turning to face me, an empty book appearing in front of her.
I didn’t know what it was that Terra planned to do, so I could only provide what answers I could. “Fleece… Fleece Alderman. Her class is Chaos Space, level one hundred.”
“I only needed the name, baby.” Terra teased lightly, writing Fleece’s name on the cover of the book. “You see, this is the story of her life. I can only write this story using the power of souls, specifically souls related to the person in question, so Irena’s pen works wonders for me.”
As she said that, she opened the book, and placed the pen against the first page. Then, she released the pen, allowing it to freely write out line after line. “The more souls I have to use, the faster it writes. And when it is done… well, what do you suppose happens when someone’s story ends?”
Seeing that Terra had taken action herself, the other gods weren’t aiming to kill Fleece anymore. Instead, Aurivy ran over towards her, a vicious grin on the halfling’s face as she kicked out at the woman’s stomach. I remembered that Aurivy’s godly weapon was a pair of shoes… so that kick was no doubt powerful in its own right.
“If that is her life story… doesn’t that mean that we will be able to get information on her world through it?” I asked, looking towards the book. However, my vision was blocked by Terra’s hand.
“Sorry. If someone reads her story, then she becomes a legend. That is the trade-off here. Once her story ends, and the book closes, then so long as there is not a single person that has read her story, her story dies. If someone were to read it, she would become a legend, an embodiment of her tale projected through the power of her readers.”
“…Why not just let one of the others kill her, then?” I couldn’t help but ask, no longer trying to read Fleece’s story. “This seems like a lot of trouble when they could do the job faster, right?”
Terra turned to smile at me. “It’s simple, Dale. She killed Leowynn. How could I just let her off with an easy death? She is going to be trapped within her story, reliving her own tale for eternity while I lock her book away in the deepest, darkest pit I can find. Nobody will ever find her, nobody will ever read her tale. She’ll be on the border of life and death, constantly walking between the two.”
Terra’s smile, which appeared to be warm and gentle, caused Leowynn and I to both shiver as we heard her words.
