Chapter 4 – Calibration

Chapter 4 – Calibration

 

Liria was freefalling through the sky, honing in on the mana signature she had detected after her brief communion with the World Tree.

Wind Spirits helped adjust the angle of her descent and maintain a comfortable speed. Beyond her initial request for help, her input wasn’t needed, which meant she had some free time before reaching her destination.

She called up her System Screen for a quick status check. From how weak she felt, she had expected the worst, but what she saw still made her wince.

[Liria Yggdris]

Existence Level: -6

Blessings: Light, Life, Darkness

“So it really can go negative,” she murmured.

That explained a great many things, like why breathing had hurt when she first emerged from her flower.

Back then, Liria had been overwhelmed by her long awaited first meeting with her siblings and shoved the minor problem to the back of her mind.

With enough focus, pain could be partitioned off. With enough willpower, the body could be puppeted with telekinesis even if every single muscle rebelled.

Liria had spent half a second to note the issue, applied her workaround with practiced ease, then immediately got back to what truly mattered: bawling like a newborn baby.

Technically, she was a newborn. Liria tried consoling herself. There was no shame in what she did.

She felt her cheeks warming from the memory anyway.

In retrospect, she should have been paying more attention. Experiencing negative Existence Levels firsthand was not exactly a common occurrence.

The Blessing of Light was filling up her XP bar fast, transforming renown into Existence Points. She only had a few more minutes before she was back to positive levels.

Liria dropped all her mental barriers and focused her senses on experiencing the fascinating sensation of being crushed by ambient mana.

The pressure eventually eased, and Liria let out a disappointed sigh. For something so unique, the sensation was underwhelming, though Liria supposed she should have expected that.

Existence Levels measured your attunement to ambient mana, each level increase granting a compounding 1.015 multiplier to your base stats. It was only natural that at negative levels, the mana would actively work against you.

The closest analogue would be operating a thousand feet underwater without protection.

Nothing special, really.

Still, Liria was pretty sure she could use the experience to modify Level Drain spells to be irresistible, so it wasn’t entirely uneducational.

Her XP bar was still filling up on its own. She was now level 2.

Liria could easily guess why.

My siblings have been bragging about me to their followers, haven’t they?

A sudden realization struck her, leaving Liria mildly horrified.

Wait. They didn’t mention the crying did they? Please tell me they didn’t mention the crying.

I’m not going to be known forevermore as the “Crybaby Youngest of the High Elves,” am I?

She shook off the unworthy thought. Her siblings’ bragging had given her a massive XP boost when she needed it most. Nitpicking the details was just acting spoiled.

Even this was nowhere near enough. In her last life, when she hadn’t emerged from her flower three hundred years too early, she had started at Level 500.

Still 498 more levels to go until she was back to an acceptable baseline.

Ironically, the first solution she fell back on was the Cultivation Arts of the Far East.

Liria had always scoffed at their propaganda, claiming that their way was The Way.

Created by men, for men, existing independently from the Grand System of the unknowable Goddesses.

As expected of people making such lofty claims, high level cultivators were insufferably stuck up. Meanwhile, the gatekeeping was intense, and the downsides significant.

But even Liria had to admit that their method for converting mana into XP was impressive. More impressive still was that its principles operated in direct opposition to the Goddesses’ Blessings.

Except it didn’t have to.

And Liria could always use a fourth method to gain levels. She was already an exception for having access to all three blessings. What was one more?

The wind was cool across her face. The continent of Eiravel, spread out beneath her, was still heartbreakingly beautiful. Her freefall was almost meditative.

Liria idly reverse engineered the cultivation method of the Sacred Realm of the Celestial Mandate.

Instead of compressing mana in her dantian to make it her own, she spread it through every cell in her body, becoming one with the ambient flow.

The mantra was adjusted to shift the paradigm from “I am my own separate universe,” to “I am the universe, and the universe is me.”

She experimentally cycled mana according to her makeshift method and for a moment, she was everywhere and nowhere all at once. The sensation of infinity was almost… seductive, tempting her to let go and become one with the greater whole.

The laughter of her siblings around a shared meal made her look back. The memory of Alaric’s gentle goodbye, of Irix Vanthe’s resentful glare, grounded her.

Infinity, Liria decided, was overrated. Similar to her communion with the World Tree, just bigger. The moment passed.

A System Screen popped up in front of her, registering the successful creation of a new skill: Harmonic Ascension.

Liria smiled. One of the advantages of the Grand System was that she could always tell when something worked.

Using Parallel Processing, she would keep the skill permanently active from this moment onward.

Passive XP gain was always good—better still when she could grind two advanced skills at once. Skills leveled through use, and under the Blessing of Life, each level-up fed directly into her base stats and XP.

It was the perfect synergy. See? She was already Level 14.

There were more things she wanted to try out, but the ground was fast approaching. This will have to do for now.

Liria cast a Feather Fall spell and drifted down as gently as a falling leaf.

She landed softly, earth yielding beneath her feet. The necromantic signature pulsed ahead like a second heartbeat, drowning out everything else. Liria barely registered the twisted landscape around her as she moved forward. Her world had narrowed to a single point.

---

 

Jonas ran through the corrupted forest, dodging skeletal hands clawing up from beneath the earth.

The trees here were wrong. Their bark had cracked and blackened, weeping a substance too viscous to be sap. Branches twisted at unnatural angles, reaching toward the sky like arthritic fingers frozen mid-grasp. The leaves that remained were brown and brittle, though it was spring.

Worse was the silence. No birds. No insects. Even the wind seemed reluctant to stir the dead foliage.

Their ragged breaths came out as puffs of steam in the unnatural cold. Each inhale burned Jonas’s lungs, the air sharp enough to sting.

How can it be so cold? Jonas thought, dread tightening in his chest.

“Let it be known that if we die, I’m going to haunt you forever,” Grenn announced, twisting mid-stride to fire a blunted arrow at a pursuing skeletal warrior. The arrow glanced off its breastplate with a metallic ring, staggering the creature long enough for them to gain a few precious yards.

Two screaming wraiths streaked past it, closing the distance in heartbeats.

“Shut up and run!” Leslie gasped. Her brows were drawn tight in concentration as she clutched her holy symbol, knuckles white.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

A barrier of light flared into existence, forcing the wraiths back, but that was all. Leslie lacked the power to destroy them outright.

They’ll be back.

“Sorry,” Jonas said weakly. It was his fault. All of it. He shouldn’t have let his rivalry with Grenn get the better of him.

Better yet, he should have picked the Blessing of Darkness and leveled up by killing goblins like every other sensible adventurer.

But no, Jonas just had to be a hero and choose the Blessing of Light…

As if becoming a hero were that easy.

Being awarded XP for gaining renown and completing Quests to make the world a better place sounded great on paper, but without significant accomplishments, progress was far too slow.

His idiotic decision left him handicapped, while Grenn had been slowly but surely pulling ahead of him.

Jonas clenched his teeth.

When they’d stumbled across the corruption spreading through the Silverwood Forest, he’d jumped at the chance to make his mark upon the world. To catch up.

And here they were.

Damn it all.

Every step sent a dull ache through his joints, his armor biting into his shoulders. He was slower. He could feel it.

More undead were closing in.

Skeletal birds dove from above on spectral wings. Ghoul wolves bounded through the decaying underbrush, spreading rot with every snapping breath. Farther back, massive shapes lumbered between the trees. Zombie bears, their stench overpowering even from a distance.

They couldn’t keep going like this. He had to take responsibility.

Jonas exchanged a quick glance with Grenn. Take care of her. He mouthed. The ranger widened his eyes, then grimly nodded.

Jonas stopped in his tracks, banging on his shield with his warhammer.

“Come and get me, you unnatural abominations!” he roared, activating an area-wide Taunt.

The undead horde answered as one.

Bone shattered against his shield as skeletal birds crashed into him. His warhammer caved in the skull of a lunging wolf, then another. A third managed to bite through his chainmail before he crushed it beneath his heel.

For a terrifying moment, his body locked up.

Cold flooded his veins, his muscles refusing to respond.

Move. Move!

His constitution kicked in, burning the paralytic poison away, but the wraiths were already upon him, claws poised to phase through armor and flesh alike.

Jonas steeled himself.

At least let me buy enough time. At least let those two get away safely.

The frigid numbness he expected never came. Once again, the wraiths were repelled by a barrier of light, and Jonas turned around in disbelief.