Half-wit
Here's the chapter. A few minutes late because I ran into some traffic.
Fuck, I ask you guys what items you'd like Devas to pick up, and 3 out of every 5 answers are women. I don't know whether I should be pissed or proud.
Anyway, this is the chapter with the continuity error. Sorry about that.
To keep the tradition alive, if anyone wants to read 3/7/13 chapters ahead, or just support me, you can do so through my (P)(A)(T). If not, I still sincerely appreciate you reading my story. Thank you so much!
With all that said, have a good day, everyone, and I hope you enjoy the read!
(P)(A)(T)/CalleumArtori.
[...]---[...]
As much as I could tell Margit hadn't liked my words one bit, he didn't act rashly.
Still, he tensed up.
Through the Transparent World, I could see his thick muscle fibers tightening beneath his skin and tattered cloak. Divine energy and another strange force—far more physical in nature—flowed and gathered in his legs and left shoulder.
The strike would come from my right side, theoretically my weak point, since the arm there wasn't my "original" one, but something made of blood.
Even if he was some kind of projection or puppet, the structure was unbelievably complex. He had real muscles, pulsing organs, bones, and tendons. It was an incredibly impressive technique. I couldn't tell whether it was the same one Ranni used, but it definitely wasn't any less sophisticated if it was something different.
My gaze quickly rose to his head.
The stump of the horn I had torn off had stopped "bleeding" that golden liquid. It wasn't regenerating in any way, but the wound had essentially healed and sealed itself almost instantly, preventing any further leakage.
Margit stared back at me. I could practically see the gears turning inside his head as he assessed the situation.
"What is it?" I flashed a wide grin, the blood from my ribs swirling around my arm. I pulled all the scattered blood back toward me. "Starting to regret getting in my way?"
"Thou art the very pinnacle of mankind's arrogance, foreigner," he growled, his aged voice dripping with disgust. "For a single fortunate strike, thou wouldst claim victory. Pitiful."
I shrugged, rolling my wrist around the sword's hilt. "I'm not the one who was calling himself the strongest and most powerful one here a few seconds ago. And now look at you... backing away and bleeding. Who would've thought divinity would end up cornered so quickly?"
Normally, I wouldn't act like this, but at this point, the words were coming out on their own.
That was the last straw for him. The twisted wooden staff struck the ground hard, and Margit advanced.
He was faster than before, but I already knew the angle and where he would come from, so I had no trouble reacting.
He brought the curved sword of golden light down in a slanted vertical arc toward my right shoulder, while the staff swept low in a second strike meant to shatter my legs.
I didn't retreat.
Crossing my left arm in front of my chest to cover my right side, the "Moon Shield" expanded from my left wrist. Foreign Flesh took the shape of the fleshy oval shield in midair.
I threw my arm against the sacred blade, and the shield's jaws bit into Margit's solidified light, locking the sword in place.
I could feel the shield trying to devour the energy.
At the same time, I manipulated the blood in my leg.
Two blood ribs lashed outward and drove themselves into the ground in front of me, hardening just in time to absorb the brutal impact of the sweeping staff. The ground gave way beneath us, but I remained completely still.
That was more to provoke him than anything else—a silent "I didn't even have to move."
'Sun Breathing (Devas Style) — Seventh Form: Dawn'
I leaned slightly forward, using the "Moon Shield" as cover for my right arm. With the Royal Greatsword scraping and tearing through the ground below, I swung upward in a swift strike, slicing through the air and burying the blade into Margit's stomach before carrying the cut upward and tearing through part of his chest.
He grunted in pain, but didn't seem much more affected than that.
Ignoring the open wound evaporating into light, he released the hilt of the sacred sword trapped in my shield, grabbed the staff with both hands, and brought the wooden base crashing straight down at the top of my head.
'Sun Breathing (Devas Style) — Fourth Form: Magnetic Field'
I pulled the Moon Shield back, releasing the golden blade as it scattered into the air, then uncrossed my left arm and grabbed the upper portion of the Royal Greatsword's blade with my left hand and the lower portion with my right, holding the weapon near its center.
Then I continuously rotated the Royal Greatsword's axis in front of my body in a counterclockwise motion.
The tip of the staff collided with the rotation, and the attack was deflected off course, driven diagonally downward into the stone beside me, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris.
With Margit's weapon momentarily lodged in the ground under the force of its own weight, I seized the opening.
After all, I was holding a colossal sword.
I released my left hand from the center of the blade and drew the Royal Greatsword back, sliding my right hand along the steel as blood flowed over the weapon.
Margit reacted quickly.
With his left hand now free, he conjured a dagger of light and slashed in a low, blind arc that, against an ordinary opponent, would've gutted them from bottom to top.
'Sun Breathing (Devas Style) — Tenth Form: Diagonal Eclipse'
I kicked off the fractured stone and launched myself forward in a low diagonal charge, exploiting the blind spot beneath his left arm. The dagger of light cut through nothing but air where I had stood a fraction of a second earlier.
Sliding past the side of his leg, I used my momentum to spin and swing the Royal Greatsword with both hands.
I aimed directly for the back of Margit's left knee.
Steel met flesh.
The impact wasn't enough to sever the leg due to his absurd durability and the fact that I wasn't fighting at full strength. Even my breathing techniques weren't operating as they should, since I was using the bare minimum amount of Mana and Spiritual Energy—just enough to maintain Sun Breathing and nothing more.
But the force was enough to rip through flesh and tendons.
Through the Chalice, I commanded the blood coating the blade to erupt into spikes, tearing even deeper into the flesh around the wound. Margit let out a roar of pain as the massive weight of his own body forced him to crash down onto his right knee.
That leveled our heights.
"Not so tall now, are you?" I laughed.
He didn't give up.
From beneath his cloak, his tail lashed toward the center of my chest, moving far faster than any of his previous attacks.
I released the Royal Greatsword's hilt, leaving the weapon embedded in Margit's flesh, and quickly raised my left arm, expanding the Moon Shield once more.
His tail slammed directly into the shield of flesh.
I reinforced my left arm and legs with blood. The impact shoved me backward, dragging my feet nearly a meter across the stone and carving twin trenches into the ground before the jaws sank into his flesh and I dug in my heels, locking myself in place.
With my right arm already raised and "grasping" at nothing, I slashed downward.
Between the blood-forged fingers of my right hand, the hilt of the Relic of Destruction appeared, and the blade cut Margit's tail clean in half.
The severed piece hung from the Moon Shield's mouth, writhing for a second or two before slowly beginning to evaporate into particles of golden light, while the wound on the portion still attached to Margit rapidly healed, streams of light pouring from the injury.
A deep, deafening roar erupted from Margit's throat.
A fusion of sound, magic, and divinity exploded from his mouth, creating a physical shockwave that blasted dust across the battlefield and sent my Nightmares cloak whipping behind me.
Through Spirit Vision, I watched the rational dark blue from before shift into a furious, wrathful crimson. Had the pain and humiliation of being carved apart finally shattered his stoic composure?
Ignoring the devastating injury to his left knee, Margit forced his weight onto his still-intact right leg and twisted his massive torso in fury.
He ripped the gigantic twisted wooden staff free and unleashed a massive horizontal sweep at the height of my neck. The wind howled violently beneath the weight of the attack.
'Sun Breathing (Devas Style) — Eleventh Form: Mirage'
With the severed piece of tail still trapped between the shield's jaws, I shifted my weight onto my heels and sharply kicked off the ground, bending my torso dramatically backward.
The rough wood of the staff swept through the air mere millimeters from my nose.
At the same moment I dodged, I threw the Relic of Destruction back into the Voidbag and commanded the blood on the Royal Greatsword to seize the hilt and rip the weapon free, carrying it several meters away with me and leaving behind an afterimage that was struck by Margit's follow-up attack.
I came to a stop with my back to the gate Margit was supposed to be protecting, drove the Royal Greatsword into the ground, and leaned against it, crossing my legs and draping my right arm around the hilt.
With my left hand, I brought the piece of Margit's tail that was evaporating into golden light toward my face and, without wasting a moment, drew Divine Anathema to my teeth and, together with the Mystery Devourer, opened my mouth and bit into the flesh.
I chewed slowly before swallowing. It tasted awful, like burnt rubber.
I frowned.
"You need a better diet, Margit. And a massage therapist. Your meat's too tough." I offered him the advice before taking another bite.
Judging by the way his aura reacted, the advice wasn't well received.
The thick, violent dark red of anger instantly exploded, mixing with a deep, murky purple that betrayed hatred and resentment. But it was the dull, lackluster tone seeping through the edges that revealed the humiliation and the feeling of being completely despised.
People these days just don't appreciate good advice anymore...
As I swallowed another piece of his flesh, I noticed that while the divine energy was still there, the healing effect of the "mixed soup" was almost nonexistent compared to before.
So that energy was something directly tied to the horns rather than the flesh itself?...
I took advantage of those few seconds of forced respite while Margit slowly rose to his feet, shifting the staff into his left hand and using it as a crutch. Then I activated Glimpse of Light in the Abyss, looking beyond that battered puppet.
Within my field of vision, the thick golden "thread" representing the spiritual and magical connection keeping that projection alive shone clearly.
It emerged from the base of Margit's neck, cut across the canyon, climbed the walls of Stormveil Castle, and vanished into the distance, disappearing beyond the horizon.
To be honest, I'd been holding back until now.
Well, not in my actions, but in what I could do.
My attacks were still being delivered with all the strength I currently possessed, but I was keeping most of my cards close to my chest.
Besides the fact that I could've severed the puppet's connection to the original, I also wanted to test the projection's durability and see how it would react.
I was almost certain that after the puppet got beaten around a bit, the real body would get offended enough to come running down from up there and settle the fight personally.
But the thread remained perfectly still and straight, without wavering even once.
No pulse of movement. No fluctuation suggesting that the original was coming my way from wherever he happened to be.
He wasn't coming, was he?...
I ran my tongue along the base of my teeth, cleaning away the last traces of golden blood as I finished eating what remained of Margit's disappearing tail and waited.
Margit steadied himself on his good leg, drawing the staff back. His face twisted into a mask of pure fury, teeth bared in a savage snarl.
Yet through Spirit Vision, the colors leaking from his aura told a slightly different story. The furious crimson had receded. The shade surrounding him now was calm and focused. He was angry, certainly, but nowhere near the blind rage he was trying to display on the surface.
I pulled the Royal Greatsword from the ground with my right hand and rested the weight of the bloodstained blade across my shoulder, leaving my left arm hanging loosely at my side.
Margit was more experienced than I was. That much I could admit without the slightest shame.
It had become obvious during our very first exchange of blows.
In terms of pure martial skill, the old man was light-years ahead of me.
The only reason I held such an overwhelming advantage was because the projection was far weaker than the real body—something easily confirmed through Glimpse of Light in the Abyss—and because of the obvious delay it suffered from.
I'd realized that Margit could read my attacks and mentally react to them before they even happened.
His mind kept up, the manifestation didn't.
The puppet couldn't reproduce the original's reflexes and kept getting hit—or nearly hit—because of that delay.
Ignoring his mangled leg, Margit lunged forward and launched a straightforward frontal attack, bringing the heavy staff down in a crushing blow.
I narrowed my eye.
For someone so experienced, sticking to the same predictable strategy was idiotic.
Pink varied his attacks more than this, and he was an insane slime zombie.
Of course, this manifestation wasn't the real body, meaning there was no true risk of death for the real Margit here—or at least, not as far as he knew.
Still, there was no reason for someone to keep making the same mistake unless it was intentional or they were insane.
And that definitely wasn't the case with Margit.
As I pieced everything together, I realized that even though he was always wounded during our exchanges, the damage was never fatal to the manifestation.
He always dodged just enough to avoid being obliterated outright, as though he wanted to prolong the fight.
If I was dragging out the battle to see how he would react, then Margit was dragging it out to study me.
After all, this was only a disposable shell.
If it died, it wouldn't matter.
...When had his priorities changed?
When had he gone from protecting whatever he was guarding to gathering as much information about me as possible?
I forced the madness back down for a moment.
Let's finish this...
I drew a deep breath, filling my patched-up lungs even though it was no longer necessary. Blood boiled through my veins, energizing me and strengthening my muscles. I forced my wounded body to ignore its injuries and moved far faster than before.
Foreign Flesh erupted from my left arm, shaping the Moon Shield in the blink of an eye.
I raised my arm to meet the descending staff and shoved it aside. I could see Margit’s eyes widen slightly in surprise.
The impact crashed directly into the shield in a perfect parry, deflecting the weapon's weight off course and completely opening his guard.
I brought the Royal Greatsword down from my shoulder in a sweeping arc and drove the blade straight through the manifestation's heart.
At the same time, I commanded the blood around us.
Red spikes shot upward, coiling around Margit's arms and legs, locking him in place and preventing any attempt at retaliation.
Not that he was trying to retaliate, I realized.
"Were you studying me?" I asked, genuinely curious, tilting my head to look at him more closely. "Why?"
The wild, feigned rage vanished from Margit's face. The snarl disappeared. He was still furious, but it was a much colder, more restrained emotion.
"Thou art an unpredictable abomination and a blight upon the Erdtree, foreigner," he murmured, his rough voice steady and level, wholly unmindful of the sword lodged within his chest. "Thy very strength doth defile these lands. Never shouldst thou have departed the stars."
[Archetype: The Threat — Synchronization +50%]
"...I see." The smile faded from my face.
"Any last words?"
Margit made no attempt to free himself from the blood restraints.
He simply lifted his head and fixed his single golden eye upon me, the iris shining as brightly as my own, enough for the air around us to take on a blended hue of orange and gold.
His gaze briefly shifted, focusing on the golden "strand of hair" in my left hand, before returning to meet my eyes.
"I shall remember thee." His voice remained calm. "That visage of thine shall be etched upon my memory."
I nodded.
"I certainly hope so."
I pulled the Royal Greatsword sideways, tearing through his flesh and carving across his chest as I ripped the blade free from his heart. In the same instant, purple Shadowflame erupted and engulfed the sword. I twisted my body and delivered a clean horizontal slash, decapitating him.
His head rolled away, and I saw the manifestation's magical connection being abruptly severed. But before the body's golden light could begin to dissipate into the air, the Shadowflame reacted.
Purple tendrils lashed out from my sword, spilling from the flames and spreading rapidly to cover Margit's headless body. The fire clung tightly, sealing the manifestation's energies inside and preventing them from returning to the original body or fading away.
I extended my left hand toward the burning carcass, grasping at empty space.
Then I slowly tightened my fingers.
The purple tendrils constricted around the body.
The false flesh, magic, and divinity were crushed and burned away instantly by the Shadowflame, compressing further and further until the entire corpse was consumed and reduced to a small sphere of purple fire floating in the air.
I pulled the sphere into my left hand and dispersed the Shadowflame, absorbing the fire back into myself.
What remained in my palm after the flames withdrew was a dense golden orb. It was slightly smaller than a walnut. Its color was mottled and shifting, like a thick soup with different ingredients swirling inside.
I tossed the orb into my mouth.
I chewed loudly, cracking the condensed energy between my teeth while keeping Divine Anathema active and using my Semblance. Then I swallowed.
I licked my lips, feeling my body recover rapidly.
It wasn't full regeneration, exactly, but it had accelerated my recovery by a day or two, which also helped reinforce my internal defenses.
I could feel my organs repairing themselves—bones, flesh, everything. My body focused on the critical areas first. I sensed that I could regenerate part of my heart if I wanted to, but since that wasn't an immediate problem, I focused on the rest instead.
I cast a quick glance into my Spiritual Realm. Where the seed I had taken from Remnant had been planted—the one I had to uproot and hand over to Shadow Puppet—a small spring had formed in the hole it left behind.
The liquid was amber-colored, murky and mixed like cloudy peanut broth. I inspected it briefly. It wasn't harmful; if anything, it seemed beneficial, so I left a deeper analysis for later.
Back in reality, I looked at my left arm, at the hollow "voids" in it. The stalemate was the same as before. They were receding slightly, but even that was slow and had almost stopped.
I hadn't noticed it before, but after living with this thing for so long and having a "sample" of another kind of void—the emptiness between worlds that I had fallen into, which I managed to suppress much faster and even destroy—I was now certain this thing was far more terrifying than I'd expected.
It was adapting in a way disturbingly similar to how I adapted myself. And considering it had devoured parts of my flesh, blood, Aura, and energies, it wasn't hard to realize it was doing it exactly the same way I did.
I let out a sigh and rubbed my neck with my left hand, tossing the Royal Greatsword into the air. The black hand of the Bone Helm caught it and strapped it back onto my back.
I commanded the blood back through the Chalice, reshaping it into six large ribs, then focused on the Card of Blasphemy. The number of runes there had increased.
Twelve thousand more runes, to be exact, bringing the total to twenty-nine thousand and change. Nearly thirty thousand total runes.
"Why didn't I get a quest for killing this guy?" I muttered, running a hand through my dust-covered hair.
I was absolutely certain this lunatic was a boss. He reeked of boss energy. Hell, he reeked of the kind of boss you'd run into again later.
I knew the stream was withholding any new quest because I still hadn't completed the main one—"arrive in this world"—but seriously.
...I didn't want to go to that tree.
I glanced toward the corner of my vision. The chat was scrolling slowly.
[So-Tan]...Did you really eat him?
[AdvocateOfGenderEquality]The cannibalism joke finally became real. I was never the crazy one! (ﾉ｀□´)ﾉ⌒┻━┻
Don't these idiots ever sleep? Sona was a devil, so I could understand her, but Kazuma wasn't... then again, he was a NEET. Staying up all night was practically his specialty.
"In practical terms, it isn't cannibalism," I replied. I was pretty sure I'd already explained this before.
Not that it really mattered; I was mostly saying it to annoy them and keep the joke going.
"First, we're not the same species. Second, that wasn't even a real body. It was literally a manifestation of energy and magic shaped to resemble flesh."
As I spoke, I looked down at the ground in front of me.
Where Margit's twisted wooden staff had fallen onto the stones after he disappeared, the wood was crumbling apart, dissolving rapidly into a small mound of golden dust.
When the light scattered into the wind, only one solid thing remained on the ground.
A small pouch made of coarse dark cloth, heavily worn and tied shut with an old leather cord.
I blinked.
Loot? That was a thing?!
I commanded the blood with the Chalice, letting a drop fall from my hand. It quickly shaped itself into a solitary floating finger. The finger flew over to the pouch and poked the dirty fabric twice to make sure it wasn't some kind of trap.
Nothing happened.
I used Analyze: Item.
The skill drained two hundred thousand SP from my reserves—a reasonable price—and an information window snapped into view:
-//-
[Talisman Pouch]
Type: AccessoryRarity: OrangePrefix: None
Durability: 500000/500000 (Regenerating)
[..]
Ability — [Talisman Resonance]
Allows the user to carry and maintain the effects of a talisman stored inside this pouch without needing to physically equip it.
Current Limit: 1 Talisman.
The pouch's capacity can be increased by reinforcing it with runes.
[..]
Description:
A small, knitted pouch, heavily worn and seemingly unremarkable, yet it hums with a strange resonance.
As the voices of the Erdtree diminished, the Erdtree Lord bestowed this pouch upon his faithful so they could carry more of its blessings.
[..]
~ The burden of power demands space to be carried. ~
-//-
I felt like there was something important hidden in that description, but I was missing a piece of the puzzle.
Either way...
"This could be useful," I murmured.
I waved a hand, and the blood-finger tossed the pouch toward me before storing the item directly in my inventory.
The limit was small, but given that I didn't know how these talismans worked beyond the fact that they worked, maybe that was important.
Even more so if I could replicate talismans.
The chat, however, didn't care about the loot.
[So-Tan]You were chewing on his tail while he was standing right there! ( ﾟДﾟ)!
...Was cannibalism Sona's weak spot or something?
I let out a snort through my nose, ignoring her, and turned around, beginning to walk toward the place Margit had been guarding.
The ruined stone bridge ended abruptly, but the walls surrounding the path narrowed directly toward an imposing stone archway.
At its center stood a colossal gate of old, dark wood reinforced with thick bands of rusted black iron, shut tight and covered in carvings and inscriptions written in the language of this world.
I stopped in front of the massive structure and stared at it for a moment.
Then I pulled the gate into my inventory.
I'll put this in the castle I promised Millia later. It looked pretty cool and like something she'd enjoy.
As I walked, I glanced at the minimap. Near its edge, close to the path I'd come from but farther east, the two markers from before had reappeared. The same ones I'd seen before Blaidd interrupted me.
Both were still the same colors: one green and one yellow.
I would've thought they were following me if I couldn't see the pattern they were making, moving toward the red markers on the map and attacking them, with the green marker acting as the vanguard and the yellow one seeming to remain farther back.
Whoever they were, they were hunting, for whatever reason. If I had to guess, I'd say it was for runes. Everything in this world seemed to have those. Or maybe it was just out of spite. I wasn't ruling that possibility out, nor any of the others.
Judging by their trajectory and speed, both of them would end up reaching Stormveil Castle in about twenty or thirty minutes.
I hummed, considering whether I should wait for them before going to retrieve my arm, but discarded the idea. Besides wanting my arm back, the person who currently had it was interesting.
Whoever it was—Godrick, most likely, based on what the soldier had said earlier—had a yellow, red, orange, and green marker representing him on the minimap. A mixture of all of them.
He was predominantly yellow, with red around the edges and small orange specks scattered across the entire surface. At the center of it all was a single green dot.
He was, somehow, someone neutral toward me, my enemy, someone being mentally controlled, and my ally all at the same time.
How the bastard had managed to reach that level of schizophrenia, I had no idea.
I walked through the empty space where the gate I'd stored had once stood and kept moving.
The path opened into a long slope of uneven stone, surrounded by the castle's steep walls and swept by a colder-than-usual wind. Broken swords, spears embedded in the ground, and the marks of countless battles formed the landscape all the way to the entrance of a massive upper courtyard.
...I'll take everything later. If it didn't have an owner, it was mine. Including the dragon corpse, or whatever the hell that lizard over there was.
At the end of the ramp, patiently waiting in front of the true gate leading into Stormveil's grounds, stood the source of that mess on the minimap.
Godrick, or at least that was what I assumed. There was no one else there.
He was a grotesque abomination. Not the same kind as The Eye, which was abominable simply by existing. The person—or whatever I could call that thing—was merely visually fucked up.
He was easily around three meters tall, roughly the same height as Margit, but his body was much broader and more hunched, and he was a long way from having been born that way. I could feel it and see it; he hadn't been born like that.
He wore heavy noble garments and cloaks in faded shades of green and gold, covered in torn embroidery. He was so visually flamboyant that it looked more like a costume than actual noble attire.
Beneath the fabric was his body.
He didn't possess merely two arms, but dozens of them.
Extra limbs of varying sizes and skin tones sprouted from his shoulders, back, and even his ribs. Grafts. The word came to me in a whisper, emerging from the consciousness in the "brain" of my soul. Grafted arms, crudely stitched into his gray, corpse-like flesh; some with twisted fingers, others clutching at pieces of his own clothing.
In one of his primary right hands, absurdly larger and more swollen than the rest, he wielded a large golden battle axe with two asymmetrical blades and the emblem of a lion engraved on its front.
Carried by another arm on his right side was a second axe, smaller and without ornamentation.
His face was old and withered, his skin drawn tight beneath a small twisted crown sunk into his long, thinning white hair.
But my eyes didn't spend long analyzing the king's general ugliness. They dropped directly to the right side of that walking aberration's torso.
Nestled among two ordinary arms was my target.
My right arm.
It had been severed exactly at the middle of the forearm, where the bone had broken when I defended myself from Hardy's attack. It wasn't stitched on like the others. In fact, the flesh where it was attached—not my arm's flesh—looked melted, as though Godrick's flesh itself were acting as a weld binding my arm to his body.
The skin of my arm was incredibly pale, but I'd recognize my own arm anywhere.
A black ring threaded with glowing orange veins stood out on the index finger—the Devas Ring. On the little finger rested a second ring, bearing the color of weathered bronze mixed with orange tones—the Ring of the Last Slime.
Both of my rings were still there, which was a relief. If I'd lost either of them during the fall, it would've been a pain in the ass.
I felt a small smile form as I stared at my arm.
The pale fingers were still closed, gripping the handle of the Teardrop Cleaver without letting go or even moving, unlike the other hands around it.
"You know, I'm impressed." My voice came out calm, the madness and insanity receding and disappearing for a moment. "This grafting technique is... crude, but effective. The way it was done is, in a certain sense, impressive."
And I wasn't lying. With my vision, I could see how the technique worked. It wasn't simply cutting and pasting... well, it was mostly that, but there was something more to it as well.
I looked at Godrick.
Through the Transparent World, his physical structure unfolded before me in detail.
The muscles beneath his gray skin were under constant tension, fibers repeatedly torn and healed around misaligned bones that had been forcibly fused together, alongside half-rotten flesh that was simultaneously new and old, composed of tissues from countless different ages.
Through the Chalice, the blood inside him fed me chaotic and random information: dozens of different blood signatures struggling and mixing together, forced to flow through a massive, twisted, misshapen, overburdened circulatory system driven by a heart that beat with an absurdly heavy, swollen rhythm.
There were hundreds of different blood types inside him. Fragments of the bodies of dozens of people. Names whispered from the blood. Different ages, young and old, men and women.
Because there was still so much humanity left in him, since almost all of the grafted arms had belonged to humans, Echo Humanitatis retained nearly all of its effectiveness, revealing how the original body had been violated and expanded to its limit in order to support the dead biology of those dozens of limbs.
Godrick was actually small and weak. Something shriveled and dried at the center of it all. A coward who endlessly sought validation and to become "greater."
Combining Spirit Vision and Glimpse of Light in the Abyss, Godrick's aura was perhaps even worse than the state of his body. His soul looked more like an oil painting made by a schizophrenic than anything else.
Vibrant colors covered most of it.
Specks and fragments scattered at random. Scraps of auras that were not his own clung everywhere, together with small pieces of other souls that were being forcibly kept chained to him.
He was divine, even if only slightly. He couldn't compare to Margit or Ranni. At most, he was descended from something divine rather than being a demigod or lesser god like the two of them. But the grafts seemed to stimulate and nourish that small spark of divinity.
I could see the spiritual remnants trapped and gagged within the grafted arms, parasitizing his primary energy so they wouldn't completely rot away and serving as a form of nourishment.
The consciousness within the "brain" of my soul whispered:
'Barbaric. Crude.'
A forced and crude attempt at what a "graft" was supposed to be. Yet it still functioned to a certain degree. Proof that flesh and soul could be forced to accept foreign parts if the host's will and strength were great enough.
...Not that this was really the case here. At least not the "will" and "strength" part.
It was useful to know and learn. Not that I intended to use something like this, but having a living example right in front of me to understand the concept would be valuable in the future.
And there was also that... thing inside his chest, keeping everything anchored. It looked like some kind of rune, but it was completely different from anything I'd ever seen.
It was what kept Godrick stitched together and prevented his body from collapsing into a puddle of ground meat. It was the central anchor forcing all the scraps to remain united.
It was old. Ridiculously old. Perhaps the first thing so "foreigner" that I had seen and that could be compared to 'The Eye'.
However, while 'The Eye' ignored the laws of reality and the world around it, that thing interacted directly with them. It was almost inert and in an absurdly weakened state compared to what it should have been, I knew that much, but it still possessed the potential to alter the laws of the world, to edit the Logos of this planet.
If I were to make a comparison—which was idiotic, considering I'd be comparing something I didn't understand to something I'd never seen—I would say it was one of the Primordial Norse Runes.
...And yet I felt that thing might be even more powerful.
Godrick raised his head. The movement made me focus on him again, drawing my attention away from his interior as the various smaller arms contracted and gestured bizarrely beneath the tattered cloak.
The great golden axe scraped across the stones.
"Recognizest thou the handiwork of a true lord?" He spread his primary arms in a grandiose pose, his deep and arrogant voice echoing through the courtyard with an aged rasp. "I am Godrick the Grafted, Lord of Stormveil, scion of the Golden Lineage! Speak thy name, foolish mortal who fell from the heavens, ere thou kneelest before thy better."
...Did the entire damn planet see me fall? How is everyone able to recognize me just by looking at me?!
I let out a short sigh and looked back at him, allowing a faint, serene, and gentle smile to form at the corner of my lips.
My mind was clear and tranquil.
"Devas. Just Devas."
Godrick slammed the butt of his battle axe against the stone floor with a loud clang and narrowed his withered eyes.
"Devas." He tested the name with a certain degree of disdain and mockery.
"Thou spakest of my craft with the audacity of a scholar, yet the blindness of a fool. Dost thou truly believe, in thine ignorance, that Grafting is naught but a crude art?" He exuded a sickly, megalomaniacal pride as the extra hands along his back and ribs twisted and writhed, smoothing the air and his own garments. Fucking disgusting. "Thou understandest naught. This is the path to divinity itself! The strength of dozens bendeth to my will, and the power of thousands dwelleth within my flesh!"
...And the intelligence of millions?
"I said I was impressed," I replied calmly, tilting my head slightly. "But yes, crude is the word. Assuming I don't prefer calling it miserable."
"You forcibly fused your flesh with that of others, ignored every form of compatibility, and I don't even want to begin explaining the mess that is your soul." I shook my head slightly. "You're more of a stitched-together flesh doll than a person, and if it weren't for that... thing inside your soul holding everything together, you wouldn't even be that. You'd be a meatball."
Godrick's wrinkled face twisted with indignation and rage at my words. The colors of his aura instantly flashed into a hostile, furious red.
"Thou darest pass judgment upon a demigod?" he snarled, taking a heavy step forward. "Golden blood floweth through my veins! 'Tis my divine and superior lineage that subjugateth the flesh of mere mortals and exalteth it unto perfection!"
I let out a quiet laugh.
"Demigod or not," I said. "Golden blood or not, if something as ugly as you is closer to perfection, I'd rather remain imperfect."
He roared in fury, gripping the handle of the axe so tightly that his knuckles turned completely white.
"Insolent wretch! A worm that mocketh a dragon!" He raised the golden weapon and slammed it into the ground. "We shall see whether thy grin endureth when I tear thee limb from limb and claim thy flesh as my own!"
Without continuing the "conversation," he began charging toward me before suddenly freezing, his eyes widening.
"But... what?...," Godrick muttered through clenched teeth. "I cannot... move..."
"You know... I'm beyond impressed." I commented, walking toward him. "I'm offended. Offended that you even considered grafting my arm onto yourself, let alone actually tried it, let alone believed you'd survive what comes afterward..."
I looked up, meeting his eyes, the only part of his body I allowed to move.
After all, my blood was inside him, and it wasn't difficult to control it and convert the blood around it into mine as well.
"Did it never occur to you that stitching random body parts onto yourself might go wrong?" I asked sarcastically. "Especially an arm that fell from space?"
"'Tis thou... who art... doing this..."
"Great discovery." I mocked. "Did you know you're already dead?"
"W-What?..."
"I estimate it would've taken another hour or two before my arm started devouring you completely," I hummed. "The only reason it didn't happen instantly, the moment you shoved it into your flesh, was because it was still finishing off the remnants of underworld energy inside it."
There was far less energy than what I carried within myself, so despite being only my severed arm, it managed to cleanse itself much faster.
On top of that, both of my rings were instinctively activating, restoring vitality to the area, and the Teardrop Cleaver was helping with the defense as well, devouring energy on its own.
A shame the "Moon Shield" couldn't do the same. It was too weak and even deader than the sword. Maybe if I fed it eyes powerful enough, it would become possible, but that was a problem for later.
"Not that it matters either..."
I took a step back and inhaled deeply.
My blood carried my mana and my spiritual energy.
And that blood was inside Godrick's body.
I inhaled slowly. Then exhaled.
Sun Breathing no longer needed lungs or air to function.
I inhaled. Exhaled.
And I hated practically everything Godrick represented, from his divinity to his sins.
I inhaled. Exhaled.
It was like trying to contain the sun inside a plastic bag.
At the end of the third breath, I extended my right hand and caught my arm before it hit the ground. I pulled the flesh back into place and stitched myself together with blood before reconstructing the bones and restoring the sleeve of my clothing.
I tossed the Teardrop Cleaver onto my back, letting the sword float beside the Royal Greatsword, carried by a hand of blood. I would've stored it inside the Voidbag if it weren't helping me combat Hardy's energy.
Then I looked at the... rune, or whatever that thing was, floating where Godrick's body had existed moments ago.
I didn't try to touch it and instead turned around, looking at the person who remained standing beneath the shadow of the stone arch.
She was a tall woman. Several good centimeters taller than me, actually. She had to be around two meters tall with ease.
Her hair was short and pure white, reaching at most the base of her neck. Strangely enough, it was extremely clean.
She had deep violet eyes, which immediately triggered the appreciation for eyes I'd developed after the Blood Moon, and incredibly pale white skin, almost corpse-like.
In fact, she was pale enough to resemble a sheet of printer paper. If I couldn't feel her blood through the Chalice, I would've said she didn't have any blood in her body at all.
Her clothes looked improvised.
Made from worn, dark scraps of cloth tied together lazily and mixed with old armor plates attached here and there. Large tears in the fabric exposed parts of her breasts—which were large—and her thighs. I could even see her right nipple, but despite how battered her clothing was, the pale skin underneath didn't have a single scratch or trace of dirt.
She had a toned and muscular body, but not so muscular that it made her look less feminine. In her hands, she carried an enormous zweihander, a steel blade with the classic double-edged design and triangular point.
On my minimap, her marker glowed green. It was the same marker that had been hunting around the castle earlier.
The yellow marker accompanying her stood a few meters to her side, completely invisible and hidden. I ignored it for now. My focus was on the white-haired woman.
Her violet eyes weren't on me. She was staring at the golden rune-like thing floating in the air just behind my back, where Godrick had existed seconds ago.
Even though her marker was green on my map, meaning that, at least according to the stream's logic, she was an ally, I still couldn't help but say:
"It only took three breaths to kill him."
My voice came out casually as I pointed my thumb over my shoulder, indicating the two fallen axes, the pile of tattered clothing, and that... rune-thing floating there.
"Are you going to fight me for that... rune?"
The woman blinked slowly.
She looked away from the rune and studied me for a second.
"No fucking way."
Then she simply slung the massive sword onto her back, turned around, and started walking away the same way she'd come.
[...]---[...]
Margit died (not exactly). Anything connected to the Crucible will heal Devas if he eats it, and that may or may not have counted as cannibalism.
Godrick died just because Devas breathed in his general direction, grafting might be useful in the future, and the Tarnished finally shows up. In this case, she's a woman—more specifically, Alice, the very first Elden Ring character I ever created.
She has a brain, too. A fully functional one.
As for Godrick's Great Rune, I'm going to take the Great Runes seriously for what they are. The damn Elden Ring literally altered the very structure of reality across the world—a Great Rune is something that should be taken really seriously.
Well, I think that's about it. I won't drag this out either—have a good day, and enjoy the chapter!