The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 375 - Parallel Points Of View, Perpendicular Points In Time
Chapter 375: Chapter 375 - Parallel Points Of View, Perpendicular Points In Time
The moment his chaotic, razor edged little ’flechettes’ of swirling spirit had pierced the sigil reinforced barrier she had set up around her workshop in that fort... she knew what he was. Why he was like he was. And it was the biggest reason she had not ’overreacted’.
"Do you mind if I ask... has your Aspect been identified already in the past by your lands’ Guilds? I do already know the likely answer, but it always pays not to assume."
The noble rose his chin into the air and looked like he was going to say something quite self-important. Even his spirit seemed ’happy’ and ’proud’. That dense, large single ’arrow’ stuck tight to the area around the back of his head.
"No one has any idea, even myself!"
"What will you pay me if I could tell you?"
"Absolutely nothing, thank you. I’m fine now."
The brunette covered her mouth, amused by both his candor and certainty.
"That’s true as long as you stay here in this bubble, but not if you’d ever like to return to our world. I could also explain the reasons behind that if you’d like."
"Why would I want to return?"
"You’re taking all of this remarkably well. All things considered."
Elua observed, genuinely curious about his reaction. For someone that seemed to actually enjoy noticing all the new things about this place, he was surprisingly... single minded.
’Perhaps that is the point. Instinctively, he is doing his best not to activate his Parallel Astralism again.’
"You’re truly sure? I may never feel like reciting the offer ever again."
"I’ve spent decades with voices in my head, contradicting each other and forcing me to locate the most likely truth through their noise. Finding myself in an impossible realm with a legendary figure who might keep secrets from me... is practically mundane by comparison."
Sevra looked between them with a growing amount of alarm and Elua suddenly turned and studied the scout’s face. Noting the genuine fear beneath the attempt to be calm. Fear of being trapped... but also fear of her.
The same fear that had driven Sevra’s suspicious behavior at the wedding, amplified now by confirmation of her worst assumptions. Whatever prophecy that was spoken of which could have possibly included her rebirth - which sounded like the kind of Clairvoyance only a Divinity could achieve...
’Already it is unfun to be around her.’
"What do you think you know about the Acid Tongued Villainess, anyway?"
The question was mild sounding - almost conversational - but the woman flinched as if struck. Slowly, she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head... as if it could hide her from what she was about to say.
"I know she burned down half the eastern provinces on a different continent. I know she led armies of damned mortals and made deals with Void entities. Boiled an ocean and... ruined a port city."
"Is that all?"
"I know she disappeared after the Sachret Pass incident. Because even her own allies couldn’t stomach her methods anymore."
Each accusation hit with all the weight of folklore that had been repeated and embellished across generations. Which is to say that to Elua, it both felt like nothing... and like the familiar hollow ache that came with hearing her worst moments distilled into legend. Events stripped of her reasoning entirely.
"Interesting. And where did these stories actually come from? After so long."
"Bards sing them, historians record them, parents tell them to frighten children into behaving. Everyone knows them."
Eyes only a fraction short of being fully dull looked towards the person hiding her face. The ancient cultivator stepped closer, her lips parting to speak words softly. With just as much accusation laced in her intent as the scout had used against her.
"Everyone knows them - but how many people who were actually there are still alive to correct the details that had been lost to time? Or to provide a second outlook that was never recorded because I never gave it to anyone?"
The air between them was charged with the roil of thick essence. Compared to the world they lived in, it was practically the difference between the water content of air on a dry winter’s day... and a humid summer just before a storm. Almost two dozen times as much.
For a cultivator used to the ’normal’ amount only, it was like everything around their essence field was molasses. It was not as simple of a matter as manipulating Element like normal. Yet Sevra could tell, with her Air Aspect... just how much of the surroundings were under the girl’s control.
’Enough to ram me into the ground again, easily.’
"The eastern provinces, as you call them, were burned to the ground because a Voidling incursion had established two Greater nests before anyone realized it. Something that this age, on our continent with Enchanter as its average, doesn’t even have *any* idea of the danger of."
Close to the strength of a Leader, but with the numbers and large wave tactics of the Lessers. Banes of any mortal settlement, as even a few of them could kill thousands if Primalist cultivators ignored them. Which they sometimes did.
"They were overrun and killed to the man - to the woman and child. The choice was made to contain the spread rather than attempt impossible rescues. And for the record? I didn’t make it. But I did carry it out."
Elua’s voice remained ’level’, but her spiritual presence gradually intensified. Collecting memories, arranging them and preparing them for what was coming. And if it scared the woman a bit - the illusionist felt she deserved it.
"As for armies of the damned... I’ll be the first to admit I worked with whoever was willing to stand against my enemies. Some of them weren’t particularly pleasant people. Neither was I, by then. But I have a feeling this was about something else entirely."
She looked directly at the Shadow Whisker member, allowing some of the weariness to show in her expression. From the recollections of those times. From death, unavoidable.
"I spent two and a half centuries on a large island where castoffs from society were regularly left. Prisoners and terminal patients both. To be culled by Descents, because their own homelands were cruel enough to let that happen... but thought they were noble enough not to directly dirty their hands."
Behind her, within the minds and eyes of the two cultivators hanging on her words, a vast city ’appeared’. With spires taller than seemed reasonable and walls that looked comparable to their superforts, at a minimum.
"By the two hundred and thirty seventh year, they were a nation of their own that accepted all refugees. And I did lead their army for a while. But I want to make one thing absolutely clear."
The two wanted to interrupt and clarify what was going on behind her. But the scene they saw suddenly turned into a sea of fire and worse. Clearly, the place so far on the horizon - in their point of view - had come under assault by Voidlings so large that it made the ’older’ cultivators flinch.
"I have never made deals with Void entities. I killed them. All of them. Until there were no more to kill."
Acid rained in waves in the illusion she showed them. Turning many of those vantablack invaders into much of nothing besides puddles. The few that survived were overwhelmed by the defenders on the walls. It was like nothing either the scout or the noble had ever seen before. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel-com
"Now... talking directly to the Divinity who mandated their existence in the first place and sending my complaints just to annoy him? If you want to count the one time I promised not to use this very tactic I developed for the period of the next six Descents in exchange for lowering the difficulty in the region... then yes, I made a ’deal’."
Slowly, the brunette backed away as the illusion ’failed’ theatrically. Not disappearing at once, not turning to shimmers or sparkles, and not fragmenting into shards. This time, she allowed the city to grow transparent and fade until it was finally gone.
In the meantime, the heiress stretched as her body was feeling rather tight. All the essence she was refining in this environment was making her muscles taut... as the field just outside the edge of her skin vibrated and put pressure on her physical form. Pressure so much like an entire ocean pressing on her.
But not quite like being forced down and held tight to the bottom of the trench by a Salt Element cultivator trying to run away again. After intruding on her life to kill her new love, after so many centuries.
"The ocean... I have little defense against that instance. I did exactly that. The people affected by it can blame me for it. But the hero in that play you people have? He was the villain who killed someone important to me."
A window appeared above her head. The view from her eyes surrounded by the dark of water. Before the virulent glow of essence charged sulfuric acid was generated as far as she could from her body. In quantities almost incomprehensible, it forced an instantaneous, violent reaction with every molecule of salt and water it touched.
Like a small green sun... that was born exploding into superheated steam. Transforming the immediate abyss of the sea into a cauldron of violence. The very molecules of water ripped apart by the sheer exothermic force.
In the middle of that, through scalding temperatures that may have hurt a weaker cultivator - but did little to a Peak Defier... that past version of herself flew upward. Through force of jump and levitation of essence. As Salt was taken hold of all around her, turning to lances and whips that she ignored.
Until her hand clawed out towards the wall of the substance hanging in the sky. He was prepared for her to use her illusions to come at him from multiple angles. He wasn’t as prepared for her to have absolutely lost her mind in her rage and grief.
Elua er Goltbred, the brunette standing before them and looking down with glowing mint eyes... shut off the illusion playing her memory for them to see. She was sure she got the point across that it all had happened in the middle of a fight, at least.
’Well, biting someone on the neck, piercing their skin with my Tongue and pouring Acid down into their body in a single heartbeat is... probably not what I should show them. Not if I want them to feel safe sleeping in the same Exclave as me~’
If she hadn’t been so concerned with correcting these ’misconceptions’ all at once... she’d have realized she’d gone ’too far’ already for one of them to ever want to sleep tonight.
All the way back... to when she was just freely manipulating essence - where Sevra could not. No matter how she tried.
Updat𝓮d from freew𝒆bnovel(.)com
