A/N: hello, so I've been informed a LOT of you haven't received any email notification for last chapter. I'm afraid it's a Patreon issue, likely the result of their newest update (I had to merge my creator & member profile into a single one for example or risk losing access to both in July) and I have no idea if it will happen again, or for how long.
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The Mana Goddess was… dead?
That wasn’t… no, no, it was probably a lie from the fear of Wrongness personified, and it didn’t matter in the middle of a battle either way.
“You…” Alphonse’s voice faltered, but anger quickly overwhelmed his confusion. “You lie!”
“I don’t,” Valravn replied, his body shifting and duplicating. The demon split into three identical doubles, each of them lunging at a different foe and speaking with one voice. “Carry that knowledge with you to the Worldsoul, failed hero!”
Valravn was fast even in spite of the debuffs Simon put on him, but the Overlord had grown in levels and martial talent since their last encounter. He turned his scepter into a mace and parried his foe’s blade with it, using his superior strength to force his enemy back.
His other allies adopted different approaches. Alphonse clashed blades with one of the doubles, only to find himself quickly on the backfoot due to his foe’s far greater stats and martial mastery, while Voltobauta patently refused close-combat by turning to mist, put distance between him and the clone, and then fired at Valravn from afar.
“Shrivel!” He cast on his own Valravn, slightly reducing his Agility compared to the other doubles.
“I can’t see the real one!” Alphonse warned his allies as he found himself pushed back by a relentless flurry of blows from his current opponent. The three Valravns were clearly trying to disperse the group. “And debuffs don’t spread from one dou—ah!”
The enemy’s sword had struck at his shoulder so deeply that the blow would have likely sliced him in half without all of his Paladin protections.
This news annoyed Simon but didn’t surprise him. He could feel otherworldly influence pushing against his mind, trying to worm its way into his senses to lead him astray, only to be swiftly repelled.
Stranger Paradise negated by Indomitable Crown!
“Mind protection?” Valravn grunted as their weapons clashed, his voice a whisper. Paladins were shielded from such trickery, and an undead like Voltobauta had innate resistance against similar effects. “I see you came prepared.”
They did. Their group had had the foresight of calling on the shades of ancient heroes who fought Valravn in the past, so they had a rough idea of his abilities. He could prevent allies from recognizing each other through illusions, which he usually used in tandem with body doubles to sow chaos and confusion; he could create duplicates of himself, some being mere optical illusions and others solid enough to inflict real damage; he could alter his limbs and form at will; and he could manipulate shadows.
However, they had little information on Verney’s Techniques beyond what all high-level Fencers could do naturally. Ser Richard had put forward a few guesses based on the days back when they fought on the same side, but he was sure to have missed a few like this Spellsunder.
Simon had hoped some of the Paladin’s Perks like his Darksense would identify the real Valravn from his doubles, but the Domain’s anti-divination feature probably interfered with that. Not even his own Dark Visionary senses could tell, though that might be the result of his own miasma control being disrupted from that earlier strike.
At least Simon still knew one spell that didn’t require much miasma control, since it didn’t use his own.
“Pandemic Bomb.”
His order reverberated to the tune of a dozen goats’ deaths through his Devil Brands, heralding the beginning of the Attic’s collapse. The sudden shift in the Abyssal Domain’s metaphysical weight took the form of a tremor spreading through space itself.
The rumble took the clone in front of Simon aback, which allowed him to follow through with a Technique of his own. “Underworld Hammer.”
He struck Valravn so hard and so viciously that the ground below his feet sprouted fire.
A surge of flames erupted from the point of impact as if the Attic’s floor was normal earth, though that was likely the result of Techniques transcending the world’s logic. Valravn dissipated into shadows at the impact, revealing himself to be a copy.
He couldn’t say the same of the one fighting Alphonse.
“Bladebreaker.”
Valravn shattered Alphonse’s sword with one blow, and then sliced his right arm off. The Paladin’s scream of pain echoed throughout the Attic as blood poured out of his wound. Another slash cut from his right shoulder to his hip and brought him to his knees.
“No wonder you had to submit to the Overlord.” Valravn raised his sword for a lightning-fast decapitation strike. “A weakling like you is no match for hi—”
The Zodiac Fiend growled in pain rather than finish his strike as he and his double’s free hands reached for their chests in perfect coordination. A terrible buzzing noise resonated throughout the entire Domain while the closed doors above their heads cracked under the pressure of countless flies filling the corridors.
Both Simon and Voltobauta seized their chance. The former transformed his Overlord mace into a sheathed sword with Warmonger and triggered his Quickdraw Technique, while the Necromancer shot his own opponent straight in the head.
Simon closed the gap separating him from the Valravn about to kill Alphonse in the blink of an eye and cut him in two, reducing him to shadows. The one Voltobauta shot stumbled back as the manalith projectile exploded. The blow would have blown off a normal person’s head, but only left the demon with a wound dripping with liquid quicksilver.
“I’ve got the real one!” Voltobauta shouted, only for another tremor to follow. He looked up to see poison corroding the doors above. “Uh oh…”
The portals shattered, and a flood of flies fell upon the Attic in a tide of vermin. The bugs swarmed the sky and corridors, delivering death and destruction to all the Cobweb’s hideouts across the world and causing the pocket dimension to start collapsing under its own spiritual weight. The anti-teleportation effect of the Abyssal Domain had already been deactivated.
The wounded Valravn looked up to the army of hungry flies rushing down on him, and did what any coward would: he summoned a shadowy door and rushed to it in an attempt to escape.
“This whole place is going to blow!” Voltobauta shouted. The door sky had begun to collapse into pieces upon them.
“Take Alphonse and teleport out to Belzemine!” Simon ordered the Necromancer as he pursued Valravn. “We’ll regroup after he gets some healing!”
Valravn opened the door and rushed through with Simon hot on his tail, while Voltobauta grabbed Alphonse and used a teleport gem to disappear. No sooner had the Overlord crossed the threshold that he felt the pocket dimension collapsing on itself behind them.
The door led into an underground and dimly-lit crypt, likely located below Verney’s castle. Tremors shook the walls from distant explosions. Valravn ran into darkened tunnels while Simon followed, his steely footsteps echoing throughout the passages. It wasn’t long before he lost sight of the demon, much to his annoyance.
“There’s nowhere to run to!" Simon shouted. He could feel his miasma control was starting to return. “You are cornered!”
“That I may be,” Valravn’s voice echoed from the shadows, “but this snake still has his fangs!”
Simon grunted and tested his restored magic by renewing his cursebuffs, including the illusion-piercing Clear Eyes, then picked up on a noise coming from deeper in the crypt. He warily followed the trail until he entered some kind of large mausoleum vault supported by four wide pillars of piled up bones. The walls were lined with skeletons caked in mud, and the floor covered in a mosaic representing Prophetess Pharis herself.
A battle was already underway there. Ser Richard and Alcyone were clashing blades with three of Verney’s clones, the echoes resounding across the crypt. It only took Simon a glance to realize the issue at hand.
“A little help here?” Alcyone asked upon spotting Simon.
“As you wish,” Simon replied.
He activated Hellfire Gaze and blasted every person there with his unholy sight.
It was true his Dark Visionary vision couldn’t tell Valravn apart from his doubles… but it could detect the small, nearly imperceptible whiff of miasma radiating from them, even when disguised. It was true shapeshifting rather than illusions, or his spell would have seen through the disguises, but the demon’s deception was still no match for his third eye.
Since all of them were impostors, he burned them to a crisp with Hellfire Gaze. He watched the Valravns and his fake teammates dissipate into smokeless flames and shadows, before quickly realizing his error.
The real one wasn’t among them.
He snuck behind me! Simon immediately turned while preparing to cast Chaos Wave to throw the enemy back, when a detail left him frozen in place: pink petals falling from nowhere. Cherry blossoms?
“Crimson Blossom.”
Valravn’s sword struck him like a whip from a thousand directions.
The onslaught of slices was so quick and violent it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Valravn’s blade moved at such a terrible speed it appeared to multiply, his sword shifting into six iron fangs biting relentlessly. The cuts reached through the chinks in his armor with swift violence and drew his poisonous blood.
Critical hit! Critical hit! Critical hit! Bleed ailment transferred by Love–Bleed ailment!
The onslaught of slices left Simon little room to free himself from the combo, but his acidic blood dulled the enemy blade enough to provide an opening. He managed to activate Devil’s Arm and grabbed Valravn by the chest. He immediately activated Crown of Pain, the sight of it briefly causing the demon to falter.
“Suffer!”
He ripped the veil between dimensions open and attempted to cast Valravn into Hell.
It suddenly occurred to Simon that he hadn’t checked whether the imp he stuck there in the previous reign was still there, but the demiplane appeared empty enough to hunger for Valravn. He could taste the fear in the Zodiac Fiend’s voice.
“No…” Valravn’s heart pulsated with darkness. “No!”
The Twins’ crystal unleashed a wave of miasma that threw them both away from each other and cancelled out Simon’s ability. However, he immediately exploited the opportunity to cast Ruin. Patches of black sores appeared on Valravn’s skin, to Simon’s delight.
There was something darkly amusing about how everyone seemed to have a counter to the Poison ailment, but not Disease.
The weakened archfiend rushed at him once again, using the very exact same Technique he used to disrupt Darkbound earlier, but Simon blasted him across the mausoleum with Chaos Wave. He crashed through a bone pillar.
I’ve learned my lesson. You’re never getting close enough to do that again. Simon activated Hellfire Gaze and forced Valravn to vanish back into the shadows to avoid being incinerated. He also drained some of his remaining livestock to heal himself a bit, while pitying the poor imperial spy Shabram selected to marry him. That woman must have suffered a lot across the reigns. Mages are helpless with disrupted magic, but so is a swordsman who can’t reach their target.
Unfortunately, Valravan still had a few ranged options. He danced around Simon, waving crescent-shaped blades of light with his sword and firing shadowy orbs from his hand. Simon transformed his mace into a shield to protect himself while retaliating with Ectoplasmer.
“This crown… it’s Nodens’ power…” Valravn hid behind one of the remaining pillars. His voice wavered. “Is that what you are after, Overlord? My strength?”
“Your head will suffice.” Simon blasted the pillar apart with a burst of Hellfire, only to find nothing behind it. He quickly cast Chaos Wave and repelled Valravn as he emerged from the shadows once more. He might have managed to land a blow had he not been so drastically slowed down.
The disease, debuffs, and his Domain’s loss are taking their toll. Simon grunted at the poisonous blood dripping between his fingers. The Crown of Pain thankfully didn’t affect him personally, but he was still a little hurt a bit from that last Technique. I can outlast him.
Then a hole opened up in the ceiling.
Both Simon and Valravn looked up to see a knight falling upon the latter, a copy of the Mana Sword in his hands. The archfiend barely had time to raise his own weapon to protect himself, but his attacker shattered it on impact with the very same Technique he used to defeat Alphonse earlier. Another swing nearly gutted Verney and threw him back a few feet.
Valravn growled upon rising back up, his tunic drenched in oozing shadow and quicksilver. “Richard.”
“What have you done to yourself, Thomas?” Ser Richard raised a hand when Simon took a step forward to assist. “Where is the man of the people I so admired?”
“There was once a time when this vessel of mine dreamed of a better world.” Valravn summoned another sword from the darkness itself. “But humans are weak of heart, Richard. The powerful laugh at the misery of those dying in the gutters, whereas the lowborn would rather have slaves of their own rather than seek freedom and equality.”
Richard tightened his grip on his weapon. “Is there anything left of you inside this thing?”
“Only bitter hatred, I’m afraid.” Valravn wreathed his sword in blue flames and adopted a fighting stance. “All I care about now, is to plunge this world into an abyss of terror and to dance among screams.”
Ser Richard let out a sigh of resignation. “Why did you have to say that?”
A pillar of light burst through from the ceiling and smote Valravn.
The archfiend screamed in pain as holy radiance incinerated him. It seemed the very sun had burst into the crypt and set it ablaze. Simon himself had to raise his hand to protect his eyes, though he distinguished two forms descending from above.
Frea floated above them while clad in her Sage outfit, her staff raining holy light keeping the archfiend firmly pinned in one place and away from any shadows. Belzemine floated down behind her, her fingers flickering with fire.
“Teraburn.”
Blue flames blasted Valravn’s skin and clothes, leaving his misshapen, faceless body exposed. He had no mouth to scream with, and yet his wail had grown louder than a company’s worth of minstrels.
Simon quickly realized that Ser Richard had simply sought to distract Valravn, and he quickly joined in on the effort with Hellfire Gaze. The demon tried to crawl away, but there was no shadow left for his thieving self to take refuge in. Soon, all that remained of him were ashes, the Zodiac crystal of the Twins, and a small rush of experience.
Thomas Verney had been slain by the very same light he so adored.
Level 72 Overlord Perk: Unyielding Essence V (Passive): You gain immunity to Bleed, Slow, Blind, Stasis, and Silence.
That…
That was it?
Ailment immunities—though it could have come earlier and made a few Titles redundant—but… only one level after slaying him? Even taking into account the fact that his experience was split between multiple people, Simon had hoped to gain at least one more level from slaying such a dangerous foe.
Could it be a trick? Simon wondered as he quickly moved to grab the Twins crystal. The malice and power inside was unmistakable. No, no, this is no forgery.
Valravn, hidden leader of the Cobweb and extraordinary thorn in Simon’s foot, was finally dead.
—----------
As Simon had guessed, the crypt Valravn had fled to had been located inside his castle. It was likely full of traps or holding a secret vault for him to hide in emergencies. They would have some time to explore the premises.
It turned out Alcyone and the others had been busy while Simon’s group confronted Verney. A fetch impostor had replaced the count during the dinner while the castle’s staff was entirely made of the Cobweb’s Fangs, murderous mannequins, and automatons. Alcyone had had little trouble handling them, and it pleased Simon to learn that Renal had been among the casualties.
As for Alphonse, he would live, though he would have perished already without Belzemine and his Paladin Perks.
“Paladins are quite hardy,” Alcyone commented. “The one that gave the White Unicorn its name fought Gargauth for days on end. She healed almost faster than he could hurt her.”
“I’ve heard the tales.” Though Alphonse still had a long way to go before he could even meaningfully contribute to any Zodiac Fiend confrontation. “Did Voltobauta tell you?”
“About that claim that the Mana Goddess is dead?” Alcyone scoffed. “That’s just not possible.”
“I agree, it doesn’t add up.” Besides the fact that Simon knew better than to believe a master liar, there were some pretty big inconsistencies in his claim. “She’s the Worldtree’s dryad. She can only dies if it does, and that would have destroyed the world's balance already.”
“Yeah, not to mention she answers Prayers all the time.” Doubt suddenly crept on Alcyone’s face. “Huh.”
Simon raised an eyebrow, before he quickly guessed what was on her mind. “We know of at least one case of Prayer impersonation.”
“Yes… yes, it wouldn’t hurt to confront Frea over it once we’ve finished scouring this cursed castle of its rats. I’ve always wondered why the Mana Goddess hasn’t been seen in centuries…” Alcyone crossed her arms. “Illusea has some pretty big explaining to do for hiding the Zodiac Fiends from us.”
So they were finally starting to believe. Simon had allowed Alcyone’s crew and the others to keep the Twins crystal for study, largely because he couldn’t devour it at this time and he needed them to confirm it was indeed a Zodiac Fiend.
“Is Valravn truly dead?” Simon wondered.
“He seemed as pretty dead as one can possibly be, though I’ll have Volto check by summoning Verney’s soul.” Alcyone crossed her arms. “Didn’t you say that he could create duplicates?”
“Yes, and split at least one person in two different individuals.” Could that be connected to the fact his host’s name didn’t appear when he used his Domain? “You think he could have one more body double hidden somewhere?”
“You tell me. What’s bothering you about this?”
“It’s just… I only got a single level out of Verney’s death.”
“Welcome to the life of a high-level person!” Alcyone laughed at him. “Hear me out. You know Muse, the country full of engineers?”
“Yes, I can read a map.”
“Their Arithmancers spent years studying the exp curve to figure out how it works, and they’ve gotten close enough to learn this startling fact: it takes as much experience to bring a level 1 person to level 54, for a level 73 fighter to reach level 74.”
Simon remained silent as the enormity of that statement sank in. It was no wonder Louis was so eager to start a civil war. Nothing short of tearing down their family’s own empire would give him that rush.
“It blows the mind, doesn’t it? And the exp difference between level 89 and 90 is the same gulf that separates level 1 from 71.” Alcyone kept rubbing salt on his wounds. “Once you hit the seventies, you either live out your archetype every single second of your life, or you pray for an elven lifespan. I wouldn’t be where I am if I wasn’t constantly on the lookout for fabled lost continents.”
“You don’t want me to live every day of my life as the Overlord, Alcyone.”
“I don’t, for sure.” Alcyone smiled at him. “You’re right though, it’s too early to celebrate. The Rogue, that Ludwig Bert, and Chrom Cruak were nowhere to be found today, so we’ll have to assume they’re stranded somewhere. They might cause us some trouble in the future.”
True. The Attic’s destruction and the Twins’ capture had mostly destroyed the Cobweb as an organization, but it still left a few loose ends. “The Rogue is likely in Valne at this moment, and Bert has a trap-filled mansion in Muse, but I’ve no idea where Chrom Cruak could be. I could create a device compelling Valravn to answer us.”
“I’m sure we’ll find a clue somewhere in these dusty old crypts.” Alcyone patted him on the shoulder. “Let’s rob some graves while Volto isn’t here to complain about it.”