Bend mana advanced to level 6

Despite how awesome the description had sounded for that skill, I'd never really got much use from it. My ability to control mana was far too weak to be of use against actual mages and their creations, while the ability to use my internal mana to strengthen portions of my body never saw much use because strengthening a single part at the expense of the rest had rarely been advantageous.

I was getting use from it now though, concentrating everything I had into my wings to dodge the multitude of imps that were swarming me, desperate to prevent me reaching the tree. They were both faster and more manoeuvrable than me, but they didn't seem able to fight effectively at speed. Their species description had said their speed was for the purposes of running away, and while it made an effective weapon against a slow-moving target, against a fast aerial opponent, the result was that they failed to put any proper momentum behind their claws. I was taking multiple hits a second, but between my armour, chitinous skin and cutting resistance, they hadn't drawn a single drop of blood.

Which was fortunate for them, because I had a rather nasty case of blight.

I hadn't even licked the stuff, not wanting to risk creating any more zombies, but it was naïve of me to think I could bottle up that black fluid without any ill effects, however thick my gloves. I'd activated trigger respawn, given that I was about to get up close and personal with the guidance again, but ideally I wanted to crush my brain or die in some other unrecoverable manner.

Proficient dodger advanced to level 18

I evaded an imp that had been coming at me head-on, on the basis that our speed differential would have made his attack far worse, and plunged into the miasma. What met me on the inside was a complete surprise; the tree had gone.

No, not gone. Shrunk. It was there, right behind the staircase, but was now only ten metres high, with short, stubby branches. It remained the same dark shade and had no leaves. Presumably it had unleashed the army of drones that made up the bigger version, using them for its invasion of the abyss. Was what was left still made up of its victims, or was that its actual body? I wasn't close enough for either appraisal or proficient empath.

Nor was I likely to get much closer. The tree had a cloud of brains hovering above it, and had a half dozen of the five metre humanoid demons standing around it, each as very definitely male as the first one I'd seen. The ceiling of the cavern wasn't high enough to get directly on top of the tree while staying out of range of the floating brains, so I couldn't bomb it from above. Suicide attack it would have to be, then.

I stashed my armour and magical items, wincing as my imp pursuit immediately started leaving wounds, then pulled out my deadly canteen. And then stopped.

Thankfully, so did the imps. It was hard to keep our attention on the fight when the ground had split open, a rent a hundred metres long tearing in front of the staircase. Doubly so since I could see it. I'd grown used to navigating this cavern with scent alone, but now my eyes were being blinded. Not by light, though. Shining through the chasm was a blinding darkness far beyond the little black torches of floor three, accompanied by a heavy feeling of wrongness, the crack looking like it had opened up in something far more fundamental than the cavern floor. It was more like a hole in the world. I shielded my eyes and backed away, wondering what the hell the tree was doing this time.

"Know your place, pawn of the Goddess," boomed a deep and familiar voice. It sounded very much like the dragon of the first floor, except that the voice was as wrong as the black light, more disturbing than nails on a chalkboard, and turning up in my brain apparently without the cooperation of my ears.

Please don't tell me I had a dragon after me, as well as the megalomaniacal tree? My eyes had recovered slightly from the sudden stimulation, so I unshielded them a little. There was indeed the head, forelegs and upper body of a dragon emerging from the chasm, this one covered in pitch black scales, but it wasn't me the dragon was looking at. It was the tree. Presumably the tree responded, because the dragon burst out laughing. Even up in the air, I could feel the vibrations as the caverns shook.

The imps started moving again, but this time not to attack me. Instead, they dived towards the dragon. The demons guarding the tree likewise charged, and the brains rotated until all were facing it.

"Your worries were unfounded to begin with. Or rather, you already won and didn't even realise it," said the dragon, sounding completely unconcerned. It lazily spun its head around to peer at me. "The hero has already failed her quest, after all."

...What?

Without deigning to explain what it meant by that, the dragon turned back towards the tree. "Regardless of your reasons, I will not permit your intrusion of my domain to continue. Return to the Void from whence you came."

The world went black.

New skill gained: Void tolerance
Sight is one of the most common senses, which also makes it a popular target. Saying that, normally people would simply turn the lights out, and not magically break through regular darkness and out the other side, where there is not merely an absence of light, but the true darkness of the Void itself. This skill will help maintain your sanity when encountering true darkness, as well as slightly reducing the strain it imposes on your body.

Side quest complete: Clear the blight

"What did you do?" cried another familiar voice.

"I didn't do a thing!" I insisted, checking myself for, well, anything. I was back in the catacombs, in my nightie. The canteen of blight-stuff was gone, and I'd lost my anti-teleportation bracelet again. Given my completed quest and my twin's reaction, I felt safe to assume that the rest of floor four was gone with them.

"Not a thing? Then care to explain why one moment I'm fighting a war—very successfully, I might add—and then the next moment every single demon corpse under my control just vanished."

"A dragon showed up," I said, simply. "It seemed rather pissed at the tree for invading the abyss."

"A dragon?!"

It took a second for it to twig that my zombie twin hadn't been so surprised that her voice had cracked, and there was actually a third person in this room. I spun around towards it.

"Do'myrith?!"

"Are we all shouting random things?" asked dupliKatie. "A mushroom!"

"Don't make me web you to the wall again," I muttered. "No, sorry, that's backwards. I mean, be sensible or I'll never web you to the wall again."

"Meanie," complained my zombie twin.

"Anyway, what's going on?" I asked. "Did I miss something important in the last hour? And why are you here?"

"I came to save you, after I heard what that mage did, so no need for that hostility."

"Thank you, then. Sorry, but I'm not used to you people showing up for non-hostile reasons. But surely my twin over there told you I didn't need saving?"

"Forgive me for not taking a blighted husk at her word."

"But surely the fact that I wasn't here was pretty good evidence that I wasn't stuck in a loop of petrification?"

"You could have been respawning elsewhere, to avoid her. She said you'd be back soon, so I waited to confirm her story. That's all."

"Well, I suppose I should be thankful that you didn't kill each other, then. Thanks for that."

"Great, now that you've got that straightened out, back to my question," interjected the zombie. "What the hell happened down there?"

"Black dragon tore its way through the floor, complained at the tree for a bit, called it a pawn of the Goddess, told me I'd already failed my quest, then nuked the floor. Damn kill stealer."

"Failed your quest?"

"Yeah, that was news to me, too. It told the tree that it had already been victorious and hadn't noticed, and that I'd already failed. Then it vaporised everything without explaining what it meant. I don't even know what it did, but I gained a new void tolerance skill from it."

"Sounds like you need to go take a look at what's left," said my twin, frowning. "Wasn't that tree supposed to be preventing some sort of demonic invasion? If that dragon was some sort of ruler of the abyss, and could do that any time, why didn't it do it earlier?"

"Just another way in which this world makes no sense. Which is a good point," I said, turning to the priestess. "Looks like you have some good news to take back upstairs."

Do'myrith took two steps towards me and slapped me across the face, hard. It was so sudden and unexpected that I failed to even consider dodging.

"Don't you dare say that to me," she said, her voice low and cold. "The knowledge that our entire civilization is merely weeks old, that we were created by the Goddess purely for your benefit... And yet here I am, respecting her will. Despite what you did to us. Since I'm obviously not needed here, I'll be on my way."

I watched her turn around and stalk off, fuming. The effect was only somewhat spoiled by the way she muttered, "Ow... What the heck sort of skin do humans have?" under her breath while rubbing her hand.

Weeks old? She sounded sure of herself. Had the arch-mage found definitive proof of some sort? If he'd convinced Do'myrith, presumably he could have convinced every remaining fox-kin. That must be why they'd let him off for the soul magic stuff.

"For the record, she said that while he had irrefutable proof that this 'world' came into existence when you arrived here, the world ending when you leave was less certain. She chose to trust in the Goddess, but the majority of the fox-kin are hoping for your failure."

"Have I ever complained that this world is messed up?" I groaned. "No wonder those fox-kin guarding the staircase upstairs felt such existential dread."

"On a regular basis," my twin confirmed. "But for now, please get downstairs and find out what happened. I don't want to open the wall without confirming a horde of demons aren't waiting somewhere on the other side."

"You're going to have to," I said after tapping the statue. "Both shrines on that floor are gone."

"Bah. You walk ahead then, and let me know the moment you sense anything alive."

"Hang on, I just levelled up. Give me a second to see what new disturbing body-mods I can make this time."

I enhanced appraisal from my primary class skills, then looked up my available tamer skills.

Skill enhanced: Appraisal
View the name, detailed information and current status of a target.

Stronger poison: Significantly increase the potency of your body's poisons.
Hypnotic aroma: Your bodily fluids gain some of the hypnotic abilities of the angelica vorax.
Exoskeleton: Develop a tough chitin exoskeleton to provide additional protection.
Luminance: Your body glows with a controllable soft white light.
Festering wounds: Wounds you inflict with your own nails, claws and teeth become diseased with blight.
Extra limbs: Grow an additional two pairs of clawed limbs.
Mana metabolism: You can metabolise ambient mana, reducing the need for physical food and water.
Crystal metabolism: You can efficiently metabolise mana infused crystal in addition to your species' regular food.
Prehensile feet: You can grasp with your feet with moderate dexterity.
Draconic might: You gain a very large increase to physical strength.
Ice affinity: You can cast basic ice spells.
Decay affinity: You can cast basic decay spells.

Festering wounds immediately thrust into my face the fact that this class may not have been my best life decision. 'Blight like symptoms' had changed to simply 'blight'. Even skills could be traps. If I'd taken that at level one or two, and then enhanced it later, I'd become a walking calamity without prior warning.

The other upgrades were more reasonable, and my new skills were very tempting. Obviously taken from the spider queen; I could gain a portion of her magic! But, with two shrines to repair, I wanted to repeat my attempted experiment of waiting for another level before picking the skill.

"Anything interesting?" asked my twin, so I read them out. "For the purpose of making yourself as inhuman as possible, obviously you should go for extra limbs," she suggested.

"No. But a few of them sound good. Draconic might and ice affinity are most tempting."

We made our way back to the throne room without me detecting anything living, so dupliKatie opened up access to floor four for me. Inching down the stairs, expecting to bump into something at any second, yet not encountering anything, was worse for my nerves than if I'd immediately bumped into a swarm of demons. I continued to meet nothing for the remainder of the staircase, and the passage at the base was equally empty. I stepped into the cavern, still wondering when the other shoe would drop.

Void tolerance advanced to level 2

Ah. There it was. The cavern this time was brightly lit. Or rather, darkly lit, by a black raging inferno burning at its centre. A vortex of obsidian flame, painful to look at, rose from floor to ceiling, casting its darkness across the entire cave. Thank goodness for my modified eyes.

Alas, from the width of it, it would certainly be covering the staircase down.