[Scroll of assisted inspiration] : Infuse it with mana after writing your current issue on it; the system will provide you inspiration to resolve the problem. One-time use.

Item level : 100.

Grade : Flawless.

There was still her last query written on it, remnants of her passage in Sun’s orbital temple : ‘How do I survive my current situation’. She had gotten no answer that time, but now was different, this time she was in the system’s reach. With a charcoal pen from her storage, she scribbled over her previous query and wrote a new one: ‘How do I get the dagger and survive?’.

It was hard to think with Lerverle battling the golems outside. He seemed to be doing somewhat well, but clearly the golems were worthy of being a level 500’s home guardians.

She infused the scroll with mana and shortly thereafter, words appeared: ‘draw a bigger connection’, followed by a small drawing of what Sofia instantly recognised as an unknown divine rune, which was surrounded by a bunch of sparks.

Is that…

Sofia brought out as large a bone plate as she could fit inside the shield and reproduced the divine rune onto it.

Nothing happened.

The sparks! Connection is…

Sofia placed her palm on the bone plate and channeled an Angel’s bolt.

Electricity!

She felt a distinct sense of reality breaking around her. Spreading from her hand, streams of blue electricity crackled within the shield, and in a flash of otherworldly iridescent colors, a being made of such electricity appeared above the divine rune.

[False God]

I have returned.

Once again indebted.

The false god of connections ‘connected’ the Dagger to Sofia’s hand. It was now in her grasp as if it had always been there.

Most I can do. Too much mana here. Cannot stay nor get you out.

More are coming. Nice to see you again. Good luck.

Sofia barely had the time to think a quick ‘thank you’, and the friendly archangel was gone.

More are coming? More what?!

No one was going to answer, so Sofia turned to identifying the dagger, which the Scribe actually refused to do.

[This item must be primed with your mana before being identified. This item already has an owner and cannot be primed.]

Shit.

Not helping.

Sofia had the urge to try stabbing Hugo with the dagger before storing it, but in the off-chance that damage could still awaken him somehow, she held back.

That did it for the dagger part of the question.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SURVIVE PART, SYSTEM?

The battle outside of the inner shield was intensifying. Every time Leverle took a hit, he healed back and regrew in more and more disturbing ways, he was as tall as the golems now, and looked like a black-furred long-limbed feral beast much more than a civilized person. With another punch, one of the golems’ cores broke and exploded.

The energy unleashed was such that Sofia died even while she stood within the inner shields.

When she came to again three seconds later, still trapped with Hugo within the inner shield, it was impossible to tell what was happening outside, as the green inferno had somehow broken into the outer shield of the vault, and the inner shields were all that separated her from its unbearable heat.

Getting in there was the right call. I might not have survived Leverle’s fight otherwise…

“But now I’m stuck.”

The situation immediately got much worse, however. ‘Ancestor Hugo’ opened his eyes.

His incredulous gaze went from his empty hands to Sofia standing in front of him.

“I-”

Sofia tried to speak. She was cut-off by a wave of energy. She survived with one percent of her health. The man frowned. Sofia died.

She reappeared three seconds later, her dragon-scale arm awkwardly already within the hands of Hugo, and her actual arm was inside of it. The man was trying to get his dagger back, and Sofia would have happily surrendered it, had she been given the chance to, but two waves of energy hit her again, and she died once more. This had been her last unlife rune. In the second she spent alive, she saw that Pareth had been out and trying to protect her, but it was a futile endeavor. Sofia died so fast she did not even have enough time to think.

Three seconds later, she was brought back from the dead for the last time.

Hugo… Was not there anymore.

Pareth had died, fragments of his crushed bones spread within the shield, along with scattered bits of Sofia’s previous bodies.

What?

Where is he?

He let me live?

Sofia’s first instinct was to prepare the ritual to bring Pareth back. While she worked at it, she spent more time assessing the situation.

The fact that Hugo was gone and the shield was still intact meant its actual core and mana source were not him, but hidden within the ground under her feet.

Within her dragon-scale arm, Sofia could feel that she still had her rings, and a quick look showed the dagger was still in there. It seemed the dragon scale, Apenoreth’s glove, and the soul-link on the ring, had been sufficient protections to prevent Ancestor Hugo from getting at or into Sofia’s storage ring in the short time she had spent dead.

Outside of the shields, the green inferno was still raging.

A few seconds later, Pareth stood up again. He was back into his very first skeleton once more, the one Sofia had found in a tomb near her Orphanage. She had kept it all this time, and it was the only humanoid skeleton she had at the ready at the moment. It was much weaker than the bone-mauler skeleton, but still better than nothing.

Welcome back. Any ideas on how we can get out of this mess?

Pareth looked around and shook his skull.

For lack of a better option, Sofia sat down and started working on another unlife rune. The five minute channeling time felt like an eternity. About thirty seconds in, her channeling was interrupted by a shockwave that sent her rolling back and crashing against the shield.

Outside, the green inferno had disappeared, washed away by the wave of energy. There was nothing else left nearby. The shields Sofia was in were the sole thing left within a gigantic crater. Hugo’s base had been underground, but now, from the bottom of a several kilometers deep crater, Sofia could see the sky.

The source of the shockwave and the maker of the crater was fighting Hugo. Saint Tartaros.

Sofia had a hard time catching a single glimpse of their battle, but she could feel it every time they clashed, the world itself shook from their attacks.

Hugo managed to trap Tartaros within some kind of mana bubble, stopping him for all of a second.

Within that second, Hugo channeled an astronomical quantity of mana and unleashed it in the direction of the ground. It washed over Sofia, suffocating but harmless. From the depth of the crater, a sleepîng being was brought to life. Hugo had summoned another ‘Golem’. A colossus. A titan of untold alloys and mana. The immense being woke from its stone prison, and slowly rose. It was taller than the crater itself, and, jumping out of it, it joined the fight, only to get tackled by a giant blue Dragon striking it out of nowhere like a meteor.

Sofia closed her eyes. She was unable to watch anymore, the battle was going too fast, and their attacks destroyed the land so far and wide that the crater around her kept getting wider and deeper. It would only take one stray hit coming her way and it would all be over, so she stopped watching and concentrated, she needed to cast that unlife rune, and fast.

Until the hell of sound and energy from the battle ceased.

Sofia couldn’t help but look, it took very little time to locate the source of the sudden calm.

Archangel.

Tartaros, Beligenus, and the Exidian Emperor were all holding onto Hugo, entrapping him within a whirling vortex of mana, and this was when an Archangel had appeared. The being’s flickering form defying all logic. The many places its ‘right arm’ were in at the same time coalesced into a singular solid image, and as it raised it, aimed at Hugo. Mana concentrated so much at the being’s fingertips that it became solid, and traced thousands of ritual circles in the air one after the other.

The otherworldly voice of the Archangel pierced through everyone’s head. With each of his words, endless concentrated streams of mana from around the world gathered within the palm of his hand.

Hugo desperately tried to fight back from within the Vortex of mana.

Hugo ElderPlain.

The archangel paused.

You have violated the pact.

As an enforcer of this world’s laws, I deliver unto you, your final sentence.

You shall be exiled within the eye of creation.

May you repent for eternity.

The mana Vortex was dispelled by the Archangel’s magic. A glowing prison made of countless threads of white magic formed around Hugo. The Archangel’s magic pulsed, and the threads closed like a cocoon around the level 500. With each pulse, more and more threads wrapped around the helpless Artisan, until it all collapsed into a silent flash of light bright like an exploding sun.

When the light disappeared, Hugo ElderPlain was no more.

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