Chapter 175: Sub-classes
Lissandra then pauses and closes her eyes again, taking in a deep, slow breath; the smile on her face increases.
I don't feel any mana from her, none at all. It's as if her heart isn't beating and creating it. Yet the danger I feel from her is extre. My instincts, my senses, all of them warn
and scream at
to run. The woman in front of
is much more dangerous than the people we just dealt with.
"Lissthanie?" I throw at her, testingly.
She shakes her head, "I'm sorry to say that, little pup, but that part of
is gone. I improved my imprint, and when I embedded it into Hadwin's hand, I removed your influence from it and also a few mistakes I made."
"That's a sha; I kind of liked that version of you."
"No, you did not, you hated it."
"True," I carefully walk to the side, and the kinetic energy I've already collected is quite massive. I'm also extrely hard to kill with the bracelet on my hand, yet... I can't see her level or her class. As before, there isn't any info over her head. I don't see it the sa way I didn't see it on the second floor or the sa way I don't see it over the heads of tutorial attendees.
I don't think it's because she is as strong as before; she is weakened and terribly so without her potent mana, yet, she feels dangerous.
She knew I would burn her; she knew her imprint was imperfect, so she dealt with it.
I don't even know how, but she is standing in front of ; before I'm able to do anything, her fist hits my chest and sends
flying against the wall.
I see that she only tilts her head and grabs Tess's javelin, and with imnse force, throws it back at the blonde girl. It pierces Tess's chest and pins her to the wall.
"I have shown you rcy, so do not annoy
any further," Lissandra says to Tess and her steps are light as she moves towards .
When Lissandra appears in front of
again, I'm prepared, and all around , kinetic energy explodes, yet she endures it and only lightly dodges to the side a few tis, jumps over one attack, and then ducks slightly and twists her upper body while deflecting the rest.
Lissandra dodges it all while looking exceedingly nimble. I slash against her, boosted with the entirety of my mana and my body constantly ravaged. She matches my speed perfectly.
She is much faster, yet she slows down to my level and totally destroys . She dodges every slash, every kick, every blast of flas or kinetic energy. She redirects mana projectiles with the back of her hand. She cancels flas with a swing of her hand.
And then she slaps , sending
to the ground.
"Little pup, you wouldn't believe how much I wanted to do that," Beautiful, full of energy, and smiling she stares down at .
Then we hear a scream and see Lily stagger backward, one of her arms missing and a big round hole in the silver door with her grayish mana still along the edges.
Before Lissandra moves, a stream of Sophie's mind-manipulating mana shoots at her, yet Lissandra dodges even that and Isabella's flas after. She grabs the javelin Tess again throws at her and ignores the lightning that flickers around her body, coming from the javelin she holds. With a quick twist in the waist, she kicks
as I try to dash at her and endures the cone of kinetic energy I shoot at her.
"I'm sorry, little girl, I can't let you do that," with a quick movent she steps to the side and throws the javelin at Lily. The weapon pierces the shoulder of the black-haired girl.
Then, instead of Lily??s falling to the ground, the illusion made by Aaron or Dennis disappears and the real position of Lily is revealed, already standing close to the Saint.
The Saint is an unearthly beautiful woman who lies on the bed. Her skin seems to have so warmth to it and her chest is moving up and down; the woman seemingly only sleeping peacefully.
Yet it's only a body, a shell that used to house a brilliant mind. A woman who used to be strong enough to be called Absolute, the title that Lissandra also has.
Lissandra moves and easily avoids Hadwin, Tess's, and Kim's attacks and even throws a piece of rubble at Sophie, sending her crashing against the wall while coughing out blood.
Lily is already attacking the Saint and her gray, smoke-like mana continues to crash against the dead woman's body, barely doing any damage.
Lissandra stops right before passing through the hole in the silver door; there is still Lily's [Disintegration] floating around the entrance and creating sothing like a net.
For the first ti, Lissandra hesitates.
My eyes et those of Lily, and she says sothing; at the sa ti, both of her legs disappear, and I feel her skill strengthening even further as it pushes against the Saint. Lily, having only a single arm, continues to shoot mana at the Saint, sacrificing her limbs to strengthen her skill.
In the end, she succeeds, and grayish mana hits the Saint's head and chest, taking a big chunk out of them.
Congratulations! You've successfully completed the 3rd floor's main quest in the fifth round of the tutorial for Hell difficulty. An entrance to the 4th floor has been created.
An entrance appears next to each of us, and I see Lily falling through hers.
"Get in!" Tess shouts, yet she stays behind and watches, making sure everyone enters.
At first, Lissandra is confused but then quickly turns around and rushes at .
There is no entrance next to her.
Tess enters her entrance as the last one other than , and before Lissandra reaches , I enter it as well.
When I pass through, I turn around, expecting the entrance to close now that all the mbers of the tutorial have passed, yet it's still there, and I get goosebumps all over my body.
Lissandra is standing in front of the entrance and looking at , "I can see it now," I easily read the words she mouths, and she steps a bit closer, her hand carefully touching the entrance to the fourth floor. It looks like she can't pass through; her hand only touches it, and unlike for us, it's like firm material for her, not a portal.
The entrance starts flickering, yet her eyes that look at
are confident. She seems happy, excited about what is to co, and ready to take on anything that dares to challenge her.
She looks like she found a reason to live again and unlike on the second floor, her eyes are full of life.
When the entrance flickers and finally disappears, I sigh with relief.
Logically, Lissandra should have disappeared the mont we completed the quest and left the floor, yet I can't be sure. Sothing tells
this is not the last ti we'll see her.
For now, I ignore the notifications and only check the surroundings with [Perception]. When I don't find any monster or human, I walk towards where Lily is lying. Tess is already holding the petite brunette in her arms, and Lily is sobbing.
More than in pain, it looks like she is just scared; she is hyperventilating, and her eyes continue to tick from side to side. She also doesn't seem to hear Tess, who continues to try to calm her down while caressing her hair.
Lily currently has only a single arm, and even from that, she misses a few fingers. The arm she has is the pale one, the sa paleness she shares with . Both of her legs are gone and the second arm as well, all used though [Sacrifice] as fuel to power [Disintegration].
I know she can restore them all given enough ti, yet it's not a good look.
"Tess, if she allows , I can use my skill and help her calm down a bit, maybe even fall asleep," Sophie's voice is gentle as if soothing a small child; she is even smiling at Lily carefully while offering so.
At that mont, Lily seems to hear that, and I can see that she is inclined to accept her offer, but before she says anything, she looks around, looking for soone.
Her eyes et mine.
She looks so pitiful, just a torso with a single arm. But, at this mont, I don't see that at all; in my mind, I only rember her face as she pushed herself to her limit, sacrificed her own limbs, and did it just to help us clear the floor. Worrying about what Lissandra will do to us.
It's weird, but I think that was the mont I felt I saw her for the first ti. I rember every detail of her face, sweat running down her forehead, bangs sticking to it, her big eyes full of fear and resolution, her clenched jaw, and the movent of her mana.
At that mont, she was beautiful. In the sa way, Lissandra was beautiful when she threw everything away to follow her twisted logic and destroy her fake world.
"Lily, it's okay now," I say while observing my voice. I sound calm; there is a bit of gentleness in it, yet it's still firm.
Just that short sentence seems to be enough, and it still takes a while but she slowly calms down.
"You don't have to do anything, Sophie; I will deal with it on my own," her voice is firr, and she doesn't hesitate anymore as she says so.
Such a silly kid, a cool silly kid.
"Well, that was unexpected," Tess sits next to , and together we look down from the cliff where we are.
We got thrown on top of a giant mountain, and a strong, cold wind constantly blows here. There are weirdly shaped mountains all around us, so of them even covered with snow. The cliff I'm sitting on offers a view of the valley below us; there is a giant lake down there with water so clear that it almost looks unreal, and we can see the tops of green trees.
The view is a killer.
"I hope you did diss Hadwin a bit," I lean back and turn my head to Tess.
"I didn't even have to; he constantly does it on his own and keeps apologizing to everyone around. At so point, I'm sure he will apologize to Biscuit as well."
Good. Everyone learns from their own mistakes, so I think we can give Hadwin a little bit of slack. It's not like he had bad intentions; he is nearly innocent.
And no, it's not like I'm defending him because I also might be partially to bla.
Nope. I did nothing wrong.
Damn it! Why doesn't she just die?! A goddamn cockroach, like Absolute. The way she clings to life is almost admirable. Plus, if things go the way they're going now, I'm sure I will do a few more similar things and break the tutorial and the system around the 7th floor.
Hmm, that does sound kind of interesting.
"Lily?" I ask Tess.
"She is sleeping now. It will take a few days or weeks before she restores her limbs, but she doesn't have to worry; we will take care of her."
"Sounds good," I answer.
The silence that ensues is interrupted only by the chilling cold wind that I ignore, even though I'm sitting here in tattered, thin clothes. My heart continuously creates energy that I transfer into thermal energy to keep myself warm. I even left a few orbs for others that they use as heaters, and little Isabella also helps by radiating so heat.
"Nat, she did play with us, right? She didn't fight seriously at all."
"Yes. What kind of adult would go all out on little kids?" I answer Tess, "But I still think she wanted to keep us there. She needs a new mana heart and to beco more like us to escape the tutorial. She would sacrifice any of us to do so if we stayed there."
Lissandra tricked . She made
think she had less mana than she actually did. She also acted as if my personality affected her more than it did, causing
to lower my guard.
In the end, she even connected to the healing aura of the Saint in a similar way items I took. The woman copied my [Resonance] to do so. Then she spent her entire or nearly entire remaining mana to recreate her body.
The scary part is that she affected the process and recreated her body to be as strong as possible, each stat other than mana probably well into the high hundreds.
She fought us with only the strength of her body.
I made a mistake and it nearly cost us. Actually, it did cost us; we couldn't take much stuff with us, only a few big bags that the twins and Kim, no, Min-Jae, shalessly took with them to the castle and left before the throne room. They grabbed them again when they were returning from fighting Edwal, such greedy little twerps.
What I regret is not being able to train in the aura of the Saint, but that's kind of my fault, so I will deal with it as I always did. I will bear the consequences of my decisions.
Now then, the notifications.
Congratulations! You have cleared the 3rd floor of the Hell difficulty tutorial. Welco to the 4th floor: Waning Realm.
You have acquired:
Access to the Shop
Skill upgrade token
Rare-graded gear of your choice
30 stat points
Well done! You successfully entered the 4th floor. You can now select one of the sub-classes. The classes are based on your actions and performance up until now within the Tutorial.
Pick carefully; it's difficult to change your sub-class!
Available sub-classes:
Initiate of Pride
Initiate of Patience
Initiate of Greed
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