Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 312: (7 Chapters today)

Chapter 312

[You will be required to visit all 4 Chalgathi altar sites and activate each of the shrines, as well as acquire 10,000 event points before being allowed to leave this event. Doing so will also give you knowledge of the location of Chalgahti’s Temple, where Chalgathi’s incubation chamber has been hidden.

There are 21 registered Cultists.

• 7 Chalgathi Cultists, 6 Chubin Cultists, and 8 Nekra Cultists

There are 9 registered Non-Cultists entering this event.

• 3 Chalgathi Non-Cultists, 4 Chubin Non-Cultists, and 2 Nekra Non-Cultists]

The old notification was dismissed from her vision.

With Riven’s temporary absence from Chalgathi’s games, the cultists had used their numbers to far outstrip the non-cultists meant to save Panu from unleashing the apocalypse beasts. Interrogation methods had revealed to her that the cultists were mostly around the 5000 to 6800 point mark, while most of the non-cultists were trailing behind that and on average sitting around 3500 to 4500. Far beyond what Riven had at the moment.

But those odds had drastically changed once Nora had arrived, new and improved - and with a vendetta. It was also now known to her that point accumulation got harder the more people acquired. Point accumulation on the side of the cultists had thus abruptly stagnated, and although the other non-cultists weren’t necessarily on Nora’s team - they wouldn’t be able to make up the difference in points to matter enough by the time Riven got back. She would leave the other non-cultists alone… for now.

Blood splattered along the castle’s far wall as Nora’s singsong voice echoed throughout the corridors with the laughter of her others.

“How I wonder what you are!”

CRUNCH

SPLAT

RIP

Her target squealed in pained anguish. “HELP ME YOU COWARD BASTARDS!”

But the others were running for their lives. She moved, ripping off a cultist’s arm and beating him to death with it in three quick strokes before dropping the bloodied limb with a splat.

“Up above the world so high…”

The abyssal giant’s spirit she’d captured rumbled into under the twinkling night sky, a shadowy remnant of the creature she’d killed in the labyrinth - its giant foot crushed fleeing peasants that’d decided to support the cultist cause. It reached down, a sickly smile on its face, its eyes a pale white, as magma dripped out of its maw. It grabbed a fleeing man as the peasant tried to scream, but crushed him in its grasp before bringing the corpse to its mouth - and chomping down with a gory gnashing of teeth.

Nora stopped her singing, watching the procession of dying people scramble like ants to flee not only the fortress - but the city itself. All around her, shifting two-dimensional vantablack figures crazed with gleeful laughter tore their claws through the spines and innards of their victims. She was the butcher, and everyone else here were lambs for the slaughter.

Bringing a finger up to her black lips, the sickly smile that nearly never left her face was stretched from ear to ear underneath the Chalgathi Cowl event item she was forced to wear in this place. It designated her as a non cultist, so these people all knew just why they had to die. They were paying for their sins. Paying for who they’d helped. “Now, now, now… Where did that other cultist run off to… I swear I smelled her earlier… and we can’t have them get to 10,000 points without Riven being here of course!”

A flash of light to the left caused Nora’s eyes to dart that way, and she let out a giggling exclamation when she finally found the target she’d been searching for. “Oh goodie! TIME TO KILL!”

Nora’s blades stretched and warped, her limbs elongated to gangly, unnatural things that propelled her forward - and in an instant she was gone. Off to murder another one.

***

[Blood Token Prizes are now finished. You and your minions have been analyzed based on need and want. Narg has not participated in this floor, and will not receive any prize. Fay’s lack of her entire ability set has been noted due to high cost of pain and self injury when casting cursed Affliction Fireball, and so a wand has been made for her to reduce the pain. Genua’s desire to make her healing more potent to keep others safe has been noted, so prayer beads that increase the efficacy of her miracles while chanting have been granted. Athela’s desire to be a real princess has been noted, so her tiara has been modified to hold influence over her own weaker arachnid counterparts while maintaining the assassin traits of the original tiara. Azmoth’s lacking confidence to effectively use his race’s traditional Shengari Shields and a desire to use his old Hellforged Maul has been noted, so the shields have been melted down and remade into a maul fitting of such an archdemon, while maintaining the size-shifting properties of the shields so the maul will match his own stature. The Unholy halberd Gluttony chose as a temporary weapon from what you could find in the descent has been re-evaluated to make it a better long term weapon: adding Sin aspects to the weapon while maintaining the dissolving acidic effects. Your halberd has been engulfed in an egg, and will emerge from its egg to match your secondary class based on how Gluttony forges the class.]

[Fay has received: Bone Wand of Curse Reduction]

[Genua has received: Prayer Beads of the Red Dawn’s Chant]

[Athela’s Tiara of Silent Killing has become: Tiara of the Spider Princess]

[Azmoth’s Shengari Shields have become: Infernal Shengari Maul]

[Your awakened weapon, Giant’s Jade Halberd of Dissolving, has become: Egg of Halberd’s Hatching.]

Athela’s tiara had grown in size and added intricacy, with the forefront protrusion at the front of the tiara now sticking up just slightly beyond the front of her hood. Carvings of arachnid demons lined the black metal, with the image of her own drider form lifting up the central ruby, and a few more elegant protrusions with their own rubies were now present out to the sides of the central tallest on along her forehead. She was absolutely ecstatic, more or less because of the tiara’s name rather than anything else, and Riven had a hard time not laughing at her excitement. Instead he merely encouraged her and talked about how pretty the tiara was, which made the demoness all the happier.

Azmoth’s maul was, for a lack of better words, exactly identical to his old maul except that instead of stone - it was made from the metal of the shengari shields that’d been melted away. There were lines of magma and infernal power running up and down the huge weapon, but honestly this one rather confused Riven. He’d had no idea that Azmoth didn’t like his new weapons and wondered why the hellscape brutalisk had even used them in the first place if that’d been the case.

“Elder brutalisks say they best.” Azmoth said with a shrug. “So I trust, but never like shields much.”

Riven had a hard time not facepalming.

Fay’s bone wand and Genua’s prayer beads had been the first items to come out, and they were rather content with their own gifts.

As for Riven…

He scratched his head, looking down at an enormous purple egg that’d engulfed his entire halberd on the ground in front of him. “Not sure what to make of this.”

Gluttony had no comment.

Reaching out to touch the egg, it disappeared into Riven’s spatial sack and that was that. “Hope everyone got something good! Hold on just a moment and from what Prince Rantali’s told me, we should very soon be getting another notification about contacting the outside multiverse before heading into the next phase.”

***

Kara stared at her own notification, gripping her bow tightly in her right hand and her quiver in the other. The quiver had turned into a treasure that people in her home world would kill for. That people all over the empire of Purturis would kill for. Even her father, the Ashen Sage, would surely think this quiver an absolute masterpiece.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The quiver now produced the same kinds of critical storm lances that Riven, Reincarnation of Gluttony, used in battle - only that she had them in arrow form. How much was even one of these arrows worth? The quiver actually spawned them over time and was a perfect match to her bow, with a sphere of red mana in the bottom that produced the projectiles and a black outer casing with red runes running all along the sides - inside and out.

It was just… it was just too much. Even if Elysium had been the one to grant it to her, they’d come because of her connection to the vampire prince. How was she supposed to repay Riven after all of this was said and done? On one hand when she’d offered to work in his service indefinitely until the debt was paid, she’d not thought she’d have been able to do it in the first place. Three billion Elysium Coins and intervention on her behalf to save her life was something not even ten of her could manage over the course of many lifetimes. But she had set her mind to trying.

But with the system taking a passage of Riven’s skillset and planting it inside another of her items on his behalf, due to her class? It was yet another reminder at how futile her attempts really would be.

A groan left her lips and she rubbed at her temple while shaking her head upon thinking of the class change she’d obtained when meditating in front of the shadow-sun on the last floor. It was beyond embarrassing and she’d refused to let anyone except Athela know what it was, and it might very well forever stay that way at this rate. She’d rather stick a dagger in her own eye than die of the embarrassment should Riven ever find out.

She’d completely zoned out and didn’t even realize they were entering the last part of this floor when Elysium gave her a nudge in the form of a text box.

[Floor 22 is near completion. Your team has touched 3 of 3 altars with less than 2 mandatory hours to spend on this floor. As this is the last altar and your blood tokens have been spent, you and your teammates are individually given opportunities to select outside influences in the multiverse to converse with. They in turn will have the opportunity to buy or trade with Elysium in order to sway fate in your favor. Notifications to potential related parties have been sent.

You, Kara Blackbow, have 1 Interested outside party willing to pay the 250,000 Elysium Coin fee of establishing communication with you. The interested party requesting an audience is listed below:

• The Court of Emperor Adali, Ruler of Purturis

You are able to accept or decline any and all parties at your discretion.]

Kara immediately felt the blood drain away from her face, and her pale eyes widened in shock. The emperor’s court wanted to speak to her? Why? Her father was on that court at the Ashen Sage, but he would never have wanted to spend that kind of money just to establish communication with his worthless 7th daughter. She was-

Kara stopped that train of thought. No, things had likely changed after her nemesis Zafima and her ilk delivered news of Riven and the signed letter he’d written in his own blood to signify that he’d made. Whether or not the emperor’s court even believed what had happened was one thing, but if they did believe the story and that their young scions hadn’t been tricked - then how would they respond to an imagined slight against Gluttony’s Reincarnation? Even with the letter he’d signed, perhaps that’d not been enough to calm their nerves.

“Huh. That’s more than I’d thought I’d get.” Riven muttered ahead of her while scratching his chin in thought. The vampire removed his hood and ran a hand through his hair with a perplexed expression as Fay came over to see what it was about.

“You look worried.” The undead lich calmly stated from the side, but he wasn’t talking to Riven. He was talking to Kara, and was leaning on his bone white staff with neon-teal light shining out of his eyes. “Do you wish to converse with me about your troubles, child?”

Having an ancient lich like this ask Kara about her feelings was rather amusing to her, but appreciated.

She hesitated, and eventually equipped the quiver by slinging it over one shoulder. “It’s nothing I shouldn’t have seen coming. I’m just still adjusting to…”

She waved her hands around in the air, at a loss for words while giving a sheepish smile. “Eh, adjusting to this situation I’m in?”

“You and me both, girl.” Retesh said with a bone-rattling chuckle. He bent down and let one of his smaller bone wyrms slither up his outstretched arm to wrap around his chest with a hiss. “I am not used to it either. Integration into this multiverse has certainly made me reevaluate my own worth. Did you know I have a designated world quest back on Panu?”

Kara scrunched her brows in confusion. “Uhm, no? What do you mean by that?”

“You are familiar with integrating planets and their world quests, yes?”

“Yes I am.”

“Good. What I meant is that I am considered a threat to Panu’s residents, enough so that a world quest was sent out to the rest of the planet about my presence. About how they should destroy me, so that I do not consume the world’s living in my ambition to create a place habitable for undead. And yet… I find myself outclassed, overpowered, and overshadowed by both the Thane siblings.”

Retesh waved a bone hand in Riven’s direction as he talked to his summoned minions. “I have an affinity for Death that reaches all the way up to 91%. I have lived for centuries. I have spent my life trying to unravel the mysteries of immortality and reach the ultimate goal of unlocking the sub-pillar of True Death. So you can only imagine what it was like to hear that Allie Thane, a vampire less than thirty years of age, was able to not only unlock True Death in such a short time - but was then awarded the body of an Angel of Death. That The Scythe himself granted her a way to convert the living of an entire continent on Panu into undead, akin to what my own goals were of killing and raising entire civilizations by using modified blight plagues - but doing it instantly just as a measure of good will from the Death god. Then if that weren’t enough, she inherited the Original Sin of Wrath and became an undead so perfect that the very void itself reaches out to her as the souls hibernating there feel her presence. Now she has gone back to Panu, and it makes me feel both excited and jealous. Excited that I am able to know one such as her and hopefully learn from her own ascensions, but jealous because of how little work she had to put into it when I have struggled my entire life to claw and bite at whatever gains I have made. Even my affinity for Death started out far lower than it is now, and it boggles the mind at how slow my own ascension into becoming an Elder Lich from a mortal human man was - when compared to the path Allie Thane has taken in two short years. That world quest labeling me as a threat? Laughable in the face of what Allie Thane is, which is why I will try to join her court as a subordinate. I suspect that you are feeling some of the same towards Riven?”

Kara was rather interested in the old lich’s story, especially about the part where he wanted to tear down civilizations with blight plague and turn them all into undead - but it didn’t take off the nagging feeling she had about what was about to come. “Somewhat… Though I would not say that I am jealous of Riven. Perhaps I am jealous of Athela and Fay, but that is because of his affections towards them - not because I am wanting their power. I barely scraped by to level 200 and doubt I’ll ever reach the D-grade, I am weak, I hate fighting, and it was nothing less than a miracle that I got to where I am. I would have died without Riven’s interference a few floors back, and probably should have died numerous times over before then as well. More than anything I am just adjusting to the idea that I may actually accompany Riven back to your world, Panu - and am wondering what life there will be like if I manage to make it.”

“He said you could accompany him back?” Retesh asked. “Interesting. I do not mean to be rude, but why? As you have said yourself, you don’t bring much to our group. And I’m not even sure how he’d manage it to begin with. Crossing universes is no easy feat.”

Kara winced, but she’d said it herself and couldn’t argue otherwise. “I believe it was a combination of pity, circumstance, and empathy on his part. I will likely remain in his service forever given the life debt I owe him, but I will attempt to repay the kindness in one way or another.”

“Odd to think than an original sin’s reincarnation would find it in their heart to have empathy towards you.

Kara laughed. “I agree! But I won’t take it for granted.”

Riven’s voice cut across their conversation when he turned around and finished talking to his three demonic minions and Genua. “Has everyone chosen to accept their requested audiences? Am I alright to proceed?”

Prince Rantali gave a thumbs up. “My parents will be attending the audience! I should like to introduce you!”

Riven smiled with a nod. “That is fine. Retesh? Kara?”

Retesh summoned a chair of bones from the piles around the altar and leaned back. “I have none. My followers were given instructions to follow the laws of the Thane Necropolis after migrating, I can’t think of a reason why they’d need to speak with me right now anyways given Allie’s return.”

Kara’s eyes met Riven’s, and she felt herself stiffen under his gaze.

“No need to be shy, hun!” Athela teased, jabbing her in the side to produce a yelp. “I thought we’d gotten over this in our little bonding experiment!”

The vampire knights following Prince Rantali laughed.

Blushing profusely Kara huffed and swatted away Athela’s elbow and ignored the way Athela hungrily looked her up and down. “I-I just am nervous is all.”

“Why?” Riven simply asked, shifting his weight to lean on Azmoth’s arm with a protruding elbow of Riven’s own.

“Because my audience… Uhm, my father is going to be there. Probably.” Kara winced as Riven’s face hardened. She knew Riven wasn’t a fan of what her father had done to her, but she didn’t want this interaction going poorly even if she did end up finding a way to Panu. There was also the chance that she’d have to go back home and wait for the means to do so, and she really didn’t want to be in bad graces with her father, Zafima, and especially the leader of her empire. “Eh… possibly the emperor too. Probably. Do I have to accept?”

“Ahh! She’s so cute!” Athela laughed, patting Kara on the shoulder. “Of course you don’t have to accept!”

“If you don’t want to accept, then don’t.” Riven shrugged indifferently. “Not any of our business.”

Kara bit her lip. “Uhm… and if I do accept? Will you all be there with me?”

Fay rolled her eyes as Athela began to laugh louder.

“Quite unnnnnn-confident in ourselves, aren’t we?” Riven said with a smirk. “What, do you want us to stand next to you as you speak to them?”

“I, uh, that’d be great!” Kara said, beaming at the idea while looking at the floor and kicking at the ground with one of her leather boots. “It would help a lot… actually…”

Riven gave her a flat look, then snorted a laugh. “Sure. We can all stand right beside one another and get chummy.”

“I’ll even hold your hand!” Athela giggled, pressing up against Kara’s body and wrapping her obsidian fingers around Kara’s own.

Kara stammered something unintelligible, but nodded and accepted her fate. Then she selected the option to accept the audience with her homeland.

“Looks like we’re ready then.” Riven said as he made some selections with the system administrator. “Not sure what to expect, but here goes.”

[Floor 22 is near completion. Your team has accepted the following audiences:

• High Queen Nephridi, of The Blood Moon Requiem, Universe 10

• The Unholy Archbishop Prek An-Gash, of The Church of Gluttony, The 9th Circle of Hell

• The Court of Emperor Adali, Ruler of Purturis, Universe 70

• King and Queen Rantali, of the Vampiric Kingdom of Garth, Universe 70

You will have a short time to speak with them one at a time, before Elysium offers these outside influences beyond The Abyssal Descent a list of potential buy options they may purchase with Elysium Coins. The first up is The Vampiric Kingdom of Garth, Universe 70.]