Chapter 539 - Before the Storm V

  While the 18th day of the festival flew by in an instant—Claire spent it with Lia’s family and reluctantly helped take care of her siblings—the 19th wasn’t quite as eventful. With all three silly creatures in tow, Claire returned to Valencia in the morning and confirmed that nothing had changed. The whole city was preoccupied with the duel. Everyone and their mother was stuck staring, either at the replay echoed in the colosseum or the projection that floated in the air above it. The soldiers, the citizens, the scheming nobility; there was hardly a soul not watching with rapt attention. Not even the foreigners were exempt from the Cadrian fervour.

  In other words, Claire had nothing to do. She couldn’t even collect Rubia; to her dismay, her sister was intent on watching the fight. Her personal connection to the involved parties drove her to think that it was her responsibility to see their duel through to the end. Technically, she’d already done just that, but she wasn’t willing to say that it counted; her eyes weren’t able to keep up with anything that happened.

  With her out of the equation, Claire was left wandering the streets with her pet. And while the activity was not intrinsically unfun—she always enjoyed spending time with Sylvia—she’d effectively spent the past two weeks doing just that already, and there was only so much she could tolerate without growing bored, especially with the city effectively having become a ghost town. It didn’t help that they’d already visited nearly every establishment that kept its doors open during the duels and their observations.

  So what then did Claire do to pass the time?

  The answer was simple.

  She laid in bed, tossing and turning as she awaited each tick and tock.

  She was so bored that she almost felt like she would’ve been better off staying in Paunse for just a little bit longer. But while Lia’s parents were pleasant, her newfound siblings proved a tad too tiresome. Claire’s departure was, frankly, more of an escape.

  Sighing, she rolled over again and looked at the furball sleeping beside her. Despite everything that they’d been through, the orange dog was almost unchanged. It was weird, how much of a constant she was. She’d been there from the moment Claire broke free of her father’s chains, all the way to the present—the moment before she finally faced him.

  When they first met, Sylvia had been impossibly far ahead. It wasn’t until she was almost all the way through her third ascension that her moose senses finally kicked in and confirmed that it was technically possible to eke out a win if they fought. And perhaps that would have stayed true well into her fourth had she not ended Olethra. But as it were, Sylvia had become easy prey.

  It wasn’t just because the silly vixen always melted in her arms.

  Claire’s fourth had simply been so ridiculous that she’d broken beyond any reasonable bounds. It came as no surprise, considering she’d killed a god after slaughtering the aspects with whom she’d been entangled. The system had no choice but to bathe her in absurd rewards—not that she needed its power after stealing all of Olethra’s.

  With all of that under her belt, the fox had gone from an insurmountable mountain to another speck of dust in the wind. Claire could surely decide the duel in the blink of an eye if they ever wound up fighting—not that they ever would.

  Smiling softly, the snoose squeezed the fox, hugging her just a little bit tighter before rolling over yet again. In a sense, Sylvia had the perfect solution. She could easily pass the time by closing her eyes and slowing her breathing.

  But for Claire, sleep would do little to solve the problem. Her phantom blood ensured that, on all but the rare occasion, she would stay perfectly conscious even as her body went to rest. The only difference was that she’d be spending her time in the dream world as opposed to the waking one, and even that was often untrue. She could easily wind up wandering the streets as a spirit instead of doing it in person.

  Greymane might’ve been able to keep her occupied had she not already absorbed his essence, but he lay dormant and his space was functionally closed.

  Claire sighed. She briefly considered reviewing the plan, but there was no point. She’d long perfected it, and going over it again would do her no good. The only thing left to do was step into the ring.

  “Maybe some last minute levelling?”

  She dismissed the question as soon as she asked it.

  Numbers were irrelevant. There was no amount of strength or speed that could have possibly made a difference—a fact that would only be doubly true if Flitzegarde fulfilled her request and completely removed her shackles.

  Or if she simply broke them midcombat.

  The former was certainly better for their relations. But either way, she would unleash all of her power, regardless of what anyone or anything had to say.

  “It’s not like my numbers can go that much higher anyway,” she said, quietly. She’d spent far too much time in Vella’s gaol and slain every god there at least thrice over. She’d killed everything in the Langgbjerns that wasn’t at least amicable, including most of the crowned.

  She’d done everything she could, save for maybe sabotaging the Western Alliance. She knew that they were planning to attack. Sylvia had even gone ahead and uncovered the precise details of their plans—apparently, she’d read them straight from the mind of a Cadrian traitor—but Claire, frankly, didn’t care. The alliance was inconsequential. Nothing that they did could’ve possibly interrupted the event. Even in the worst case, all Claire needed to do was snap her fingers to make them go away.

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  A pout appeared on her lips as she tossed and turned some more.

  She just wanted the time to pass.

  She nearly gave in and sped it up with her divinity, but she was resistant to the idea. Skipping ahead was no different from giving up—following in Olethra’s footsteps. Of course, her problem wasn’t nearly as dramatic as growing bored of the world. Even if she did accelerate her perception, she’d only be skipping a little bit ahead, seeking an event that she’d been awaiting for years. Still, it felt like a slippery slope. She could easily see herself loosening her restraints and going from skipping days to weeks to years at a time. And that was the last thing she wanted.

  Sighing, the snoose crawled out of bed and wandered out onto the balcony. She spent all of three seconds looking off into the distance before she decided that she‘d had enough. It wasn’t the view from the castle that she’d craved.

  Spreading all six of her wings, she broke through the castle’s barrier, shot into the sky, and returned to the manor. She spent a few minutes looking over the edge, reminiscing about her childhood, before floating up to her room.

  Claire took a moment to stare at the stained glass depicting the goddess of war before pressing her face into her hands and slowly shaking her head. By returning to the manor, she’d effectively done what she would have in her dreams. At the rate that things were going, she might as well have gone to bed.

  Clearly needing a change of pace, Claire opened a portal and escaped to Vel’khan. Specifically, she warped to Vel’rulm, the first city that she’d visited upon escaping Alfred’s dungeon. Unlike the mostly empty capital, the landlocked city was bustling with life. There were festive shops and decorations all over and the streets were completely packed.

  Claire spent a few minutes wandering the main road before deciding to follow the crowd; most of the citizens were either headed in or coming from a very specific location on the other side of town, and even some of the shopkeepers were packing up as the larger groups passed them by. Upon arrival—she’s explicitly kept her ears lowered so as not to ruin the surprise—she found the Vel’khanese gathered in front of the sun goddess’ temple. They were listening to a priest, an old, portly fishman, as he preached about the sun and its wonders.

  That was when Claire suddenly remembered that she did at least have one order of business. Opening another portal, she stepped into Vel’khagan. Specifically, she landed in front of the temple that had been constructed in Alfred’s name. She’d expected it to be empty on account of the Cadrian event, but there were a fair number of worshippers present. Most were human or people who were otherwise interested in engaging in relations there with. Claire couldn’t help but feel a wave of revulsion as she watched them flirt in an open, public, and supposedly sacred space—a sentiment only made worse by the heated glances cast in her direction.

  Ignoring them all, she headed straight for the atrium, voiced a few words of prayer, and briefly chatted with the demigod before immediately relocating to Temple Street. She repeated the same actions at least a dozen times, visiting, praying to, and conversing with every deity that she knew or expected to be in attendance.

  With Alfred, she discussed Sylvia’s recent behaviour and recounted her encounter with Lia’s family. With Ira, God of the Abyssal Depths, she talked about recent eldritch incursions and the battle against the imaginary gods. With Archimess, God of Mathematics, she debated the nuances of gravitational fields.

  It wasn’t just all talk, of course. Sure, she discussed Boris with the Inner Flame’s master and chatted about her mother with the Goddess of the Frozen Wilds. But so too did she enjoy a brief snack with the Goddess of Harvest, sit in silence with the Goddess of the Moon, and share a cup of coffee with the God of Curses. So on and so forth, she worked through the list. She even greeted the God of Lightning and thanked him for watching over Lia’s family before convening with the Goddess of the Sun.

  The only ones she abstained from visiting were the Goddess of the Flow, with whom she still felt just a little bit awkward, and the Goddess of Order, just to keep herself from asking about her restrictions in the coming battle.

  That left only two more.

  The first was Vella. Claire briefly stopped in front of her temple and cast her gaze within its empty halls. A familiar chill shot down her spine as she did; she could sense the goddess’ eager gaze, entreating, begging for her entrance into her halls.

  And at least for a moment, Claire considered the option. She was going to need to confront Vella eventually. After all, the only way to truly break the puppetmaster’s strings was to face her and cut her down. But that time was still a ways off, and Claire had no interest in the life story Vella was sure to tell. She knew the goddess’ plan. It was to turn her into an ally and wield her as a weapon against her father.

  Originally, it was meant to be through seduction.

  Had Claire been born male, as the goddess had originally intended, then she would have long captivated, manipulated, and turned her. But that had stopped being an option as soon as Greymane entered the equation. With her plan in shambles, Vella had eventually resorted to garnering Claire’s sympathy. The next time they met, she would try her best to tell her of all the struggles she’d been through. She’d emphasize any similarities they shared and gloss off their differences.

  It wouldn’t work, of course.

  Claire had already tagged the goddess as an enemy; she wasn’t nearly enough of a fool to sympathize with someone who just wanted to use her. Still, she felt like there was a small chance that Vella would find just the right words.

  Though a total moron, the goddess was a master manipulator; it wouldn’t hurt to steer away.

  Tearing herself from the arachne’s temple, and ignoring the crestfallen groan that echoed into her mind right after, Claire sought her final destination.

  It was the Death god’s temple.

  The original plan was to visit in the morning, right before the duel began.

  But with nothing else on her plate, Claire decided to move it up the list.

  There was something she’d realised, after learning of Panda’s ability to toy with death—an odd inconsistency within the system that should have drawn his ire. Further consideration led to the realisation that King Ragnar’s ability was just as distorted. And so too was the one that her father had feigned. All of them were death defying, acts of blasphemy in the face of the supposed absolute principal.

  And yet, Xekkur had never once reacted despite a supposed zero-tolerance policy for those who crossed the line. And despite many historical accounts of him doing just that.

  She was already fairly certain that she knew the answer.

  And by stepping into his temple, by basking in his aura again, she had already confirmed it.

  Despite his lofty claims, the God of Death was weak.

  He hid his malediction well. There was no trace of it anywhere in the system. But as Claire chatted with him, as they discussed the ins and outs of death by old age, she managed to decipher the reason.

  It was right there, stuck in his core.

  A fragment of a broken blade.

  Coated in a god-slaying poison.