Chapter 253: Family pictures
Im free to move again. Did he leave? Didnt even see him.
Oh right, I better put the black glasses back on. Really cant see much with these on
Its a bit harder to move here. I feel heavy.
Sofia used the graveyard skeletons to phase through the door. Now she could use it with or without the graves popping up without much effort, and the channeling was fast enough that she could use it to almost seamlessly activate it and walk through walls anytime. The teleportation room was at the very end of a corridor with three doors on each side. Sofia tried to analyze the contents of the closed rooms with her mana senses as she passed by, to no avail as there was no mana around. She figured this floor was probably some kind of living quarters of some sort. nôvel binz was the first platform to present this chapter.
Ill come back to this later.
Since it wasnt moving, Sofia kept going, the skeletons grabbed her through the door at the other end of the corridor. This ones thicker.
The other side was a small empty circular room with only some vents on the side and another thick door. Whats the point of this room even?
Going through yet another door, Sofia finally understood why the glasses the oracle had given her were so dark. This door had led outside, after climbing a short ladder up, there was no more roof or anything, this looked to be the highest floor of the elven temple, in space. The glasses were basically black, yet Sofia still had a hard time seeing anything through the light and glare. I dont know why Im surprised. The sun is really bright. The temperature on the outside is really bad too Im sweating already. I can survive this but its quite bad. Also no air. Plenty of light though, so Im not going to have any issue.
Actually cant I survive off of just my mana now? I might not even need light to breathe anymore. Of course no ambient mana around here but I knew that already.
Sofia deactivated her armor and wings. The wings were useless here and the armor just made the heat worse.
If something gets a surprise attack on me I have the runes.
Ugh. I feel a bit bloated, strange.
She looked around, this top floor of the orbital temple was like an observation deck, mostly flat, with guardrails along the side, stairs going down, and weird metallic poles sticking out of the ground. To her left, Sofia spotted Aphenoreth. He was leaning on the guardrail, staring directly at the sun, motionless, his brown suit and small flat hat still the same as ever. She walked up to him, standing on his left, she looked at the sun like he did. The station was speeding forward, like gliding along the surface of the massive ball of fire.
This is incredible.
Sofia tried to talk but she couldnt. In fact, she just now realized that everything was silent too. She couldn't hear anything except her own heartbeat. The great ball of fire and explosions that was the sun should be really loud, she had thought, but she just didnt hear anything.
A system window appeared out of nowhere, characters filling it one by one.
[Observe]
[Regulator]
So it was Ormoncleths doing. If the name is anything to go by, it intervened to enforce regulations of some sort? Wouldnt I be a bother if I interfere now, then? Could I even do anything about it anyway? What should I do?
[Quest]
A tremor went through the station, the source of the shock seemed to come from behind, Sofia turned around, but she couldnt see anything out of place, when she looked back, Aphenoreth had disappeared. He had left behind something on the large guardrails, a midenicite tablet.
He brought it back? Sofia thought as she grabbed the familiar piece of blue crystal. It seemed to be the same one he had previously taken from her, but the carving depicting a cold looking Aphenoreth with elf ears was no longer. In its stead was a stylised carving of Sofia and himself, in front of the sun, looking at the planet.
Ill keep this precious gift. Thanks again This was significantly less scary than the previous times.
Alright. To the quest then, I have as clear a permission as I can get. I need to find the monsters of Ormoncleth and get rid of them, I guess, if the quest objective is anything to go by.
Seems like a tall order. Not the finding part but
What would Ormoncleth even do to a place like this?
Sofia looked around the whole top floor, she could make out that the main body of the station was a big upside down pyramid, like an upside down Herzal. There were three smaller upside down pyramids linked to it by very weak-looking bridge corridors on three of its four sides. It was a wonder that they all held, Sofia thought, until she realized there was a fourth such bridge, broken in the middle. Nevermind then. Lets hope there wasnt anything important in that part because its gone for good. This doesnt make me very impatient to explore the side pyramids If one of these breaks off while Im on it, Im gone for good. It was a good call to train the piercing bolts before coming because the explosive bolts are a big no go here.
Before anything else, Sofia returned to the interior of that level, she checked every room one by once, phasing through the doors. She had been wrong in her first assumptions that it was a living space of some kind; each room was full of nothing but cables and mostly dysfunctional machinery. It seemed the energy distribution panel was in the teleportation room because all the modules it deserved were right next to it.
All safe.
With that taken care of, she returned to the roof and took the stairs down to the level below. Sofia looked left and right, not sensing any danger so far, she walked along the guardrails. This level was built like a giant balcony, going all the way around a central block of more indoors stuff with exactly one door leading into it from each side of the station. Only by doing an almost full loop around the level did she find the stairs going down to the lower level. Since it was an inverse pyramid, each level was slightly smaller than the one above. Every level looked like it followed the same pattern of an external walkway going around a square walled-off section. Sofia was debating whether to keep going down and explore the entirety of the walkway or to go back up to the second highest level and explore its interior.
As she was contemplating her options, sitting on the first step of the stairs, something on the other end of the walkway slowly showed itself as it walked the turn. It looked like an elf, but its skin was gray, it looked dead but it slowly shambled forward, gradually revealing itself.
An elf zombie? Theres something wrong with its head
There was something inside of the dead elf, behind its cracked face, spilling out of its burst cranium. Something large and iridescent, contracting and dilating, breathing.
This isnt a zombie at all!
It made Sofias hair stand on end. Shuddering, she ran back up the stairs.
