He even found an undead corpse that had his full armor still on. Axl stabbed it in the head a few times, just to be sure, then took his sword, belt, and sheath included. It seemed better made and maintained than his old weapon, and the shorter length of the blade was more comfortable in his hands. Unfortunately, he had no food or water with him, the belt's small pouch only carried some coins, which he kept.
Axl looked around at the buildings of the city's richest elites, eyes wide as Roken's memories screamed at him of the riches to be found within. Looking down the street, he saw the looming globe of Oocile barely a few blocks away. Shrugging, Axl figured just a few more minutes should be fine, and he approached one of the boarded-up houses.
He was stopped by a clear barrier, vaguely recognizing a defensive glyphic array, the undecipherable term bubbling up in his mind. He remembered the glyphs in his ice-box, and wondered at how something like this would also be possible with the same rules. Was this what these elves used for Mana inscription? But how the venting damn could the code spring to life with such unbelievable effects? This was the opposite of how it was for any engineering he knew, where circuits struggled to be drawn the more complex they became, one of the main reasons his [Mana Sense] helped him so much when building his own mining rig. Apparently, this was a big part of why so much of Terra's history was lost in the great Mana Arrival of the 22nd century, only the old, simpler vids and texts able to be transcribed into simple Mana inscriptions.
Axl unsheathed his sword and attacked the barrier, but the strike simply bounced off, like he was attacking a pliable sheet of hard plastic with barely a caress. He then put his hands on the barrier and tried to use [Mana Shroud] to absorb it, and while he could get Mana similar to the atmosphere's, several minutes of this did nothing to the barrier's stability. It seemed to compensate for the loss by drawing in Mana from somewhere as quickly as he could draw it out.
Hoping this would be an unusual defensive measure, Axl tried another building, but it had an even more formidable shield, and so did the next five he tested before giving up and continuing.
He did keep an eye on the leftovers on the street, and was able to find a dark red cloak of a rich, heavy cloth and a large backpack, both from a large crate that had broken up midway down a dead-end alley. The backpack was filled with a neatly packed porcelain statue, which Axl left behind, making room for three bottles of red liquid he found later on, having rolled next to a building. Roken's memories called the drink wine, and upon remembering the name, Axl also recognized the drink from the times he'd seen it in vids before, not quite as excited as Roken would be, but still curious to try it. At least this should help deal with his thirst when it started to make his mind foggy.
The cloak looked strange on top of his utterly soiled and blood-stained clothing, but he didn't find anything else to replace them, there being far fewer corpses here than outside the crab blockade. The few he found were in fact from the undead, and Axl was hesitant about putting on their clothing or armor, not entirely sure how becoming undead worked, and their clothing was soaked in the putrefied fluids of the injuries that killed them. He didn't need to remember old vids to be wary of anything that reeked so much of death. More than one plague cut through Ost when corpses weren't dealt with right.
Giving up on his meager and frankly disappointing looting session, Axl started his final approach to the square after setting up [Mind-Soul Bulwark] again. He slowly crept along the side of a building's deep shadow, [Mana Shroud] fully active, even if the mist was rapidly thinning out as he got closer. Soon, he turned a corner and saw the broad open square, not quite as Roken remembered it.
It was a rectangular space, three hundred meters on each side, neat blue stone slabs on the ground, with a line of primly manicured trees at the outer edge, each of eight different colors repeating in a pattern, four times to each edge. At the middle of the square was a massive stone statue of a perfect sphere, with engraved palms sticking out of its surface, all pointed upwards in various cupped gestures. While the sphere was a neutral brown color streaked with white, each palm was of a different color, made of a different rock, some even wood or material he couldn't identify.
Altogether, the decorations gave the square a rather colorful, festive look, but that was in stark contrast to the corpses that filled it. Dozens of undead, their bodies broken up far more destructively than any Axl had seen before, were strewn all about, broken weapons and armor littered as if from varied forms of violence. Among the undead, he also could make out elven corpses in simple clothing, bright colors on simple trousers and shirts spattered with blood and refuse. A brutal battle clearly had broken out here, one that at least had cost the undead far more than the elves.
He drew closer, body tense and weapon out. There was barely any mist around, so he relaxed his grip on [Mana Shroud]'s camouflage, stepping over a few dead bodies, feeling very exposed.
"Who's out there?" A weak voice came from the base of the massive statue. "I can sense you're not of the sullied."
Axl froze, eyes darting to the elf sitting at the statue's base. He thought he was just another corpse, but he looked right at him. Clearly [Mind-Soul Bulwark] didn't actually hide him from detection, but the bigger shock was that the elf somehow also sensed he wasn't undead, even from a distance. Maybe he had an inspection Skill?
Regardless, he was out now, so Axl just stepped forward.
"My name is Roken, honored senior," the proper greeting sliding out smoothly, a practiced routine burned into his body's previous memories. "I came to pay my final respects to greater equanimity. You know, before I die."
The elf nodded solemnly. "A fair way to meet the end of your path, young cultivator. Come, I'll not get in your way."
The elf was breathing slowly now, his eyes drifting down to the large spear on his lap. Axl exhaled in relief, glad the elf didn't seem to care about what he did anymore. Part of it was certainly his battered state, with large swatches of his blue and yellow outfit and short hair stained with elven and undead blood, his left arm missing entirely. It even took Axl a moment to notice he was a green-skinned elf behind the mess, likely a tree or grass-elf.
Gingerly, Axl stepped over the many corpses, trying not to greedily eye the superior gear strewn all about him. The injured elf might not care so much about him meditating before the statue, but he might raise an eyebrow if Axl started rifling through the dead on his way over.
The last surviving elf was sitting firmly in the middle of the statue’s base behind him, but Axl veered a bit to the side, not wanting to get too close to the injured warrior, in case he noticed something wrong about what he had to do. Soon, the large sphere loomed over him, its bulk intimidating, and even without [Mana Shroud], he sensed the dense Mana within tugging at him like another source of gravity.
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Axl straightened, hands clapping twice in front of his chest, then he looked down at his fingers, as if focusing.
He had to rouse Roken's memory for this snippet on how to properly do this, the elf never bothering to cultivate, and only occasionally glanced at the cultivators practicing here or at the other statues. Still, nothing happened as Axl opened his second quest.
>>Terrania Quest (Unique): Usurpation of Oocile.
>>Activate [Mana Absorb] on a nexus of Oocile.
Axl wondered if he should go to the other side of the statue and activate the Skill there, away from prying eyes, but a sidelong glance at the injured elf showed he was now cross-legged with eyes closed, clearly focused on his own recuperation. If anything, better to do it now while he was focused on something else, remembering that his setting up [Mind-Soul Bulwark] took all of his attention, and guessed the elf was up to something that also would keep him fully busy.
Slowly, Axl reached out to the statue's base with a single hand, finding it warm to the touch, and activated the absorption function of [Mana Shroud]. A strange Mana started slowly rising from the statue above to snake down to him. After a few tense moments, the Mana entered his hand, but almost immediately dissolved, as opposed to letting him take control of it, as usual. Figuring that the quest needed a certain amount of the Mana to be absorbed, he kept the skill steady, concentrating entirely on increasing the pull.
The Mana started to increase its flow, as if a circuit had been established. Soon, it kept building and building, the Mana now also dragged from the ground, even as he did nothing differently with his Skill. As the flow rate intensified, it took a bit longer for the Mana to dissolve in his body, his hand starting to feel as if it had grabbed an unshielded steam pipe.
A few moments passed and Axl started to worry, the surge of Mana easily matching what the obelisk spat out back on Luna. But it didn't stop there, but kept building and building, the intense surge still eventually disappearing as it reached his body, but starting to heat up uncomfortably as it poured in.
"What are you doing?" the elf to the side asked, his voice more curious than concerned.
Axl turned to him, forcing a smile as his hand felt like it was being stabbed repeatedly by a dozen soldering irons.
"Oocile… I seem to have…" he stalled.
The elf looked confused and slowly rose up. Axl regretted not probing Roken's memories for a believable lie, but with the pain, he was barely able to keep [Mana Shroud] going through gritted teeth.
Suddenly, the Mana was gone. Everything was gone, his world in darkness, his body no longer present. But his mind felt sharper than ever, rested and still, unnaturally so, in fact.
Then he was in a vast wasteland, the cracked brown earth below parched and sickly, the mountains in the distance like scabbed wounds attacking the sky. Above, churning black clouds roiled for as far as he could see, their mass low and menacing, bearing an almost palpable wrath. Jutting from among the clouds were jagged lines of myriad bright colors, some clearly bolts of lightning curving in the air, others more like laser shots, focused and straight. They were frozen in time amidst the dense, ever-changing clouds. The air was eerily still, however, as if hiding from the calamity above.
Axl was drawn to the frozen lights above, feeling like something important hid within. But his sight was driven to the mountains in the distance and their earthen solidity, then the cracked and damaged ground, each crevice extending down endlessly, then finally to a bunker barely twenty meters away, the only structure punctuating the vast wastes. It was a flat, rhomboid construction of unadorned metal ending on a flat top, its heavy vault door cracked open, the naked branch of an emaciated tree rising to the sky from the slight sliver of the door's upper edge.
Before the bunker, a figure sat cross-legged on the ground. They wore a full environmental suit of ancient design, complete with the fishbowl helmet, the glass black as the void. A curved sword lay unsheathed before them, the metal screaming of lethality. Then Axl's gaze was released as he grasped the location in its totality, aware he was being given a choice. He briefly lingered at the metal of the sword and the bunker, two very different manifestations of something solid and pure, but ultimately his attention snapped to the thick bolt of purple lightning cutting a jagged path from the depths of the clouds onto the frail branch sticking out of the bunker door.
That still lightning flooded his mind with a sense of sharpness and speed, of density, and myriad other impressions. But at its base, fundamental to them all, was a bridge between the chaos above and the earth below. None of the countless other frozen lights reached the ground, even if some came close before curving back in chaotic loops or fractal patterns. The sole purple strike dared trespass the dividing line between the roiling heavens and broken earth, a violation of the absolute.
Axl stood in this unfamiliar land for an uncountable moment, and all too soon it started to fade into darkness. He was bodiless for another moment, his mind and very soul now deeply exhausted, tired as he'd never felt before, and he returned to his body with a snap.
He gasped aloud and almost fell, knees weak and body numb. Just what was that? Even now, it was something beyond tangible, every moment and impression burned into his mind. He quickly scanned his Status window and noticed a notification he'd missed with his experience.
>> Terrania Quest (Unique): Oocile Infiltration.
>>Update: Quest Complete
>>Reward: Dao Vision
Followed by a second one.
>>Dao obtained:
>>Glimpse of Lightning
So that's what it was, a Dao Vision. Axl wanted to sit and go over the startling event, even as its details felt painful to recount, sore to the touch. But a hand was on his shoulder, the elf now at his side.
"Did you get an impartment?" his eyes were wide in shock. "How many hands did you see?"
Axl almost felt bad for the elf, since what he did to the statue was almost certainly not a good thing for whatever Oocile was, from how the quest was titled. But this was war, and if he had to steal from some elves to get humanity a leg up, then so be it, even if they were unrelated to the Vikam. He was about to reply when another notification popped up.
>>Classes unlocked (Terrania and Oocile sub-systems):
>>Equivalence Warrior (Uncommon)
>>A fighter seeking to balance all the aspects of the self through battle.
>>Attributes per level: +1 to each Attribute
>>Oocile offers class rebirth and the title "Oocile's Chosen" with this selection.
>>Terrania upgrade to Usurpation of Balance (Rare) available.
>>Jovian Marine (Uncommon)
>>A soldier proficient in all modern weaponry, with bonuses to plasma-based riflery.
>>Attributes per level: +4 Str, +4 Agi, +2 Free points
>>Lunar Miner (Common)
>>A specialist in extracting Mana-infused metals and ores.
>>Attributes per level: +2 Str, +1 End, +1 Free points
Axl almost laughed aloud as he finally understood the trick that humanity's AI was trying to pull here. He was being passed off as an elite of another sub-system, so that he could get the rewards from both it and Terrania. In a way, it was a relief, finally getting a sense of why he was thrown into this chaotic situation, and why he in particular. The answer was, of course, his [Mana Absorb] skill, which apparently was necessary to get him in with Oocile.
He knew that his Skill wasn't one of the usual ones, not having heard of anybody else having anything like it, but on Luna it was barely considered a novelty, since Mana was so sparse it had limited usefulness. He'd only gotten an edge in Mana inscription after years of working out the kinks of the Skill, with the few others born with Skills having theirs pay off far earlier and more dramatically. But here, it was exactly what Terrania needed.
Without another thought, Axl accepted the first option, then immediately accepted the upgrade.
>>Class chosen:
>>Usurpation of Balance (Rare)
>>A refinement of the Balanced Path, subverted.
>>Attributes per level: +3 to each Attribute
The injured elf was still staring at him, so Axl turned to face him. But his body was oddly swaying and numb, then he vomited a thick stream of blood and passed out.