Sworded Affair

Chapter 155: You Court Death!

[You should be safe now.]

Emma stood up slowly, brushing stray dirt off of her back in the process. The ground was no more comfortable now than in campsites of her childhood, but at least her new body prevented any soreness on waking up. She called Epitaph into her hand, seeing no reason not to, now that the associated cost was gone, and last but not least reached for her traits.

[Wolf, Ram and Heart (Toggle: ON)

Ephemera (Toggle: OFF)

Null Zone (Toggle: OFF)]

At the third flip of a switch, the empty crater faded from view, returning Emma to the entrance of Blenheim Palace.

[1 EXP gained.

1 EXP lost.

3 EXP gained.

3 EXP lost.

2 EXP gained.

2 EXP lost.

You have 99+ unread notifications.]

“Could you not?” Emma groused, quickly dismissing the sudden flood of notifications and banishing it to the corner of her sight.

[This is not ideal, the System is struggling to reconcile multiple timelines currently in play. Try going inside, the instability should be at it’s worst here, at the boundary between it and realspace.]

Emma needed no further prompting, stepping forward and through the innocuous wooden gateway that had denied her for so long. Absently, she noted a faint patch of dirt on the ground, the only hint of what happened to the Earthbound Immortal upon opening the door. The inside was much as Emma had expected: luxury carpets, golden furniture and renaissance era artwork dominating the antechamber.

Far less welcome was the doorway disappearing at soon as Emma stepped through, leaving no way out that she could see.

[You have entered a Dungeon: The End Times.

Return has been disabled.

WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 23 hours, 11 minutes.

Anyone inside will be erased upon collapse.

Admin connection lost, reverting to autopilot.]

“Come again?” Emma blinked. “Edith, this is a bad time to joke around.”

There was no reply.

“Are you still mad I messed around with Null Zone?” She tried again. “I’m sorry.”

[WARNING: This Dungeon is unstable, and will collapse if unbeaten in 23 hours, 10 minutes]

“It’s probably real then,” Emma decided. “Wonderful.”

No advice from the System, only one corridor available and with no way back, Emma didn’t exactly have many options, so she could only embrace the inevitable and advance into the unknown. Despite the difficulties getting inside, there were surprisingly no attacks as she wandered down the hall, past golden desk lamps worth more than the average family income pre-apocalypse. After a few of these, Emma succumbed to greed and tried to steal one.

[3RR0R stored.]

The lamp she’d targeted was gone, but there was nothing inside Eden’s Echo for her efforts.

“At least the storage item still works, sort of.”

[Shovel withdrawn.]

Emma confirmed that withdrawal worked as well with the shovel, before smashing the next lamp she saw to pieces. It didn’t give her any EXP, but it felt good. The corridor continued, unending and unchanging save for the portraits. Those were no longer quite so civil, making rude gestures as Emma continued ever onward. Smashing them didn’t help, either, as the occupants jumped to adjacent frames and continued their jeering.

“Is this some bizarre form of hazing?” Emma asked aloud.

Nobody answered.

—

1247

Edith Knight woke up to find herself restrained and hanging from her wrists, a spear pierced through her heart and runes of binding carved along the length of her arms and legs. A thin dressing gown was all that protected her modesty, swaying leisurely in the wind. Altogether, this wasn’t too unusual, though it had been quite some time since anyone dared to try and kidnap her. Far stranger was the scenery, featuring a wall that extended far into the horizon, one that she’d seen through many eyes over the years, and even from space, more than a millennium in the future.

“How odd,” Edith murmured, drawing the attention of her guards, no less than eight men surrounding her, spears levelled at her neck. “I don’t recall offending any of the sects recently. If you wanted to invite me to China, a written invitation would have sufficed. The view is quite lovely.”

“You don’t recall?” The guard closest to her turned wrathful, his face red beneath the setting sun. “The Sectmaster’s youngest son visited your island as an honoured guest, his safety guaranteed by sacred rites of hospitality. So why did he depart with both arms shattered beyond repair, and his mind so fractured that he fell to a heart demon decades later, when the time came to shatter his core? Not for millennia has a young master of the Azure Heavens Sect disgraced himself so, to fail to reach Nascent Soul. You ripped the face from our sect, and still, you claim not to recall?”

“Does your Sectmaster concern himself with the lives of every disciple?” Edith retorted. “By your own telling, his son was Core Formation at most when he visited my Empire. Why would I care if he broke some laws and got himself paddled?”

That was enough to make one of the guards break, lunging forward and spearing Edith through the throat before his fellows could restrain him.

“How undisciplined,” Edith spoke through the guard’s mouth, moments later, as her former body withered away to nothing. “A few harsh words is enough to prompt the murder of a valuable prisoner, one smuggled all the way from England? I’m starting to see why your tribulations fail so often.”

“Impossible,” the remaining guards stepped back, turning their spears on their former comrade in horror. “We carved our strongest formations into your flesh. You can’t cast magic. We made sure of it!”.

“No external magic,” Edith sighed, even as her stolen body melted like wax, features reforming to those more familiar to her. “But qi exists in every being, so long as they live. You, of all people, should know this. A life taken in anger has implications for the soul; using that moment as a bridge for possession was trivial, given the physical contact between us. But that’s enough out of me; my lessons are highly sought after, and very expensive. None of you have the wealth to cover my standard fee, so I suppose I’ll have to settle for your lives instead."

—

After far too much walking for her liking, Emma finally reached another door, plain, black and labelled for her convenience.

“Heavenly Tribulation.”

Emma didn’t much like the sound of that, but the dungeon wasn’t going to clear itself, so in she went.