Half-Wolf

I don’t have much to say here, so, just to keep the tradition alive…

(Megum) If (Ujiguro) anyone would like to read 3/5/13 chapters ahead of the story, or simply support me, you can do so through my (P)(A)(T). If not, I still appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much!

With that said, have a good night and happy reading!

(P)(A)(T)/CalleumArtori.

[…]—[…]

After the not-so-good news about the awakening of the powers of one of the few beings with divinity in the body of someone I actually liked, I had a conversation with Sally.

She had already told Percy not to watch the stream in the meantime, but I still pulled her into a private (CHAT).

To sum it up, I told her to grab the boy and take him back home. Staying near Gabe was the best way to hide him right now, especially because, near her, Percy would have the protection of two stream invitations, since the concealment from my title leaked over to the other side.

Sally suggested using the other two stream invitations for extra protection, but even though it was a good idea, I refused.

It was better for her to save those two invitations as bargaining chips, in case she ever needed to ask one of the Greek gods for something.

… I wonder what Ichor tastes like. Monsters like it, so it must be at least somewhat good…

In the end, all she needed to do was keep something from noticing Percy for a single week, which was how long I was forced to stay in this world — whatever this place even was — before I could finally accept another emergency mission.

Because, based on the date Sally gave me, Percy had in fact awakened his powers before Zeus’s lightning bolt was stolen.

If he showed up now and the bolt got stolen afterward, the paranoia of would hit even harder than it did in the original timeline, and I seriously doubted Zeus would hold back from attacking without even considering that doing so could make Poseidon potentially drown half a continent.

So she needed to wait and buy us a week.

That was the amount of time needed for me to step in and help if something happened, because I was certain the stream would give me an emergency mission if things went south.

… I needed to heal faster. Facing Olympus in my current condition would not be fun…

As a last resort, I also told her that, if something happened, she had a few options to protect herself and Percy.

The first and most obvious was to run to the sea and pray to Poseidon. If the God of the Seas realized what was happening, I doubted he would ignore the two of them.

But since I didn’t trust the moods of the Greek gods, I told her it was better not to risk relying on that method. Especially with Poseidon, because he was the sea, and the sea was nothing if not fickle.

The second option was to go to the nearest hearth and pray to Hestia, who was, undeniably, the Olympian I trusted the most, even without ever meeting her personally.

Honestly, she was the only goddess in that place I trusted even a little.

It was the safest option too. Before, there had been a chance the prayer wouldn’t reach Hestia, but with Percy’s powers awakened, those odds had dropped.

That was where the stream invitation came in.

Hestia didn’t actually need to answer. Sally only needed to vaguely “feel” Hestia or understand that she was speaking to her for that to make it possible to invite her into the stream.

Then I would enter the conversation, and things would change.

The third option was to go to a church and pray to the Big G. That one was the vaguest, but I had a feeling it would work if she did it.

It was just a kind of instinct, but I felt like she would be safe there until this week of “waiting” ended.

But since I was also half insane and my mental faculties weren’t exactly stable, I told her not to trust that instinct of mine one hundred percent.

If none of that worked, she would need to give Percy a Drachma and have him throw it into the nearest fountain while praying for Iris to connect the two of them to Poseidon or Hestia.

But again, I didn’t trust any god other than Hestia, and Iris was one of them.

While I was talking to Sally, Percy ended up showing up in the (CHAT) too, wanting to know what this was all about.

[JackSon] Why are you and Mom hiding things from me? What’s going on?

And there wasn’t a single emote in the message, which, in Percy’s case, meant he was actually serious.

I stepped on the head of another zombie-dog-thing before speaking to Percy.

“Remember what things were like with ?” I asked before waiting.

[JackSon] Depends. Which part? A lot of things happened when that weird eye showed up.

I laughed.

It vaguely sounded like something you’d hear in a horror movie set inside an abandoned asylum.

“True. But in this case, I mean the part about ‘ignorance is bliss’ and ‘knowledge is the worst disease of all.’ That applied there, and it applies here too.” I looked at the golden tree while speaking.

Erdtree was the name of this thing, right? The Blessed Dew Talisman’s description said so.

“The more you know, Percy, the worse things are going to get. And this isn’t your mother treating you like a child. She’s simply protecting you as much as she can.”

“Especially your mother. I’m way too far away from there…” I ‘grabbed’ the stream camera and pulled it in front of my face. I stared at it with my one remaining eye. “I don’t even need to tell you what an incredible mother she is. I’m more than certain that out of everyone, you know that better than anyone else. So listen to her, don’t think about it for now, and wait.”

I let go of the camera before continuing to walk. Miserable place full of weird things.

One last message from Percy appeared in front of me:

[JackSon] I won’t disobey her, I promise. And I won’t disappoint either of you.

I nodded, but didn’t reply.

I didn’t think I needed to.

[…]

After calming Sally down and talking to Percy, the next thing I had to deal with was something that required my phone.

So I called Dylan. Creating a small hand of blood to hold the phone next to my right ear, I kept walking.

I had left the half-plain from earlier and entered what looked like a trail inside a denser forest. My severed right hand was actually farther northwest, so the correct route would be to move through the forest itself, but there was a perfectly usable trail here, so I saw no problem in taking it.

The environment around me was kind of eerie. Dark, with distinctly unfriendly growls and snarls coming from the trees.

“What a fucked-up weird world…” I muttered.

After a few rings, Dylan answered.

“Devas? What happened? Why are you calling this late?” His voice was sleepy.

Right, it should be around two or three in the morning in Terraria right now, shouldn’t it?…

“A few things,” I said. “But I called to let you know I’m going to be late getting back.”

“Wait, what? What happened?” I noticed his voice getting louder, and he sounded more alert. “Your voice sounds strange too. What happened?”

Did it? It sounded normal to me.

“I got attacked by a goddess,” I replied. “But it’s already been partially dealt with. The problem is that, because of it, I kind of ended up falling into another world, and it’s going to take another week before I can come back. And after that, I probably won’t stay long before needing to leave again.”

“You got attacked by ”

After spending a good five minutes explaining to Dylan what had happened, I heard an honestly exhausted sigh.

At first, I thought it had come from me, but it was actually from the other side of the line.

“And here I was thinking I’d get a good night’s sleep tonight…” he sighed. “Compared to your condition after the fight with how are you doing?”

“Fucked overall. But these injuries are way simpler to heal than that thing’s bite.” Which said far more about how ridiculous ‘The Eye’ was. “Once I manage to suppress and expel, consume, or absorb Hardy’s underworld energy, I’ll recover pretty quickly.”

“… Thank God for that, at least,” he replied from the other side of the line. “I’ll talk to Alalia. Maybe she has something that can help when you get back.”

“Good idea…” I nodded, stopping for a second. “Wait, I think I found something.”

“Found what?”

I ignored him and stepped deeper into the forest, leaving the trail behind. Strange whispers were coming from that direction. I didn’t have to walk far before finding what looked like a small pile of stones.

Each one was roughly the size of a fist, some slightly smaller or larger.

They were irregular fragments with a grayish, somewhat porous color. Even so, I could tell they were strangely dense and far heavier than things that size should have been.

They emitted a faint, pulsating glow.

The strangest part, though, was the fact that I could feel the stones slightly distorting the gravity around them, making small nearby pebbles float ever so slightly.

Farther ahead was what looked like a ruin, but it was nothing more than broken walls and scattered pieces. Even though it seemed to be made from the same kind of stone as the little pile, it didn’t have the same glow or whispering.

The whisper leaking from the stones was weak, almost like a dying man trying to speak. I could only hear it because of my spirituality.

I focused for a moment.

“Farum… Azula… Farum… Azula… Farum… Azula…”

What the actual fuck… Just how messed up is your world, Klein, if even the rocks are talking to me now?

… Wait, are they actually talking, or am I just going insane?

I shaped a blood hand and used it to touch one of the stones before activating Analyze: Item.

-//-

[Ruin Fragment]

Material/Block

Light Red

None

8372/10000

[..]

Ability — [Celestial Residue]:

When thrown or shattered, releases the latent energy of its cosmic origin.

The fragment emits a dull, constant luminescence that tears through the darkness and pulses in resonance with gravity, capable of testing the stability of the surrounding space or drawing the attention of distant threats.

[..]

Description:

Stone fragment found near ruins fallen from the sky.

Glows with a faint, faded light.

These shards are said to be pieces of a floating temple in the sky, shattered and scattered across the lands — a silent testament to a prehistoric age that existed long before the Erdtree, when ancient civilizations looked upward for guidance.

[..]

~ The sky falls apart in fragments… ~

-//-

This… could be useful…

“Devas, you still there?” I heard Dylan’s voice.

“I am. I was just checking out what I found.” I grabbed one of the Ruin Fragments with my right hand made of shadows. It was light and, at the same time, should have been absurdly heavy for its size if it weren’t ignoring gravity.

I looked upward. There was nothing floating above me, of that I was sure.

“I found pieces of a prehistoric floating ruin…” I looked back at the description. “And something tells me that really does mean prehistoric. Like, ancient-as-fuck prehistoric…”

“And you just stumbled onto that? Out of nowhere?”

“If I said the rocks were talking to me and I followed the voices, would that sound like less of a coincidence?”

“…”

I laughed and pulled all the fragments into the Voidbag. There were five in total.

The whispers stopped the moment the stones disappeared into my inventory. I opened the private (CHAT) I used as a notepad and quickly wrote down the name Farum Azula so I could look into it later.

I pulled the entire ruin into my inventory too. Didn’t see any reason not to.

“… Why are rocks talking to you now, Devas?”

“The tone of your voice makes it sound like I’m going insane.” I blinked. “Which might actually be true. But in this case, there’s a decent explanation.”

“Go back a little to the part where you said you’re going insane.”

I ignored him.

“The new energy I got is connected to ‘History’ for some reason.” And since the creation of the Blasphemy Card had happened in this world, this world’s history was affected too. “These stones are ancient and came from someplace so important to this world that the echo of the place’s name still leaks out of them, even if only faintly.”

I paused briefly before adding:

“At least, I think that’s what’s happening.”

“You think?”

“Do you understand exactly how mana works?”

“… Fair enough.”

After another short conversation with Dylan — who told me to keep updating him whenever I had time and that he’d let everyone know I’d be delayed — I hung up and tossed the phone back into the Voidbag.

I returned to the trail and kept walking.

One of the moonlit streams distorted into words, forming a message in front of me:

(Emote of a lunar princess pointing upward)

I blinked, slowing my steps slightly.

“Wait, what?” I threw my head upward.

Which, given the utterly fucked state of my body, would probably have been less painful if I’d fallen through the atmosphere another five times. I felt my muscles press against something in my spine and neck, and then something locked up.

… So this was what being old felt like? What a shitty sensation. Dying young really was the better option…

And it wasn’t even worth it, because I couldn’t see a single star thanks to the gigantic and blindingly bright golden tree. The only visible thing beyond it was the full moon.

My senses were messed up enough that I couldn’t feel anything abnormal either.

Apparently I’d just fucked myself over for nothing.

“Kaguya… explain…” I placed my left hand behind my head and pulled downward with a loud crack.

Then I fixed what I could using the Chalice and splashed a potion onto the back of my neck.

Maybe because of my miserable condition, or something in my voice, she actually explained things without making a single joke or snarky comment.

[MoonPrincess] Something is forcibly holding the stars of this world in place. Literally by force, something is grabbing them!

[MoonPrincess] It’s ridiculous, it makes absolutely no sense!

[MoonPrincess] And the stars themselves aren’t normal either. They don’t really feel like stars for some reason, they feel more like… things?… I think they’re alive. It’s honestly kind of terrifying.

I had to read the messages two or three times before the information finally sank in. Not because my brain was that damaged, but because part of me simply refused to believe what I was reading.

I slowly licked my lips before peacefully continuing down the trail.

The moonlight reaching the path shaped itself into another message:

[MoonPrincess] Are you just going to ignore what I wrote?

“Are you just going to ignore the fact that you found out the sun’s going to explode in five billion years and wipe out all life in the solar system?” I shot back.

[MoonPrincess] … You know, I think you’d get along really well with Mokou.

I stared at the message for a moment.

I’ll admit, it took me a few seconds to remember Mokou was.

“I genuinely have no idea what you mean by that. Is it an insult, a compliment, or just a random observation?” Coming from Kaguya, it could’ve been any of those.

[MoonPrincess] It is merely the pure acknowledgment of a fact. However, you may interpret it however you wish. 乁༼☯‿☯✿༽ㄏ

Then the messages stopped.

Fascinating…

I continued walking in peace while patching myself back together and healing my body, now burdened with knowledge I genuinely would’ve preferred not to have.

Ignorance truly was a blessing. Well, not in every case.

Like the fact that I knew someone was following me. That was definitely not the kind of thing you wanted to stay ignorant about.

[…]

It took me around ten minutes to leave the trail behind, during which nothing really happened. I wasn’t even attacked, despite being able to see a few red dots on the minimap.

My stalker also kept their distance, simply watching me from afar. They were around eight, maybe nine kilometers away. Sometimes they drifted farther, sometimes they came closer, but they never truly tried to make contact.

Overall, it was a nice walk. I’d love to do it again in another world and when my body wasn’t actively falling apart.

Of course, I was moving slowly because I was stabilizing myself. That, and waiting to see if I’d get ambushed, but it never happened.

Once I left the trail, the scenery changed rather abruptly.

The dense green forest simply ended, giving way to a rocky uphill slope swallowed by gray fog and harsh winds.

The atmosphere there felt far more hostile. The grass was dry, I could see gray cliffs in the distance, and the few trees that remained were twisted and warped.

I was starting to get a strange sense of déjà vu. The “style” this world was following was giving me a very bad feeling, and if I was right…

I looked around at my surroundings.

Right at the transition between the woods and that ravine, planted at the edge of the dirt path, stood a very strange little stone statue.

It depicted a woman with her arms open and stretched out to the sides like a cross. Or rather, the stumps of her arms, since the right one had been destroyed just before the elbow and the left near the shoulder.

She stood a little under a meter tall and looked worn down by time, but she emanated a subtle, almost calming energy, and deep within there was a faint remnant of divinity.

I narrowed my eye and approached before crouching in front of the statue, feeling my spine crack in the process.

The eyes of the woman carved into the statue were closed, and her face, even with its features eroded by time, was beautiful in a way.

“It’s you, isn’t it?…” I muttered.

I could vaguely recognize the remnant of divinity, if it could still even be called that. It was the same as the one in the voice that had spoken to me before, asking me to find her and help her.

I touched the statue’s head with the tip of my left index finger.

The energy contained within the statue didn’t react — namely the mana and ambient magic soaked into it — but the remnant of divinity did.

Contrary to what I expected, it didn’t flee or try to attack me. It simply approached slowly and coiled around my finger. It was a bright golden hue, yet weak, fragile, and as thin as a strand of hair.

I commanded the Divine Anathema not to devour it while I watched. I wanted to see what it was trying to do.

Slowly, the tiny golden strand slithered until it reached the junction of all the fingers on my left hand and wound itself between them, circling each finger at least once — before wrapping itself around the tip of my ring finger, just beneath the start of the nail — tying itself into a simple butterfly-shaped knot and remaining there, swaying not with the wind, but toward a specific direction, completely ignoring the violent gusts around us.

I could feel the Divine Anathema “staring” at it in disbelief, as if wondering whether it was really that stupid or simply didn’t understand where the hell it had tied itself to.

It was almost like watching a tiger stare at a rabbit that had casually walked up, curled beside its mouth, and started sleeping there.

“Curious, isn’t it?…” I felt my eye pulse.

I activated Glimpse of Light in the Abyss. The world around me shifted slightly; the colors became duller and more gray while golden threads appeared everywhere.

As expected, the golden “strand of hair” tied around my finger floated in the same direction as the golden “braid,” which was the thickest and brightest golden “path” I could see, stretching toward the Erdtree, where I was certain the initial mission I had in this world awaited me.

In fact, the “strand of hair” seemed to strengthen that path, and instinctively, I knew it would help me complete that mission and reach the “end” to which that “path” led.

It would only be a small help, but help nonetheless, and considering there were dozens of other tiny threads connected to different places, there had to be more of these statues scattered around.

The only problem was that most of them were far as fuck away, even if a few were nearby.

I tore my gaze away from the golden “paths” and pulled my spirituality back from my right eye, deactivating Glimpse of Light in the Abyss.

Then I used Analyze: Item on the statue.

-//-

[Stake of Marika]

Key Item / Furniture

Green (Formerly Light Purple)

None

: 3521/3000000

[..]

Ability — [Resonance Beyond Death]: INACTIVE

This statue was meant to serve as an anchor point for the soul, allowing those blessed by Grace who fall in battle to awaken immediately beneath the protection of its effigy.

However, the ability is now inactive; the last remnant of golden Grace granted by Marika herself has abandoned the statue, tearing itself free from the stone to desperately cling to the one it now believes to be its final hope.

[..]

Description:

A small stone statue of Queen Marika the Eternal, found scattered across the Lands Between.

These stakes are placed in areas of great peril, usually where fearsome foes or sudden death await the Tarnished.

They represent the lingering, guiding hand of the Goddess, defying the finality of death.

Yet, as the Golden Order continues to fracture, many of these remaining effigies grow cold and hollow, their divine spark slowly withering within the lifeless stone.

[..]

~ A prayer of stone for the fallen… ~

-//-

Queen Marika the Eternal, Lands Between, and Golden Order… Three extremely important names, I imagined, yet none that I recognized.

Even so, the way there was a “class” of beings with a singular name called Tarnished, who endlessly revived after death in pursuit of a goal, felt a little too…

I pulled the stake into the Voidbag and stood up, staring at the Erdtree.

“This is a fucking Miyazaki game, isn’t it?…” I said to no one in particular.

… The foot fetish guy!

The moment I got kidnapped, that foot-obsessed bastard released another Dark Souls? God fucking damn it!

I didn’t even know whether I was more pissed about ending up in a world this shitty or because I couldn’t play whatever game this was, considering one of the few things I played besides Terraria were FromSoft games.

“Marika…” I muttered.

What were the chances she was basically Gwyn, but with tits?

Letting out a sigh, I started walking again.

I left the “strand of hair” tied around my finger since it wasn’t harming me, and letting the Divine Anathema devour it would’ve been the equivalent of feeding a dinosaur a single lettuce leaf.

There was also the fact that it might help me later, so I saw no reason to consume it.

A message formed in front of me from the natural gray mist covering the region:

[Mr.Fool] Avoid killing yourself around those statues. You may be a Tarnished now after drinking the potion, but you are not the same thing.

“Indeed, I’m not the same thing…” I said, confirming Klein’s words. I had already expected someone would connect the two names.

I explained it to the (CHAT), and potentially to Klein himself — since I was almost certain he had only sent that message because of the “Avoid killing yourself” part, while the rest was just there to “sound mysterious and deeply knowledgeable.”

I said:

“I don’t possess ‘Grace,’ nor am I truly the same kind of Tarnished that exists in this world, whatever exactly they are. And I have no intention of testing that.”

My Nightmare-made robe fluttered violently against the wind for some reason, while my hair followed the natural flow.

Did my energies just want to make me look weird to anyone watching me?…

… As if having a glowing eye, smelling like death, possessing six massive blood ribs orbiting my body, and wearing a half-bone mask wasn’t already enough…

“Putting me in the same category would be like calling a monkey a human. Both are primates, but they aren’t the same thing.”

Another message appeared:

[Mr.Fool] I’m aware. Merely offering a friendly warning, given that your current mental state is far from ideal.

Just as I expected…

As I walked across the uneven terrain, I noticed some strange structures. They were made of somewhat rounded stones stacked on top of each other into thin towers roughly two meters tall.

The curious part was that, according to the minimap, those things were enemies.

I moved one of the six ribs to slice the stone tower in half, but to my surprise, it exploded the moment the blood rib got close, tearing apart a large section of the terrain and scattering part of the rib’s condensed blood.

I pulled all the blood back together and reshaped it into its previous form before letting the rib return to orbiting my body.

I gained 138 runes from killing that thing.

Even though I already had a strong suspicion I was truly inside a FromSoft game, every new discovery made the idea feel even more certain.

Still, what would truly confirm it for me would be finding some horribly poisonous swamp and discovering whether the women in this world wore shoes or not.

If they were over two meters tall, that would also be another point in favor of this world having crawled straight out of Miyazaki’s mind…

As I walked and blew up a few Alive Stones — for lack of a better name — I spoke to the (CHAT) again.

“It’s late. You guys should get some sleep. I’m keeping the stream on, don’t worry,” I said after noticing the viewer count was abnormally high for that time of night.

There were almost ten thousand viewers. Far from the peak of nearly seventeen thousand during normal hours, but still way more than there should’ve been at that hour of the morning.

The moment I spoke, the “spam box” opened and countless messages spilled out from inside it:

( ･`ω･´)

(Iron Man emote drinking coffee)

[MoonPrincess] I am eternal.

(Little Red Riding Hood emote smiling faintly, with puffy eyes)

[AinzOoalGown] I do not need sleep. Do not worry.

[AdvocateOfGenderEquality] (-_-) zzz ╭( ･ㅂ･)و

(⺣◡⺣)♡*

I quickly read through the messages before even more arrived. It was like a small cycle where the “spam box” kept vomiting out new messages all saying basically the same thing.

I let out a quiet sigh and smiled.

“I won’t argue then,” I said.

Whether I liked it or not, having company was nice, especially in a situation like this.

The rest of the walk was more of the same. I killed more strange stones, gathered runes, collected a few chunks of soil and some saplings just for the sake of collecting them — nothing too abnormal.

I had the feeling that the fact I was undeniably insane was making all of this a lot more fun than it should’ve been.

It really was nice exploring a different place like this, even if it was dangerous.

… Maybe something in my brain had genuinely snapped for good.

I even found three more Ruin Fragments. They were a little bigger, though only slightly. The gravitational pull also seemed a little stronger.

I stored them in the Voidbag before continuing on my way.

It was around the time I was climbing a slope, with the wind crashing hard against me and the night growing darker despite the Erdtree’s glow while clouds gathered overhead, that my pursuer finally decided to speed up and meet me.

Whoever it was clearly didn’t want me reaching the two people ahead, the ones I could see on the Minimap.

There were two dots: one green beside a yellow one. They were the first two non-red dots I had found since falling into this world.

I stopped halfway up the hill and turned around, looking downhill as the dot representing my pursuer drew closer.

Curiously, his dot on the Minimap was yellow. But at the same time, it randomly flickered red, as though the person himself couldn’t decide whether he was my enemy or not.

It stayed yellow most of the time, so maybe this would end without another corpse inside my inventory.

I didn’t have to wait long. Barely more than ten seconds later, the being had already crossed the entire eight kilometers separating us and stopped a little over twenty meters in front of me.

It was a man — more specifically, a wolf-man. And when I say wolf-man, I mean an actual wolf, not some guy with animal ears like a faunus.

He didn’t seem remotely winded from the sprint he had just made. He simply stood there, staring me up and down.

And he wasn’t small either. He had to be at least two and a half meters tall, if not more.

His head was literally that of a wolf, covered in dark fur with a long snout and alert ears. The rest of his body, however, was humanoid and clad in heavy armor covered in scratches and battle scars, complemented by a thick fur cloak.

Strapped to his back was a sword.

And honestly, “sword” was being generous. It was a massive slab of metal nearly as large as he was and as thick as a human thigh, almost more club than blade.

… I wanted that sword. Could I take it from his corpse if he attacked me?… It was a cool sword…

The dot on the Minimap flickered red once more when he uncrossed his arms and rested a hand on his waist before turning yellow again.

I could feel hesitation leaking from him, mixed with genuine terror. His fur was standing on end. Yet his eyes narrowed sharply as a low growl escaped his throat.

He seemed determined about something.

Still, there was something about him that irritated me slightly. It wasn’t the way he was looking at me while evaluating me, nor the fact that he had been stalking me for the last hour.

It was that he smelled like

It was a strange scent that vaguely reminded me of but closer to The Blank Card before I turned it into the Blasphemy Card — though darker somehow.

If I had to put it into words, ‘The Eye’ smelled like a ‘Blood Moon,’ The Blank Card smelled simply like ‘Moon,’ while this guy smelled like a ‘Dark Moon.’

There was also something vaguely divine about him. Or rather, it felt similar to the sensation the Relic of Destruction or even Jinn herself gave off.

It wasn’t something divine. It was something created by a being that possessed divinity or by a divine means. Whoever this wolf was, he had not been born as a normal person.

I activated Glimpse of Light in the Abyss.

There was an important “connection” between him and one of the two people behind me, a faint and fragile golden thread that could snap at any moment. It wasn’t guaranteed that this “fate” would come to pass.

However, there was another “path” linking him to a distant place.

It was a blackish-blue “thread.” A dense, dark blue that reeked of night and moonlight, cold unlike the normal golden “paths” and “connections.”

I stood still.

Silence ruled for a few seconds while the wind blew around us. His eyes remained locked onto me, his posture tense.

When I realized he wasn’t going to make the first move, I spoke instead.

“Tell me, wolf-man, for what reason did you decide your pursuit should end here?” I smiled at him gently. “Does your master not wish for me to meet the people a few kilometers behind me?”

He tensed up, though whether it was because of my smile, the comment about his master, or the people behind me, I couldn’t tell.

“Thou speak’st with little certainty, Foreigner One.” That was his reply.

His voice was absurdly deep and rough, like the growl of a dog that had turned into speech halfway through without ever losing its animalistic edge.

Even so, there was something undeniably cultured and educated about it.

“About your master?” I hummed. “I can tell you’re connected to something. Almost like a shadow, probably your purpose. So yes, I’m certain about that part.”

That only made him tense up even more.

“But I admit I don’t know your objective, nor why you decided to hasten your steps.” My smile widened. I gestured toward my chest with my right hand. “But I’m being rude. I’m Devas.”

I motioned toward him. “And you would be?”

He stared at me for a moment before replying with a single word:

“Blaidd.”

“Blaidd, then.” I nodded.

Silence settled over the place once more, broken only by the strong wind crashing against the rocks and our bodies, producing sounds like the howls of distant wolves.

His jaws parted.

“Thou art a…” He growled low in his throat. “Threat.” The word was practically spat out. “To my Lady.”

So his master was a woman. Useful to know.

His eyes shifted briefly toward my left hand. More specifically, toward the bow-shaped knot of the golden “strand of hair” tied around the tip of my left ring finger.

So it wasn’t because of the people behind me, but because of this?…

A misunderstanding, most likely.

He probably thought I had some connection to Marika or that I was allied with her, while he and his mistress were possibly her enemies.

I felt my teeth itch. I ran my tongue across my lips. My right eye pulsed, and I could see orange light illuminating the ground beneath me. I felt the crimson marks, veins, and symbols across my skin throb.

… But the real question was: did I want to correct this misunderstanding?…

I smiled, which made him bare his teeth as well.

“No. I do not plan to be.” I was still partially rational. “Not unless you give me a reason to become one…”

He fell silent.

“Tell me, Blaidd, shadow of the one touched by the moon. Do you truly wish for me to become your mistress’s enemy?”

He growled, ignoring my question.

I narrowed my one remaining eye and activated the Transparent World.

Something about him seemed strange when I looked closer. Being near me appeared to be pushing him into a state I could identify as madness.

Like an emergency switch that should only activate under a very specific circumstance, but which I had somehow triggered by accident.

“You should calm down,” I advised.

“I’ve no fear of thee!” he snarled in response, gripping the hilt of his sword and drawing it from its sheath.

… A shame, but in the end, I doubted this was ever going to end differently.

I nodded in respect and said:

“Then thou shalt die braver than most.”

[Archetype: The Threat — Synchronization +30%]

[…]—[…]

Devas in his Half-Insane state will be far more spontaneous and will do a lot of things he normally wouldn’t. But at the end of the day, he’s still Devas.

This arc will have a lot of items, since Elden Ring has a ridiculous amount of them. So I’m going to shorten the descriptions and keep them smaller unless the item is genuinely important.

Things also happened on Percy’s side, so the next arc is pretty obvious. I want to go to the places that I think will be the most fun to read through. I currently have a rough outline for around three future arcs and two mini-arcs.

Well, I think that’s about it.

I’m going to write a little more before going to sleep.

As always, good night, enjoy the chapter, and thank you all so much for staying here and reading my stories with me!