Awakening
Awakening.
It was a message she had already seen who knew how many times.
Just looking at it was enough to make the trauma come surging back up, but she steeled herself and accepted.
Krrzzt…
The door opened, and the state that had been so heavily suppressed came rushing back in a single instant. Power overflowed her body. She drew that overflowing strength into herself and became one with the spirit of lightning.
Tap.
Tap.
Two soft footfalls, and the Progenitor revealed herself. As long as no one attacked her, she would offer nothing more than a light greeting.
"Hello? So this time, how long will you—"
Before the sentence could even finish, her body transformed into pure electric current and shot forward.
Blood-red spikes erupted from the floor as though it were the most natural thing in the world. This was an attack you had to dodge before the line of dialogue even played — there was simply no other answer.
Because from the instant the skill activation message appeared, there was no escaping it.
Slip past the first attack, and the counterattack was your turn. Her body, forged into one with the lightning spirit, became a spear of current and hurled itself at the Progenitor.
The spear never even touched her, stopped dead by a veil that curled around her like a dome. Overflowing current might have been able to flow through liquid blood — but the Progenitor's blood was an Authority unto itself, a domain all its own. Not something mere lightning could presume to run through.
The attack had failed, so she rode the rebound and sprang backward at speed. If the veil wasn't broken, the counter came at once.
The Veil of Blood scattered entirely, reshaping itself into several chains. A handful of chains — it sounded almost trivial, but each one that connected meant death or a near-fatal mauling.
And the way to dodge them was… there wasn't one.
With the Crimson Spikes, at least, there'd been a method of evasion the first time she delivered her line. These chains came flying in from every direction, leaving no blind spot to be found. And she couldn't simply refuse to engage and plink away from range, either — the Progenitor's veil was far too solid for that.
'A way… there has to be a way!'
She released the unity with the lightning spirit. She let out a slow breath, then drew upon the power of light.
Vampires — beings that had forsaken life and light, creatures that grew in the dark. To fight something that thrived in shadow, she needed a light powerful enough to strip that shadow away entirely.
"Hyah!"
Unity with the spirit of light. Leo, now one with it, clenched a hand even smaller than the Progenitor's own.
A sword of purest white hung in her grip.
Shaaak!!
The chains that had crept within reach were cleaved apart, and the Radiant Sword vomited forth its light.
"Radiant Sword — Diagonal Cleave!"
Krr-kzzzt…!
A crack ran through the Progenitor's domain. A diagonal line of light tore open a fissure, and the dominion of blood that had bound the entire space blurred, if only for a breath.
Of course, the Progenitor restored it faster than an eye could blink — but that instant was enough. Leo didn't waste a heartbeat of it, blinking through space to strike at the Progenitor's back.
"Radiant Sword."
Shaaak!
Slice.
The veil was cut open, and blood trickled down the Progenitor's left arm.
Just a little.
"Hm…"
"…Finally! I finally drew blood!"
It was her first wound. A wound earned only after a full nine attempts, her patterns memorized and dissected down to the letter.
But the problem was everything that came next.
"Not bad at all. To think a Nymph could grow this strong."
The Progenitor spoke with what seemed like genuine admiration as she traced a circle in the empty air. Blood magic carved itself into being with fluid, elegant lines.
'A-and after that I have no idea what's coming?'
What were you supposed to do once you'd landed a hit? There was no way to know what came flying at you next.
The only answer, once again, was dying over and over until the pattern burned itself into her bones.
Pssshhk!
Threads of blood shot out from the tips of the Progenitor's pale fingers, spraying forth like lasers. There was no room even to flinch; she took every single one.
No, wait — this meant dying agai—
"Huh?"
"The world really has changed a great deal."
The world stopped.
The blood threads skewering her flesh, the beads of blood welling from the wounds they'd torn, the spirit mana saturating the space, the Authority of Blood itself — all of it, frozen.
Tap.
Even the penalty that rattled her mind had come to a halt inside this stilled space — and the single being who alone could still move turned to look at her.
"Did thousands of years of history change all of this?"
So saying, Lasty glanced down at her own slender arm. It was nothing more than a scratch, and yet she seemed genuinely stunned by the simple fact that she had been wounded at all.
'…Thousands of years?'
"No wonder Unnie was so worried about you."
"…Unnie?"
"Leo, was it?"
She drew closer, wearing an expression of mild displeasure.
"Why do you keep rejecting it?"
"…I'm sorry?"
"Your unity of power is incomplete. Your body became a Nymph, and yet your mind keeps trying to crawl back to being human."
"Uh…"
"Of course, among those like you, you'd be close to the strongest. But you need to let go of a little more of that 'humanity.'"
A lecture? All of a sudden?
As Leo stared at her with a bewildered look, Lasty gave a small flick of her hand. A blood-red sword materialized in her grasp — and at a single glance, Leo felt chills crawl up her spine. It didn't even seem to belong in the same category as any ordinary Mythic-grade item.
The blood-red sword was leveled at Leo's throat. A thin line of blood slid down her neck.
"Don't reject it. Body and mind were one to begin with. Keep hauling that awkwardly shifting mind back into place, and in the end you'll be neither one nor the other."
"But the penalty—"
"Penalty? It isn't a restraint. If anything, the true restraint is forcing yourself back into being human."
The blade pressed deeper. More blood ran down.
"Ugh?!"
"Spirits and Nymphs excel at spiritual union to a degree humans, blessed with nothing but affinity, can't begin to compare with. No — comparing at all is an insult."
"……"
"And yet you'd call becoming a 'Nymph' — no longer even human — the restraint?"
As if that could ever be true.
"The penalty is nothing but a form of suppression imposed by an Authority called the System — a brake placed on the power of 'perfect unity.' You could undo that restraint right now, this very moment."
"B-but Lily-nim—"
"Unnie believes that 'humans should remain human.' She'd never have bothered to tell you any of this."
Because that's simply who Unnie is.
"But you — do you actually have a reason to insist on it?"
The Authority of Blood bored into Leo's body.
Thump.
Her heart beat.
"Sometimes you want to live as a Nymph, don't you? Sprinting through the forests, playing with the other Nymphs — the feeling of becoming one with a spirit isn't something you truly hate."
"………"
"Just accept yourself as you are."
Thump. Thump.
Was that really it?
The penalty wasn't a debuff at all — it had been a shackle, all this time, holding back her growth?
The Authority of Blood shook her body to its core.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Her heart pounded faster and faster.
The frozen world began to flow again. And the moment the wall her subconscious had been holding up crumbled away, her unity with the spirits took off like a runaway freight train, spiraling utterly beyond her control.
And then—
"Wh-whoa?!"
'Open your eyes, Leo.'
"What IS this?!"
She opened her eyes.
Light surged.
An immense power, so vast it defied control, overflowed and burst out of her, and the Progenitor's Veil of Blood tore apart like so much paper.
Totally broken!
This went beyond Spirit Descent — she felt, quite literally, as though she had become a spirit itself. The Radiant Sword shredded the veil, shredded the threads, shredded the spikes. The Progenitor's body bled from wounds opened by a power that couldn't even be compared to before.
Nothing short of overwhelming!
In this moment, Leo had become a complete Nymph. If this was where she stood now, then no matter how mighty the Progenitor was, she could win!
"Splendid."
The Progenitor wore an expression of considerable amusement — which then curdled into something faintly uneasy.
"…She's really not going to let this go, is she? Unnie, I mean."
Well, it wasn't as though she hadn't been planning to teach her anyway. She could think of it as merely giving her a taste.
"…Aaand I'm dead."
The Blades of Blood Lasty had unleashed were jagged monstrosities, each one large enough to fill half the throne hall. She had slipped into something like a berserk state, smashed through the blades, and counterattacked — but the Progenitor was, in the end, a being closer to undeath than life. She could do nothing against blades that flew at her without end, and she was shredded into fragments and died.
"…Can I actually win?"
A primal fear had carved itself into Leo's heart.
Anyone might have said she'd only challenged the Progenitor nine times. But Leo, who had faced down countless bosses and monsters of a caliber most players never even dreamed of, could tell.
'She's stronger than anyone.'
Stronger than any being she had ever encountered. And it felt strange to even think this, but she wasn't at all certain that even Lady Lily could defeat the Progenitor at full strength.
After all, even she — the one who had torn through the 'wall' — had managed to land a few wounds before dying on the spot.
So much blood had been spilled, and yet there was not the slightest trace of 'crisis' on Lasty's face.
How on earth had Lady Lily brought a being like that into existence?
"……"
Leo clenched her small hand.
Something about it felt good — soft and squishy and strangely satisfying.
'Accept it, she said?'
Accept herself as the Nymph she had become.
She had always been on guard against this penalty, always wary of her own mental state. Something about turning into a Nymph had felt irreversible — as if, once she sank into it, she might spend dozens of hours living like a little kid with no way back out. She'd always kept a penalty-cancelling potion on hand, just in case. Whenever she felt herself sinking too deep, she would even deliberately stay offline for long stretches of time.
"Mmm…"
But in the instant she had 'awakened' at the Progenitor's hands, Leo had understood.
It felt like stepping past the strength of a mere player and becoming something a whole dimension beyond. In her awakened state, she felt certain she could deal a genuinely meaningful blow even to Lady Lily.
"…Unnie, huh. Hmmm…"
It hadn't been said outright, but the Unnie the Progenitor kept mentioning had to be Lady Lily.
'She believes humans should remain human.'
Humans should remain human. What in the world was that supposed to mean?
Was she saying that Lily-nim… could have been something other than human?
Even more suspicious was that strange video she'd seen through the condensation stone a while back.
'The golden empire. A white woman lecturing on mana before a stone and countless students.'
Lily-nim had called it an error, a glitch — but now, Leo felt she understood.
"I have to go meet Lily-nim."
'That is not a lie.'