720 The Jade Orb
“This is going to take forever!” Skullius shouted, not bothering to keep his thoughts to himself.
Close to an hour had passed since his encounter with the Beckoned Retriever, and the distance between him and the goal didn’t seem to have dwindled at all.
In fact, because of the clouds overhead, it almost seemed like he was standing in place.
“Is this why there’s no time limit? I could be walking for eternity!”
What if the Royale took a week to end?
He would have wasted seven days to the 19 he already had left. He wanted a bit more than that if he was going to prepare to fight Somanda for his soul.
As it stood, if he didn’t find something to give him an advantage, he would be royally fleshed.
Curiously though, could the Draw Bubbles, Scatter Crystals or whatever, be used to help with this ordeal? Was luck the major factor involved with finding them?
If that was the case, then…
The Hybrid Luman slapped his face.
‘At least give me something else to fight in the meantime!’
Since fighting the Retriever, Skullius had expected to be swarmed by other, similar Cluster beasts, but no. Since then, almost an hour ago, absolutely nothing had happened.
To Skullius, that was just torturous.
He wasn’t used to doing nothing, whether in Deadmanland, or in Aigas.
Taking quiet walks among the trees had seemed like a good thing at first, but he didn’t realise how much it would bother him if it continued for this long. His body was starting to itch for something to happen.
Anything.
The Hybrid Luman took another set of steps.
The forest seemed unending.
It extended to who knew where, and judging by the flashes of lightning and signs of battle going on in other locations, it wasn’t a stretch to say he was the only contender in this realm of crooked wood.
Maybe.
To no surprise, two, uneventful hours passed as Skullius trekked. He grew so annoyed by the trees that he shut off Crude Vision so as to not see their varying degrees of woven imagination.
Speaking of Crude, Skullius groaned as he began to think that perhaps, if he was still able to use Crude World Projection, where he projected a dark humanoid figure that carried his consciousness, leaving his body limp, he might have been able to scout ahead from above.
For now, he couldn’t use Crude World Projection because he couldn’t trust Sila to not take over his body again.
And quite frankly, with the clouds so close that they devouring the taller trees around here, Skullius wasn’t willing to risk pushing through them to see if he could make out what was around better. If that was even possible.
What a hassle.
But…
‘Hmmm… maybe I can…’ Skullius thought. ‘Well not me.’
He hadn’t thought he’d use this item for mere scouting. Well, to be fair, that could be one of its uses, but Skullius hadn’t imagined its utility to extend to that till now.
The very nature of the Royale, in his mind, had been much simpler, after all. Who knew you’d have to prowl through a large world until you met people to fight.
Skullius extracted something from his storage ring. The Temporary Storage wasn’t meant to be exposed willy nilly. Even his use of it before hadn’t explicitly revealed that he had something like it. Perhaps Mages could guess correctly.
A jade orb appeared in his hand, perfectly fitting in his grasp.
Vaguely, a cloudy texture could be seen past its beautiful exterior, but that was merely a design choice, and not something to get one’s hope too high on. After all, this item was merely Unique grade.
The Hexer’s Inheritance.
It was the third object Skullius had chosen to bring into the Royale, barring the storage ring, the others being the VergeRider armour and Demion’s Dance.
This orb’s function, was to act as a conduit that extended the user’s abilities over a maximum range of five kilometres away from them. Naturally, while it couldn’t be bound, as it was only a Unique item, a connection with the user could be made that extended their senses as well, allowing them to control it, but not to a perfect degree. Additionally, it worked better with curses and external mana applications, thus limiting its use for non-Energy Formers.
‘I should really try to take on missions that give access to the Second treasury,’ Skullius thought. Having been rewarded with this after taking on another exclusive mission, he wondered what he could get for higher tier missions, which to his sickening luck where usually picked off by higher ranked exclusive mercenaries.
The Hexer’s Inheritance wasn’t as good of an artefact in his opinion.
“Now…” Skullius said as he held up the orb.
A swift light shone from his body and illuminated the orb.
It was the skill [Lucent Apparition].
~~~
[Lucent Apparition (Special) | Lv.1]
Project a soul light from your body that can carry a portion of your consciousness and solidify it anywhere within a range of 5 miles. In the solidified state, your consciousness’ only limit is the strength of your soul, and the mana required to perform complex actions in such a fragile state.
-Caution-
It is possible to receive damage through the projected soul consciousness.
—
Mana Requirements: 275 (I) Mana Points, 110 (I) Mana every minute
Duration: —
Cooldown: —
~~~
When the light died down, a voice sounded from it, but it rang only in Skullius’ mind.
‘Tomato flinger…’
‘How’s that for a body?’ Skullius said as he let go of the Hexer’s Inheritance, which began to float, moving to and fro.
‘I much prefer that other, humanoid body. Being stuck with your face is a much better punishment than having to be… this!’
‘You should be glad you’re getting to stretch your le-, to breath the fre-… time outside, Sila,’ Skullius thought, inconsistently.
ƥαṇdα-ηθνε|·ƈθm
‘I assume this isn’t for my own benefit, tomato flinger?’
Skullius gave a grating laugh that made Sila invisibly cringe.
‘Of course not. I want you to scout the area. Start from the sky, past the clouds,’ the Hybrid Luman instructed to which Sila emitted a exasperated sigh in his head. ‘And be careful… wouldn’t want the orb to be destroyed.’
‘…’
Since Sila was an Incandescent Stage expert, he could manipulate his soul and consciousness very efficiently. Possessing the orb, which already had a link to the user, and moving around with it wasn’t a problem for him. Though Skullius did find that controlling the Hexer’s Inheritance himself became harder when Sila was in it.
Thankfully, he could just cancel [Lucent Apparition] if the Tower General tried anything.
Soon, the jade orb flew up cautiously.
Sila himself was quite apprehensive of the electric blue hue from the clouds. It seemed they could erupt at any time.
Thankfully, as he slowly dove into them, he found that they didn’t exhibit any form of offensive intent. Of course, he didn’t know what Skullius knew, but that had been done on purpose.
Past the varying thickness of the clouds, were the canopies of trees that rose for tens of meters past the foggy blurs. There wasn’t anything special it seemed, until Sila turned and explored a bit in one direction where the trees were a little shorter.
The view of the gigantic mountain registered in his sight for a few moments, and he shuddered.
‘This world still has terrifying things like this? Only… I remember such things being prevalent everywhere back then…’ Sila thought.
How terrifying indeed.