RinoZ
patreon
Chapter 1547 - Spiritual Invasion
🕑 Added 2025-02-24 10:19:49 +0000 UTCFor an hour, I flip between managing my body in the ‘real’ world, while ducking back into the Nave to see how the Templar are doing, holding off the… spirit… mites?
Spirit mites sounds good.
By the time it settles down and they can’t find any more of the damn things, they must have caught and destroyed hundreds. Hundreds! I pull back from the very front of the platform, though I still use my sub-brains and acid to bombard the endless hordes with acid and magic.
Thankfully, the Templar begin to stir as they return to their physical forms and I call them over to me. They all seem a little disconcerted by the events, well, the kids don’t, they never seem to have much of an expression at all. The adults though, they look somewhat disturbed, as if they don’t understand what just happened.
Which is a shame since I sure don’t.
“What the heck went on there?” I ask them all. “I was minding my own business fighting and you guys all collapsed! And I want to emphasise that it wasn’t my fault for thinking that nothing bad was going to happen. Why would I think that? It’s impossible that I would be that naive!”
Smooth.
They look at each other, Jern reaching up with one hand to scratch the back of his head.
“I was fighting and then I had the sense I was really needed somewhere. So I went. Then I was inside that other place and there were those things all over the place, so I tried attacking them.”
This description is… pretty basic, delivered in the straightforward, no-nonsense pheromone language I’ve come to expect from Jern. I look at the others and they just shrug and nod.
“So you sensed that I was under attack?”
“I… sort of?” Alis hedges. “I could feel that something was… wrong.”
“It was like I’d left the house and then remembered I hadn’t properly doused the fire,” Bertran mused. “A real panic set in as I raced to get to the problem and fix it. I was so desperate, I jumped right out of my body without even knowing how I did it.”
“Was it the same for you three?” I ask the youngin’s.
Allison speaks up on behalf of the three this time. Looking at me directly, she says exactly what’s on her mind.
“When did you last rest?” she asks.
“Never mind that! We have more important things to be working out right this second. Sheesh!”
“More important?” she demands, her eyes narrowing.
“Oi! I’m out here saving lives and unlike the others, my combat performance doesn’t dip that much when I don’t sleep. Up to a certain point, at any rate.”
I do need to rest eventually. Emotional fatigue is a real thing, and I can end up feeling incredibly drained, even if my body and brains are fresh as daisies.
“Now lets focus on examining the problem at hand. What happened to you three?”
“We felt the attack and acted to protect you,” Allison replies, a little begrudgingly.
“Well… can you explain how you knew what to do?”
“No,” she shakes her head slightly, “we just knew.”
Some sort of instinct imbued to them by the Class itself? Would have to be. I find it extremely frustrating that they were able to sense this attack and I was completely left in the dark. If I didn’t have the Templar to help me, would I even have known about it at all? Perhaps not until the damage caused by the spirit-mites became too great to ignore.
“Perhaps the most important question I have… does anyone have any idea where those weird things came from? Who or what tried to attack me?”
And how did they do it through the Vestibule? Nothing has ever gotten in before except for the pure and focused Will of the Colony! Along with a few other people’s will….
I’d rather not think about it.
Each of the Templar shakes their head and tells me they have no idea how the invaders got in or who sent them. They felt the disturbance, and went to defend the Nave, that’s as much as they know.
“I did get notifications about a Skill improving while I was in there,” Jern notes at one point to nobody in particular. “The more this happens, the better we’ll get at it, I suppose.”
I suppose… if the Class is supposed to be about protecting me from spiritual assault, then they would have a Skill related to it.
“This is so irritating,” I say, snapping my mandibles. “Something finally happened regarding the Class, but we don’t know much more than we did before.”
“Well, it’s not that bad,” Bertran says, patting me on the leg. “You know what the golden statues are for. We know what a spiritual attack can look like, and how the defense is done. It’s quite a lot when you think about it.”
With his friendly manner and practical view on life, Bertran is hard to be grumpy around. The guy is just very positive and talks good sense. In this case, he isn’t wrong, I guess I’m mostly just annoyed that I don’t know who was attacking me, or how. If they did it once, they can do it again.
“All right, well, for now it seems as though nothing else is going to happen, so you all can go and rest for a bit before you return to active duty.”
They all start to protest… except the children who just glare at me. They really have taken on the mannerisms of the Nameless Ones. Talk, dammit! You’re kids, you should be talking!
“We don’t know what happened, we don’t know if it will happen again and we don’t know what it took out of you. Get checked out by the healers, take a breather and then come back, alright?”
“What about you, Anthony?” Jern asks in his usual, straight forward manner.
“I didn’t do anything! I just sat around chomping my mandibles and waving my antennae. After sitting back here lobbing spells, I’m as rested as I can be. I need to get back to the front and do my job.”
So saying, I bid them farewell and start striding back to my post. Without me there, the number of injuries suffered by the Colony has skyrocketed. I have to be there as often as I can to make a difference and save my siblings. That’s why I took this evolution, after all.
Comments
Gopard
Thanks for the chapter!
real
Thanks
alt31415
Chapter 1246 is when a 6th-stratum monster appears.
Bethany Bluebird
MASTER!!! YOU WOM'T ALLOW ME INTO YOUR MOST SACRED SANCTUM?! *ELDRITCH WAILS OF DESPAIR*
real
Hey can anyone remind me the chapter where Antony fought an energy based enemy
Bethany Bluebird
Pppppppst. Hey. Hey guess what. The baby showed up. He's perfect. <3 Thanks for everything, RinoZ. Your stories helped us both get through that long ass pregnancy!!!
alt31415
There was a few chapters back. Basically a farmer or something in Renewel who stumbled into the Templar class.
alt31415
Nah, no way Theorazyn sent them. First off he gave the task of killing Anthony to the Krath, Ancients tend to be hands-off. Second, we can reasonably assume that the instant an Ancient tries to kill Anthony, Anthony dies - he barely survived getting blasted by Ramon, who was intentionally holding back.
Edgar Delibo Jr.
I think these Ancients have their "Godly" domains of some sort and they have a much more powerful and greater control over theirs. Which they can use to attack other Ancients like them or those that gather faith to strengthen themselves or others. It must be some sort of faith based attack that maybe all ancients can do or Thorazzyn, because of his nature as a parasitic god has an easier time doing stuff like this and it surely isn't his strongest, that's for sure. Just my conjecture though.
alt31415
Unless they're the ones who unlock it...
Nathan Patrick
Was there ever a concrete backstory for Bertran? A spy perhaps?
Brandon14754
His little guard of 20 ants are gonna be so jeallous
alt31415
The real question is, how did they get in? Are monsters with spirit-realms like the Nave common enough there are 5th-stratum monsters that evolve just to prey on them? And if the Templar weren't there... what sort of damage would the mites have done?
C Gillan
He probably should never mention he's had people inside him fighting the mite things to crinis or she find a way in and never leave.
Rick Delallata
I can't wait for one of the ants to discover an evolution that allows them to defend the Nave or whatever it's called. The rush to be able to help defend the Eldest would be glorious
Navarog
My money that spiritual tentacles of Eldrich abomination of cuteness, can access the vestibule. And She will spoil somone day at some time. (And save Anthony in most horrific way possible)
Shakyamunie
I like the Nameless Ones a lot, but I have to agree with Anthony on this one. Kids shouldn't be turned into super emotionless ninjas, they should live a little !
Anthony Romanov
For the Colony!
Sapphire Rose
Trippleeeeeee
