Mornn
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Chapter 785 S - Another mark against the heavens
🕑 Added 2025-11-03 16:17:28 +0000 UTCAuthor note:
Hi! Ever wondered what a charisma build would be like? Well, wonder no more :)
No spoilers, but there should be anywhere between 1 and 4 Shaily chapters here depending on her results, so no matter what we will be back to Sofia shenanigans on Friday at the latest, for those who really can't stand side character POVs :p
Shaily looked with satisfaction at the golden glow now residing under her right arm’s blue skin. The golden bracer was like it was made for her. She couldn’t have imagined a more perfect item in her dreams, it even doubled her main stat charisma.
While the bracer was fusing with her arm, she had spent a bit looking at space and the surface below through the windows, sending mana into her armor to let its repair function patch up the holes. When she finally felt ready, she finally glanced at the scoreboard screen near the staircase.
‘Floor 100
Known people who have failed on this floor :
Sen
Saria Aphenoreth
Current rank : 5
(You are currently ranked at the bottom of this floor’s list)
Should you complete this floor, you will climb to rank : 1 or 2, depending on performance’
“Teacher should be rank one, right? But I’m rank five currently, and there were four missing items. Is the last missing person Saint Tartaros? Wait, no, wouldn’t he appear here, then?”
Sen appeared next to Shaily without a sound.
“Tartaros never took the second trial,” Sen told her, hands behind his back, “he shot past the filter by accident.”
“What?! That’s crazy… Wouldn’t that disqualify him for the other trials?”
Sen nodded with a smile, "Exceptional people get exceptional treatment. You can count yourself on that short list now. I am curious to see how you will fare on the last floor.”
“Were you close to doing it?” Shaily asked.
“Not quite,” he answered with a light laugh, “I am currently fourth place. Hopefully later today I will be relegated to fifth.”
“Any advice?”
“Of course not. How would that be fair? As you can see there is no timer, you’re allowed to take your time here before going up, that’s as much as I can say.”
“Nothing then. Alright. I won’t make you wait much longer, just give me time to cheat a bit more mana into the last floor.”
With a proud smirk, Sen disappeared.
By ‘A bit more mana’, Shaily meant as much as she possibly could, because her mana regeneration, a bit above 23 points a second, always felt horrendously slow. If the trial generously offered to let her prepare and cheat several times her maximum mana as summoned sprites in advance, she was not going to pretend to be above doing just that.
Over the next several hours, she fully saturated her body and armor with elemental+dark sprite pairs, and summoned an extra cloud of a few hundred sprites that happily flew around her like a small colorful galaxy. She kept going until she hit her absolute limit, and couldn’t control a single extra sprite.
Watching her status page, she drank some water and ate a light snack as she watched her mana refill its last points
Name : Shaily Ormoncleth
Age : 20
Class : [Sprite Regulator] ♢
Level : 199 ♢
Health: 8980/8980 (10level (0-100) + 20level (101-199) + 1000 + 5000)
Stamina : 8980/8980 (10level (0-100) + 20level (101-199) + 1000 + 5000)
Mana: 58324 / 58500 (50level (0-100) + 500level (101-199) + 4000)
Specialization : [Elemental Order]
Alteration chance : 100%
Active Skills (7/7)
[Call Elemental Sprite] ♢
[Element Burst] - Level 199
[Sprite Chain] - Level 199
[Rejuvenating Sprite] - Level 199
[Fuse Elemental] - Level 2
[Deny] - Level 2
[Containment Zone] - Level 2
Passive Skills (6/6)
♢ [Hand of Ordinance] ♢
[Aura of Sprite Speed] - Level 199
[Split Focus] - Level 199
[Greater Regeneration] ♢
[Equal Reaction]
[Elemental Extraction] - Level 2
Classless Skills (6 / 6)
[Kleptran Influence] - Level 1
[Smear]
[Identify] - Level 2
[Regenerator] - Level 100
[Tireless] - Level 97
[Explosive regrowth] - Level 98
Wildcast (2)
[Maiden Bolt]
[Piercing Angel’s bolt]
[Mark of Ormoncleth]
“All set. Ready, everyone?”
The sprites fluttered and glimmered in the faint sunlight, the sun was starting to disappear over the dark horizon.
“Perfect. Let’s do this!”
Filled with anticipation, Shaily took her first step on the spiraling staircase leading up to the tower’s last floor. She climbed and climbed, shocked at how long she was spending in the stairs, until a melody started playing, one instrument at a time, following the rhythm of her steps.
When the music reached its climax, she finally took the last few steps, the hundredth floor coming into view. Shaily watched with surprise the flat, barren platform, the sea of stars surrounding her, the ghostly orchestra that slowly stopped playing, and the one other person here, a green-skinned orc.
By the time all of her sprites followed out of the stairs, only the harp continued playing a soft background melody.
The muscular orc was wearing nothing but burlap shorts and a golden crown, sitting cross-legged on the ground, facing away from Shaily.
“Welcome, challenger,” he greeted, getting up with slow, practiced movements that felt too gracious for his bulky frame.
All kinds of alarm bells rang in Shaily’s mind. This orc wasn’t normal. Not normal at all. He was too tall, at least three meters, and her sprites, usually so brave, now seemed all timid and scared, like children facing their scornful father.
“A fourth challenger in such quick succession. I have no time to be bored these days. What is your name?”
“Shaily Ormoncleth.”
The orc visibly flinched at the name. And suddenly let out a roaring laughter. “Ahahah! Good! Great! I can hardly wait!”
He turned around, revealing a scarred face with a single eye left, and a large smile full of sharp fangs. A spiked heavy plate armor formed around his body; the pieces appeared one by one and clamped together around him. Extending his right hand, a regular-looking longsword appeared in his grasp.
But Shaily’s eyes were focused on a single thing. The orc’s crown.
Isn’t that teacher’s crown?!!!
It’s the exact same just without the jewels!
“Let us see if you are worthy of my crown; now come, challenger!”
The music started again as system windows appeared in Shaily’s vision, some from the trial, one from her own hurried [Identify].
[Incarnation of Victory - Level 199]
Fuck.
As the platform expanded in all directions, the Orc gave a final line before closing the visor of his helmet.
“I am Victory! Prepare yourself!”
[Ranking Spire Phase 2 : Floor 100 - Defeat]
Shaily had her sprites fly out and form a wide dome above the platform as Victory charged ahead.
A god.
Victory started the battle with a very obvious horizontal cut, yet it was so fast, Shaily barely managed to lean back enough to avoid it, even with [Smear] tripling her reaction speed. The sword whooshed above her, cutting the tip of her hair.
Before she could even steady herself, the sword was already coming back the other way, aimed down slightly.
Three lightning and shadow sprite duos escaped Shaily’s right hand, crashing into Victory’s sword. The sprites exploded, a lightning bang coursing all over Victory’s armor, and stopping the momentum of his sword just enough that Shaily could drop to the ground. She kicked Victory’s shin, a fire sprite imbued in her leg exploding on impact, but the damage on the orc’s armor looked minimal.
Victory sent Shaily flying with a heavy kick that carved a bloody hole in the middle of her chest.
In one hit, her health had plummeted down from 8 to 4 thousand.
At the same time her [Equal Reaction] passive activated, all the sprites stored in her destroyed chest latching onto Victory’s foot and self-destructing, hitting it with the same force he had hit her. It was barely enough to shatter his leg armor.
With gritted teeth through the pain, she tried to stabilize her flight, and [Maiden Bolt]ed herself to the side, to prevent being flung out from the platform. She landed harshly on the ground, but her health was almost back to full. The hole had been closed by hastily regrown flesh, while a [Rejuvenating Sprite] continuously worked on soothing the pain.
Shaily did not get a second to breathe.
Victory’s sword came flying at her like a spinning boomerang.
Still sprawled on the ground, she had no time to dodge, and could only raise her arm in front of her to protect herself.
BANG! The sword hit Shaily’s forearm dead on, but it failed to even cut through the skin. The golden bracer fully stopped the deadly blade. But the impact remained, Shaily was pushed back several meters, sliding on the stone ground, half of her bones shattered by the sheer force behind the blow.
Spitting blood, grimacing through the pain, she tried to store victory’s sword in her ring, but discovered it was still linked to the orc by a thick string of mana, and impossible to plunder. Her regeneration was fast but painful, as she forced herself to stand back up, unabated by her failed theft.
She was free to move for just a moment as Victory’s sword flew back to his hand.
With a thought, she controlled all the ice sprites she had out flying above the arena to collapse on Victory.
Victory punched and slashed the ice sprites one by one, Shaily barely able to even see his movements. For a moment, she felt despair, watching her sprites die pointlessly. But the ice sprites were not going down without a fight, for each sprite that died, some ice formed over Victory’s armor.
Shaily did not waste the time her sprites bought her. Her right hand channeled a piercing angel bolt, protected by all the lightning sprites still hiding inside of her skin, while her left hand channeled [Fuse Elemental]. For ten thousand mana, she fused the most numerous of the sprites she had summoned before, a hundred water sprites.
A tall creature made of a vortex of raging water like a typhoon formed between Shaily and Victory.
[Minor Water Elemental - Level 199]
The Water Elemental unleashed a torrent of pressurized water at Victory just as the last ice sprites disappeared. But it never reached Victory. With a simple movement, he explosively discarded his frozen armor, escaping the layers of ice, and avoided the water.
Victory raised his sword, and Shaily could already imagine her elemental getting split in half.
No!
She ordered the remaining lightning sprites in the dome formation to all strike together.
Victory roared. A battlecry charged with mana that made all the lightning sprites explode like fireworks, while Shaily was stunned and the water elemental was knocked back.
When Shaily’s senses recovered, Victory was nowhere to be seen.
Shaily was alarmed, but her sprites warned her. Behind.
She turned around, the barely forged piercing bolt slamming into the tall orc’s side like a vicious spear. He was wounded, but that did not slow his sword. Shaily’s head flew, separated from her body.
Comments
Mánalėikr
TFTC!
Wensber
Thanks for the chapter!
Amythyst
Iirc there's enough gems for three crowns and they'd planned around those being used
Tejing
Considering she's already demonstrated how powerful her [Greater Regeneration]/[Regenerator]/[Explosive regrowth] skills are, I don't see it as that much of a cliffhanger.
Tejing
She did, yes. Guess she changed her mind.
Tejing
Well, I'm certainly getting into this fight. Love what you've done with it so far.
Sky
*reads last sentence* Look Shaily, I know you admire your teacher, but you shouldn't go that far to imitate her!
Cyclone001
Speaking of those skills, I'm pretty sure Shailey learned to wildcast bone armor in her first trial. I don't see it in her list - wildcast or otherwise.
CherMi
Didn't she want to get Shenanigans instead of Identify back in previous trial?
Songy
I completely forgott Shaily got 'Maiden Bolt' and that it's basically a movement skill. Oh the 'what if's of Sof's old skills are fun.
Cyclone001
That is an evil cliff hanger considering it is possible to die in this trial.
Ceasar Salas
Thanks for the early chapter; Always a welcome blessing! Anyone else imagining the water elemental as the ones from Warcraft, but without the arm bands?
Tom Asciola
Ah yes, Shaily the Sprite Regulator vs Incarnation of Victory. I'm actually pretty interested in how this goes. D'you suppose Victory can make as many crowns as he wants, or that he got it back because Sofia incorporated hers into a new item?
Spencer
This is gonna be great, im loving shaily so far.
Mornn
She not only had to suffer one year of Sofia teachings, but she also had to be her for her first trial, they're truly the same kind of monsters now :p
Joshua Nutter
The 2 things that come to mind about why he flinched at Ormoncleth are either because O is “the queen”, and therefore possibly the most feared of the group, or my personal guess, that being that 1 lord actively adopting is interesting, multiple lords adopting is very worrying
Lazy Monster
TFTC. Truly Sofia most devoted student. “Oh I have prep time? How many nukes can I make to launch at the fights start?”
Kennyevilmonkey
Yay, early chapter!
OmniGlitcher
Thanks for the chapter! Nice to see a new perspective of this fight. Interesting that he flinched at Ormoncleth but not at Aphenoreth. >[Minor Water Elemental - Level 199] Well, definitive confirmation of elementals being better sprites is appreciated. :P
Joshua Nutter
I had truly forgotten how absurd it is for a level 199 to be fighting Victory
Mornn
I always get hyped when I write cool boss scenes, so have your early chapter on account of that :D
