As I lay screaming and squirming on the ground, insensate to all around me and with no idea how long I'd been in that condition, the pain abruptly lessened.

Evolution conditions met: Pain nullification ranks up to pain immunity

Pain is essential for letting you know when you're injured, when something is wrong, or simply when you've pushed yourself too far and it's time to stop. At least in small doses. Sometimes you already know exactly what's wrong, in which case the pain is nothing more than a distraction. You have experienced far too much pain in your short life, having had limbs ripped off and the wounds agitated, suffered an internally injected dose of aranea volito venom, been consumed from the inside out, been melted by a dragon, spent time in a vulpes sagax torture chamber and experienced your soul itself being violently shredded. For surviving such traumatising experiences, albeit after having your personality corroded as a result, your nullification has been upgraded to immunity. This skill grants almost complete immunity to pain, allowing through only what you need to be aware of your surroundings, with only the worst of afflictions able to penetrate your defences.

New skill gained: Soul magic tolerance

There are no classes of magic more insidious than soul magic, whose effects can extend even beyond death. While users are routinely hunted down and executed in almost all civilised lands, there are always a few evil beings who escape the net. This skill offers a small amount of protection, should outside influences attempt to interfere with your soul.

Hah. So, when the mind magic description said something about few classes of magic being more insidious, this one says there are none. Guess I've found the top of the pile. Or more accurately, the bottom. The thought made me laugh. Or attempt to laugh, anyway; the action caused the pain to flare up once more. Stupid badly named skills. In what way was I immune to pain?

"Hey, Katie! Can you hear me?"

Yes, but I couldn't speak. Mi'taan was looming over me, the priestess Do'lelenii behind him.

"I still don't see why we can't bring her back upstairs," I heard So'ballash mutter.

"Because there's no way anyone other than Mru'walyn enchanted that dagger, as I've already said," answered Mi'taan. Had he? I hadn't noticed. Must have been while I was busy screaming. "No-one else can use spatial magic like that. We've been lied to. Whatever mission Mo'teckit was on, it wasn't the same as ours."

Spatial magic? But I'd been hit with soul magic?

"Then what? You want to stay down here forever?"

"Just until she comes around."

"It's been hours. You've watched her die twice already. I imagine the only reason she's stopped screaming is because her mind finally broke."

What? Hours? And I died? Twice?! And respawning didn't fix this?!

I lay completely still on the ground. Any effort to move, from speaking to twitching my little finger, caused unbearable pain.

"No, my healing may have done nothing, but she is improving on her own," said Do'lelenii. "In any case, it will be several more hours until I have fully recovered my mana. It will not be safe to attempt to leave this place before then. We don't know how many walls commander Sru'taklin will need to tunnel under to reach the exit."

"We'd have been ready sooner if you didn't waste your mana by trying to heal her," So'ballash continued to mutter.

Soul magic tolerance advanced to level 2

Yes, please. More of them. Many, many more.

I twitched my fingers, happy to find that doing so no longer caused unbearable agony. Only the marginally more manageable bearable kind.

"Hey, if you can hear me, blink twice," Mi'taan tried.

Blinking sounded nice and easy. I could do that. I blinked twice, and then winced at the pain, which caused yet more pain, which made me wince harder, leaving me in a feedback loop of torment.

"Good, looks like you really are recovering. You were hit by an enchanted weapon which delivered some sort of shock into your body, before vanishing. The purpose seemed to be to disable you and then teleport you somewhere, but your deflection of the weapon meant that the teleportation only caught the bottom of your legs. I don't think you got the full force of whatever the disabling shock was either, but given your condition, you obviously got enough."

Wait, it what? The arch-mage made a dagger that would shred my soul and then teleport whatever was left over back to him? And it had caught my legs? They certainly seemed to be present and correct now, but then they did say I'd died a couple of times. So that was why he mentioned spatial magic.

Soul magic tolerance advanced to level 3

Doing my best to get my body back under control seemed to be triggering the levelling, so I concentrated on making progressively bigger movements without doing anything so strenuous that my body shut back down.

Soul magic tolerance advanced to level 4

Soul magic tolerance advanced to level 5

"Are we just going to let her recover?" asked So'ballash, apparently getting fed up sometime later. "So what if Mru'walyn came up with some way of neutralising her he didn't tell us about? It didn't work, but at least it incapacitated her, so shouldn't we be taking her while we have the chance?"

Not a single member of this group was referring to me as 'it', which was nice, but So'ballash obviously wasn't a fan. Not that I particularly held it against him; rather than him, I was more surprised at the commander, who had actually tried to defend me. Where was he, anyway? I couldn't see him without turning my head, despite his looming bulk, and he wasn't speaking.

"You watched her resurrection just now. Three times. How can you still say that?"

"That doesn't change the fact that she destroyed our town! She killed thousands! I was there, at her trial. I was right behind her when she casually mentioned she had the blight, with a smile on her face, like she was telling a joke. She didn't care in the slightest about what would happen next!"

"Maybe she didn't know? It's obviously not as serious for her as it is for us."

"Dying isn't as serious for her as it is for us!" So'ballash hissed. "Don't ask me to believe that she thinks everyone is personally resurrected by the Goddess each time they die."

"You three. A moment, please. Away from her."

Oh, there's the commander. He was still here after all.

He took the other three into a corner and started whispering, far too quietly for me to pick up what he was saying. If needed, I could probably reach out to touch the statue now, which would let me use fast travel. What was he saying that he didn't want me to hear? I could at least use novice empath to get an idea of their mood.

Trying to activate the skill felt like being crushed while on fire, with a swarm of biting ants crawling over my skin. Suffice to say, I knocked it off very quickly, without learning anything.

The feedback from trying to use trigger respawn hadn't been a one off, then. As well as physical movement, my skills were currently out of use. So, no fast travel either. There I was, worrying about being kept asleep or sealed, but Mru'walyn had come up with something even worse, stripping me of my abilities and persisting across respawns. And this was the effect after blocking most of it! I could do nothing but hope their discussion was nothing bad.

I could hear hisses of disbelief and increasingly agitated whispers coming from the corner, but still had no idea what they were discussing. And I was stuck here, helpless.

Eventually, the four of them returned and stood over me.

"Check her," said the commander, and both Mi'taan and Do'lelenii started waving their hands around. I couldn't activate sense mana, but I felt confident they were doing magic of some sort. Checking what? Even without sense mana, I felt their spells wash through my body, powerless to do anything about it.

"Done? Okay, Do'lelenii first. Please tell me I was wrong."

"You weren't wrong."

The commander spun around and rammed his fist into the wall. Hard. "Mi'taan?" he asked without turning around.

"I concur."

"Dammit. And So'layn was a part of this? What have we done... What have I done? It's no wonder the Goddess has deserted us! And now we've let that man effectively rule over what is left!"

"Not only that," said Do'lelenii. "We let him dispose of the infected in the town. Alone and unsupervised."

The commander punched the wall again, repeatedly, while screaming.

I had no clue what was going on, but no-one seemed to be talking about dragging me back upstairs anymore, so I accepted the good luck and continued trying to get my body back under control.

Soul magic tolerance advanced to level 6

"Testing..." I mumbled, managing to form an intelligible, if quiet, word, without causing myself too much painful feedback.

"Katie?! You're up to talking? How are you feeling?"

"Not too..." I started, before wincing with pain, and trying again at lower volume. "Not too bad considering someone just tried to tear my soul to shreds."

"How do you know that?" demanded the commander, having started paying attention the moment I first tried to talk.

"I assume you know that I grow resistant to classes of magic that are used on me," I whispered. "Sometimes, for particularly significant things, I get a description of an event. That dagger gave the message, and I quote, 'experienced your soul itself being violently shredded'."

Soul magic tolerance advanced to level 7

That single attack was going to get me all the way to ten at this rate. Hopefully, the evolution would help. I needed my skills back!

"I don't suppose you heard any of our conversation just now?" he asked.

"No," I answered, now able to turn the volume up a little.

I saw him glance at Do'lelenii, who gave a shallow nod.

"As if more confirmation was needed..." he muttered. "What the fuck are we supposed to do now?"

"Go upstairs and tell everyone?" suggested Mi'taan.

"Tell everyone what?" I was feeling seriously left out here.

"And do you think that even if every single one of us up there attacks him at once, we'll win?" asked the commander, ignoring me.

"...No."

"What are they even after?" asked the commander, turning back to me. "Katie? I don't suppose So'layn told you what his plans were?"

"Not at all. He promised to stop torturing me if I promised him my unconditional cooperation, but never said what he wanted. I assumed there was some way for him to steal my blessing, as long as I willingly gave it up."

"No. That's not possible," interjected Do'lelenii. "A blessing can never be transferred, regardless of the will of the people involved."

The commander glanced at her.

"I'll admit I can't be certain of that if soul magic was involved," she added, presumably in response. "But I still think it's unlikely."

"Then I have no other ideas, sorry. Umm... If you think it was linked to Mru'walyn, he did comment that he was going to have me save the rest of you."

"Save us? I don't suppose he went into any more detail?"

"No. He just whined for a bit, then hit me with a sleep spell. I have no idea what happened after that, because I didn't wake up until my next death."

"Wait. He captured you? When was this? And how long for?"

Even if they were suddenly being nice to me, there was no way I was going to accurately answer the how long for... "Yesterday? Ish? I've lost track of time, with all the unconsciousness. Which also means I have no idea how long he had me for. Could have been ages."

"That one was a lie," said Do'lelenii. "You may not know the exact time, but you can put an upper bound on it, and it is not 'ages'."

Damn... I blame my current condition for forgetting the priestesses can do that.

"Yeah, it wouldn't have been more than an hour. But that counts as ages to me, when my unconscious body was in the hands of someone hostile."

"That sort of timescale would match up with that big scream he made, before he marched out and demanded we start putting a team together to find you," commented Mi'taan.

"Guess my death interrupted something then. Yay."

"You said we were the second group to watch you resurrect. Who were the first?" asked Do'lelenii.

"A pair of mages in the temple, that time they'd set up a barrier around the shrine."

"Dammit! He knew. All along, he knew!" yelled Mi'taan. This group of fox-kin were really not happy, and for once, it wasn't me they were unhappy with.

Soul magic tolerance advanced to level 8

The fact that I was still getting tolerance levels was actually incredibly disturbing. My resistance skills only resisted attacks. They didn't help to heal the resulting wounds of anything that got through. That implied that rather than attacking me and shutting down, there was still soul magic acting on me. Maybe the respawn-defying paralysis was the main point, and the shredding was a result of the imperfect application?

"This speculation is nice and all, but what, exactly, are we going to do next?" asked So'ballash, speaking up for the first time since their whispered chat. "I'll... acknowledge that maybe bringing her to Mru'walyn may not be the best of ideas. At least without checking if he really has been dabbling in forbidden magic. But we can't just stay here."

"What are you doing here in the catacombs, Katie?" asked Do'lelenii. "Is this where the holy sword you seek is hidden?"

"I don't know. I've searched the top two floors without finding it, so now I'm just working my way down. Which reminds me, Mi'taan, you seemed to be able to see the direction of whatever was controlling the floor layout. Where was it?"

He pointed in a direction that corresponded to the throne room.

"In that direction is a throne room, occupied by an animated suit of armour. And also... me. Or a blighted version of me, anyway. She was friendly to start with, but now the armour seems to be controlling her somehow. My current task in these catacombs is destroying the armour and freeing her."

All four team members stared at me in disbelief.

"Oh, please don't tell me you're going to suggest we help her," complained So'ballash.

Even Do'lelenii shook her head at that. "No. No, I was not going to suggest that. If she wants to 'free' a blighted husk, she can do so on her own."

"I dunno..." said Mi'taan. "A soulless ally might be just the thing we need against a soul mage."

"No," said the commander with finality. "We leave here as soon as Do'lelenii has her mana back, then we gather our survivors and demand Mru'walyn explain himself. If he attacks, he attacks, and either we will deal with it, or we fail."

I had no idea what was going on. Apparently, Mru'walyn had been using forbidden magic? Well, the soul magic description did say soul mages were generally hunted. But he'd said he wanted me to save the fox-kin? As far as I could tell without novice empath, he had been serious. Big, evil necromancer-ish soul mage didn't match up with someone legitimately trying to save his people...

"Can you at least dig me a tunnel to the throne room?"

"No, you can dig your own damn tunnel. While I acknowledge that you were sent here by the Goddess, and that we wronged you badly, that doesn't change the fact that you killed so many of our people. Not just those who sought to capture you, but innocent families and children, and even those who tried to protect you. I'll respect the will of the Goddess, but that doesn't mean I have to like you."

Fair enough. I'd take that over him hunting me down again. I watched the group of fox-kin leave not too long later, the sounds of the commander's explosive digging receding into the distance. Meanwhile, I managed to drag myself into a sitting position, where I could indeed see three of my corpses, one of which was missing its lower legs. Not just my legs, either, but an inverted dome of the ground had vanished. It looked like the dagger had teleported a sphere around itself. I looked around a little more, and yup, there was my shield with a curved segment missing from the bottom. I was fortunate in the way the dagger had bounced.

Now I just needed to regain the ability to stand upright.

Soul magic tolerance advanced to level 9