Chapter 53

“Die, traitor!” Elaine screamed as a sixty-foot-long scimitar slammed down on her clone’s freshly summoned Judgement. Yara hastily raised four hands to block as the ground caved in underneath her. Elaine had many arms to use, and a spear pierced forward while Yara was busy preventing the scimitar from cleaving her in two.

Just before the spear found its mark, a transparent black bear no smaller than Yara’s Judgement appeared and slapped it away. In the center of the bear’s head was Catara, her tattoos covering the surface of the bear’s body. It was her innate gift.

The bear cast Intimidating Cry and released a mighty roar, lowering Elaine’s stats by a fraction of a percent just as a club the size of a hill knocked the beast aside. A deep trench followed the bear as it slid against the ground, while yet another weapon, this time a sword, came to claim Yara’s life.

At this moment, an incorporeal Frod merged with Yara’s Judgment, greatly boosting all of its parameters and reducing the disparity between Yara and her main body. Empowered by Frod’s innate gift, Yara pushed out the scimitar embedded in her shoulder, allowing her to defend against the incoming sword.

All the while, Markus and the six other War Array recipients defended on Yara’s left and right, forming a tight blockade against Elaine’s furious assault. While Elaine’s Judgement skill was amazingly powerful, only ten arms could attack Yara’s group at once. The rest were situated on the other sides of its body, making them useless. By taking advantage of this weakness, Yara and the rest were just barely able to hang on.

But it was a losing battle.

Every attack Yara’s group thwarted consumed either some Health or Mana. Meanwhile, Elaine had only lost a few percent of Mana. The comparison highlighted just how vast the gap between both sides was. War Arrays, First-Class Skyships, unique innate gifts. No matter how many advantages Yara’s group had, they still couldn’t overcome an equipmentless level 983 opponent.

All of this was in accordance with Yara’s divinations.

Karma was an elusive concept, and while Elaine slept, Yara nurtured a civilization from scratch, fuelling the growth of her Karma skill by leaps and bounds. It was now level 856 and around 200 levels higher than her main body. That meant Yara could manipulate things without Elaine’s knowledge.

For example, Yara and her main body primarily perceived the world through karmic lines. So, all Yara needed to do was shift the lines a bit, and suddenly Elaine was oblivious to the movement of the soldiers fuelling the War Arrays.

BOOOOOOOM!

The battle ravaged the land as the minutes passed. Deep ravines and giant pits were everywhere, with broken rocks flying around at incredible speeds at any given moment. The twenty thousand soldiers tried their best to avoid the debris as they surrounded Elaine, but a few were unlucky.

A small rock traveling faster than the speed of sound caved a young woman’s head in, and several others found themselves on the ground without understanding what happened. The injured tried their best to stay silent as they took painkillers and left the battlefield, while anyone nearby carried out those who couldn’t move.

Yara released a flare once she saw everyone in place, and the now nineteen thousand soldiers all withdrew an item from their inventory: a handheld ballista engraved with runes. A moment later, nineteen thousand bolts flew through the air and collided with Elaine’s Judgement. Strangely, the flat-headed bolts stuck to the manifested skill like glue. Attached to the other end of the bolt was a chain still connected to the ballista that fired it.

Just as a surprised Elaine discovered that Yara fooled her senses, the nineteen thousand soldiers quickly unhooked their chain from their ballista and wrapped it around their arm before pulling as hard as possible. While each soldier was much weaker than Elaine individually, their combined Strength stat was far beyond what Elaine could contest with. As a result, Elaine found her Judgement pinned in place and unable to budge an inch. Her prided self-created skill became useless in a single move.

Several things happened simultaneously over the next second while Elaine was defenseless.

Major General Gregory, a bulky short-haired man and one of the War Array recipients, abruptly dashed forward and jumped. He arrived at the chest of Elaine’s Judgement and cast Myriad Strikes, unleashing a hundred punches in an instant and cracking the scales of Elaine’s Dragon Regalia.

Major General Alyssia, a red-haired woman, pointed her staff as Gregory jumped out of the way. A level 500 Holy Ray made its appearance as a thick beam of light pierced through the air. The scales Gregory cracked shattered, revealing Elaine's shocked face.

But the hole they made was too little for what they wanted to accomplish, so Yara stepped forward and used her Judgement’s arms to pry it open further. During all this, Frod merged with one person after another until finally, he empowered Markus, who stood atop Yara’s Judgement.

Markus’s expression was firm as he held a greatsword over his shoulder and activated Inevitable Presence. The air rippled with increasing ferocity as he walked forward, each step causing his back to bend ever further as the skill compressed his strength. The sixth step was his limit. Blood flowed from his eyes and nose, yet he drew upon his will and forcibly took another step.

CRACK!

A web of white lines spread out in the air from underneath Markus’s foot. Tremendous power flowed through Markus’s body as blood gushed out of his pores, and if not for Frod’s empowerment, he would’ve collapsed. Knowing this was as far as he could go, Markus looked up at Elaine and activated his self-created skill: Weight of Virtue.

Channeling the compressed power within him into his greatsword, Markus swung down, releasing a ferocious arc of sword light that almost instantly collided with Elaine’s torso.

Time and space abruptly froze as an unknown power dragged Markus and Elaine into an immaterial world where everything was blurry except for a massive weighted scale. Due to the special nature of the skill, Elaine instinctively understood the rules of this strange space. A sliver of clarity returned to her mind as she gazed at Markus with visible surprise. “You created a skill with interconnection at its core, a tenet of Karma. Did Yara teach you? Why? Who is she to you?”

Markus struggled to stand upright, blood still gushing from his pores and orifices, as he said, “She’s my mother.”

“What?!” The little clarity that Elaine recovered vanished in the blink of an eye. “Impossible. How dare she forget what we’ve lost? It must be some trick, a ploy!”

Markus watched as bloody tears streamed down Elaine’s cheeks. He struggled to imagine the crazed woman before him was once how his mother was. Although he knew they were different people after so many years had passed, he still didn’t agree with how Yara was handling this. Was killing Elaine the only way forward?

Markus tried to reach out to her. “Five hundred years have passed. She hasn’t forgotten; she’s moved on and found happiness again.”

“You lie!” Elaine screamed. “Just thinking of the possibility that I’d forget the rage and injustice that flows through my veins sickens every fiber of my being, so do not speak to me about moving on and finding happiness until you have lost everything you’ve ever loved.”

“Very well,” Markus sighed as the skill Weight of Virtue began to activate.

Motes of light started forming behind Elaine and Markus, some larger than others. The enormous scale floating beside them began tallying each light after determining its intensity and size.

Elaine sneered at the sight. “Child, while I commend you for creating a skill like this, it was foolish of you to target me with it. You are merely less than a century old while I have lived for over two thousand years. How many connections do you think I’ve formed compared to you?”

Weight of Virtue was a skill Markus created by incorporating his understanding of his innate gift and Yara’s teachings of Karma. The skill evaluated a person’s connections, how deep they were, and how many. If the skill determined Markus had fewer connections than Elaine, the skill would damage him instead. That was why Elaine thought Markus had a death wish by using it on her.

However, as time passed, more and more orbs of light formed behind Markus, easily eclipsing Elaine’s side. Elaine couldn’t believe it. “How is it possible for your vessel to influence so many people? Who are you?”

For the first time, Elaine focused all her attention on Markus and the karmic lines surrounding him. Surprise colored her face when she deduced his innate gift. “No wonder. You are one of the Innate Dimension’s chosen. But this ability is ludicrous. What is the System thinking?"

Markus remained silent as the scale to his side began tipping in his favor. Ten million, a hundred million, one billion. Each light represented a person that Markus had influenced positively in some way. As for Elaine, who had slumbered for five hundred years, her connections were pitiful indeed.

A few moments later, the scale ruled overwhelmingly in Markus’s favor. A pulse spread out as the immaterial world shattered, returning Markus and Elaine to the real world. Space unfroze and time resumed.

The sword light that entered Elaine erupted as Weight of Virtue dealt a deadly blow. Blood spewed out like a fountain from the large gash on Elaine’s chest that started from her shoulder and ended at her hip.

The Judgement covering Elaine vanished as she fell to the ground accompanied by the clangs of nineteen thousand bolts.