Punching the puddle of blood beneath his body my past self got up to his feet with a groan. Forcing his barely recovered body up as aether filled his wounds and stopped the bleeding.
Walking back into the hall Strife let out a long determined exhale. The gauntlets across his forearms strengthening as the patches of armour across the rest of his body disappeared. They were useless anyway in the face of the knights overwhelming prowess.
Stood before the white throne, the cracked knight leered over its shoulder and its wafting white cape. Watching the fool it had just tossed out willingly walk back in while dripping blood onto the floor.
"You want to know something... thats the first time anyone has shown me what mercy actually is." Strife said as the knight twisted to face him properly. "I've been told what mercy is. Taught how to use it by friends I'll never forget. Until now i always thought mercy was something the weak could only beg for. But now... i see mercy is a strength for those sure of themselves. Those strong enough to be gentle. Hah!... its such an absurd thing, wouldn't you agree, cracked knight?"
No answer came but the ancient knight watched and listened to his challenger. Awaiting what they would say next.
"Thank you for sating my curiosity on what it means to be merciful. Now, lets try this again then."
With a swift motion the knight moved and i thought it was preparing to attack. Instead it stabbed its massive sword into the black floor and with a quick gesture unbuckled the white cape at its back tossing it atop the blade gripping his wrists.
Surprised a little but seething with anger i asked, "is this supposed to be knightly chivalry? You're teaching me so much today."
Just like before the knight darted forwards but this time i was to slow as it grabbed me by the tatters of my shirt and plunged me into the floor with such force the whole floor shattered. Lifting its fist it then punched down but my hands managed to catch it before it fell.
The knight looked down at me with shock that i wasn't dead already. When in fact i had revived the instant before.
[aspect: taken devourer — telekineses!]
Using psychic power fused with aether my grip on the knight dented into its gauntlet bout before I could do anything he lifted me from the floor and tossed me into a pillar. Immediately following up he punched his fist through the pillar.
Narrowly dodging by a hairs breadth, i immediately counter attacked with an upper punch into the knights chin, shocking it for a moment as a flurry of punches and jabs followed. Swinging its arm it tried to grab hold of me again but i snuck beneath its arm thinking i gained an advantage.
Little did i expect it to be a faint as his sharpened elbow plunged into my back completely shattering my rhythm before being kicked up into the ceiling. Jumping after me the knight punched then grabbed me again to toss me into the back wall.
As i slid down and revived right as i reached the ground, my eyes opened to see the knight with its fist flying right for me.
Blocking just in time my gauntlets lifted above my chest and face meeting the knights assault as he kept flinging mountain breaking punch after punch. Digging me deeper into the wall as the bones in my arms shattered more with each strike until the knight was done.
Stopping its assault it looked at my very clearly dead state, about to turn away before boulders suddenly threw themselves at him from every angle. Breaking across the knights armour.
Looking at me embedded in the wall the knight saw me using the telekinesis of my [aspect] to its fullest as every single broken oak scattered across the room flew and broke itself against the knight before a massive chunk of a broken pillar forced it away.
"Ahhhh!!" With a desperate battle cry i took the advantage beating into the knight's cracked form with my gauntlets as my telekineses crushed rocks across its whole body. Firing like cannons into its body while covering my every opening.
The knight stumbled back one step at a time. Being hit with impact after impact from blitzing stones and devastating punches that barely scratched the knights cracked armour.
[skill: winter inverse — dagger]
A lull came in the assault as i pulled my fist back shifting the material of the my right gauntlet into a blade at its fingertips, then it plunged forwards for the knights chest.
That lull however was all the knight needed.
Using its arm it grabbed one of the many rocks being thrown at it with telekinesis before ramming it into my hand and diverting the dagger away before gripping me by the wrist and swinging me around through all the rocks that would have been thrown at him instead before pummelling into me like a punching bag.
In a rage the knight punched and broke my body before pulling me back in to atop me from escaping to then break even more of my body before grabbing me one last time and tossing me through the floor until i stopped at the foot of the throne it guarded.
Staring up at the statue in a half dead state i wondered one last time who this woman was to the knight to protect her so fiercely. With so much determination.
Beginning to lift up from the rubble as my body healed me from death for perhaps the tenth time, my head slowly raised to see the knight using a telekinesis of his own to lift the sword he embedded in the ground earlier before it shot across the hall and sunk itself through my chest.
My eyes went wide as i saw and felt the sword pass through my sternum all the way out through my spine.
"The knight... could use telekinesis like me?" While the shock of this settled in i could feel death taking me for the eleventh time in this fight.
The knight must have gotten tired of beating me up like a rag-doll seeing i was never giving up and decided to end it all once and for all.
Even as i laid dead with the sword trapping me in death, my curiosity about the knight burned. It was unlike anything i had ever met before, there was so much i wanted to know about it.
What was its story?
What drove it to protect this place?
What made the woman in that statue so important?
What put the knight here when its clearly so powerful?
[aspect: taken devourer - death thief]
I want to know. To find out these answers by any means even if i needed to take apart that knight in the process.
[aspect: taken devourer - life thief]
This knight is incredible! I want to take it! I need to take! I will take it!
[aspect: taken devourer - taken mind]
Black slush erupted across my body. Forcing me back to life even with the giant sword in my chest as my body dripped with ink turning into something strange that shouldn't exist.
The knight watched my resurrection in shock and stretching its hand out its telekinesis ripped the sword out from my chest.
[aspect: taken devourer - fang]
With a slight squint a black and silver dagger shot out from my body, embedding into the sword and pinning it to the ground.
The cracked knight's astonishment continued as several more of theses fangs grew out from my ink dripping body and floated into the air with threatening sharpness.
With the exhale of steam from what was my mouth my new body shot forwards with the floating daggers plunging into the knights body. Bisecting into pieces before my hand of ink grabbed it by the face and shoved it into the ground with mountain shaking force.
The knight still fought back. Swinging its arms punching into my strange new body of ink before it finally managed to find something it could grip and tossing me off from atop of it.
It lifted from the floor trying to pounce but six of the fangs sunk its body, then my hand raised, wrapping it in psychic force before i ran at it. Screaming in desperate rage to win as its massive sword flew into my hand.
Flailing its body the knight ripped out the fangs piercing through its cracked armour grabbing the sword just in time even as my telekinesis crushed in around it.
"Raaahhhhh!!!!"
Forcing my body to the limit with all the aether, psychic power and force of will i could muster. I shoved the knight back into the wall before it could no longer hold on and i rammed its own sword straight through his chest. Just like he had done to me earlier.
Staring at me in my strange form the knight wore an appeased look in its eyes before it finally, at long last, died.
The ink that spewed from my body started reaching out to him but i stumbled back and ceased the strange power immediately. Returning to my original human appearance as i huffed in my exhaustion before saying a few words.
"You were... by far... the best." Falling backwards the exhaustion fully overwhelmed me and i collapsed onto the floor.
Back then i didn't realise it immediately, it was only after i met Raptor that i had fully become a kralscell. Me embracing my [aspect] fully was the trigger of it.
Watching the completed fight with me, Thorn let out an impressed scoff. "Damn. Ingrik really kicked your ask, huh?"
"Its not completely over just yet." I muttered while looking up at the knight on my other side. Seeing him watch with an appreciative expression.
Lifting up from the floor my past self gathered enough energy to approach the white throne and the black statue of a woman presenting her sword to he who approached it.
Falling to his knees realising he was still exhausted, my past self huffed in annoyance before noticing the writing at the bottom of the throne and reading it aloud.
"To you who finds this place. My name is Sigrid, the first kralscell, and one of the fourteen apocalypses that destroyed
Back then i thought that was stupid. It was clear enough the knight wanted nothing more than to die protecting the remains of its master that it had already failed to protect once. But then i read a little lower.
"If it is the child of sentience that finds this place. I'm sure you will do as i hope . Forhorn and Seririna would surely ask you to follow this childish wish of a long since dead woman. So should you agree to my plea, my sword is yours to take."
It was shocking way back then to learn that Forhorn and Seririna, the two entities that dwell within Sefirot within my throne-world, were familiar with this Sigrid who claimed to be the first kralscell. The two of them only had pieces of their memories leftover but both confirmed this as truth after their memories recovered a little bit from me reading that.
It was clear that Forhorn and Seririna fusing into a singular kralscell was something Sigrid was part of. It was also clear Seririna and Forhorn played active roles in the apocalypse of
Even so. Sigrid, the first kralscell. simply her asking was more than enough for the me back then. I already wanted to take Ingrik for myself after all, and now i knew he had possible answers about what the kralscell's themselves were.
Lifting up from the floor my past self grabbed hold of the terribly made sword in the black statue's hands, saying, "as a fellow kralscell. Following your final wish will be a little difficult now, but I may have a way of mending that."
As i lifted the crooked machete that was more like a baseball bat, several embers fled the obsidian like Sigrid's spirit was still within it, and at peace now that her wish had been finally fulfilled.
Amused a little by this. My past self gripped the sword in both his hands dripping with drying blood before walking back to the knight's corpse and standing over it.
Simply watching over the knights remains for a moment my past self pondered if what he thought was possible would be. Taking the dead's spirit and turning it into a soldier of his own. He had no idea if it would work, but he had been told by the only kralscell still alive from since
He had also seen the armies made by the kralscell's of evolution and corruption that swept across
Taking this knight for ourself was entirely possible.
[aspect: taken devourer - taken ego]
Extending a hand we reached out our influence across several dimensions. Bestowing power onto the knight's spirit trying to bring it back to life, but it resisted. Clicking his tongue my past self tried again a second time but that failed as well. Now the feeling that he had barely one attempt left washed over him and he didn't want to lose the story this knight could tell him.
Having a thought he then said, "your previous master is long since dead. She wished for you to live as something other than a destroyer even after she died, but i cannot promise that. Instead, i can offer you that you can remember her for eternity. Teach me mercy as my knight from now on, and you can let your former master rest in peace knowing her story was not lost to time. Please tell me her and your story."
[aspect: taken devourer - taken soul!]
A burst of power radiated from the knight's corpse as ink poured out from within its body. Its body convulsed and shifted into a slushy liquid substance similar to ink before standing up straight in front of me. The sword that was in his chest before was now in his hand and a cape of wet ink flowed down in his back.
The knight still had the same cracked appearance as before but was arguably even more imposing with his presence, making my past self question if they had either become more powerful after the resurrection or regained sone of the strength they had lost from the eons of imprisonment.
Dropping to a knee the ink knight bowed its head, and spoke for the first time, "...i will bear your hope from now till eternity, my lord. And tell you my lady's story."
The Ingrik of the present watched the scene closely with Thorn and I. Nodding contentedly knowing he had followed through with those 60,000 year old oaths today.
Thorn and i grinned at the knight covered in cracks with a paint of amber running down his cape. Happy for him for the moment before i turned around with the raven on my shoulder.
"Lets move on to the next place then."
Watching the memory recording vanish the illusion, Ingrik quickly followed. "Yes, my lord."