Ella expected nothing. It was not like she had time to see what killed her, lest to expect something from death. However, the pain came thoroughly and clearly.
Not the kind that makes you scream. The kind that turns screams into silence. She could feel every pore of her body being crushed into paste. Her spine—if there was anything at all—felt like it had become jam between the foot and the ground.
Her ribs were gone. And there was no air to breathe because her lungs were no longer lungs. Just mush.
Everything she was experiencing screamed her death, but the said death seemed to hide from her. Oddly enough, she could, creepily, watch her own crushed self like a bystander.
For a moment, Ella floated above her dead body, watching the figure supported by that titan's foot disappearing into the horizon.
[Challenge Boss: The Walking Deserter]
[About the challenge: Defeat the walking disaster plaguing Dustspire and liberate the inhabitants from the might of a fallen titan.]
[Challenge Difficulty: Apocalyptic.]
Ella read the message more than she had to. Then almost blanked at the difficulty level of her challenge. And then deflated into a shrug, remembering she was already dead.
But, why is she still here, not in the afterlife if that exists? Ella glanced at herself, then at the system screen.
]System notification.]
Your death has triggered the legacy condition, Endless Death.
Calculating resurrection timer… Complete.
Resurrecting...
The pain she thought was going to fade didn't fade; rather, it reversed. Her body parts began pulling themselves back together like someone had hit undo on her crushed body.
However, this undo was the beginning of a new kind of pain. Her bones reformed, tissues started forming on them as her veins joined together. Skin stretched, inflated again, with blood starting to recede into her pores.
Her fingers twitched, and she blinked her eyes to be open in her newly regenerated body.
"What the hell…?"
She gasped, lying flat, staring up at the blue sky once again, greeting the twin suns with a grunt. She sat up. Just like that.
You have used your legacy once.
Death Energy: 130/140
You have copied a new trait: Walking Deserter
You have unlocked one skill core on Walking Deserter: Cracked Awakening.
{
Cracked Awakening: The titan stirs. A faint tremor is felt when he moves.
Effect: 100% HP regeneration when below 10% of health. Can stack up to three magic damages to unleash a minor earthquake at each skill activation.
Legacy, Walking Deserter, has seven skill cores left to unlock.
Next skill core: Grudge Slam. (100 system points to unlock)
Your current skill points: 0
}
Ella blinked. Or at least she was pretty sure she blinked. Everything felt numb—even her thoughts. She lifted her hand, watching her newly regenerated fingers flex. Her palm was covered in a faint violet glow.
"…What is this?" Her voice came out flat, like always. However, that too failed to mirror her confusion. Her brain took a few moments to decipher what the hell just happened before she abruptly called her status panel.
[Ella's Status Panel]
Trait: Goddess of Death, Walking Deserter
Bloodline: True Origin of Death
Rank: Awakened
Tier: 1
Level: 0/10
STR: 10, AGI: 10, INT: 14, END: 10 (Average for humans: 6)
Death Energy: 130/140
Health Points: 100/100
Mana points: 140/140
Legacies:
[Goddess of Death] ->
??? (100000 system points to unlock)
(Three more skill cores to unlock)
[True Origin of Death] ->
1. Endless Death
2. Physique of the Origin of Death
3. Aura of Death
Next -> Throne of the Forgotten (10000 system points to unlock)
(Five more skill cores to unlock)
[Walking Deserter] ->
1. Cracked Awakening
Next -> Grudge Slam (100 system points to unlock)
(Seven more skill cores to unlock)
[Ella's status panel ends.]
And the contents on it took her breath away instantly.
Everyone who awakened their traits—unless they were chosen by the cosmic system and became Magical Beings—couldn't unlock their skill cores.
Ella had heard it was different for higher-level worlds, as the system would initiate system battles in those worlds, allowing beings there to unlock their skill cores and become more powerful.
There were Magical Beings who had useless traits that became overpowered after their first skill core was unlocked. The same thing now seemed to have happened with her. Except she had also awakened her bloodline.
Ella frowned at the number of skill cores for all her traits. The better the number of skill cores a legacy had, the more powerful the Magical Being became.
Her attention quickly returned to her surroundings. The trembling caused by the titan moving across the plane had disappeared. The desert now seemed to come alive as she sensed multiple movements in the surroundings.
Only then did she recall she was currently in a challenge. That too—of Apocalyptic difficulty. The most difficult challenge anyone had ever cleared in the whole of Solaris was Nightmare difficulty.
That person was the current owner of Solaris. And even he had cleared it when he was in King Class, that's ninth rank.
Could she clear this challenge?
If it was before, she wouldn't even think about winning. However, after everything that happened… her lips curled slightly. Before anything, she had to clear some doubts.
She mentally called her system: "What will happen if I am killed again by that boss?"
[Death energy required to resurrect after first-time kill: 10. Second time by the same cause: 10². The amount will increase as 10ⁿ as you die to the same cause.]
Simply put, if she was killed by that boss again, it would take 100 death energy for her resurrection. If she died a third time, it would reach 1000.
"So I need death energy to resurrect." She glanced at her total capacity.
"How to increase my death energy capacity? And what is the regeneration rate of it?"
[You can increase the capacity of your death energy and mana points by improving INT. Every level in Tier 1 grants a single free point. Every five levels in tier one give two points in every stat.]
That meant in Tier 1—that's until level 20—she would get 20 extra points. Ella had already decided where to dump these points as her gaze shifted to the horizon.
She was a hermit vampire for sure, but that didn't mean she had no idea how to survive in system challenges.
Most of her time had been spent reading wilderness survival guides, so she had a rough idea of what to do first. She murmured the mantra for surviving in odd, dangerous places:
"Find a shelter, then water, then food…"
With that in mind, she treaded through the sand toward the jagged rock a few meters ahead of her.