The Calling of Wrath - Book 2 - Chapter 44 - Insanity (Patreon)

You may ignore these lines as they are because a certain website is stupid and has made some stupid new changes.

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                                                            Cassandra
                                          Year 820 | Month 3 | Day 26

Silence fills the center of the glacier after the ice wraith goes silent. Not a single creature moves. Not the ice wraiths, not the yetis, not the wyverns, and certainly not me.

I just rigidly stare at the creature who I couldn’t even sense approaching me. Not even with my aura.

Eventually the lich turns its gaze to the ice wraith that is currently just a pile of red ashes on the ground. He then walks over to it and runs his hands through the ashes.

“Just as I thought,” his eerie voice echoes in my ear, as if he was standing right next to me while saying it. He turns his head to look at me again and asks, “You’re an Embodiment of Wrath, aren’t you?”

I tense up at his words, but he doesn’t even bother letting me answer as he stands up again and just appears standing right in front of me with his skeletal arms crossed in front of his cloaked ribcage. And it takes everything in me not to run away.

Why does this lich know what I am? What is he? Who is he? And how the hell is he so fast?! Is he at the end of Tier 4 or something?!

It would certainly explain why even the wyverns, who are also Tier 4, are afraid of him.

“Well, you’re not running,” he says, tilting his head to the side, “that’s a start at least.” Then he straightens his head again and half asks half states his question again despite likely already knowing the answer, “You’re the Wrath I sensed born not too long ago.”

As if forced to by some sort of power, I feel my head nodding up and down once in agreement.

“There, that wasn’t so hard, now was it?” he says, a chuckle filling the silence of the glacier.

I grit my teeth in anger, but he just ignores me to turn to the other ice wraiths at this vein opening and wave his hand, causing a wave of miasma to envelop them all, turning each of them into an undead that then walks over to the vein opening he was controlling. Then he turns back to me again and explains, “Gotta keep my spot safe after all.”

My eyebrow twitches.

Keep your spot safe? Who the hell here is going to try taking it in the first place?!

“Now then!” the lich says, clapping his bony hands once and making a clacking sound echo throughout the still-silent glacier. “I’m in a good mood thanks to finding an interesting toy!” my eyebrow twitches again. “So go ahead and ask me any question you want, and I’ll answer it!”

I blink in surprise before tilting my head in confusion.

“Why, you ask?” he asks despite me not saying a word, “Well, because I haven’t seen an Embodiment in soooo long. Just way too long.”

My brows furrow this time.

Uh, doesn’t that mean he’s seen one before? Actually, no. I should ask my questions to him instead of pondering them.

“How did you know I was an Embodiment of Wrath?” I ask, trying very hard to keep my voice from shaking.

The lich just points at the pile of red ashes on the ground and doesn’t say anything.

Silence stretches on for a few seconds until he eventually seems to realize that I have no idea what he means, beyond that something about me being Wrath turned that ice wraith to ash in a single slash.

“Oh, um, well let’s see,” he says, apparently unprepared for actually answering my question, making me begin to question this lich’s intelligence. In my head, of course. “I’m hoping you know that monsters are made of Sin energy, because I’m not going to explain that. But what you don’t know is that when something drinks the lifeblood of Fafnir – the dragon thingy currently being drained of its lifeforce to feed everyone here – they also grow closer to any Sin that might be in their body. Particularly the Sins the dragon has making up his being, Wrath, Pride, and Greed.” He pauses here, tapping his finger against his bony chin before raising it and pointing the finger at the Wrath energy making up my aura around us, “So when your pure Wrath energy entered the body of a monster whose own Wrath Sin – a much more impure one – was recently drawn out by the dragon’s blood, this-” he pauses again to indicate the pile of red ash “- is the result.”

I stare at him for a few seconds, then turn my gaze to the pile of ash.

“Huh.”

“It won’t do that to all of the monsters here though,” he continues, drawing my gaze back to him again. “Sin energy is quite random, you see. So two of the monsters of the same species could be made from two completely different Sin energies. So who knows what monsters you’d be able to turn into a pile of ash here? If any.”

I blink in surprise at that, only to glance at the ashes once more, and then look at the li- Wait. Where did he go?

“Well, I think my interest in you is about running out, so have fun!” I hear the lich’s voice again, making me turn to find him once again at the vein opening he was using before.

What. The fuck. Just happened?

And more importantly, why didn’t he stay to answer my other questions? I really am curious to know what happens to humans who drink the ichor, since we, or rather they aren’t born from Sin energy.

I’m also a little curious as to that lich’s sanity. Because he didn’t seem to be all there…

Wait. He just said that I can turn some of the monsters here to ash with just a touch from my Wrath energy… right?

A grin stretches across my face at the thought.

Does that mean I can go on an EXP gathering spree here?!

I quickly l wipe the grin from my face before focusing on the vein opening.

First thing’s first. Get my ichor and raise my World Tree Affinity to 100%.

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