Chapter 257: Coming With A Vengeance

The next time Finn opened his eyes, the first thing he registered was the stone ceiling. He lay still for a moment, taking stock of the changes to his body.

The new soul mass — or rather, masses, since there were practically trillions of the microscopic little things — made his body feel fundamentally different. He could practically feel every individual cell.

Compared to the other soul masses he’d assimilated, the direct effect of this “collective” microbe soul mass was much more evident. It suffused through his entire body, not just his soul, almost like he had nanites coursing through his bloodstream.

Finn analyzed the feeling for a few seconds where he lay, before finally sitting up and taking in the full view of the chamber.

It had been wrecked beyond recognition, like something had tried very hard to unmake it. Deep gouges ran across the floor in long parallel lines. One entire section of the left wall had been blown inward. There were even scorch marks scattered about the chamber haphazardly, all finished with a fine metallic dust that coated everything — the telltale signs of what had clearly been high impact shavings off a metal weapon.

Slick Jones was dead. He lay near the far wall, collapsed in a way that made his cause of death obvious without requiring examination.

Vara was propped against the wall beside him, alive, but not whole. Her arms were sliced cleanly from below her elbows, leaving her without a significant portion of her arms. Her eyes were barely open, but they were watching Finn with an intensity that showed she hadn’t yet given up on anything.

Althea stood in the center of it. Clothes torn, hair loose, one sleeve missing entirely. Yet without a single scratch on her skin.

Finn looked at the destruction around her, took in the view of everything, and immediately knew what had happened.

A fight… and from the looks of it, one strenuous and dangerous enough to tax Althea and make her wreak such havoc, which was actually surprising.

Finn knew just how strong Althea was. Even without using her Transcendent abilities, he’d watched her kill twenty men back on the ship deck without breaking a sweat.

For her to go this far… For her to have to resort to her Transcendent powers, Vara must have pushed her really hard. She must have been hiding something significant. Something that hadn’t shown itself during the entire voyage. Resources kept in reserve for exactly this kind of moment, spent all at once when she thought the moment had finally come.

“She moved the second you went down,” Althea calmly explained after noticing Finn wake and take in the view. “Both of them. She had artifacts I hadn’t accounted for… I would’ve killed her, but I kept her alive just in case…”

Finn nodded, understanding her reasoning. He might still have some use for Vara.

He stood up from the ground and took a step forward, immediately feeling the effect of his much denser soul. Already he’d felt reality trying to accommodate him after his soul got denser with each assimilation, but this was no longer something that could be ignored. His body, as the vessel of such a dense soul, was now influencing the world visibly with each step he took.

Finn steadied himself, then walked over to Vara.

She watched him approach without changing expression. Despite her beaten up state and her cut-off arms, she still had a stubbornness behind her eyes. The discontent and unwillingness she’d kept hidden were on full display now, and they were directed at Finn.

She still thinks she can do something… Finn mused internally. She still has one more play left in her…

That was the only reason she was choosing to spend what remained of her on staying alive. Whatever card she’d kept concealed through the entire voyage, through the temple, through watching him claim everything she’d come here to take — she still hadn’t used it yet. She was waiting for the right moment.

Finn thought about what that card could be for a moment.

Then stopped.

It didn’t matter. There was nothing she could produce from whatever she had left that would change his position in any meaningful way. Not because she wasn’t capable — she clearly was, and she was clearly still thinking. But the gap between what she could do and what he was now wasn’t something a petty last card could bridge.

She could play everything simultaneously and he would deal with it the way he’d dealt with the Frost Tiger’s ice spikes. Simply by being more present in reality than anything she threw at him.

He crouched in front of her and pressed his fingers to the stump of her right arm, conjuring flames in an instant. Heat built, controlled and specific, and her wound was cauterized cleanly.

It was something that should have been very painful, but through it all, she didn’t make a single sound even as he moved to the left and did the same.

“You’re keeping me alive,” Vara finally spoke with a cracked voice barely above a whisper.

“You might be useful,” Finn replied cursorily. “You’re the only one with knowledge of your great-grandfather coming here… There might be things you’d be useful for later.”

He saw her file his response away, as if she was adding that to whatever she was calculating, but still, he didn’t care. He simply stood after making her bleeding stop, looking around the room at what to do next.

Ailin was near the corridor entrance, standing exactly as she always stood — like she’d been there the entire time and would be there after everything else had finished.

Her black eyes were already on Finn, observing him in a way that was starting to make him wary. The way she observed and the way she even spoke, the cadence to her voice, everything had been subtly changing for several corridors now.

“The ascent continues,” she said the obvious, staring at Finn while she spoke.

The cadence to her voice was different. Less considered. More like something being transmitted through her than something she’d chosen to say. Finn looked at her for a moment, then turned toward the corridor without responding.

Of course he was going to continue moving up the ranks of soul masses. No matter whether the Blessed — No. “The Mnemosyne” — had to say about it. No matter if she was speaking the words of the Great One. No matter if there was a machination in place, just like Vara, he simply didn’t care.

He was going to keep going regardless. He would keep amassing his soul masses and keep getting stronger… Strong enough to trump any plans or machinations waiting for him at the end.

.

.

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The next Corridor was 16. The corridor that correlated to his Rank 15/21 soul mass from the future. The Iron Winged Ferropteryx Eagle.

He knew this soul mass very personally. It was the soul mass that had brought him the most suffering for an extended period. He had battled with its debilitating soul debts, adjusting his lifestyle to cater to the needs of Ferropteryx that he’d had no choice but to summon in time of his need, and it had made him truly pay.

He knew a lot about this prideful creature. Even from the Crimson Tyrant’s trial, he’d seen it in action, thoroughly beating the Tyrant. So he knew just how terrifying it was.

But he was stronger now… He was not the same Finn that the Ferropteryx had overwhelmed back in Xanth in the future. And neither was he holding only the Crimson Tyrant that the Ferropteryx had so thoroughly beaten.

He was a whole different animal now…

And this time he was coming with a vengeance.

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