The Nine was someone known for her powerful healing abilities; people who were sick would come to her and ask to be cured. She was also said to be quite beautiful, and so was given the nickname of Goddess. To the Children of Praise, she was known as Eir and served an important role in their research due to her absolute intelligence.

Yet, things have changed quite drastically even since the Queen gained control of her and the rest; her power became corrupted, a curse that only she suffered. From being able to cure diseases to spreading them. It was also why she could use soul attacks, since they can be used like a poison, just like he does.

Now, on how The Jack was able to heal him, and how he had become immune to the attacks himself, he had no idea. But he knew that the day would come when he did figure it out, after all, after The Nine, there’s only one more before he has to fight J.

But even if The Nine was able to inflict soul attacks on him, she was still vulnerable to them himself. So there was still a chance that he could win if he just got the poison going, and enough for it to kill her.

[Pierce the End]- This blade was meant to pierce the Gods, the world at that. And such, every time it pierces, the damage done is increased. How much it increased depends on the class of the enemy, or if they have any influence from a God.

It was an ability he overlooked, but might serve as his only chance in the next battles. It allowed his pierces to be strong enough to do damage, no matter the class of the enemy, or at least that was how he hoped it worked.

The Nine should be a Harbinger, and while it was normally bad news, in this scenario, not only is his thrust increased by the class, but also the high influence the Queen has on her.

Out of all the Knights, surprisingly, she was her favorite, the King being second, and of course, Jack being in third place. But when you consider how rebellious he was, with being able to get out of her control, he should have been last place, but due to his power, he was one of her favorites.

And being her number one, The Queen must be trying hard to keep her under her grasp, using more Abyssal influence on her, meaning, his attacks increase in power from that too.

It was great, but what wasn’t was what he was going to have to do after he killed her. For that very same reason, his thrust power is increased. After killing her, the Queen will definitely not just sit and watch anymore. So he was going to have to be careful after that point.

But to get there, he was going to have to find a way to get past the soul attacks.

And he was going to do so by trying to build a tolerance, to make him last longer than her. He was at a disadvantage, since his class was so low, his body wasn’t the most durable, meaning he couldn’t last long if he got hit by it, and that was shown when the arrow hit him.

But how was he going to do that, building a tolerance to something that you can only experience once, isn’t easy.

So he was going to have to experience the closest thing.

…

…

The darkness was everlasting, the shadows stretching endlessly, watching over him like hawks waiting for their prey to finally fall from exhaustion. They pecked at his body, trying to slowly kill him.

There was no escape for the light, no cracks in the walls, no windows. The only thing there was the darkness, that grew with each second, and the little light from his lantern, protecting him from his marks, but not from the shadows themselves.

His eyes were closed as he controlled his breath. But it wasn’t so easy; the air was heavy, almost too heavy. He felt watched, and he was, by who knew how many shadows. He heard all of them, all of their voices; he remembered them all. Their mockery playing on repeat in his mind.

Yet, the voices were coming from his soul…

Shadows don’t have vocal cords; they don’t even have a physical body. They are a replica of a human, an imitation. And so, instead of talking like humans did, they talked with their souls. Which made him wonder, if the Abyss is the god of shadows, and shadows talked by the soul, what was the soul to the Forgotten?

It was said that soul attacks were his weapon, but why? Had it been the one who created them? If so, then it was a terrific creation at that.

He had come here for one single reason: to make his soul stronger.

With the shadows slowly taking turns cracking his soul, he was going to heal to build an endurance to it. Their insults and mockery were going to make him stronger; his soul was going to become stronger, strong enough to handle this terrific creation.

And yet, it was going, quite slowly if he had to say… he didn’t have time to wait. He still had five Knights to go, and then the Queen herself. He also didn’t want to leave Azel all alone in a city where everyone wanted them dead.

He had to find a way to make things faster.

…

He sighed, opening his eyes. The shadows stopped to watch, wanting to see if their words had finally gotten to him, if he couldn’t take it anymore, and was leaving.

But he wasn’t, he walked deeper into the darkness, and laid his lanters on the floor.

He had never known that such a mundane object would be so… valuable and helpful. If it hadn’t been for it, he would have died countless times. And yet now, it was keeping him back.

Smiling, he walked away, stopping just before he walked completely out of the light.

He took one last look at his marks, which had already started to sting, as his arms were burning on the outside and the inside. But he knew that it would only get worse.

Only one step, none came after. He had already fallen onto the floor due to the pain. How much he hated this feeling, he wanted to cut his own arms off, just to get rid of the pain that was hitting his bones and growing stronger with each second.

It was risky what he was doing; after all, he wasn’t sure if he could endure the pain to get back into the light, but there was one reason why he had to do this. The pain was similar to the one from the soul attack… no, it was the same pain. Just that the one from his blade and the arrow was a poison, designed to be weak at first, and grow strong over time, the one from his mark was a constant pain, never being weak in the first place.

There were also the voices, which now he could recognize as the shadows mimicking the voices of his loved ones, making his mind an absolute mess.

It was a painful process that made him clench his fists until his fingernails cut deep enough into his palm so they couldn’t even be seen anymore, for he had to clench his teeth to the point that some were even cracking under the pressure they were being put under.

A process that also made him want to scream just to silence the voices. He could cover his ears all he wanted; his soul was wide open and much more vulnerable than ever. Which made him wonder if physical damage affected the durability of a soul.

If he was asked how much time the pain had been going on for, he would have answered that hundreds of years had passed, but in reality, it was five seconds. It was a small time, but he didn’t care; he couldn’t take it anymore.

He reached with his arms into the light, crawling back into it.

The light was so welcoming, so warm, like a healing flame. There was a big difference between it and the darkness. He wanted to stay there all his life, yet he knew he couldn’t; he had to do this again, many times, that was the only way to make it less painful. He didn’t want to force himself, but he knew he had to, that being the only way for him to gain that tolerance in time.

Today, he had endured five seconds.

Tomorrow, he was going to do ten seconds.

The day after that, he was going to do fitheen seconds.

After, he was going to do twenty seconds.

And so on, until he could do at least a minute.

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