"If I have to repair all of these pieces, then I have no idea how to proceed," Magnus muttered to himself as Restiel and Klaris stood at the side.
They too lacked the skills to repair such objects. Even if Klaris could slowly steal materials, that would take days. Thus, he could only continue searching for clues.
He went through the artificial corpses and sorted them all out into groups. He placed the beheaded ones on one side and the dismembered ones on another, and so forth. But even after he cleaned the entire room of the artificial corpses, he found nothing.
Magnus truly did not know what to do. Thus, he decided to sit down and rest for a moment.
His brain was fried and he was slightly irked.
He found the rest area inside the room and had the other members take a seat each. He, on the other hand, continued to float.
For a moment, however, he messed up his gravity control.
He ended up sitting down on the bench. A split second of contact.
Although his Curse did not act up, something else happened.
Click!
Magnus was instantly locked onto the bench, and so were Klaris and Restiel. Magnus had a mini-heart attack as he tried to pry himself off of the bench to no avail.
Restiel glowed in divine energy and tried to take to the skies, but he too was stuck.
No need to mention Klaris, whose abilities were based on utility.
"Shit," Magnus cursed. He couldn't lose Klaris to an accident just because he sat somewhere wrong.
Whoom whoom whoom!
Short pulses of energy wafted over from the chessboard. Magnus found a powerful suction force suddenly pull him in.
He found his body morphing and changing into something different. A cloak of white garb was placed around his shoulders.
He was turning into a pawn.
Magnus glanced at the others and saw that Restiel, who had donned his special armour, was given a steed. The angel became a knight.
Klaris, on the other hand, turned into a bishop.
But there was a catch.
They were all grey. Not white, not black, but grey.
Magnus watched as the chessboard drew nearer and the life-sized pieces grew larger. The pieces seemed to be glaring at him with hatred-filled eyes.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
All three members of the Hivemind arrived at the chessboard, taking one tile each.
And then, there was silence.
"What now?" Klaris asked, trying to step backwards and finding that he could not retreat past the area of his tile.
"I don't know," Magnus replied.
Everything that was happening here was a mystery to him. Things were just happening as if it was on some god's whims, making little sense.
It was confusing, to say the least.
And unfortunately for Magnus,
His Curse was about to send him to death.
Again.
Standing rooted on the spot, Magnus silently counted until 10 and then,
"Damn."
Thud!
Magnus dropped dead on the floor as a familiar vile energy erupted from his Curse. Blood splattered out like a grenade going off.
Magnus was vaporized, leaving Klaris and Restiel to fend for themselves.
Restiel was about to curse aloud but stopped himself just before he did. An arrow was shot in his direction, forcing him to parry in a hurry.
He raised his scythe to meet the weird marble-made arrow.
Clang!
The collision force was greater than Restiel expected. It was like a car crashing into him instead of an arrow. A force that spanned the entire tile slammed into his entire body and not just his scythe.
"Urgh..." Restiel let out a groan as he exerted all the force he could muster.
Divine Energy burst out of him like a tide as he invoked,
"I am the warrior of the Heavens!
The seeker of light!
The judge and jury!
And the image of perfection!
Bow before my grace and glory!"
Ethereal wings of light flashed into existence on Restiel's back, joining his corporeal pair.
He became a six-winged archangel in an instant.
"HA!" Restiel pushed out with all his might, blasting the arrow with as much energy as he could. The blade of his scythe sparked and cracked under the exerted force.
SCREEEEEECH
The arrow finally veered away from his direction and shot towards his side.
BOOM!
The arrow flew past him in the blink of an eye and slammed into the distant wall behind his back.
A shockwave almost swept Restiel off his feet. If not for the special properties of the tile, he would've been launched off. The same went for Klaris.
The pair felt their ears ring. Their clothes danced with the wind.
They felt the hatred in the eyes of the pieces grow.
But then...
Then there was silence.
Restiel and Klaris both realised something at the same time:
'It's our turn.'
They both glanced at each other for a moment as they heard Magnus' voice in their minds.
[ Don't act. ]
Time was an important resource and they had been gifted with quite a lot of it at the moment.
[ We need information. ] He commanded from within the Hivemind.
[ Klaris, steal Rie and assimilate her into the Hivemind. ]
Nodding gravely, Klaris chanted,
"I am the thief of mirrored creation,
The cloned child,
The descendant of greens,
And the walker of reflections."
Klaris swiftly found himself in front of a familiar blacksmith shop. He stood there and tackled the young girl from afar. Holding Rie in his arms, he re-invoked his Blessing and brought her into reality.
Rie's unconscious form appeared by his feet.
He then chanted,
"I am the master and maker of the Hivemind,
The mind behind minds,
The one who stands above humanity,
And the one civilizations despise."
Rie then gained consciousness as she was assimilated into the Hivemind.
"Hm," She hummed blankly, void of personality.
Unbound by the rules of the chessboard, she moved around. The many pieces stared at her with rage bleeding out from their eyes. Bloodlust exuded from their bodies, but Rie simply waltzed past them as she looked deep in thought.
"I see," Magnus was fully enlightened on Rie's abilities as he controlled her dainty form.
He felt the burden of her Curse and the amazing capacity of her Blessing.
He then had Rie stand at the centre of the board.
Klaris and Restiel both watched as Rie closed her eyes in focus. They were both slowly grasping Magnus' plans.
"That's right," Magnus replied to their thoughts using Rie's lips and voice. "We lacked information and thus got into such a predicament. Using Rie is the best way out."
And thus, after reading through the invocation of the Blessing, State of Higher Existence, Magnus spoke through Rie,
"I am she who is greater than life.
The one who sees all,
The one who hears all,
And the one who knows all.
Show me what secrets lay within your existence."
WhoooooOOOOOOOONG!
A great fluctuation occurred in the world as Rie suddenly vanished from the eyes of everyone present. A huge amount of Spirit Energy disappeared from the Hivemind's reserves, dropping it down to a measly 1% despite the arrival of a new full 5-line Curse.
The earlier expenditures were much too great as they occurred in such a short amount of time. That, and,
'Shit...' Magnus cursed from within the Hivemind, 'Using this Blessing drains all my Spirit Energy no matter how much I have.'
It would always leave just a sliver of Spirit Energy whenever it was invoked. What the young girl said was true.
But because of such a fact, Rie was invulnerable, intangible, and unable to be seen by the naked eye. She had touched upon a state of existence that was greater than the simple lives of mortals.
The Hivemind then felt a great surge of information bang against its gates.
Magnus opened the gates without care and allowed him and his members to be consumed by all that knowledge.
They looked for what they needed the most, commanding their collective consciousness to find anything relevant in the sea of both useless and useful information.
The thoughts of infinite beings threatened to bring them into insanity, but Magnus held on. Desperately.
He had not expected such an influx of information. It was too much, and perhaps that was the reason he had yet to see the real Rie invoke her Blessing. She only ever used it in short bursts.
But it was too late to regret now.
He decided to sacrifice Restiel's mind, as he used it in overdrive. Although the real Restiel would turn into a vegetable with a fried brain, it was worth it if he could have Klaris escape.
He had already tried, but unsummoning the man didn't seem possible at all. The chessboard was limiting his abilities.
After a while of processing the information, Magnus felt the Spirit Energy around Rie finally die down. The influx of information was suddenly cut and Rie reappeared before Klaris' eyes.
Restiel was lying on one of the tiles, brain turned into mush.
But it was all worth it.
Rie proceeded to walk in a certain pattern across the chessboard, tapping with her feet at a certain rhythm as she channelled what was left of her Spirit Energy.
Before long, a subtle click sounded.
Klaris felt the restrictions on him get released. Rie unsummoned him and Restiel just as a black hole appeared above the chessboard. All of the pieces and everything else in the room flew into the black hole as the entire board folded into itself.
It folded again and again in an impossible manner until it became a cube the size of a regular Rubik's Cube.
Rie caught the cube in her small hands as she slumped to the ground in exhaustion.
Even Magnus was mentally exhausted as he sighed.
"It's going to take a while to regenerate all that Spirit Energy without Soul Devourer," Magnus muttered through Rie.
There was nothing he could do about it. It was a good thing that Rie herself had a pretty strong Curse. Her regeneration was impressive. In fact, it was slightly more impressive than Magnus' own Vow of the Unchained.
{=[ Vow of the Watcher ]=}
Actively killing anything weaker than you will bring you weakness until you spell your own doom.
Verses:
"You are above life,
But not above death.
Judgement is not your role.
You are but a being who watches.
Do nothing in the face of measly danger."