Chereads / Roguelike: Amalgam Incarnation / Chapter 5 - Ignorance is a Bliss

Chapter 5 - Ignorance is a Bliss

'I GOT IT! I GOT THE TORCH AGAIN!'

Much to his expectation, the illumination expanded up to the exact three meters in its vicinity, revealing a new terrain from the world of living. In that moment itself he realized that the upgrade he gained from the orbs won't get carried away to the next if he died.

'A new location?' Kivas caressed his non-existence chin with his blobby hand. 'It might be a slight detail but I feel like the ground is swaying up and down like I'm in a ship.'

After the realization, the torch let out a familiar golden bright light along with the sound of a passing wind chime. Just like before, it birthed the same auspicious fiery purple orbs that bless him with an upgrade!

Not one.

Not two.

But a whole eight of them orbited around him.

'What is this!? Has my accumulated good karma finally yielded a result??'

Overwhelmed by joy, the little tadpole-looking blob of blue with three hands proceeded to begin his weird and unorthodox ceremonial dance. It's not that he did an actual ceremonious dance, it's just how it looked from someone outside of the limited illumination.

And that someone was not exactly amused for the unknown trespasser who suddenly appeared out of nowhere inside their territory.

"What is a weird, little, and insignificant ugly blob doing in my domain!?"

Because the sound was coming from the area outside of the illumination of the Torch of Blight, Kivas was uniformed by the irritated sentence with a question mark.

Little that Kivas knew, he was currently gazed upon by an entity that was five-thousands time bigger than him. A talking, decapitated, giant, humanoid head of an old man, where the section below sprawled kilometers of giant stiff tentacles sprawling over the continent. The reason why Kivas felt like he was on some kind of a ship was because he was currently riding a growing tentacle out of a gargantuan decapitated head.

Not acquiring the answer that he was looking for, the giant decapitated head urged the moving tentacles to lean itself forward. With one eye closed, the giant head of a bald old man tried to capture the tiny detail of the unassumingly weird visitor.

"UWOOOWWW! Is this really what I'm currently seeing right now!??" The giant decapitated head was so excited, his mouth created an 0-shape. "The lasting remnant of the Eternity Flame!! How can such a precious thing be in the possession of a puny, idiotic creature?? Blasphemy! Tad, very much so, blasphemy!!"

Meanwhile, forcefully ignorant of the surroundings, Kivas was barely able to grab one of the purple orbs due to the platform he was currently in moving around too much.

'Is there an earthquake??' Apparently not. 'But how come on earth that an earthquake is this less vibrated and wavy??'

Because it's not an earthquake.

It was continuously recoiling from a lump of house-sized tentacles trying to form a hammer on the other end.

"MUEWEHEHEE! THE ETERNITY BLIGHT SHALL BE MINE!!"

In a flash, the hammer was hurled with the momentum faster than the bullet of a firearm. The blue gooey flesh of Kivas scattered to the surroundings in a sharp and elongated splatter from the center of the jello explosion.

It was quick and painless.

The giant talking head however, didn't really get what he wanted.

"UWAAAAAAHH!! WHYYYYY?? WHY DOES THE ETERNAL BLIGHT IS SOULBOUNDED INTO THAT PUNY INSECT'S SOUUUULLL!!!!???"

And once again, Kivas was transported to the same familiar darkness, and the familiar violet flickering flame in the distance once again.

'... I haven't even chosen the upgrade from the purple orbs yet.'

Kivas tried to rack his physically non-existent brain about how in the world he died. Due to the jarring lack of information, Kivas concluded that there was probably a sudden meteor that fell from above, killing him instantly from the process.

It's not that he was wrong. The tentacle hammer lunged at him at the speed of what an asteroid would be if they were digging the earth's atmosphere and collided with the surface of mother nature.

'Well, ain't that not going to matter.'

And so, he went for his third try.

This time, he started his life upon the highest peak of a mountain. Before he knew it, a strong gust of wind pushed the lightweight body of his into the sky. He eventually fell to his death.

If his body were that of a human, then the crime scene would be pretty gnarly for it to be shown on television.

'... I died without even getting a single purple orbs.'

To his surprise, despite the obvious sign where it was unnecessary for him to be surprised, the Torch of Blight was there, waiting for him to grasp its handle.

This time, Kivas got thrown into a dense and heavy snow blizzard.

Just above the snow, the squishy jello body of him began to extremely shift in temperature.

'Brrrrtt! Where in the actual aether you threw me this time!??'

Shuddering away the cold, Kivas dragged his body with the two front arms that he got. Even though his third hand was carrying a torch, there was no disparity in temperature as if the torch didn't really give any kind of warmth to his elastic skin.

For two hours, Kivas dragged himself forward without any guide nor information about anything in this world.

'I-I've walked over two hours, why are none of those purple orbs appearing yet??'

Was it because he didn't find anything within this endless white world?

21 minutes later, he heard the sound of the wind chime vastly different from the raging blizzard along with the temporary golden shine. The long awaited orb had finally birthed by the flame of the torch in front of the death door of Kivas' mindless exploration.

'So 2 hours and 22 minutes. Will this number be universal if I don't find anything on my next try? Or it's just because I've found nothing but snow for quite a long time, and the torch is taking pity on me…'

Preventing anything to kill him without doing the thing he wanted, Kivas hurriedly made touch with the orbiting purple orb with his claw.

A pair of floating vertical-rectangle outlines, burning with a purple hue. Within both of them, scribbles of texts from an unknown language were transcribed out of thin air like a printed fancy ink, before the symbols of the respective screen appeared like burned paper on the upper part of it.

Except that one of the screens was no longer indescribable.

'This is…'

-Boon of Utility-

[Blight Expansion]

-Thou Disgraced couldn't perceive anything outside of the illumination from the Torch of Blight. The impurity within the flickering fire allowed the tarnished to comprehend, so let thy grace expand the 'blight' until the stars cometh within thy frame!-

'So the one that I've chosen before will be shown for the rest of my life!!'

Kivas did the same weird ritual dance above the snow. Which begs another question.

How come he was still alive?