Dead Reckoning IV

It had become routine for Geist by now, as he existed in the void of nothingness waiting to be resurrected, to train in the only way that was available to him. He had all but memorized all of Inessa’s movements, so he was able to simulate battles with her to try an improve his odds of beating her.

However, even in his imagination, the gulf between their abilities was deceptively misrepresented by their stats alone. From a raw numbers perspective, he completely outclassed her overall; his sum of 528 against her sum of 313 suggested he should still hold an insurmountable advantage. But without the Spells or Techniques to make the most of his stats, and the distribution favoring magical potency over martial prowess, his disadvantage was absolute.

As he was stuck down for the hundredth time that session, he took a break to contemplate. What would I even do if I did beat her? Lylia asked me that recently, but I still don’t have an answer. He thought, trying to imagine himself standing over a defeated, exhausted Inessa.

The first thing that immediately came to mind was the merciless blonde appearing and shrinking him down so she could stomp the life out of him for daring to hurt the brunette. Just like how he couldn’t best Inessa with force, Lylia held the upper hand in spellcasting proficiency.

Yeah, that tracks. It had long since been overkill to use so many Divine Seals on us, but with how many Divine Artifacts they… Wait, they stopped using Divine Seals entirely. I mean, I suppose it depended on Lini’s generosity, but why stop? Why give them Divine Artifacts at all when she could have just kept giving them Divine Seals until the Demon Monarch was weaker than a Level 1 Golem? Because he had never thought about which would be more efficient before, Geist hadn’t considered the reason for the appearance of the Divine Artifacts.

The Divine Seals lowered his stats and prevented him from accessing the abilities that would allow him to easily defeat Inessa, and probably Lylia if he caught her off guard. The Divine Artifacts were entirely unnecessary beyond making it easier for the Champion’s party.

For that matter, they said the reason was to stop Chrysaor from fleeing to another world and wreaking havoc on the people there. But if he was still powerful enough to put a millennium-spanning curse on the entire world, shouldn’t Chrysaor have been able to curse Champion Leopollis and his party instead to turn the tables on them? What are the seals on me if not a curse? Why would Chrysaor target the magic of Facide when the Corrupted need it just as much, if not more, than the–?! Probing deeper into the subject that he had accepted and glossed over, Geist was struck by a revelation that felt so obvious, it was almost concerning how it seemingly had never been brought up before. If ‘magic has declined’ for millennia, to the point that the Pure cannot raise their levels beyond 10, then why is there enough DMC to resurrect me in a day when it should take 50 years or more?

Going back over his limited knowledge of the world, he knew that the kingdom had recently completed an array of purification spells to keep Dark Magic from festering in their lands and Corrupting the people, animals, plants, and environment. So while that could explain why there was enough to fuel the resurrection of a Demon Monarch, Dark Magic is not a persisting resource. It is finite. The Corrupted consume and use it in much the same way the Pure consume and use Mana.

No matter how powerful we are supposed to be, there is no way we Demon Monarchs create all the DMC in the world. Even if we did, how would any get to the other side of the world when we’ve been stuck in these ruins all this time? The further he pursued the thought, the more questions he had. This has always been a chicken-and-egg paradox. Sure, the Corrupted can spread Corruption, but we are not the source of it. The Corrupted come from Corruption… so where does Corruption come from? Or rather, what was it before, and what turned it into Corruption?