Abyssal Awakening

Chapter 217: Side Effects Of One Sigil Resonance

Looking at the corpse of the Grimwater Wyrm, Alice figured she should get some sort of verification that she killed the beast.

'I should probably get its eyes, fins and maybe an arm for good measure.' She thought to herself, creating a butcher's blade to hack away at the beast.

Even though she'd left most of its corpse behind, the parts she wanted to bring back was still quite a handful.

Tying it up using her threads made of blood, Alice started to haul her quarry back when a wave of lethargy hit her, causing her to stumble onto her knee.

Widening her eyes in surprise, she wanted to move her body but it didn't listen.

*Drip

"Eh?"

Looking down, she could see a droplet of blood hitting the moss-covered planks beneath her as she slowly reached for her nose and realized that she was bleeding.

'Is this a side effect of using a single Sigil as my Resonance?' Alice thought to herself with a frown as she tilted her head back and stopped the bleeding.

Forcing herself to stand up, Alice could feel a stinging pain emanating from her left arm where her Sigil was engraved.

Pulling up her sleeves, she could see the Sigil itself pulsing with life. Parts of the Sigil tried to branch out and cover her body once more but there was an invisible force holding it back, stopping it from doing so.

'Wait…' Pausing for a moment, Alice felt as though she needed to reevaluate her understanding of Sigils and Resonance. If the Abyss was simply bringing out the dormant power within your body using Resonances, it wouldn't have created this much of a reaction.

Yet her Sigil felt… 'alive'.

Furrowing her brows, Alice focused on the flow of energy within her arm and realized that something foreign was being generated within the Sigil. The connection that she had formed between the Abyss and herself using just one Sigil was still connected.

It was faint but the connection was enough to stir her Sigil.

Trying her best to suppress the Sigil, turning it off as she had done many times before, Alice felt as though she was in a tug of war. A struggle within the body over the control of her Sigil.

In a single burst, she exerted as much power as she could to suppress the Sigil and managed to regain control of her Sigil, turning it off in the process.

Taking rapid breaths out of exhaustion, Alice collapsed on the bridge with a frown on her face.

A single thought was present in her mind. Whether or not the Sigils are truly alive or not.

Or else why would it have tried to override her control? Perhaps it wasn't even the Sigil, perhaps it was her own body.

Scratching her hair in annoyance, Alice took a deep breath and sighed.

As much as she loathed the thought, she figured that getting the documents of her own experimentation may help her understand her body more.

If there were anyone in the world who knew more than her about her own body, it would definitely be the Zenia Scholars.

"Tsk... How would I even get their notes without getting recaptured in the process?" Alice muttered, unsure of how she should approach this.

But the more she knew about her strange condition, the better.

After spending a few moments laying motionlessly on the bridge, Alice managed to stand up without any issues as the fatigue left her body. Looking down at her arm, it was the same slender arm that she was used to seeing.

Activating her Sigil, it obeyed her commands without any resistance as though its previous show of defiance was merely her own hallucination. But she knew that wasn't the case.

'The connection between it and the Abyss has truly been separated for now. Seems like I'll need to borrow more than just the combat department at the Academy.' Alice sighed inwardly.

If she could get access to the other facilities, she might be able to redo some of the experiments performed on her and try to figure out something.

Noticing something strange on her reflection against the swamp water, Alice tilted her head before leaning in to get a closer look.

Pausing for a moment, she hesitantly raised her hand above her head and felt the broken obsidian crown.

Unlike before, it wasn't disappearing once her Resonance ended. Instead, it continued to float around her head.

But unlike her Resonance form, it merely looked like broken shards that floated rather than a crown.

"Urg… Is this a side effect of me testing the one Sigil Resonance? How am I supposed to hide this? I'm already getting a lot of eyes drawn to me because of my hair and eye." Alice lamented since it was going to be much harder to hide when she had such a conspicuous detail.

Flicking her crown with her finger, Alice sighed.

"How should I even explain what this is? I guess I could be dismissed as an Abyss Blood side effect."

Shaking her head, she dragged the corpse of the beast with her as she made her way out of the swamp.

Finding the carriage that had brought her here, Alice loaded the remains of the beast onto the back before gesturing for the driver to take her back to the port. She'll take an ship back to the city via sea and she should be back to Silverwind Valley in a few hours.

###

"I thought the crown only appeared in your Resonance form? How comes its… floating above your head now?" Ria asked as the two of them sat around a table with several cups of mead, all for Alice to enjoy.

"Urg… Just an experiment gone wrong I suppose. I was trying out something I thought was pretty interesting but turns out it gave me two kinds of side effects. One disappeared pretty quickly and this crown is the second." Alice sighed, drinking her mead before leaning forward, letting Ria touch the floating crown.

Tapping the cold obsidian that floated above Alice's head, Ria couldn't help but wonder if she could pull it away from Alice's head.

But try as she might, the pieces refused to budge.

"I mean… It's a pretty unique accessory." Ria shrugged.

"I'm not denying that. I'm just saying the unwanted attention is annoying."

Glancing around her, Alice could see several eyes staring at her while whispering to the people around them.

"Mnm, that is an issue. If we were to annoy anyone, all they need to do is ask around for a split haired girl with mismatching eyes and a crown. I doubt anyone would forget what you look like ahahah." Ria laughed since it was quite rare to have those features appear simultaneously on one person. And if someone did indeed see Alice, Ria doubted they'll see another with similar features.

"Don't remind me. I've been trying to be low key while we travel. But this doesn't allow that."

"By low key, you mean reshaping the map and the fully charged Nova Core that you fired at Blackrock City? I'm pretty sure the City Lord has an idea that it was you who caused that kind of destruction." Ria chuckled with a raised eyebrow while Alice couldn't refute.

Indeed, looking back, her actions haven't really been low key. Anyone near the site of her fights would probably remember the destruction she caused as well as a flip in personality should she allow her inner hunger to take over.

"You know what I meant. Setting that aside how was your hunt?" Alice asked curiously.

"Honestly, it was a lot easier than I expected. The beast was already injured in a territorial dispute with another beast so all I had to do was take aim from a distance and fire a bolt right through its head. Shredded the upper half of its skull so I had to take the lower jaw to verify my kill." Ria shrugged as she had gotten quite lucky with how easy her hunt was.

She half expected another beast to interrupt her or an accident were to happen but it was simply a normal hunt that didn't trouble her at all.

"But with two hunts done, I think we've gotten a decent amount of funds. I need to buy myself a pair of gauntlets to fight with even if I rely on my Sigil power. And you can probably find someone to fix your gloves in the Handicraft department. I'm sure there's a good blacksmith there that can try out some repairs since this is a famous Academy after all." Ria suggested.

This Academy was probably their best shot at fixing Alice's gloves without going directly to the mainland.

"Hmm… You're not wrong. If I could use these gloves alongside my third Sigil, I could focus my mind on controlling the metal rather than both the metal and the blood." Alice sighed as using her third Sigil was a little taxing on her focus.

But if she could relieve her burden by making blood threads to be used with the gloves, she could rely on her own muscle memory and instinct to manipulate the threads while her mind focused on fighting using the floating blades.

With their next steps decided on, the two finished their drinks. For Ria, it was a single tankard while Alice chugged down several with ease then letting out a sigh of satisfaction at the end.

Seeing Alice with a happy grin on her face, one that wasn't due to seeing blood or killing something, Ria couldn't help but chuckle at her love for alcohol.

###

Walking past the countless containers filled with a strange blue liquid and the bodies of Abyss Beasts, Xinbei kept a lazy smile on his face and approached a woman sitting in front of the operating table.

He needed to notify all of the Department Heads and have them be present at the exams. Naturally, that included this woman in front of him.

The Department Head of Theory, Elara Frost. A woman who's responsible for many of their breakthroughs regarding the Inverted World.

"Ara~ Good evening Xinbei~ I'm surprised you're visiting me. It's not often you come here, should I prepare some tea for you?" Her whimsical voice rang out as Xinbei shook his head. It was here for two reasons, both having something to do with Alice.