Chapter 19: The Lake-Facing Cliffs
The path down from Stormveil wound past cliffs that overlooked Liurnia's impossible lake, each switchback revealing new impossibilities that challenged basic understanding of geography and physics. Water stretched beyond horizons that shouldn't exist, painted in shades of blue that had no names in any earthly palette. Academy spires pierced distant mists like needles threading cosmic fabric, their glintstone lights pulsing with rhythms that suggested academic ambition transcending mortal limitation.
Gara and Nepheli traveled in uncomfortable silence, their horses' hooves marking time against stones that remembered better days. The partnership that had carried them through Stormveil's horrors was still intact, but strained—trust wounded by revelations that couldn't be unexplained, intimacy complicated by knowledge of capabilities that transcended human limitation.
Each knows the other is thinking about what was revealed in Godrick's throne room. Each is processing implications that reshape their understanding of partnership, duty, survival in a world where the rules kept changing to accommodate impossible people doing impossible things.
A voice calling from the roadside cut through their mutual contemplation: "Please! Someone help!"
The desperation in the cry was absolute, primal, the kind of terror that made rational thought optional and immediate action mandatory. Gara's enhanced senses tracked the source—a cluster of ruins where something large moved with predatory patience.
"Side quest," his gamer instincts identified immediately. "Rescue mission, probably simple, definitely worth investigating."
But his current emotional state made prudence negotiable. Instead of careful scouting, instead of tactical assessment, instead of the methodical approach that had carried him through one hundred seventeen previous deaths, Gara charged directly into whatever situation had generated such desperate pleading.
A pack of demi-humans had cornered their prey in architectural remains that spoke to better days when roads were safe and travelers were welcome. The creatures moved with inhuman coordination, their grafted limbs working in harmony to maintain tactical superiority over something that was trying very hard to become invisible.
The something was a man—middle-aged, well-dressed, currently experiencing the kind of terror that made complex thought impossible. But he wasn't just being hunted. He was being transformed. Bark covered half his face, branches sprouted from his shoulders, roots emerged from his feet to anchor him to soil that hadn't asked for the privilege.
"They're turning him into a tree. Slowly. While he's conscious. That's... actually worse than just eating him."
Gara's tactical assessment lasted approximately two seconds before moral outrage overwhelmed strategic thinking. He charged the demi-human pack with the kind of reckless fury that felt satisfying right up until claws punched through his enhanced Constitution and reminded him that anger was poor substitute for competence.
Death #118: Demi-Humans. Pack tactics. 4/10 - should have expected coordinated assault.
He respawned at the nearby Grace, muscle memory already analyzing what he'd learned from the encounter. Fast, coordinated, using their victim as bait to lure potential rescuers into disadvantageous positions. Classic predator behavior, enhanced by supernatural intelligence and grafting advantages.
The second approach abandoned emotion in favor of efficiency. Gara shifted all available points into Dexterity, turning his body into an engine optimized for speed and precision. What followed was mechanical violence—systematic execution of targets that had made the mistake of threatening someone under his protection.
The demi-humans died with sounds that suggested surprise. They'd been expecting another reckless charge, another emotional response they could exploit. Instead, they encountered something that treated their tactical advantages as problems to be solved through applied mathematics and enhanced reflexes.
"Thank you! Thank you!" The man—Boc, based on his terrified introductions—fell to his knees in gratitude that bordered on worship. "You saved me! I'll serve you forever! Whatever you need, wherever you go, I'll—"
"Please don't," Gara interrupted, his voice carrying exhaustion that transcended physical fatigue. "Everyone around me ends up watching me die a lot. It's not... healthy for most people's long-term psychological well-being."
Boc blinked, processing words that didn't match the heroic rescue he'd just witnessed. "But you saved me. You risked your life for someone you'd never met."
"Yeah, well, my life's pretty risk-able these days. Don't read too much into it."
The self-deprecating honesty was deflection, but it carried enough truth to make Nepheli wince. She'd been watching the entire exchange with growing understanding of how Gara saw himself—not as hero, but as someone whose circumstances made heroism mechanically feasible rather than genuinely courageous.
They reached Lake-Facing Cliffs' Grace as evening painted the sky in colors that belonged in art rather than meteorology. The golden light provided warmth that transcended mere physical comfort, sanctuary that existed despite rather than because of the surrounding landscape's casual hostility.
Roderika was waiting for them.
The young woman who'd been hiding in Stormveil's depths was transformed—not physically, but in ways that spoke to confidence earned rather than inherited. Her crimson hood was thrown back, revealing features that held determination where terror had lived before. But more importantly, the air around her shimmered with presences that weren't quite visible but definitely real.
"I found my courage," she told Gara, her voice steady with conviction that hadn't been there during their first meeting. "By remembering yours. You're fractured but you don't break. I want to be like that."
"I'm not brave," he said automatically, the protest emerging without conscious thought. "I'm just too broken to shatter properly. There's a difference."
"Is there?" Roderika's spirit sight revealed truths that normal perception missed. "I've been to Roundtable Hold, learned from Master Hewg and the others. They told me about Tarnished who go hollow when the weight becomes too much. Who give up when dying stops teaching them anything new."
She studied him with eyes that saw through surfaces to foundations beneath. "You've died more than anyone should, suffered more than most could bear, seen horrors that would break stronger souls. But you kept fighting. Not because you were unafraid, but because you chose courage despite fear. That's not broken. That's... necessary."
POV: Nepheli Loux
She watched the exchange with growing recognition of something she'd been too close to see clearly. Roderika's words painted picture of someone who'd become inspiration through accumulated failure, hero through systematic self-destruction, leader through refusing to accept defeat as final condition.
People need his example. Even if it's built on inhuman foundations. Even if it relies on capabilities that normal people don't possess. They need to see someone who keeps fighting when fighting becomes impossible.
The realization shifted her perspective on everything she'd witnessed since their first meeting. Gara's resurrection abilities, his stat manipulation, his absorption of divine essence—all of it was monstrous when viewed through lens of normal limitation. But when viewed through lens of necessary function...
He's not trying to be human. He's trying to be what this world needs. And maybe that's more important than preserving whatever he used to be.
POV: Gara Smith
That night, they camped beside Grace's golden light while Liurnia's impossible geography stretched beyond the horizon like promise and threat combined. Nepheli had been quiet since Roderika's departure, processing conversations that revealed depths she hadn't previously recognized.
Finally, she spoke her thoughts with the directness that had marked their partnership from the beginning: "I wanted to be angry. You're unnatural, you've died over a hundred times, you steal power from corpses and absorb divine essence like it's routine maintenance."
Gara tensed, prepared for rejection that would hurt more than any of his accumulated deaths.
"But Roderika's right," Nepheli continued, her voice carrying notes of acceptance rather than condemnation. "You kept fighting when any sane person would've given up. You threw yourself between me and that knight's blade, chose protection over self-preservation, risked yourself for strangers who couldn't offer anything in return."
She turned toward him, storm-gray eyes holding complexity that transcended simple categories like approval or disapproval. "That matters more than what you are. The choices you make with impossible power matter more than the power itself."
It wasn't forgiveness exactly, but acceptance. Recognition of someone who'd chosen to wield monstrous capabilities in service of better goals rather than personal aggrandizement.
Gara's response was raw with vulnerability he rarely displayed: "I'm terrified I'm becoming a monster. That each death carves away another piece of whatever made me human originally. If I ever do... if I ever start seeing people as resources instead of... people... promise you'll stop me."
Her hand found his, fingers intertwining with warmth that transcended their accumulated mysteries and impossible circumstances. "Promise I'll try."
It was honest rather than reassuring. Practical rather than comforting. But honesty was the foundation their partnership had been built on, and practicality was what kept people alive in circumstances where sentiment became luxury they couldn't afford.
It was enough.
POV: Nepheli Loux
She watched him sleep that night, counting the ways he flinched—muscle memory from deaths his body didn't remember but his mind couldn't forget. Each twitch spoke to trauma accumulated through experiences that transcended normal possibility, education purchased with currency that normal people couldn't spend.
He's a weapon forged through trauma, she realized with crystalline clarity. But he wields himself against monsters, not innocents. Against problems that require inhuman solutions. That has to mean something.
The decision crystallized as she studied his features in Grace's golden light: she would stay. Not despite what he was, but because someone needed to witness his struggle. Someone needed to remember he'd been human once, needed to recognize the moment when he stopped being human entirely.
Someone needed to love him enough to kill him if love became the only mercy left to offer.
But that moment hadn't arrived yet. Tonight, he was still choosing compassion over efficiency, protection over optimization, connection over the isolation that would make everything simpler.
Tonight, he was still worth preserving.
Morning brought them to Liurnia's border, where impossible geography revealed itself in full splendor. The great lake stretched beyond horizons that shouldn't exist, Academy spires piercing distant mists like needles threading reality itself. Gara's Grace guidance pointed toward Raya Lucaria, promising education in glintstone sorcery and cosmic mathematics.
But Merchant Kale's rumors spoke of alternative paths—roses and blood to the east, opportunities that promised power at prices that couldn't be calculated in traditional currencies.
"Two paths," Nepheli observed, studying distant landmarks that suggested different approaches to the challenges ahead.
Gara checked his journal, reviewing notes written in handwriting that had grown steadier as his deaths accumulated. The careful script of someone documenting education purchased with systematic self-destruction, lessons learned through currency no normal person could afford to spend.
"Academy or murder cult," he said, his voice carrying humor that transcended their impossible circumstances. "Why do all my options suck?"
Despite everything—despite the revelations, despite the fears, despite the knowledge that their partnership was built on foundations that included resurrection mechanics and divine essence absorption—Nepheli laughed.
Maybe they'd be okay.
Maybe whatever he was becoming would remember to choose connection over isolation, compassion over efficiency, partnership over the solitude that would make everything simpler.
Maybe the thing that survived his continued transformation would still be worth preserving, worth protecting, worth loving despite capabilities that transcended human limitation.
The road ahead stretched toward choices that would define whether those maybes became realities or just another set of hopes sacrificed to necessity.
But for now, they rode together toward whatever fresh education awaited in the waters ahead.
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