Fate Weaver's Legacy [LitRPG with stream chat]

"Time travel…?" I murmured as I wiped my mouth with hydrokinesis and looked around with a weird sense of deja vu.

This… wasn't the demon guy's doing, was it? Although the name of his other racial skill might hint at something to do with time travel, I didn't think that was it.

More like, this might have been the work of the Fate Weaver. Maybe even an actual feature of the Limit Break.

And then it hit me.

"...There was no warning for death. Possibility of death."

Only a warning for trauma.

Did that mean that respawning was a core feature of the trials? That you could just keep throwing yourself at the trial and dying over and over until you finally passed it? That, as long as you didn't enter a red door, you were guaranteed to eventually pass the trials if you just kept trying?

But… doing that involved repeatedly dying.

I shuddered.

Only an insane person would voluntarily keep jumping to their death over and over like that. This wasn't like a video game. I actually felt all the pain that came with death.

No wonder it had warned about long-term trauma then.

Still, ignoring the horrifying groundhog day potential this had, the fact that I was back here meant that I had another shot at this. I had to do it right this time. I couldn't waste it.

Because if I failed again, I would die again.

I wanted to throw up.

I… didn't have to go right away, right? I could just… rest a bit. I'd taken my time getting to my apartment building the first time around, so I probably had a moment to spare before something inevitably forced the issue.

Also, hadn't I wanted some time to properly think about a strategy against the guy? I could do that now.

Yeah.

No need to rush headfirst into death.

I slowly backed into the alleyway again and then plopped myself down on the dirty ground with a sigh.

Part of me just wanted to sleep with how mentally exhausted – despite my topped up Ether and Intra reserves and not even feeling sleepy anymore – I felt, but I knew I couldn't do that. Not now.

...Not with that fucking red door right next to me that I just noticed.

Scew you, red door.

Burn in hell.

...Anyway.

Strategies.

I'd taken his air skill, which was nice, but he still had a ton of other skills to work with.

His lightning traveled very fast, but I could dodge it if I saw him pointing at me. The ice had proved annoying but nothing I couldn't break or go around. The damn confusion attack was a serious issue and I really wished I had more to counter it besides just Mind Shield. Then he had the extremely dangerous fire… as my torso had demonstrated.

I closed my eyes and let out a shuddering breath, trying very hard not to think about it.

Then, the illusions. Those, I could counter relatively easily as long as I recognized them as illusions and with Abyssal Domain, that shouldn't be a problem.

Lastly, there he had his racial skills.

The black and white mode skill, Eversion, sounded quite powerful even if I didn't know exactly how much regeneration and power increase it granted. The obvious way to counter it was to use Rend when he was in black form and physical attacks when in white form, but beyond that, I couldn't think of much else.

Then we had Feathers of Narnia. What kind of skill was that? It just conjured up extremely weird and confusing illusions. It had confused me so much that I'd completely forgotten to use Abyssal Domain.

It was… weird.

Weird for a racial skill?

Well, I wasn't really sure. I only had a sample size of three, but I had to agree with chat – racial skills seemed to mainly be power amplifiers. Eversion buffed Ether and Intra-based skills in a bit of a roundabout way, while the Streamer skill… Well, ignoring the social aspect, from a purely video game point of view, it helped with gathering information, figuring out plans, and making decisions.

But both of these skills felt like they were supposed to be supporting the use of other skills.

Feathers of Narnia? Felt a bit too different.

Unless the confusing illusions wasn't the skill itself.

Jeofffff: Im just saying it was like he combined the two skills
Jeofffff: confusion and illusions

Yeah. That was a possibility.

And when I thought about it – and I really didn't want to think about it – just before I'd died, I saw his arm covered in a somewhat solid fire.

A combination of his black ice and fire?

Maybe I was overthinking it, but to me, it seemed that…

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Feathers of Narnia is a skill that combines skills," I murmured.

Now that sounded pretty damn scary.

But the scariest part?

I couldn't sense it when I'd used Skill Snatch. Not that nor Eversion.

Did that mean that Racial skills couldn't be snatched? Probably. Well, at least that meant that Streamer could never be taken away from me… hopefully.

I heard slow clapping above me.

I froze and then slowly craned my head up.

The demon guy – in his black form – stood there, on top of the building I was leaning on, staring down at me.

"Good job figuring it out. Ah, I guess I wasn't very subtle, was I?" He chuckled. "Feathers of Narnia can temporarily combine skills. That's not all there is to it, though."

"...What else does it do?" I asked, trying to totally calm and compose despite the fact that not only was he here, but he also remembered our fight.

Meaning that even if I could die and retry over and over, I couldn't save scum my way to victory like I'd hoped.

He gave me a wry smile.

"Now that would be telling, wouldn't it?"

I grimaced.

Silly me for thinking I would get a break in the final trial.

I sighed and closed my eyes, relaxing my body.

In the meantime, I reached out with my stolen wind skill – I ought to at least look at its name and description soon – and subtly gathered a ball of wind right behind him.

Then I shoved it into him, making him stumble and fall into the alleyway I was in. A split second later, I shot my eyes open and fired off an empowered rend as he flapped his wings to stabilize himself.

It hit him and he turned into a ragdoll as his eyes rolled back.

I used the chance to get up, get out my axe self, switch to Flameguard, channel as much regular and black fire as possible into the axe, and then jump to intercept his falling body.

I arched my back, gripped my axe so hard that my knuckles turned white, and then swung the thing over my head, perfectly hitting the demon in the chest with a bang.

We exploded and I found myself careening backwards and into the street filled with faceless people.

I crashed on top of a car and bounced before steadying myself with Featherfall and falling to my feet.

Then I froze.

The faceless people were all running around in panic. The driver of the car I'd crashed into had exited his car in a hurry and began running away. I could hear sirens in the distance...

I hadn't sunken in back when I'd fought the guy at my apartment building since it lacked people for the most part, but our battleground was my city.

"Chat, this isn't real, right? Please give me a confirmation," I begged as I glanced around with dread.

Again, some people said yes and some said no. I had no idea who to trust. Part of me thought the ones saying yes had to be trolls, but… I couldn't be sure.

Then the earth shuddered and my eyes went wide as a shadow blotted out the sun.

The demon guy stood there, somehow towering over the city as he looked down on me with a wry grin.

I shot Rend at him.

He opened his mouth to say something but got hit by the Rend and stumbled… but didn't disperse like the other illusions.

What the hell?! That was real?!

The demon raised his hand and it lit ablaze with the familiar black flame.

I tensed but listened to my instincts and dashed to the side, hoping to avoid the inevitable giant fireball of death.

But to my shock, when the hand finally heaved and tossed the black ball of doom, its salvo flew at a random building instead of me.

I stopped in my tracks once more and stared as the building exploded into black flames. People ran out of it in wild panic, some burning, some–

I looked at the demon in horror as he prepared another fireball.

"Stop it!"

He just smiled at me.

"They aren't real."

What the fuck, man?!

I didn't know whether I could believe that or not, but watching him terrorize people – no matter how fake they were – felt wrong on a visceral level.

I clenched my fists as fury filled my veins.

I whipped out my gun self and on a whim, tried to load it with Demon Queen Flames and the air skill.

And just like when I'd somehow managed to use Armor Break with Rend, it worked.

I fired off a sharp black fireball at subsonic speeds and it pierced the demon's head, though not before he lobbed another fireball in a random direction.

His giant headless body swayed for a moment, then stabilized, and then regrew its head.

How was this fair?!

His restored face grinned at me.

"Ah! That's good! Keep it up!"

I returned the gesture with a furious scowl.

He was goading me, I knew. But I couldn't help it. The previous two trials had ended when I'd done something insane and borderline suicidal, and since I apparently couldn't die here?

I conjured up my axe self and dashed forward. Then, using a combination of my integrated ninja sandals and the stolen air skill, I leaped straight at the dude while charging my axe self with all the fire and brimstone I could muster.

Then a giant object came from my blind spot and slammed right into me. I could feel my bones crack at the sudden impact and let out a strangled scream. A split second of whizzing through the air later I felt another impact from the other side and then the world turned black.

…

I vomited as soon as I returned from the dead void.

I'd died again.

Fuck!

But I had no time to dwell on that. I had to move before my opponent got here again.

I ran out of the alleyway without even wiping the vomit from my mouth.

But then I froze once more.

I hadn't looked up when I'd come back, but maybe I should have. Then I would have realized that all the damage we'd caused with our fight in the previous loop hadn't reset.

The car in the middle of the street still had a dent in it, the black fire still covered that one building, and people still ran back and forth in panic.

Was it real then?!

What was I supposed to think here?!

I stifled my frustrated confusion and forced myself to move.

I headed straight for the nearby metro station I sometimes used and didn't hesitate in jumping down the broken escalator even as my mind ran at a thousand miles per second, trying to figure out how to beat that damn demon guy.

What the hell even was that gigantification supposed to be? I hadn't seen any such skill when I'd used Skill Snatch, so it had to be one of his racials.

He had said that Feathers of Narnia could do more than just combine skills, hadn't he? So, what? It could also make him giant? Something about that didn't seem right…

I lit my hand on fire to light my way and jumped onto the metro tracks, only slightly concerned that a metro might ram into me.

The giant air attack that had cut up the whole street. Could that be something similar? Like… maybe not only did the racial skill combine skills, but it could also hugely empower them somehow? But if that was the case, then what exactly was the unempowered version of that gigantification…?

...Illusions, right? He had played me for a fool, making me think it real by somehow defending the giant form from my Rend…

No, but, he had also thrown a huge black fireball and had slapped me from the air. How the heck had he done that if the big body was supposed to be an illusion? Had those also been some forms of empowered skills?

My surroundings shook and a moment later, I heard a loud crash from behind me. I sneaked look down the tunnel but couldn't see anything, so I turned back forward and kept running.

A moment later, there was another crash and the ceiling in front of me suddenly came crashing down.

I reacted instantly by forcefully stopping in my tracks and using my tentacle to springboard me back, just in time to avoid the collapsing ceiling.

With dread pooling in my gut, I saw the figure of the winged demon float down into debris with a wry smile.

"Ah, I forgot to mention, but I have a third racial skill."

Seriously?!

"But you know this one. In fact, I got it from you." He chuckled. "You were right, you know? This… John is very good at scouting."

I stared at him, my mouth agape.

Because what the fuck?!

He had Streamer?!

How–

What did he mean he 'got it from me'?! Had he stolen it?! I'd thought we were supposed to be friends! Or colleagues or something!

"Ah, well. Better luck next time."

He pointed at me and his right wing glowed red.

Shi–

The following surge of black lightning completely drowned the whole tunnel.