Angel Monarch

Chapter 160: Flames of Mourning

This was definitely the weirdest experience Bran ever had in his life...

He was currently being carried in the air by a bored faced Sera. It took a bit of convincing, but eventually Bran agreed that this was the fastest method.

Unlike other people, his transformation didn't include changing into something on the outside. It only changed his eye color and increased his power by a great amount. This meant that he had no way of flying, especially as fast as Sera could.

Right now Sera was holding him by the waist, while they flew through the skies with about 100 or 150 km/h. She was actually going slower for his sake.

Every time he looked at Sera and realized the situation he was in, he began blushing from embarrassment. It was very weird being carried by your crush through the air. He also felt Sera's breast touching his side a bit, which only made the scenario worse.

As he was struggling keeping his dirty thoughts away, Sera payed no attention to him. Currently she was staring at her status window, reading through everything for possibly the hundredth time in the past hour.

Name: Seraphine

Title: Angel Monarch

1st Kill: Archangel of Despair, Horror of the 3rd Tier

2nd Kill: Holy Phoenix, Corrupted of the 3rd Tier

Life Essence Absorbed: 8453/10000

Abilities: <Lightbringer> <Deathless>

Passive Abilities: <Angel Sight> <Flames of Mourning>

1st Transformation Ability: <Wings of Despair> <Wings of Cleansing>

Transformed Passive Ability: <Indestructible>

Heritage: ?

Race Change Status: <Angel: 2/3>

Items: <Midnight Crown> <Healing Sculpture> <Color Changing Earring> <Stone of Communication> <Nothing>

Two years ago, when she was finally able to check out her status, there were a few interesting changes about the interface. There was the new line which showed her second kill, then the three new abilities and finally the question mark at her new heritage.

First Sera opened the <Deathless> ability.

<Deathless>

Description: <The phoenix… a symbol of rebirth and resurrection. They were a beautiful and prosperous race once. Worshipped by many, even the angels of Aerin built temples for them. Sadly others hated their perfection. They shunned and hunted the magical birds, until their only sanctuary was Aerin… Then they destroyed that too…>

Through fire and pain you have inherited the phoenixes' strongest power. Once a day you gain the ability to resurrect from even eradication. When resurrected, you became much more powerful then you are supposed to be for an hour.

Her eyes turned sad when she read through the description again. Not because of the phoenixes' fate, but because of her own. This ability was her savior and her curse. The thing that kept her going, but didn't let her go. It was both amazing and abhorrent.

Gently she shook her head a bit and closed her eyes. She felt Bran's eyes on her, but she ignored it. With a quick movement she closed the description and opened the next one.

<Wings of Cleansing>

Description: <Phoenixes had many different types, but everyone knows that the strongest were the Holy ones. It is said that their fire could cleanse every form of corruption and could break any illusion. They could burn the sinners, as well as the innocents. Many feared the Holy Phoenixes because of their large pride and hotheaded nature.>

With the evolution you have gained a second pair of wings. With them you gain control over the phoenix's holy fire. If you can't save the world, burn it to the ground!

While reading it on one of her fingers a small white flame appeared. It was like a small candle, which burnt hotter than the Sun. Luckily she could control its temperature output, so her jacket didn't immediately caught on fire. It wouldn't have been nice to fly through the skies naked.

It took her longer this time, to gather enough strength and open the last description. This was the worst out of them all.

<Flames of Mourning>

Description: <Sadness is the purest emotion, and the cleanest form of sadness is mourning the people you lost… As the Holy Phoenix died and resurrected, it remembered the forgotten. Sadly its strength wasn't enough to break the spell of Madness, which quickly made it forget again.>

Each death brings you a new life, which can purge even the strongest of hexes. You just have to remember who you are!

For a long time Sera didn't understand the meaning of this message. It was very strange since it gave her no actual description of what the ability was supposed to do, only that she should remember who she was.

It took her more than a hundred deaths and resurrections to finally get an idea for the ability's power. Back then she thought that by dying a few more times, she would start remembering her lost memories, but that wasn't its purpose at all.

Another hundred deaths later, she fully understood the meaning behind the message.

Continue your saga on ???

Without her knowledge she was under Harold's spell, she felt like she had to do everything he told him. It was so subtle since she could say 'Fuck You' or 'No', but eventually she would do it without her noticing that anything was amiss.

After two hundred deaths though, the spell broke and she was finally free. Of course she still acted like an unwilling servant when Harold asked her anything. Who knows what he would do if he had the knowledge of her mental freedom.

But it didn't stop there, eventually she learnt how to place false images in her mind. Every time Harold looked to see what she was thinking, instead of seeing her actual thoughts, Sera just showed what he expected or wanted to see.

This was one of the best upgrades she could've received. In the past she was afraid to conspire against Harold and the Federal Alliance, since he could see her thoughts. But things change...

Her eyes moved towards the items section. Most of it was normal, but the last one...

With a small proud smile she opened the description of <Nothing>.

<Nothing>

Description: It's nothing! What did you expect?

Attribute: Does nothing...

This was a masterpiece of an item which will serve a major purpose when the eventual revolution happens. In the past two years Sera only met one person who could edit an item's description and that was a necessity for this item. If Harold would've found out what its actual purpose is...

Well, she had really good imagination, but even Sera couldn't imagine the tortures she would have to go through. Who knows maybe Harold would fully destroy her consciousness and use her constantly regenerating, lobotomized self to do experiments on.

Her plans were mostly ready, but a few players were still missing from the board. By her and her scientists' judgement they will take at least another two months to arrive, which meant she had to keep Harold off of her back until then.

This meant getting 1547 life essence in a months time...

They flew for quite a long time now, so Sera dismissed her status window and began scanning the ground.

The reason they had to go this far was because more than a hundred kilometers around New Athens the evolved and regular soldiers were constantly patrolling. This meant that the city was much safer, and they had to travel farther to find prey to hunt.

It was still a bit surprising to Sera how different this part of Europe is from the north where she had initially came from. Not just because of the bit stormy, but otherwise mild weather, but more importantly the monster composition.

While in the north the monsters roamed alone and killed anything coming their way, in the south they moved in packs. Nobody really understood why, since they weren't any weaker than their northerner counterparts, but what was even weirder is that the packs weren't homogeneous.

They were made up of many different races and forms of monsters. The only common denominator was that the strongest creatures in each pack were only corrupted.

For some reason when a creature evolves into a horror, they leave the pack no matter what.

Of course this made hunting them much less dangerous, since there were basically no corrupted that stood a chance when fighting against Sera. Even though she was technically a rank lower, they just simply had much fewer life essence or abilities to use in a battle.

They were in the air for a few hours now. Their eyes constantly scanning the ground below. Just when they were about to glide down and take a short break, Bran spotted movement a few kilometers away.

Sera increased the speed suddenly, which caused Bran to yelp from surprise. After a few seconds she began to slow down and a small smile appeared on her face.

Luck seemed to be on their side today. The pack or more like horde, was quite huge. It was made up of maybe 250 or so monsters. More than half of them were only tainted, but the rest were perfect for her.

Gradually she went down on the ground and then both of them took a few minute to catch their breaths. They were a bit farther away from them and since there were so many, they wouldn't be getting away anytime soon.

Eventually Sera stood up from the ground, then made a couple of stretching moves which caused Bran to look away with a blush. After a few minutes both of them were ready and without the need to say another word. They left the small clearing, leaving their bags behind.

Slowly they neared the end of the forest in which Sera landed. In front of them the ground sloped downward and about a hundred meters away the first monster seemed to notice their presence.