Nexus Awakened (An Isekai LitRPG Gender Bender Story)

864. Virtues of Paradise

Grandis would never be the same.

The morning sun marked the beginning of a new dawn of a Region that had been famished and torn apart by countless wars. What occurred here was no different from the many exchanges in the past.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

The bloodshed was the same. Mountains had crumbled and reformed in the wake of extraordinary power. Millions of people were displaced, and countless would be devoured or slaughtered by the monsters of Grandis. The rest would die of starvation or disease.

But this time, the victors were not slavers who sought to exploit the Demi-Humans of Grandis, or a King who blindly blamed countless for the sin of one. Nor were the monsters of Grandis capable of hunting following an apocalyptic near miss event.

Furthermore, and as if ordained by a higher power, the millions of people who had no stake in this war, and who were simply trying to live their own lives, found themselves being defended by the Markers.

No monsters dared to wander into the light beyond their forests. The monsters of Grandis were highly territorial. Even if they were outclassed by a stronger predator then they would die attempting to hold their feeding grounds.

However, where some creatures could at least hold their own against even Anids, they folded entirely against the beasts born from the Markers.

The pale creatures flew like whisps of clouds. None could differentiate them from low-altitude clouds other than their brisk and sudden, irregular movements whenever they found prey.

The clouds were made up of several hundred 1-2-meter-long worm-like creatures. A long slit ran across the length of their bodies, stopping only at the tail. A coat of highly reflective feathers allowed them to appear much smaller and closely mimic clouds.

They were fast and highly aggressive against creatures that entered anywhere between a 10–30-kilometer radius of a Marker depending on how large the said Marker was. Though they lacked eyes or sensory organs, they were able to accurately locate their prey from the furthest end of the radius to the other, allowing them to swoop down with deadly precision.

Their slits would part to reveal a mouth that spanned their entire bodies. Within was nothing but rows of hooked teeth designed not to eat, but to tear apart and encase whatever they devoured. Because their bodies also lacked organs, those eaten parts would naturally decompose within their mouths.

Their likeness to an iron maiden must have been why they were called Winged Maidens.

< The Markers have created scavengers. It’s a nice touch for them to also act as defenders >

 

Nav explained in a prompt. This information came from Lailah, who in turn received it from Michaela herself. The way that these creatures – the Winged Maidens – were able to detect prey was thanks to an all-seeing eye located within the center of the Marker.

Regular people were not able to see the eye. All they would see was a maroon, gaping hole. But Frost and few of her companions could clearly see a golden eye that floated in the center of the gap. It was able to rotate on every axis, giving it a vast degree of observational vision.

This was a Marker of Paradise. Snap made a quick stop nearby one of these Markers of Paradise to allow them to get a closer look.

“A Virtue. The opposite of a Sin.” Frost murmured.

Her Corrupted from had disappeared by now, returning her body to its natural form. Her body was still smaller than most, and her hair was still short and messy. But the gold and red remained as a permanent reminder of what she had gained.

They travelled around the Marker a few kilometers out. Frost’s breath hitched in her throat as she gazed up at the creature unable to accept the fact that it was alive. It was larger than the skyscrapers of Earth, standing over several hundred meters tall.

There were humans and even Demi-Humans who roamed within its jurisdiction, but they were untouched by the Marker. Frost wondered if it had something to do with their blood. It always came back to blood somehow.

That said, she awed the presence of the marvelous thing. Likewise, the all-seeing eye watched her with equal amounts of reverence. It seemed to understand exactly who she was.

The Winged Maidens that flew overhead parted to allow the sunlight to reach them. At the same time, the large ground-monsters of the Marker attempted to run alongside Snap.

“Halt for a moment, Golden One.” Dark Memoria commanded. “We’re not in any rush. Our Amalgam’s curious about these herds.”

Dark Memoria’s ability to tell what Frost was thinking rivalled Jury’s. It caused Jury to childishly pout like someone had spilled water on her head. She was about to say the same thing, but she came just half a second short.

Snap slowed down enough for a herd of giant pale-furred wolves to catch up.

“The Marker births Snow Dire Wolves? Wait a second. That’s no wolf.” Cer observed.

“How do you know they’re not wolves?” Jury asked.

“Paws? Weird. Snout? Nonexistent. Ears? Am I looking at a rabbit? They look like giant anteaters if anything.” Cer remarked. “But they look strong. Really damn strong. A pack of them might even give a Moon a run for their title.”

They were quadrupedal beasts with disproportionately large paws due to the thickness of their fur. Each were easily larger longer than 4 meters and stood at over 2 meters. If one measured them from the tip of their noses to their tail, then they would exceed 10 meters.

Though Frost described them as wolves, their faces and tails told a different story. Their cone-shaped faces were slitted into 12 large petals. The ring of muscle that formed its mouth hid a long tongue which occasionally forked out to taste the air.

Each of the 12 petals had a red, beady eye similar to that of a rabbit. Six long, floppy ears vibrated in the wind. It emitted a pleasant, glittering sound.

“Pale Hollower. Huh. The Winged Maidens I get. They resemble iron maidens. But what about these?” No one knew the answer to Frost’s queries.

Several tongues of the Pale Hollower lapped at her hand as she managed to reach out to touch them. They were gentle with her, as though sensing her weakened constitution. Their tongues were coarse and, to her surprise, bladed.

“No, it’s barbed. Or is it like needles? You guys have needles like the backside of the gympie gympie.” The gympie gympie was another name for the stinging bush from Earth; one of the worst stinging plants to exist.

Furthermore, the tongues were actually tubes. Every breath they took caused a small opening at the tip of their tongues to expand and contract.

Frost had to wonder just what those tongues were for. Luckily for her, she didn’t have to wonder long.

One of the Pale Hollowers pounced on a large Barbed Boar. Contrary to what Frost initially thought, they did not use their paws to hunt. Rather, they relied solely on their tongues. It fired from their sphincter-shaped mouths like a harpoon, and it embedded itself into the hide of the boar.

Immediately, the boar began to squeal as the Pale Hollower stood above it, sinking its tongue into its body. Then, it stirred the boar’s innards. One could imagine a stick mashing the innards of a melon. The boar ceased moving as even its bones had been reduced to mush.

After every fragment of bone, every muscle and every layer of fat was minced; the Pale Hollower began to syphon the boar’s innards. It occasionally retracted its tongue for cleaning before continuing their feed.

“More white-furred monsters. What’s the Nexus and fuzzy creatures? Aren’t the Puff Puffs enough?” Cer muttered. “Tch. Maybe the Nexus is trying to replace the Moons. Monsters this powerful would drive an ecosystem down the drain.”

“But they’re not after animals, are they?” Jury pointed at another Pale Hollower.

It approached a shambling deer. Instead of pouncing on it, the Pale Hollower threw its body onto the deer, absorbing it into its fur. Suddenly, its tail popped off and was taken by the wind. An invisible strand kept it secure like a kite.

“An alert system?” Cer’s brows knitted with piqued curiosity. “Heh. That’s one way to get the Marker’s attention.”

Indeed. The ‘kite’ was a method to communicate with the Marker. As soon as the deer was secure, a small group of Pale Hollowers split from the herd and went to assist the one calling for help.

“I smell pheromones in the air.” Cer added. “And a bunch of noise.”

“I don’t hear anything.” Jury said. “Frost? Dark Memoria?”

“Sort of. I can feel it, if that makes sense.” Frost answered.

Dark Memoria shrugged with disinterest. She spoke anyway:

“Judgment Affinity Virtues seem to possess a common thread. They’re hollow shells containing no semblance of a backbone of pride, unlike the Prideful Consanguinities. I see them as defenders of pride, so that they cannot be run over or destroyed.”

“Isn’t that like the Prideful Consanguinity?” Frost murmured.

“No. The Prideful Consanguinities stand alone. But the Virtues cannot support themselves. Rather than the parasites that are the Sins, these Virtues appear to be symbiotic.” Dark Memoria further explained. “Jury, do you happen to be thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That we should stop to fluff them?” She said.

Dark Memoria sighed. “Close. Puff Puffs. The Virtues here are innately similar to the Magicalis. From what I can tell, they’re similar in composition. The same can be said about Sins.”

She carefully coded her words to hide a message in plain sight. The fact that Virtues were similar to the Magicalis, who in turn were born in the Nexus, caused Frost to wonder if the Lower Half of the Nexus could create creatures of their own.

Is there a Magicalis equivalent that the Lower Half can create?

Dark Memoria grinned when Frost came to this conclusion.

“The Lower Half can do what the Upper Half can. Magicalis born from the Lower Half will be less exemplary than what we know. Whether it’s true or not is not something I am aware of. But we can assume this to be true.”

She wore a relinquished look suddenly as she stared off towards the ruins of Mount Saris. A faint light glimmered deep within the great, mountainous claws that surrounded where the mountain used to exist. They were made by the many divided chunks of the mountain itself.

“I like to think that this was what Michaela intended from the beginning. Creatures elevated from humans rather than failed Angels. The outcome still would have been the same. People would have suffered an existential ordeal to become something they are not. The perfect fruition of that dream has taken root here in Grandis…”

Dark Memoria took a deep breath before turning around to meet with Cer’s gaze.

“What’s up?”

“Two Stars and a Glimmer. To what heights will Stars of Light will reach compared to that of P-Factor?”

She left them with a vague, hopeful question.

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