New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 1016: The Queen's Lament



The darkness didn't last long for Jin-Sil, whose eyes fluttered open to the deafening roar of flames and the almost blistering heat they shed as a torrent of fire ate away at a nearby wall.

The roar of flames was only drowned out occasionally by the clap of thunder and explosions in the opposite direction.

It took Jin-Sil a second to adjust to this sudden cacophony, wincing as the sound threatened to blow her eardrums out with every thunderclap.

"I can't hold the wall much longer!" Ri-Chu's voice entered her ears.

"The cave isn't large enough for a brawl of this magnitude! Hold it as long as you can, Rì- Chū!" Kary replied to him.

Jin-Sil looked around, noticing Cory at her side but looking away from her and everyone on high alert.

She saw their front liners taking care of breaching kobolds, heard the loud thud of something smashing against the stone her lover was trying to maintain, and the noisy din of the rest of them trying to chip away at the cavern's walls.

No one even noticed she had sat up at the end of the cave, as they were too busy with the impending threat and their tasks to look behind themselves. Even Cory, who was closest to her, was too busy making sure nothing came to harm her, and no one came close to dying.

On the ground at her side, Jin-Sil saw the bow she'd been using had been laid there, awaiting her awakening. She reached out her hand to grab it, hoping to start helping her friends, when a voice spoke in her mind, almost making her yelp in surprise.

'Why would you use such an inferior weapon, mistress?'

The voice sounded slightly like the harpy queen's, only softer and clearer, almost as if it were younger and unhurt.

'Why am I still hearing her voice?' Jin-Sil thought, confused.

And apparently, the voice heard that because it replied.

'I belong to you now. My power is yours to wield. Please don't use inferior weapons, mistress. It would pain me to know you aren't using the best weapon for you.'

Jin-Sil didn't know what to do with this voice in her head. It was troubling, to say the least. She had once discussed with Alexander, inside New Eden, how he often talked to his soul companions in his mind, but she'd never thought it would happen to her someday.

'What else do you want me to fight with?' she asked in her mind, hoping the voice heard her.

'Just think about using me, and I will answer the call, mistress.'

'Think about using you? What are you even?'

'I'm the weapon your soul has birthed from the power of a dying wish of revenge-the embodiment of your will to fight. I am the only weapon you will ever need. I am, The Queen's Lament.'

Jin-Sil's face scrunched up a bit at the name since she would have never named anything so cringe, but it seemed this weapon had a mind of its own.

'Think about using it. About using what? The bow from earlier?' she thought, thinking about the strange bow that could turn into swords.

As soon as her mind visualized that bow, she felt a surge inside herself and a sudden weight within her hand. Opening her eyes, she looked down, and there it was: The Queen's Lament.

The bow looked even more beautiful out here, in the real world, than it had in her mind, and Jin-Sil had to force her focus off of it because an explosion occurred less than fifty meters in front of her, followed by a hail of stone shards around.

"They breached the wall!" Winston shouted, bracing his shield.

**RROOAARR!!!*

The massive thing that had been smashing against the stone wall finally came into full view, and a few gasps of fright echoed on the human side.

A gigantic lizard-like entity with a mouth elongated enough that it looked more like an alligator than a lizard and teeth that could evidently chew up any of them within seconds.

It roared in victory as it finally took down the barrier these puny humans were trying to erect in the way of his allies and looked down on them.

"You can't hide forever, tiny humans. Now you feed the army of the great one," it grumbled in its hollow voice, which shook the walls themselves in its low tremble.

But before it could even move, a whistle flew by its face, resembling a tune of a few notes, before a gust of wind followed.

A single phrase escaped Jin-Sil's lips from the back of the cave, with no one aside from Cory hearing the words.

"Queen's Lament; Song of Pain."

As she unleashed a single arrow, which made the tune everyone heard, time seemed to freeze for Jin-Sil as the mana in her body surged forward, creating a gust of wind in proportions she had never seen, aside from Jonathan's magic.

Every enemy stood still in that gust of wind, as her mind felt like it was flowing outside her body, following the wind.

She felt herself flow forward, passing by each enemy, and instinctively lashing at them with her bow now in sword form before the wind split at the tunnel wall.

Her body went one way, and with every enemy she flew by, a single sword slash followed; Jin- Sil reconnecting the swords between each slash and firing an arrow made of pure wind in the other direction, clipping kobolds on the other side of the cavern entrance.

Everything happened too fast for her mind to process, her body moving on its own under the guidance of the weapon's mind, and before she knew it, she was past the horde of kobolds on the left, and her mind snapped back to her body.

The gust of wind howled for three seconds, and with it, a surge of mana that everyone in the cavern could retrace to behind them.

When the gust vanished, the tune disappearing along with it, wails of pain erupted, along with the unmistakable thud of bodies hitting the ground.

Jin-Sil hadn't been precise in her cuts since she lacked proper blade training. But her attack

had, without a doubt, killed a few enemies.

"Woah..." she said, looking down at the bow with shaking hands.

'This much power with a single skill...'