Ronan froze.
Not from fear, but from confusion and shock.
He'd half expected to get a quest during the final battle, one he fully intended to ignore should the penalty allow it, but this wasn't what he'd been anticipating at all.
He stared at the system screen, rereading the penalty line twice to make sure the implication was real.
[Failure Penalty: A high-grade, malicious parasitic entity will identify you as a viable host.]
That made no sense.
The Refinement Leech was a parasite. High-grade. Many would describe it as malicious.
It was drawn to exactly the conditions Ronan had been trying to create: distorted mana, exhausted cores, fractured nodes, unstable battlefield flow.
Is the system threatening me with something I want?
He didn't understand. Confused would be an understatement to what he was feeling.
