Outside of the damn Dungeon, Robert sighed in relief. He felt naked without his main talent. It was his access to a safe haven and his best defensive ability.
He conjured the book. Using his primary talent, he took the tome with him to the liminal void. There, he went into a state of hyper-alertness as he scanned his surroundings to see if anyone was nearby. No, he was as alone as ever. He didn't doubt the cultists could come up with a spell to grant survival in the liminal void.
He got an idea but he pinned it for later. Maybe he could grant visitors immunity to the liminal void without the need for direct physical contact or emulate this contact at a distance. But it wasn't the moment to come up with new ideas. It was time to explore the old.
Unwrapping the book, he checked for traps. When he found none, Robert flipped through the pages, making a copy in his mind palace. It was much safer to read the book in there. Placing the tome back in his spatial storage technique, he went to his intellect fortress.
*
*
Robert sat on a leather chair in a comfortable study. He had a steaming mug of tea, the lighting was perfect, everything. It was all make-believe but he didn't care.
Outside, he could see the trees and bushes and flowers. Then the tall walls of his bastion in the distance, and the projection of the Gurglock Ocean world floating in the sky, right next to the map of the Maze Corridors. After taking a sip of tea took the cultist's tome and started to read.
The first page had a handwritten letter penned in a gorgeous flowing script.
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> "Dear Robert. A century separates us but we are one and the same. Though many praised my power, I can only feel regret in the last days of my life. So many opportunities were squandered. This is why I am going to end this life and bet everything I have on the next. On you. I made my pacts, and I made arrangements for the gifts I leave for my future self. Take them. You've earned them. Seek power and happiness in equal amounts. I now feel ready to cross the Void Gates of Nirvana. But though it was supposed to be gates, I only have this door here. My biggest regret. I hope you don't make the same one, but the act of leaving this book behind, by itself, is already toying with Fate too much. After you finish reading this book, please ascend to the third star. It will be all right.
>
> — Love, Gwen."
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The letter resonated with his subconscious. He had a "tip of the tongue" moment where he was about to remember something but couldn't. The script looked familiar. It was someone who had great hand coordination and a soft personality. It hardly matched the image of the leader of a bunch of crazy terrorism-driven cultists.
He re-read the letter, then checked the rest of the book. It was an in-depth manual to the Void affinity, describing many things and giving insights about what the void was. In between chapters, tales of Gwen, the Pail Priestess' life. The woman was born before the rift cataclysm and worked at an animation company. She was a Void-affinity Arch with a mediocre talent but she managed to grow and become a four-star in record time.
He went back to the letter. Her gates were a single door. her biggest regret. Robert felt some faint sadness coming from nowhere. He knew the text didn't elicit such feelings in him. He didn't know this void priestess and couldn't care less about her.
So what? He was her reincarnation? If reincarnation was a thing, then everyone was someone's reincarnation. Did she expect him to take over her cult for her? That was absurd. But no. He kept reading. Gwen made pacts with creatures outside human comprehension. The book even mentioned Cerebelon. But the pressure borne out of envy of her talent forced her to go underground with her followers. Eventually, she gave up and erased herself, going through the void gates that were a single door.
The last chapter had detailed instructions on how to open the Void Gates of Nirvana. After the Arch fully develops the void heart to a capacity of over a hundred percent of a star's essence, he should perform a short ritual and then sacrifice an amount of capacity from their stars. The more one sacrifices, the stronger and bigger the gates will become. Said capacity could be earned back at the current rate of growth, depending on one's number of stars.
No loss of talent evolution would be incurred from this sacrifice. The gates would produce as much essence as three times the amount of progress sacrificed. Once opened, the gates could be further developed by sacrificing essence through them and meditating on the engravings present in the doors. Developing the gates would increase the essence produced. Each stage would add to the gates' base essence regeneration, plus any modifiers from the concepts acquired.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Doors. Not door. Doors. But Gwen had a single door. She stressed it. And that was her biggest regret. Robert knew that the key was to know how to open more than one door. The true technique created gates. Doors. More than one.
He re-read the instructions, spending more than one hour on each line, trying to grasp its meaning. He sensed that the instructions and descriptions had no useless words or sentences. He separated everything he knew from the tomes Cultist Marcus had and the new information present in this tome.
It could be a trap but he doubted. Robert knew these cultists were insane but would they sacrifice one of their leaders just to trap him into crippling his soul? He didn't think so. Retrocognition told him the book was ancient. It wasn't something they concocted with very accurate knowledge of his life to trick him. This tome was a hundred years old at least. Especially the letter. It was more recent than the tome but still old.
Gwen sought more power than what she had. She made irreversible choices she regretted. She had one door when she wished she had gates. Her Void Gates of Nirvana were defective. Incomplete.
She told him to ascend immediately.
The instructions said that the sacrifice didn't cause a loss of talent evolution.
Robert focused on that little detail. What would cause a loss of talent evolution? He knew that a botched ascent, or one propelled by treasures rather than achievements, could cause a talent to devolve. To become weaker. But the sacrifice removed one's growth. He couldn't botch an ascent if he was doing the opposite.
The opposite of an ascension to the next star... a sacrifice... Gwen's sacrifice fell short of what she could've achieved. One door instead of gates. Singular versus plural. The sacrifice didn't degrade one's talent.
Robert thought he had figured it out but it was an absurd proposition.
He re-read the letter, the instructions, the whole book. If he told what he thought was the solution to this puzzle to anyone, they would laugh in his face.
It was insane.
But he was missing one piece still. There was something in there that he missed or dismissed as not important. Gwen probably couldn't tell him what he should do straight. She was toying with Fate too much already by only leaving clues.
He re-read the instructions, sentence by sentence, trying to see if he had extracted all the meaning from each one of them. He wrote them down separately and drew lines between them, seeing the connections he had already made. Few sentences had way fewer connections than the others but one in particular drew his attention.
The lost capacity from the sacrifice could be earned back at the rate of how many stars he had. He skimmed over this sentence because it was obvious. If he was a three-star, he would recover the sacrificed capacity as a three-star.
So why was this sentence in the instructions? Why stress over something that should be obvious?
Gwen regretted not sacrificing enough. Robert knew he should go all out. She also told him to ascend immediately. Without fear.
One thing at a time. He could ascend to three stars now. Back in his body in the liminal void, he did that even though everything said he should wait.
His two stars shone like supernovae, and then a third faint glow appeared between them. A wave of power washed over his body, enhancing it once more. His perception became sharper, his coordination, better. It was as if his former self had spent months slouching on a couch but now he was at his prime.
His two Prime vestiges opened their eyes, appearing as ghostly apparitions of enormous size above his Ethercosm.
"What the Emperor gives, the Void feasts on!"
"Fae eyes to see through deception!"
He felt an itch in his eyes. Summoning a mirror, he noticed his irises were silver on a brown backdrop and his sclera had no visible veins. Instead, tiny dots shed a faint light. It was so faint that it could barely be seen even in pitch-black darkness.
Robert had no idea what the evolution of his primary talent meant. Again with that Emperor talk. He went back to his study in the intellect fortress.
*
*
He gave the book a fourth read-over. The next step was to sacrifice some growth but... he was at zero percent on his third star. What growth would he sacrifice if he had none to give?
That's when his crazy idea returned to the fore of his mind. Could it be? Both versions of the technique stressed that the lost progress could be regained. It wasn't a matter of how much he wanted to sacrifice but how much he wanted to redo everything again.
Gwen sacrificed too little. What was the least amount of sacrifice one could make? One percent? Ninety-nine? She got a door where she hoped to get gates. Plural.
Before he made the worst decision of his life, his eyes landed on a little tidbit about Gwen. She worked at an animation studio. From what he learned in the hundreds of books he read, animators made motion pictures, and cartoons, by drawing stuff by hand.
Mickey. Gwen drew Mickey. Was she linked to his awakening as a spirit? He had to ask the mouse later.
But back to his conundrum.
Robert went to his Ethercosm. How much growth was he willing to recap? If it was just the progress of his stars, all of it.
It finally clicked.
Robert started the ritual to open the void gates. He drew the runes and created the shell as instructed in the book. Once the shell became active, a hole opened in his soul, connecting his soul to the deep void. It started to suck everything toward it. He had to sacrifice to stabilize the gates.
If Gwen sacrificed just a portion of a star and got a door, Robert wanted gates. Not one but two gates. The technique's benefits hinged on the amount sacrificed.
He tossed his two full stars at the hole. The Void devoured the stars. The shell for the Void Gates of Nirvana pulsed and all the essence stored in those stars cycled through it.
Two gothic gates of black iron, the metal twisting and forming fractal patterns appeared. Two obsidian pillars flanked the gates, serving as support for the hinges.
Robert felt weak. The power of a three-star Arch was taken away from his body. Then the gates opened and a flood of essence filled his void heart. The doorway to reincarnation was open to him though he had no interest in going through it. He was happy with his life. He had no regrets. And he felt that Gwen was vindicated. Those massive, brutal, powerful gates weren't just a mere door.
And his void heart, for the first time in weeks, beat once again. With each heartbeat, it drew more essence from the Void Gates of Nirvana.