I decided to go with the delayed gratification and powerlevel Calling. Would increasing my Willpower right away have helped with increasing the level of my Boons? Probably, but not by too much. That’s why I was going to practice my Spatium Manipulation last.

It would also just feel nice to level up a bunch, all at once, and then get my next specialization. I didn’t really need a win quite yet, so I could save the levels for when I did, or when I was done with all the work and would be able to enjoy watching the numbers go up, knowing that I was just about at the finish line. Either way would be better than getting a dopamine rush when I didn’t need it.

Actually, I don’t have dopamine, do I? A happy-energy rush? Did it matter? Not really.

In any case, I was back to working on my Calling. I'd eventually gotten bored of repeatedly summoning lizards and hated seeing it stagnate, so this time I was mostly working on Nomantic Call.

I only had a couple of things to use Nomantic Call on. It worked on my Named mobs, sure, but that was incredibly easy and I sincerely doubted that it would net me the sort of levels I needed quickly. Instead, I’d had to resort to somewhat more unpleasant means.

“I hate this,” Azrael said, looking a bit queasy. “I just want you to know that if I still ate food, I would be vomiting all over you right now.”

“That’s a very pleasant comment, Azrael.” As I said the last word, I reactivated my Skill/Boon combo, and she reappeared in front of my hand, stumbling and glaring at me.

“I hate this,” she restated with even more vitriol.

“Alright, let’s take a break. I know that Azrael isn’t your given name, so why is this working?” To my knowledge, it had to be the name the universe knew you by, so the fake name that I knew her by shouldn’t have been working so well.

She paused at my comment, then glanced off to the side. “Well, it’s probably for the same reason that my legend calls me Azrael.”

I raised my eyebrows. The words that were used here for a map’s legend and a person’s status screen were the same, so I’d just decided to get used to it and stop trying to split the translations in my head. Still… “Wait, the name on your legend changed?”

“Yeah, it happened around when you split all those bonds from me,” she said, nodding. I cranked on my Bondsight to check my suspicion, and nodded when I saw that her strongest bond was to me. Her bonds from her life were all dull and gray, since she was, well, dead, and I’d cut all the others to keep us safe from the Watchers.

I knew her as Azrael… "Do you consider Azrael to be your real name? Is that how you think of yourself now?"

"Hmm," she considered. "I guess I do? I hadn't thought about it until now. I mean, my old name is still my name too, but it feels a bit strange since it's from when I was alive."

I nodded to myself and mumbled, "That makes sense…"

"What's that?"

"Oh, my bad. I was just thinking about how if we both accept that you're Azrael, and your bonds with everyone else are too weak to be taken into consideration, then perhaps the universe simply decided that you were the name that was most strongly tied to you."

She blinked at me. "So, the name that's used to refer to me the most, by the people that matter to me the most, is my name?"

I waved my hand back and forth. "Not exactly, but that's pretty much correct. If you could use my Bondsight, it would be a lot easier to explain it. If your old name were written down somewhere recently and I hadn't removed those bonds, then that might have a bit of sway over your name, but I do think that people matter the most to it.

"Now, are you ready to continue?"

"Go slowly so I can ease into the teleport," she grumbled, "The moment you level up from this, I'm done."

"It's not really a teleport," I answered her mutterings unbidden, "It's more like I'm pulling you towards myself, just not through a physical means. If it were true teleportation, it would be instant. Instead, I think it stores your body in an extradimensional pocket that's bound to your soul, and then yanks on our bond. Once your soul is here, it takes your body out of storage and reformed it around you." I stopped, but then explained, "Of course, this is just speculation based on what I'm seeing with Delinear Sight. It still barely makes any sense at all to me, Azrael."

She appeared in front of me with a glare. "Yeah, we're definitely only doing this until you get to level 5 in that Boon."

Luckily for her, it didn't take too much longer for me to get to there.

Seif Ambrose

Spatial Lich 2

Phylactery 2

* Undead Possession 1

* Reconstitution 4

* Incorporate Phylactery 2

Necrosis Manipulation 5 (Max)

* Deadsight 7

* Animate Necrosis 8

* Shape Necrosis 5

* Create Undead 9

* Necrotic Restoration 0

* Construct Consciousness 3

Domain of Undeath 5 (Max)

* Spread Undeath 9

* Mold Terrain 10

* Transmute 4

* Omnipresence 4

* Omniscience 3

* Empowered Control 1

Spatium Manipulation 2

* Delinear Sight 4

* Stitching 2

* Folding 1

Calling 4

* Taglock 6

* Nomantic Call 5

* Bondsight 6

* Alter Bond 4

* Available Boon (Bond Leash, Sympathetic Bonding)

Enhancements: Willpower x2

Named Belongings: Caerbalope, Antigo, Arachnomicon

Bond Leash was cool, and in its base state would allow me to prevent my Called creatures from running away. The way it did it, though, had a bit of potential. It would use my bond to a creature to flood it with my Spatium energy, and would then effectively puppeteer it. Sadly, it felt too redundant, what with my Animate Necrosis which could create and manipulate creatures on its own without any need for summoning magic.

Sympathetic Bonding, though, leaned more into the spatial aspect of the Skill. It was centered around the connections between things that were similar in nature, as well as the tiny, weak bonds that held all matter together as though it were a solid whole. It used those tiny bonds between all things to exert some control over reality, linking things together in a much more physical way. It would obviously be hard to level, but… it looked strong.

Trying it out, I realized that I was right: this Boon would be nearly impossible to level up. Or, rather, it would level, but I just knew that if I didn't level it by focusing on learning its principles, I would never truly grow in this aspect. It was just going to be very difficult to observe in action.

The Boon, while active, would consider two things as intrinsically connected. They would be, in a way, the same object. For that reason, the skill would be stronger the more similar the objects were, with maximum efficiency only being possible if they were truly copies. However, if that efficiency was reached, then the objects would effectively be overlayed on top of one another in the eyes of the universe, becoming one thing, but in two different locations. Any changes that happened in one would also take place in the other, and said changes would become much harder to make.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I looked around my tower, feeling slightly annoyed by the ideas that Sympathetic Bonding was giving me. I was going to have to duplicate my tower once it was done, wasn't I?

I started working on the new Boon right away. I could just level up my other stuff first, but I wanted to have a good grasp over this new ability first. I used my Mold Terrain to form two stones that, to all of my senses, were previously the same. Even my Delinear Sight agreed that they had the same weight, circumferences, average radii, and maximum deviation from that radii.

Once I'd carefully gone over the rocks to make sure that they were exactly the same, I slathered some Spatium on them and turned on Sympathetic Bonding. It guided me through the motions of strengthening the bonds between each and every bit of the rocks, then lengthening the bond and pulling it into a knot, then putting even more energy into that knot and peeling away the casings between the places the tether touched itself. Eventually, the knot would form into more of an orb, and the energies that flowed into it would be reshaped and distributed. Anything that was sent across the bond would be sent in both directions equally. Without the knot, there wouldn't be enough room for the bond to send across the force that was applied to the original creature, since it would all be full of Spatium.

Sadly, it didn't look like there was a way to make sacrificial dummies, since the bond was always going to be equal, no matter what. That, more than anything, was set in stone. The bond just wasn't large or strong enough to accept 100% of the forces applied to one body. Imagine getting punched. This way put a wide plate on the attacker's fist, spreading out the supplied forces. Sending all of the energy across would be like eating the fist. It just wasn't feasible.

Finally, I would focus on pulling the bond into the physical world, rather than simply tying it to the idea of the objects I was working on. I would then encapsulate the creation in that bond, and then it would be done.

I ran out of energy multiple times during the process, but I eventually finished testing the new Boon. My creation was certainly not perfect. First of all, I'd taken the easy route and made a basic square knot, rather than any of the other, more complex shoes I could have made to increase and strengthen the bond further.

Using Spatium Manipulation, I cut a thread of reality. This was pretty stupid, since it cost a lot of energy to keep it split, but I didn't intend to keep this tear in reality open for long. I looked directly at the other stone and found that it seemed to be warping in the same way that the original was, just without the influence of Stitching.

Interesting. It was also taking far more energy to keep the strand of reality detached than it should. I let it go so my energy levels wouldn't get too low, and then Created two Dualjacks on the floor. I could bind two objects together, but would that connection work for animated creatures? After a bit of experimentation, I got my answer.

It turned out that I could attach the bond to corpses just fine, but the Necrosis would devour the Spatium that was keeping the bond in place. At first, that had seemed like a dead end, but then I looked down at my own hands and realized that I could mix Necrosis and Spatium. With that in mind, I tried again, this time infusing the bond with my Spatium-Necrosis mix. It took a lot more energy, and I'd needed to convince the mixture not to eat the Spatium casing of the bond, but it was mostly docile now so it wasn't too hard.

When I tried to reanimate the corpses this time, I mixed the Necrosis into the mix that was already present, and it accepted the soupification, adding its own intent into the mix. After a few moments, I had two intrinsically linked Caerbalopes.

I had one of the Antigos stab one, and sensed that its flesh was much tougher than it should have been, and the damage was split between the two abominations.

It looked like I'd be able to use this method to create monsters with linked "health bars," which was cool since that was a common theme in games. I used the ability on a few of the Gila Hulks I was making, and decided to call them Twinscales. I also found that I could use Create Consciousness on the knot in their Sympathetic Bond, which would give them a singular hivemind that controlled them both.

I also used the process to make a pair of Antigos, but gave them both their own Consciousnesses. They were both given my Spread Undeath Boon.

After some more tinkering with my new ability–mostly smashing rocks and having linked creatures fight one another to figure out how exactly the Sympathy worked–I sensed that Azrael was heading down the stairs. I dismissed my projects and called the new Antigos forward.

"You're heading out?"

She nodded. "Are these the ones you're going to send with me?"

"Yup," I responded. "Sorry, gimme just a second…"

Hey, you two, I mentally communicated to the beasts, causing them to look at me. Great, keep this lady safe, and follow any of her orders if you can understand them. Their heads twitched, and I knew they understood my command.

"They're ready. They can't speak and don't know… wait, what's this language called?" How did I not know this one?

"Depends. If you want to use the full, proper name, then it's Kerenth-Yalten Glyphic," she explained, "but most governments I know of like to ignore the fact that there's anything above the Dead Belt, so they call it Yalten. Most people just call it Glyphic, though. I don't know if that holds up in Kerenth, though."

"Thank you, wellspring of knowledge," I praised. "Anyways, yeah, they don't know Glyphic, so they won't know what you're saying, but they might be able to interpret if you think you're good at charades."

Azrael's head tilted. "What's Chawr-Aids?"

Whoops. I guess I'd said that in English? Was there really no translation for that? "Don't worry about it, just uh, have fun out there!"

"I think I will," she said with a smile. "Sorry if I've been too pushy lately. I just don't know how you manage to stay in here constantly, I would have gone crazy by now."

"Who knows, maybe I went crazy all the way back in that first dungeon and you're just a figment of my imagination?" I chuckled at her concerned expression. "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure it's just a lich thing."

"I see. Anyways, I'm gonna get out of this boring stone tower. See you later!"

I waved her goodbye and got back to my experiments.

In the end, I tried a lot of different things. Even to me, it felt like I was spending a lot of time on this specific Boon. I took breaks to check on Azrael with my Omnipresence, but there was never anything she needed and no opportunities to Call her back arose, so I'd just ended up working on creating tons of Twinscales. My Necrosis Manipulation didn't need it, but it was helpful for my new Sympathetic Bonding Boon and populated the dungeon. Right now my Wisps couldn't automatically make these things, since they would need at least three of my Boons to manage it. In other words, I definitely wasn't wasting my time just to reduce the boredom involved with this process.

It. Took. Days. I eventually ran out of room on the first seven floors and had to start chucking Dualjacks outside the dungeon to use my Sympathetic Bonding on. I actually started making the two corpses on opposite sides of the tower when I realized that it was harder to do that way, just to make it feel a little more interesting.

Eventually, after what I'm sure was days of progress, I felt the buzz.

Seif Ambrose

Spatial Lich 2

Phylactery 2

* Undead Possession 1

* Reconstitution 4

* Incorporate Phylactery 2

Necrosis Manipulation 5 (Max)

* Deadsight 7

* Animate Necrosis 8

* Shape Necrosis 5

* Create Undead 9

* Necrotic Restoration 0

* Construct Consciousness 3

Domain of Undeath 5 (Max)

* Spread Undeath 9

* Mold Terrain 10

* Transmute 4

* Omnipresence 4

* Omniscience 3

* Empowered Control 1

Spatium Manipulation 2

* Delinear Sight 4

* Stitching 3

* Folding 1

Calling 5 (Max)

* Taglock 6

* Nomantic Call 5

* Bondsight 7

* Alter Bond 5

* Sympathetic Bonding 2

* Available Boon (Call Through Space, Call Through Fate)

Enhancements: Willpower x2

Named Belongings: Caerbalope, Antigo, Arachnomicon

Humm. New options. Furthermore, these were actually both variants on the Calling Skill itself, it seemed.

Call Through Space was actually a simpler version of the Skill. Instead of doing all the fancy stuff with dragging someone's soul, it latched onto their body and bodily yanked them towards you. It would basically let me fish without a fishing rod. This Boon would actually be a pretty cool ability to have as the final boss of a dungeon. Pulling people into crowds of mobs or attacks… it would be good. Call Through Fate went the other direction. It actually relied more on the Karma aspects of the Skill, and would gently influence the target's mind, making them think of me or area I called, and cause them to find an excuse to go there.

Call Through Space could be used to troll people or fight in a fun way. Call Through Fate was minor mind control that I'd only really have a use for on Azzy. I took Call Through Space.

Next up was my Phylactery Skill, but honestly? I was tired. Kinda bored, too. I laid back on the hard stone floor and turned on Omnipresence.

Gonna spy on Azrael for a bit. Then I'll get back to work.