And I have arrived. Arrived where exactly? Well, it’s a dimly lit cave. To be honest, the only source of light is the dim sunlight coming from where I fell in. Things didn’t pan out as we thought, but I arrived nonetheless. Even though, the blood diluting the water in the small lake implies that this body is probably in a terrible shape. Well, it’s my first time possessing, so overall I count this as a sort of success.

Well, let’s do some check-ups and tests before anything else. I make a pistol sign with my fingers, and on the end of it a black mass in the shape of a sphere appears at the tip of my bloody broken finger. Oh shit, it's a good thing I don't feel the pain. I shoot it at a nearby stone, and it corrodes, or more like decays, until nothing remains, just a pile of dust. Spending all that time practising did paid off in the end.

I can now safely proclaim myself as a professional death mage. I wonder if I can fix my body with it. After giving it a quick try, I look at my arms and my body, and it’s also in a regrettable shape as one would expect it. I guess it won’t work even if technically the original owner is dead. Well, I’ll have ample time to fix this on the journey towards the heart of the mountain.

Let’s try something else for now. I sit down in meditation pose. Gosh, it’s so uncomfortable, my knees gave out crunching noises. Even in this new body and world, I’m cursed with shitty knees.

Okay, for now, let’s just focus. I close my eyes, and slow my breathing. The world is consumed by an ever hungering darkness in front of me. After a few seconds pass by, I began to feel my body, or more exactly my soul body speeding up in place. Like when you are in roller coaster that is in the motion of going down in high speed or when you are in those spinning teacups at the local amusement park.

And in the next moment I arrive at my destination. My very own divine space, if that is the right name. It’s a peaceful place. I’m standing on a body of water, and in front of me there is a relatively small island. From what he told me, only Gods, demigods and such beings possess their own divine spaces. I’m really no longer a human. I had a lot of time to cope with that, but still it gives me a really weird but also exciting feeling.

But back to „reality”, on the island is a shrine-like platform. There is no shrine in the middle but a odd looking tree, surrounded by altars. Six to be more precise, with only two being lit. The altars and the platform itself is made from some darkish marble material that gives it a menacing and wicked look. Also, I kind of forgot to mention them, but peculiar twisting dark spires come out from the water surrounding the islands in small intervals like the Norse mythological kraken is trying to swallow the small sinister island. Anyway back to the two altars, one has a darkish purple sphere like light hovering over it that I can guess is the Aspect of Death, while the other is a bluish sphere that a recent addition, a gift of sorts. The Aspect of Aether. Even though it is only limited to the Mind sub-aspect. I can tell that from instinct.

The tree itself has its roots are twisted on the sides of the scones and if I had to guess it goes underground connecting into them. Well not guess because the tree looks like a solid three-dimensional wound on the fabric of reality that eats away the surrounding light, but also has visible veins on it the same colours as the two spheres over the altars. Touching it gives me a cold, yet warm feeling. If I remember correctly, he said the tree itself is a part of our soul. Now we can use mana and negative matter at the same time. The veins themselves end at the branches where lotuses grow on them with the same colour as the two aspects made from some ethereal solid visible energy. To be more precise, they resemble closed lotus flowers.

There is one last thing to check. Behind the tree and at the far end of the “temple” is an orb floating in the air decorated with various runes. This is the manifestation of the gifts he has given. Three gifts, to be precise. Innate specialities are what he called it. First is an unfair passive involving the magic system The Creator made. I call it a cheat, but it’s more of him being an aberration by the standards of our reality. And now that includes me too. In short, my magic works by different rules than what the Creator and the Arch-God of Magic made. Just to give an example. Undead creatures have natural resistance against any kind of Death magic, with only two exception, one including me while the other is him. So yeah, it is kind of unfair compared to the folks of this world.

The second gift is this Divine Realm and the benefit of it being my little safe haven in case something happens to my vessel. I can even retreat here in the middle of a battle, thanks to time flowing differently. That is unfair too, but it is a given now that I’m sort of a demigod.

Stolen story; please report.

And the last one is a more active Innate Ability. Namely, Absorption, even though others like to refer to it as Consuming or Devouring but well those are different things really. With this one, learning about this world and gaining the powers of some monsters will help tremendously navigating towards our goal. Well with that I think I pretty much checked everything here.

Now back in reality, I quickly take a better look at the condition of my vessel. That looks distressing, I’ll definitely need to absorb a few stronger monsters. The left part of the vessel's head is completely missing, reminding me of someone eating orange in a fucked up way. The rest is more or less okay. Parts of the meat are missing from here and there and there are deep cuts all over the body, but I can stand. Seems like I was lucky that my legs and my right arm is not broken.

Anyway time to move on and find some “food” so I can fix some of it…

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Aspect of Death and the Sub-Aspect of Mind:

Magic itself was made by the Maker. At that time it was merely an invisible force the people of the Multiverse could use in various ways, like strengthening their bodies and muscles or boost their stamina and mana. Simple stuff that is considered basic magic nowadays. Then later came the Arch-God of Magic and upgraded it with the help of all the others of the same rank. That’s when the Aspects of Magic term slowly started to be used. First they made the five main Aspects: Aether, Nature, Water, Air, and Fire. And these all have sub-aspects, which some are considered taboo or forgotten. And there is the Aspect of Death that was created secretly by the then Arch-Deity of Death itself.

Aspect of Death:

This Aspect of Magic is one of the aspects that is considered by some to be magic while others just see it as a perversion of the gift of the Maker. It was created by the Ur-Reaper eons ago without the aid of the Arch-God of Magic. One of the biggest reasons many don’t consider it a main aspect like the other five is because Death Mages don’t use mana to fuel their spells, instead they use negative matter or necrotic energy. Using that can have several drawbacks to the user if they are a simple mortal. The best example is that the their skin colour slowly turns to deathly pale, their hair colour gets darker and paler until it starts to fall out. After a few decades of usage Death Mages slowly turn into undead beings. Depending on their expertise and power level they either turn into some mindless zombie or a lich from which they either resemble a highly sophisticated zombie or through various other sub-aspects of Death can regain their original form or at least the point where they started to go deathly pale. And while it has drawbacks, for some the benefits they can get from using death magic can easily outweigh them. A newbie death mage user can raise a few dead and may can instantly kill a weaker mage or warrior with their spells while a stronger and more experienced death mage can raise an army of powerful undead creatures and kill instantly mostly anyone with the exception being demigods and gods themselves.

While on the deity/entity side they are seen as one of the most dangerous beings beside demons and aberrations. Some of the beings of death can easily kill with their sight themselves unless you have a protection of a “benevolent” being on the same level. Even a weaker ones possess an aura that causes decay in their immediate surroundings, which in some cases even mean the mana flowing in the bodies of mortals. And on a final note is the Ur-Reaper whose death magic was so powerful he could kill spells themselves before they even reached him, had a decaying aura that turned even demigods to a pile of dust and ash. But even that is not considered the peak of Death by many.

Sub-Aspect of Mind:

The Sub-Aspect of Mind belongs to the Aether Magic. It was made by various gods of logic, trickery and knowledge. Mind magic have many spells and uses, a few example is telekinesis, light brainwashing like making people turn on their friends and allies that is even used in assassination in some cases and lastly recording that is relatively rare because it needs extensive training to contain knowledge you just seen for more than a few seconds or minutes. Unlike death magic this uses mana to fuel the spells and can be combined with the others. In all mixing cases people like to refer to it as Magic of the Imagination. It is very rare though, most people just stick to the basics of the Mind. While the few who use Imagination are considered semi-demigods or are outright demigods. Just to give an example, if you combine illusion with a combustion spell the victim will see themselves on fire, feel the pain and even the damage becomes semi-real. Even though they are not really on fire, scars common to being on fire will appear on the body and can even cause the death of the target. Or a simpler example is mixing thought-seize with Air can cause someone to completely forget to breath. While in the case of the Gods and Entities it gives them a passive eidetic memory, some demons and even Gods use it as a special kind of possession which is more of a really extreme brainwashing (if you ask me) where they completely rewrite a person’s memories and psyche to match theirs. And weirdly Gods are incapable of using the Magic of Imagination, but that is considered taboo to mention.