The bubbling worsened, growing into a ball of flesh as the two Dei’s charged towards it. Spirit Dei Identified it using Wrath mana, both punching a hole into it and getting more information.
[Grubbing Body Melder - Level 243
The Melder is a type of Spirit that assimilates different materials or affinities into itself, drawing power from variance with versatile weak attacks. This Melder has chosen Body as its specialized affinity]
A large hand made of hands grew from the mass, grabbing towards the two of them. Physical Dei jumped to the side, cutting one of the fingers off in its passing, while Spirit Dei flew over the hand, running along the arm and holding his body low, dragging his claws along its flesh that left deep gouges.
It was entering the Physical realm much slower than Dei or the Wraith could, so its [Re-Attunement] was of lower quality. They needed to score as many hits as possible before it stabilized.
Rather than saving his Wrath mana, both of them began blasting it out in weak Identifies. Wrath Mana still rapidly flowed into him, while Soul mana was passively absorbed into him from the air, leftover from the battle with the Wraith.
When he cut off one of the fingers, it dropped to the ground, and he stabbed it with his Biting Flesh Trap, which delivered more Soul into his body.
He leapt backwards a moment to allow his blade to process the mana, when suddenly a crippling pain rang out from his soul.
His physical body screamed in agony as multiple cracking sounds echoed across his soul sense. The Spirit Dei felt concerned, but decided that the best he could do to help was hold back the enemy while Physical Dei figured the issue out. Looking within himself, he quickly realized the issue.
[Pandora’s Box (Contained) (50) (2000/2000)]
His [Pandora’s Box] was full, and more mana was quickly pushing its way into him. He communicated this to his Spirit form, and both of them knew they could fix it by just laying on attacks more quickly.
At the same time though, they both realized it was an opportunity.
Skills leveled up faster during combat, and [Pandora’s Box] in particular was a leftover from his previous life, boosting its growth further.
It might be smarter to empty it out, growing the Box in the safety of his Garden, but it was downright fucking agonizing to feel it grow. Instead of just emptying it, the Dei’s chose to allow the box to fill and grow, releasing some of the pressure through rapidfire [Identify]’s when it became too much.
His Physical body was out of the fight for now, but the Spirit form would take it from here. Physical Dei leaned against the wall, ready to launch into action if needed or dodge if any stray attacks came his way, but otherwise his task was to just endure the pain.
Spirit Dei was not shy in punching holes with [Identify] or clawing at the writhing mass. It continued to grow, and Dei made sure to stay on top of it. Two limbs made from their miniature counterparts came through, a leg made of legs and an arm made of arms. It was horrific and disgusting, but Dei ignored the way it looked, ripping out small chunks when he could. Its Soul integrity had hardly gone down at all, and he was getting worried for how much more would come through. Only a hand and leg were through into the physical world, but it was massive. Dei knew he would need to be more sturdy if he was going to fight this thing without his Physical body.
The Projection he piloted was made from the minimum required Soul mana, at a Soul Strength of four hundred and fifty.
Soul mana was thick in the air, and something else joined the mix. A new type of mana leaked from the Melder, and it beckoned Dei to absorb it.
It felt very natural, like the mana of plants or animals, but something else. He was already full on Soul Strength, but he began absorbing it into his projection nonetheless, preventing it from entering his [Pandora’s Box], Physical Dei was having enough trouble already.
Carefully, he dodged whipping limbs while slowly absorbing something from the new mana. Once the first few points were integrated into his body, he understood the new flavor- it was Spirit mana.
Until now, he assumed that Spirits would be made from Soul mana, same as his Projection, but that was not the case. This was a natural born Spirit he’d encountered, its Soul had never been alive. Spirits weren’t just dead beings, they were living creatures with their own Souls, and their bodies were held together by Spirit energy.
Dei’s Projection was not a true Spirit, held together by Soul. The Wraith as well, for that matter, was more of an undead creature than a spirit- the revived Obsidian Elemental.
No, what he encountered now was an intangible animal, and its mana proved immensely useful in giving him information which natural spirits were born with, but created spirits were not, an instinct stronger than that provided by his [Astral Projection] Skill.
It gave information on how to absorb Spirit mana from the air, how to use sound waves to disrupt other Spirits as well as how to defend from such things, how to change his own shape, and so much more that he’d never tried.
If he pulled enough of this Spirit mana into himself and digested it, his Projection would face a tangible upgrade in versatility.
With his mental enhancements, the entire thought took seconds, but he put it aside and refocused on damaging the creature. He had to wound it hard, before it entered the physical realm fully, so he began working to cut off one of its hand-made-of-hands.
Rather than scoring small scratches, he focused on its wrist, tearing a hole in it.
The hand whipped around, and he jumped off easily before it could build the momentum to send him flying away.
Pestering it, he continuously flew back to the same spot, digging deeper with each swipe. When the gash was elbow deep, he dove headfirst into it, pushing his body through as he dug into it hard.
Again, it whipped back and forth, but Dei clung to the structure of it, burrowing into it.
The flesh around him began vibrating, and he sensed a bellow ability go off in the Spirit realm below the Physical layer he was in. The Melder had tried to destabilize him with an area attack, but it was clearly struggling to launch any Skills at him with less than half its body through the opening it created between realms.
Digging harder, he was halfway through the wrist when the Melder slammed its hand into the wall, attempting to crush him.
It partially succeeded, finally getting him out of the wound, but his hand mostly came off too, barely held by a thread. He thought such damage would be a critical blow to the Melder, but barely any mana leaked from the wound. Something was off about the creature, and he needed more information.
Killing two birds with one stone, he shot off four quick Identifies using Soul mana, which punched cleanly through the last of the skin as the hand was at the apex of a swing, sending it flying down the tunnel.
From the disruption to its Soul, Dei tried figuring out why the creature was so fragile, discovering that it was a feature of its constitution.
While this being was higher leveled than both Dei and the Obsidian Wraith, it sacrificed its baseline for higher survivability. It was half as strong, about eighty percent as fast, and only twenty percent as durable as Dei. In exchange, it was nigh unkillable, as its body was almost gaseous in nature.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The creature was a scavenger, through and through. The reason it was so big was to take longer strides to escape faster, and it was very fragile because it would readily cut off pieces of itself to distract predators away from the main body. There was hardly any Spirit mana coursing through it, which led to it both being easily torn apart, and almost impossible to pin down.
That didn’t mean it was weak to Dei though, just that creatures of its own level wouldn’t have to fear it. It was a small bird, and he was a bug that caught its eye.
“Go absorb the hand that was flung away, but don’t store the mana. Send it to me through our connection, I need to use it to reinforce myself” he sent to the Physical Dei, hoping he could accomplish it. Physical Dei was the one with the plant after all, and that plant was the only one who was able to easily absorb Soul mana from the Spirits.
If Spirit Dei was right, it wouldn’t be like that for much longer though. He just needed enough Spirit mana incorporated into himself to learn how spirits absorbed mana from the air, and he would be able to massively strengthen himself. There was far too much around him to let it go to waste.
Physical Dei began limping over to the hand without responding, and Spiritual Dei again focused on the fight.
The Melder did not like its hand getting cut off, and began reforming the limbs that were through, splitting them into four smaller tentacles each.
The feet began pressing down on the floor, lifting it up through the blob, while the hands started whipping around to defend itself long enough to be lifted through.
Dei ran forward carefully. While he had a faster reaction time than the Melder, it did not need to think quickly to whip him using its longer limbs. If he could get closer to its center it wouldn’t be able to properly utilize its reach, but he needed to get past the danger zone to reach it.
He would need to trick it somehow to give him an opening. While he could easily run straight through, he didn’t want to leave it to chance.
In order to fool it on where he was. He would need something large to distract it. He also knew that it had [Spirit Sense], same as him, though likely lower tier.
For [Spirit Sense], he was confident that it was being thrown off. There was far too much Soul and Spirit mana in the air, causing even his own to become blurry and indistinct. In order to distract it, he pulled two hundred and fifty mana from his [Pandora’s Box] using [Meaningful], imbuing it with the message of “I am here you big bastard, and I am going to kill you.”
He shaped clump of mana into that of his body by using himself as a mold, spreading all the Kindness mana around his Projection equally, then sent it forward. Immediately, he ran diagonally from the fake Dei, aiming to enter the danger zone after putting distance between them.
The arms did pause in swinging around when the [Meaningful] message entered its radius, but it didn’t attack immediately, instead sending its four hands to grab onto it and begin feeling around inside its body.
It seemed almost curious of it, rather than outraged at the message, but Dei was just glad the distraction worked.
While it was playing around with the mana, Dei got close enough to the legs and swung out his claws at the first one, quickly destabilizing it. As he did, the entire mass began to wobble precariously before falling towards him.
He flew backwards, the central mass that the legs were pulling through finally came out of the bubbling ball of flesh, taking the shape of multiple eyes and mouths, giving it a spider-like appearance with its four legs and four arms.
In the same moment, he felt Spirit mana begin pouring into him from his connection with Physical Dei, and began frantically searching through the information the Spirit mana gave him for “how to make your body more sturdy.”
To his dread, he realized that it wasn’t as simple as upgrading his projection, requiring time to fully digest the Spirit mana. Despite the setback, though, the fight would not wait for him to be ready.
He jumped onto the central mass, ripping out chunks of it and sending more mana into the air. It was far too little mana based on how much damage it was taking, but that was the trade off he knew to expect. He also began trying to learn how to pull in mana directly from the air, when he felt something grab onto his back, prying him away from the orb like center of the creature.
He bagan to panic, trying to reach his back to pry the arm off him as he was held up to the creatures face, all eighteen of the eyes on this side of its face staring at him. He saw how some of the eyes on another side of it were looking at his Physical self, who stood like a deer in the headlights at the situation they found themselves in.
“What is it doing?!” Physical Dei said
“I don’t know, what's the plan? I’ve been focused on fighting.”
“Well if you lost, I intended to fully open Pandora’s Box, effectively setting off a bomb of Spirit, Soul, and Wrath mana in order to blind it, then to run back into my little hidey hole until it goes away. It doesn’t seem all that mad, so I’m not afraid of it coming back.”
“Okay, but that involves me most likely dying, and that would deal a big soul wound, yea?”
“Got a better plan? No! You’re me!”
The entire conversation took place in a second, quick exchanges of pure meaning boosted by [Vigilance] increasing their thinking speeds, but the Melder had yet to make a move. It just held Spiritual Dei in the air, keeping multiple eyes on both of them.
Thirty seconds later, Spiritual Dei felt himself move, and his nerves spiked as he assumed he was about to be eaten. He realized quickly though that he was instead being moved away from the central mass, and placed next to Physical Dei.
Both of them were tense and highly confused. Now that they were next to each other, they could potentially fire off multiple [Identify]’s in a concentrated beam to try and blast it away, but Spiritual Dei had already tried that, and it didn’t really care if parts of its body were blown off.
At the same time, their attention was drawn to a bulb on the central mass that suddenly began writhing and pulsing, before falling off it and splattering against the ground. They watched as it slowly reshaped itself to the size and shape of a gingerbread man. Much more horrific, but its features were indistinct and it was a tiny figure of a person.
It began walking towards them as the larger mass took a few steps back, and both their eyebrows rose at the same time of its mannerisms.
When the tiny man was around five feet from them, it looked up towards their heads, and skin pulled back from its lower jaw to reveal shining white teeth.
Physical Dei shivered and Spiritual Dei cringed at the sight.
It opened its mouth, and a Skill similar to [Meaningful] activated, translating itself into their minds.
“Hello! My name is Gargeth, who are you?”
Both of them were stunned for a moment, but Spirit Dei responded first using [Meaningful]. “We are Dei, parts of the same whole. We are a single person, just split for now.” It was weird referring to himself as plural, but not inaccurate.
“Ahh yes, swarm mind. I am familiar with the state. Why was there a fight here? Why did you attack me?” Again, the questions took them off guard, and Physical Dei decided to let Spirit Dei take the lead from this point forward. Spirit Dei couldn’t get nauseous, so he had the upper hand there.
“The Wraith was trying to hunt me down and kill me, so I killed it first. As for why we attacked you… Well, we thought you would try to kill us too? I am glad that you are not, but why are you not?”
“I am a scavenger, not very good at fighting. Many spirits know my kind, so they do not attack, are you new to the spirit world?”
“Err, yes. This is our first time talking to a spirit.”
“Oh! Lucky you! Melders usually do not attack, but are also not as interested in speech as I. I am fascinated with physical beings, a side effect of my affinity. You are spirit and body, like me, but separate, different. Very interesting. You have interesting eyes, unnatural yet… built in. you were born with them, yet your soul shape is edited. Not normally obvious, but I am sensitive to such things.
“If you sate my curiosity on the incongruities between what I expected to see from your Soul upon studying it versus what I actually saw, I will answer some questions of your own about the Spirit World. I also promise to not attack you for the duration of our discussion, plus four hours. Once the discussion is over, neither of us will attempt to track or monitor the other in any way until the minimum of four hours is over, after which I will be indifferent to your attempts.”
It was baffling to hear such a horrific creature use scientific words, but it felt like some sort of researcher based on how it was acting. The Dei’s realized it was most likely there to study their body, its affinity a result of its personality or vice versa. At the end of its sentence, they also received a notification.
[Gargeth has offered a Temporary Truce of Discussion]
[Temporary Truce of Discussion
Gargeth wishes to discuss with you. If you desire, it will answer your own questions. During the discussion, no intentional harm will come from either party towards the other. After the discussion is considered over by both parties, a grace period of four hours will commence, where neither party will make attempts to gain advantage over the other in anticipation of the Truce ending]