Chapter 50:

[Class Leveled Up: Prodigal Detector (Level 71) -> (Level 72)]

[+1 Mental, +1 Magical]

[Skill Leveled Up: Meaningful (33) -> (35)]

[Skill Leveled Up: Growing Pains (109) -> (110)]

[Skill Leveled Up: Solidity (17) -> (19)]

[Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (65) -> (66)]

[Skill Leveled Up: Identify of the Stout Protector (56) -> (57)]

Finally, after months of preparation and retrying his trips, Dei closed in on the spirits abode. It felt almost anticlimactic. He’d struggled so many times, completely failing to make progress, and now he’d suddenly skipped right to the end. The entire trip, Dei waited for some monster to jump out at him, for something to be tracking him, yet nothing happened.

He had to think back and remind himself that the fault of his difficulty was his alone. In all his delays, he made himself known. When he visited the bog, he spent too long making a racket in the exact same spot, until a monster came to kill him. When he stopped by the Convection biome, he’d intentionally thrown himself into the fray.

The only time a monster ever actively hunted him was the giant centipede that took an interest in him while he was between the Garden and Lorpee cavern, but it was easily scared off.

The one time he genuinely tried to be as stealthy as possible and make his way to his end goal… it just worked. Based on his previous trips, he thought it’d be years before he ended up finishing the journey. Yet here he was, two days since the start of the trip, right where he’d intended to be.

He was tempted to stop and think about it more, but he let the momentum of his jog take him around the final corner. The spirit itself was at the end of a long, straight, tunnel, and it was the entrance to this tunnel that he now sensed the oddest signal from.

Dei was faced with some sort of invisible wall he hadn’t seen using [Tremor Sense]. To the naked eye, Dei couldn’t see it either. Instead, it pulsed across his Soul affinity, sending a message he couldn’t differentiate. The wall stretched across the entire entrance of the cave, leaving no room to slip through

As he drew closer, the message became clearer.

“This place is dangerous. Leave. This place is dangerous. Leave.”

Words came through his connection to Soul, the opening to the cave warded with a solid wall of Soul mana that sent a message to any who came across it. Dei was reminded of the way Iora used to talk to the crowds of people when they lined up at the gate, sending a message to everyone that would come through as words to Dei.

Clever, on his shoulder, began to freak out slightly. He expressed feelings of being uncomfortable with the cave in front of them, saying that he didn’t want to go in, and that they should leave. He was afraid for Dei as well, asking him to turn around, saying that it would be best to go somewhere else.

‘It never occurred to me, but how do others hear these soul words?’ Dei thought ‘Right now, it’s like Clever can't hear the message, but he understands the meaning.’

Dei told Clever that he was being manipulated by some invisible force, sending Clever what he saw when he looked towards the cave. When Clever realized it was some sort of manipulating spell, he started trying to work through it. Nonetheless, Dei believed Clever had a good point: they might want to leave.

The spirit was trapped, and he now knew that was intentional. Someone came upon the spirit, and found a way to imprison it. What if it was an evil spirit, and this was its sentence? What if it did horrible things, and would kill him if given the chance?

Dei was tempted to turn around, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to. To his [Spirit Sense], he saw the flickering nature of its life. Since he first sensed it, Dei realized how weak this spirit was. It remained on the verge of death through all of his adventures, but it continued to cling to life. He continued to feel its desperate calls for help, even now, as it refused to give in and die.

He looked towards Clever, and chose to give him an option. “This might be dangerous. You don't need to come with me. If you want to turn back, I’ll take you back to the Convection biome, and you can join your sister's community.”

Before he’d finished the message, though, Clever was already adamantly rejecting it. He wanted to explore with Dei, and he wasn’t as interested in sitting in the hottest area’s anymore like most Korgonda. Clever expressed how he’d earned tons of “Titles” already from their ventures, even though Dei didn’t know what that meant, and he wanted to keep pushing himself to be the strongest he could be, with Dei.

Smiling at him, Dei sent back feelings of gratitude. He wanted Clever to be here with him, but he didn’t want him to feel obligated in doing so. With a friend at his side, Dei found his decision to continue forward much easier.

“Prepare yourself” he sent to Clever, then started walking forward. He sensed tiny claws grab at his body from his shoulder, and the message of “danger” grew louder as they got closer.

He reached out, pressing his hand against the barrier, but it went straight through. The invisible wall didn’t slow him down at all, not meant to do so. It served only to carry the message that danger existed beyond its bounds.

In no time at all, he and Clever made a final push, and came out the other side to an eerie quiet. No message played now, left behind them at the door. In front of them, Dei heard none of the usual ambience of a cave.

He hadn’t realized it until it was gone, but the dripping of water on stone and distant echoes of movements or calls around the cave provided a low white noise to listen to. Now that it was gone, the silence deafened him.

Taking one step after the other, he crept slowly, cautious of any traps or hidden beasts. If this was a prison, there was bound to be a guard.

Instead, all that greeted them was an absolute silence like none other. Dei felt that it was almost purposeful, as nothing echoed around them, sound left near the start of the cave.

The further they went into the cave, the more… intentional the structure grew. The crooked edges of the stone walls smoothed into a polished material. The floor, too, polished further and further, until the stone took on a glassy texture.

Some sort of magic was worked into the stone that dampened sound, and the perfect nature of it all made it uncomfortable to look at. His mind was so used to seeing differences in things, that an absolute absence of them started to shake him. The only break in stillness was the tiny breaths and rhythm of the heartbeat on his shoulder in the form of Clever. At a time like this, it was particularly obvious to Dei that he had no functions of his own.

He found himself breathing, despite the nature of his Projection, to simply have something loud to help stave off the silence.

On top of the eerie quiet, darkness began to press into them. Because of his [Darkvision], Dei quickly noticed that it was magically enhanced, and paused for a second to see whether it was going to attack them or not.

‘Fuck, its times like this where I cant properly sense magic that I realize how important such a sense is. If I could, then I would be able to read whether there's intent behind the darkness.’

Regretting his situation would fix nothing, which led to him asking Clever instead. Clever stated that he didn’t sense any abnormal heat around them, and that the darkness didn’t feel like it was closing in on them. After Dei brought his attention to it, Clever was able to see the Dark magic, and said that he would watch it.

Not only this, but Clever began shining much brighter, and Dei saw how the magical darkness receded under the glow. His Projection body didn’t have the ability to fire infrared light like his Physical body did, otherwise he would be able to banish the dark on his own instantly, but he was glad that Clever could. Dei realized he would have genuinely been hard-pressed to find a light source bright enough to show the way forward if Clever had turned back.

Deeper they ventured, the dark and silence growing more oppressive with each step.

Before he knew it, he’d reached the end of the long tunnel. Clever buried himself in Dei’s neck, obviously afraid yet sending none of it through the connection between them.

This time, an actual wall stood before them, composed of the same perfect stone as all the rest. the only difference being a simple wooden oak door with an iron lock on it. Dei studied the door, seeing its medieval-esque style as odd but in-tune with his supposed time period. It had a small ring that acted as a handle, but Dei guessed that it was not going to open without a key. He tried anyway, but found that he was right. He didn’t want to simply phase through it, as that would involve leaving Clever and the red blade behind.

‘Okay. what now?’

First, he tried just punching it, but several points of Soul mana were blown out of him as the damage to his arm was fairly extreme. After quickly recollecting it, he went over his other tools.

He was obviously of superhuman strength, so the door had to be magically reinforced. For a second, he considered pulling Null mana through his connection to fire at it, and see if he could disrupt is magical properties, but hesitated as he too was made of magic. On top of this, he was hesitant to use the broken sword as a chopping instrument. It would get him through the door, but he didn’t want to aggravate the spirit inside it any more than he already had.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Instead, he saw that it was a wooden door and he had a fire lizard. Clever could easily blast a hole in it, but that would leave him cold and weak. Dei didn’t want Clever expending all his heat in some place like this, but he didn’t think Clever could control the blast enough to be okay afterwards.

“Clever, can you crawl against the door and become as hot as possible?” Dei asked him, getting a hesitant affirmative. Clever didn’t want to leave Dei’s shoulder, but he also didn’t see another way forward.

Sitting against the door, Dei saw how Clevers bright glow shifted from white to red, dimming significantly as he tried to focus everything on heat.

After a few minutes, Clever moved to measure his progress.

Hardly even a smudge was left after all the effort he poured in.

Sending an apologetic feeling, Dei reassured him that it was okay, and that Dei himself wouldn’t have been able to do any better.

While Clever was very hot, he could only increase his body temperature by so much. ‘What if me and Clever combine our abilities? I can store heat because of the knowledge on convection that I learned from that Wraith, and Clever can be the source of warmth to power it as I don't have my own body heat to draw from.’

Posing the idea to Clever, he seemed to like it because it would involve both of them working together.

Climbing onto Dei’s hand, he again began to grow hot. Dei drew the heat from Clever as best he could, spreading it out evenly across his body. It was much easier for him to do than with the Convection mana, as bare heat wasn’t naturally imbued with meaning.

Slowly but surely, the heat throughout his projection began to produce its own mana. It wasn’t Convection alone, but several mixed together.

Pressure, Heat, Convection, Light, and dozens of other types of mana he couldn’t place started naturally forming within his body, much easier for him to sense because they were inside him. Dei realized that the Convection Convergence was not only aggressive against life forms, but other Mana’s as well, drowning out the natural balance of them.

Searching through the wavelengths, he found one mana type that stood out to him as a perfect catalyst, one that he was actually familiar with.

The mana represented rapid movement from one place to another, quickly displaced material, or the lighting punches of a professional fighter. After studying it for a time, getting a feel for it and what it meant, the mana presented its name: Snap mana.

He remembered feeling this as his mother fought to escape the people chasing them, using it to teleport around the battlefield and tear apart the stone gate for them to escape through.

Dei wanted to use this mana to cause an eruption of heat out a particular part of his body.

The small amounts of snap mana he could sense had an anticipatory feel to them, ready for what was to come. The Snap mana appeared in response to the “potential snap energy” in his body, ready to kick off the process.

All the Snap mana he could, he gathered together, seeing the heat that came into contact with it become more excitable and aggressive for a few moments.

Gathering the snap mana in his middle finger and thumb, pressing them together as he held his hand out towards the door.

“Get back for a moment Clever, this might get dangerous.” Dei sent, and readied himself.

When Clever was a small distance away, Dei moved all the miscellaneous swirling mana and heat forward, focusing it into the two focused points of Snap mana as he actually snapped his fingers together.

Like signal, the gesture of snapping accelerated the process to speeds he couldn’t follow, causing all the heat and mana to instantly eject from his body. A bright, radiant spark flew from his fingertips towards the door, a raging inferno concentrated into a single point.

‘I should have backed up too’ he thought far too late as the spark collided with the door, and the explosion went off.

Exactly two feet from said explosion, Dei was sent flying backwards down the corridor, hundreds of Soul mana knocked out of him as he skidded along the ground. The length of the tunnel worked in his favor, as he didn’t slam into a wall, but he was fifty feet back towards the entrance by the time he came to a tumbling stop.

[Soul Strength: 723/1100]

[Skill Leveled Up: Homeostasis (26) -> (32)]

He felt like groaning would be appropriate, but he didn’t actually hurt at all. Instead, he just sighed at his own stupidity as he quickly stood back up and looked towards the site of the explosion.

Clever was, luckily, completely unharmed, but Dei’s ego was in shambles.

The door itself was weirdly intact. While there was still a hole in the center, Dei expected the entire thing to be dust at this point.

Walking towards it, he received a message from Clever that he was sensing an odd flow of the Soul mana in the air.

Clever said that the loose Soul mana was flowing into the hole in the wall, and Dei began to panic slightly. If the spirit truly was a dangerous prisoner, he didn’t want to empower it back to full strength. Throwing his body in the gap of the door, most of the Soul mana flowed into him, being reintegrated into his body with little difficulty. After a few seconds, he felt the flow stop, and Clever said the air was clear of Soul mana,

[Soul Strength: 923/1100]

While he wasn’t full on Soul Strength before, that still left around one hundred fifty concentrated mana to the spirit… around nine hundred mana if it was unconcentrated.

With his [Spirit Sense], Dei felt the flicker of strength left within the trapped spirit grow to a roaring explosion.

“Clever, we’re out of here!” Dei sent to him. It was one thing to meet with a criminal behind glass, it was another to face that criminal head-on without any protection, unknowing of how strong it was.

Quickly swiping him up, he took off down the tunnel when Clever sent a picture of his future to him, showing Dei being struck with a force from behind.

Dodging to the side, something brushed his arm before grabbing it, wrapping itself around the limb.

“WAIT” he heard in his head “WAIT WAIT. PLEASE! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME!” it screamed through the connection with his limb.

Quickly looking down, Dei saw a watery tentacle wrapped around it, pulling him backwards. He pressed forward with all his might, but he could barely stop himself from losing his balance. It was holding the arm that held the red blade, and he didn’t want to shift his weight enough to grab it with his free hand. He couldn’t cut it, he would have to pull away.

“I MEAN YOU NO HARM! I BEG YOU, RETURN!" The screaming plea’s continued, and Dei was more hesitant to break the connection.

“Let go of my arm!” he sent back

“You will leave! You will run!”

“Yes, and I am allowed to do so! How do I know you are not going to attack me?”

“Please… Don’t leave me down here…” it came to him, quieter now. He didn’t know if it was merely playing at his heart strings, but the tactic was starting to work.

Clever was frantically sending through their connection that he vehemently disagreed with returning to the room, saying that the monster was large now that he got a good look at its shape with his [Heat Sense]

Dei tried thinking of a way to read its emotions in an unfiltered manner, one where it couldn’t lie, and came upon the same way he read Clever.

“Allow me to Identify you, what you are, and all your intentions. If you are truly not going to harm us, then I will come back. Do NOT resist the Identify at all. You will have NO secrets, or I am leaving” he gave it the ultimatum.

“Yes! Yes! No secrets at all, please scan me! Just don’t leave!” it excitedly sent back, the vague sense of hope filling its hysterical voice.

Firing a Kindness [Identify] at it, there wasn’t even the slightest resistance in its soul as it latched onto everything Dei wanted to know.

First, he scanned its intentions, sensing that it was in desperate need of companionship, and already considered him the closest thing to a friend it had. ‘Thats incredibly sad’ he thought.

Next, he got the information on what kind of creature it was

[Corrupted Damaged Crippled Embodiment of the Flow - Level 1

Embodiments are elementals which have chosen to boost the effectiveness of their Mental stat at the cost of Physical, Spiritual, and Magical stat effectiveness. The formation of an Embodiment indicates that the original Elemental was already an incredibly skilled and intelligent combatant, guaranteeing that meeting any Embodiment on the battlefield is a near-guaranteed death sentence for the unprepared.

The Flow affinity involves both the flow of rivers and the change of all things. Everything flows from one form to another, and the Flow Embodiment encapsulates this perfectly. Always seeking out new experiences and a willingness to change the world, creatures of Flow are never content to sit still, always moving forward.

This particular Embodiment lost a battle nearly one year ago, but was not killed by its opponent. Instead, the opponent decided to seal it for an unknown purpose. The seal prevented the Embodiment of the Flow from exploring or changing its environment. Over time, the absolute lack of change in scenery began to damage the Flow Embodiments connection to the Flow, causing it to drop in levels and begin taking damage. Every time it dropped below an evolutionary threshold, one of its buffing adjectives were replaced with a debuffing adjective. Originally level three hundred and eighty two, the Embodiment of the Flow gained the Corrupted adjective once its level decayed to 299, the Damaged adjective once its level decayed to 199, then the Crippled adjective once its level decayed to 99.

The Corrupted adjective indicates that its connection to the flow was temporarily severed, preventing it from producing Flow mana. The Damaged adjective indicates that its form is easily disrupted, making it very fragile. The Crippled adjective indicates that the disconnect from the Flow element has reached critical levels, preventing it from naturally changing its scenery without a specialized container.

Physical: 5

Mental: 5

Spiritual: 5

Magical: 5]

Dei winced when he read each adjective in its name, already sorry for it before even reading the full description,

Once he’d finished though, he really felt sorry for it, and understood why this prison was unnaturally devoid of ambience or detail in the stone. It was intentionally created to torture an Embodiment of the Flow, something that lived for change.

Clever saw the change in his expression and realized Dei was genuinely about to walk back into the lion's den, and asked him to reconsider.

Dei sent back the full description he’d gleaned from the Embodiment of the Flow, and Clever froze. Getting feelings of exasperation from the connection between them, Clever agreed that he, too, felt sorry for the spirit, and supposed that they should give it a shot. He also sent that Dei needed to be ready to carry Clever away while running, as Clever would be ready to blast this Embodiment to smithereens if it tried anything.

Dei sent to the Embodiment “Alright, we’ll come back, but you have to let go of my arm.”

Slowly, the watery tendril unwrapped itself and pulled back down into the darkness. Dei, with his [Spirit Sense], saw that it was just out of sight though. The Embodiment was ready to try and drag them back again if they attempted to run away. It was off putting how much this thing was fighting to get them into its cell, but he continued to scan its intentions using Identify, and it continued to wish only good things on them, as it wanted their help to escape its cell.

Hoping he wouldn’t regret this, Dei walked back into the clutches of a powerful monster.