As much as Cyril wanted to savor the moment of victory, there was more work to be done. His immediate concern was over whatever spirit inhabited Clear-Surface being released upon death. If it was an entity loyal to Leviathan, it may cause further trouble, though without a bonded partner it would prove much easier to handle than the Ascended.
Several seconds passed. Nothing happened, not even the slightest fluctuation of energy. Not all spirits emerged immediately upon their partners’ death, but Cyril should have felt at least some sort of qi build-up preceding its return to independent consciousness. The forlorn look on Tyrin’s face all but confirmed his suspicions.
“The spirit is dead?” said Cyril, resisting the urge to communicate through their mental link. It felt too intimate all of the sudden, baring his soul to the others.
Loras nodded. “Your tribe views spiritual entities as sacred; your enemy has no such qualms. High-level water spirits in particular tend to be fickle, even in service to a paragon like Leviathan. They must have tired of the disunity within the Ascended’s soul and cannibalized the original spirit.”
The notion spit in the face of everything Cyril had been taught. Humans lived and died in the endless cycle of Samsara, but spirits were unique and eternal. Unless cultivators burned their existence as fuel. “I didn’t know it was even possible to do that without destroying your own core, especially for an Ascended. It's…monstrous."
“They are monsters,” Tyrin muttered.
Loras ignored the remark, flicking his hand to shed the coating of gore. “It is one of those things that are best considered impossible, especially when it comes to promising youth that may be tempted to seek power through forbidden means. Outside of the obvious Water affinities, Adaptation and Mutation are some of the most common affinities for slaves of the Wicked Serpent. It allows them to survive otherwise catastrophic situations, though it tends to be an uncomfortable process.”
Cyril nodded solemnly, most of his good cheer evaporated. He knelt in front of Clear-Surface’s disfigured corpse. A veritable ocean of essence continued to flood from the Ascended, filling the building like a storm trapped in a bottle. Compared to the amount of essence Clear-Surface must have accumulated during its lifetime, the amount it had released upon death was a drop in the ocean. The rest was lost to entropy and, perhaps, taken with the Ascended to whatever hell laid claim to it in the end. Still, Cyril couldn't complain; the majority of cultivators spent a lifetime trying to reach the Fourth Sphere, with countless failing. The upper echelon would have long ago hunted one another into extinction if the spoils were worth the effort.
With a deep breath, he began to absorb the death energy into his soul. It eddied around his body like a maelstrom. More and more flooded into him, his Dominion of Earth ticking upward at a pace that made him raise his eyebrows. Starting from a little over 1000/10000, he soon filled the Fourth Sphere to near-completion. Around half of the death energy still remained, enough to elevate Gravity to the precipice of the Fourth Sphere as well.
Before making the investment, he sent a mental communication to Tyrin and Loras asking for their recommendations. After a bit of back and forth, they agreed he should split the remainder between Gravity and Knowledge. While the current situation called for improvements to his combat strength, elevating his mental Dominion would help tie everything together. Cyril still hadn’t acclimated to his most recent breakthroughs, leading to an imbalance where his mind couldn’t draw out the full potential of his current capabilities.
Once he was finished directing the remaining essence, he reviewed his soul.
Prince Cyril, Vessel of Behemoth
Early Foundation Stage
Dominions:
Sun, Third Sphere 82/10000
Knowledge, Third Sphere 5182/10000
Earth, Third Sphere 9924/10000
Gravity, Third Sphere 6150/10000
Mass, Second Sphere 993/1000
Curious, he materialized an ingot of darksteel in his hand. The quality of the material had improved, bringing it to the peak of D-grade and stripping away the vast majority of the metal’s original impurities.
Materialization was the original boon granted from acquiring the Dominion of Earth; reaching the Second Sphere had expanded his options and granted him access to the Transmute Cantrip. Now that he had empowered most of the Third Sphere of Earth, the Purification boon seemed to express itself without his conscious direction, infusing other Earth techniques. Though he had increased his investment into the Dominion almost tenfold, it hadn’t led to an linear increase in his mastery over the affinity. Doubled, perhaps, which he could hardly complain about. The true benefit seemed more subtle, a greater comprehension of the Dominion of the Earth and how its possible expressions were a unified part of the whole, opposed to isolated techniques.
The investment into Gravity made him all the more aware of the shifting pressures of the world around him, the complex interplay of all physical creation. This awareness had almost been elevated to a primary sense akin to sound or smell, and its prominence was distracting, like a blind man who had been granted sight for the first time. Fortunately, his improved Knowledge helped unify the various aspects of his soul. His best guess was that it was akin to how the World Map Cantrip combined his various spatial memories and experiences into a singular visual construct for him to reference. The myriad puzzle pieces of his cultivation were likewise fitted together, working in harmony to form his sense of self. While he had always possessed a vague understanding that at least Behemoth’s Dominions worked synergistically, he hadn’t yet taken the step to integrate them together.
He wished he had months to experiment with his newfound authority. Continuing to brute force his way through breakthroughs without appropriate meditation and study would inevitably lead to problems—possibly even forming an internal conceptual paradox capable of tearing his soul asunder. Reality, however, wasn’t content to let him sit around pondering the nature of existence. How could he lock himself in secluded meditation while Leviathan had such a head start? While his people died?
The sound of Loras tapping his foot impatiently pulled Cyril out of his reverie. Grumbling to himself, Cyril slid his metallic hand into Clear-Surface’s eviscerated abdomen and dug around. His old self would have been disgusted to touch wet, slippery offal. Compared to everything he had seen since awakening, it barely registered as unpleasant.
His fingers brushed against a rigid structure. Through his seismic sense, he could make out its approximate shape—humanoid, like a homunculus had made a home within the Ascended’s gut. Cyril removed the treasure, revealing something not far from the truth: Clear-Surface’s soul gem, large enough to fit comfortably in his grasp. Though this was more of a soul figurine, a crystallized representation of the Ascended’s Nascent Soul.
It looked much like a nude depiction of Clear-Surface, carved with exquisite precision. Mostly shades of light blue, with flecks and swirls of red and white and silver. Nascent Soul Gems were rare enough that none of Cyril’s standard education had touched on them much, but the figurine form was the most typical manifestation. Probably because high-level Ascended tended to be quite narcissistic--what could represent their core better than a reflection of their own perfect form?
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“What should I do with this?” Cyril said to his companions. “Most of the energy feels incompatible with my soul. I think I can Purify it, but I’m not sure that’s the best use of my time right now.”
"Purifying it may just erase the concepts inside," said Tyrin. "It could just end up as a massive well of pure qi. Useful, but a waste of a unique treasure.”
Cyril nodded. “So, what, just store this for later?”
Loras shook his head. “Integrate what you can. Avoid any of the obvious Water-adjacent Dominions. Too high of a chance that your Destiny neutralizes or rejects them.”
To accompany his advice, Loras transmitted a series of ideas and concepts through their mental link. The purity of his thoughts revealed a deep pride hidden beneath his laconic tone. It was an honor to help shape what may end up being the pinnacle of body cultivators, so of course his ideas heavily focused on that direction.
Loras' suggestion was not far off what Cyril had done to integrate the Dominion of Volcanoes into his Magmatic Heart: find a suitable concept and bind it to his Body, forming the basis of a personalized constitution. The problem was finding an appropriate affinity within the soul gem.
“Don’t rush,” Tyrin warned. “Without that monster to spawn wyrms, the guard will easily secure the central compound. Our presence will help, but if you can make a serious breakthrough that’ll improve your usefulness, it’s worth a few extra minutes sitting around.”
Cyril offered him a thankful nod. Then he took a deep breath and trickled a wisp of Knowledge qi down his hand, into the figurine. It offered no resistance to his intrusion. No longer bound to Clear-Surface, it possessed no real purpose or identity. Whatever spirit had once been bonded with the Ascended’s soul had been carved away into no more than a compliant little bauble. If anything, it was desperate for a master to justify its existence.
As despicable as Clear-Surface had been, without the entity’s consciousness, the soul gem was not inherently good or bad. No concept, even one like Slaughter or Sacrifice, was ontologically evil; to cultivators, they were tools to be wielded. Certain affinities were widely considered taboo or forbidden due to the likelihood of corruption, but in the end, without a hegemony to enforce such restrictions, might made right.
Sighing, Cyril clenched the figurine tight and projected his will into it. His Knowledge qi seeped inside and began to analyze the contents. Within a few seconds, it displayed its discoveries into Cyril’s mind in the divine language, almost eager to demonstrate its worth.
Vessel of Unknown
Middle Nascent Soul
Dominions:
Reflection, Sixth Sphere ???
Water, Sixth Sphere ???
Blood ???, Fifth Sphere ???
Creation, Fourth Sphere
Adaptation, Fourth Sphere
While the incomplete text didn’t exactly inspire confidence, Cyril assumed that the uncertainty was related to concepts beyond his understanding. His Dominion of Knowledge categorized all the information as best as it could, drawing on the techniques he had witnessed from Ascended Clear-Surface. The first three were too beyond his comprehension to comfortably name, let alone integrate.
That left only Creation and Adaptation as suitable candidates. Cyril’s mind was drawn toward Creation, imagining himself as a walking fortress firing off golems and weapons and whatever else he could dream up. He sent the idea to Loras and Tyrin across their mental bond and was taken aback by their immediate rejection.
“Creation is…tricky,” said Loras. “It would synergize with some of your skillsets, but ultimately makes for a subpar constitution. If your techniques can already accomplish aspects of Creation such as physical materialization and you want to improve that, it would be better to simply advance your relevant abilities to achieve a similar result. It is possible you would naturally awaken the Dominion of Creation simply through emphasizing those skills.”
Cyril wasn’t as disappointed in their dismissal as he expected. Not only was the logic sound, but his immediate preference toward Creation had been more of a flight of fancy than anything. After all the destruction he had witnessed—and caused—the childish part of him had been drawn to the complete opposite. The concept still resonated with his soul, but he sensed a subtle danger behind it—the potential of a paradox. Fundamentally, he was not a being of Creation. Within him lived yin and yang, existence and oblivion, creation and destruction. Turning himself into an avatar of Creation was to deny half of himself, if not more.
That left Adaptation. At first, the concept seemed divorced from the rest of his soul, yet a persistent resonance hummed through his being as he considered it. Was Earth not solid, robust, unyielding?
But that wasn’t altogether true. When it encountered a greater force, it would break, shatter, erode. When water wore it down over the millennia, it would take on a new shape to allow that water to pass through. A forest could burn down, and a new one would sprout up from the fertilizing ash. Metal ore could be harvested from the earth, and turned into a weapon, or a shield, or a home, depending on one’s need.
Cyril slid into a meditative trance as he considered this new avenue of thought. In truth, he suspected he was stretching the truth--the relationship between Earth and Adaptation was tangential at best. He attempted to examine his own thought processes, to understand why that would be the case. Was he merely an obedient follower, tossing aside his first choice in order to appease his mentor figure?
The realization came to him with such clarity that it wiped out all other thoughts. He may be the embodiment of the Titan of the Earth, but he didn’t have to approach cultivation from such a rigid, dogmatic perspective. Attempting to incorporate oppositional concepts into his soul would undermine his Destiny, but an abstract concept like Adaptation was neutral.
Adaptation didn’t have to be closely related to Earth for him to use it. It functioned as a broad concept, by its axiomatic nature able to adapt to whatever situation it was placed in. In the end, his Earth-attuned soul would shape it into the most compatible expression of the concept. Cyril’s only worry was that the trial and error may prove a little torturous in the meantime.
As soon as he finished reflecting upon the epiphany, a sudden pain cleaved through his head. Nausea washed over him. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the migraine ended.
He hesitantly opened his eyes, and found himself standing in a barren expanse of the desert. The sun was setting on the horizon, tiny and ethereal against a palette of peach and lavender sky. Though it looked much the same as any stretch of desert, he was seized with utter certainty that he was standing in the same location where his journey had begun. The place where he had first woken up after bonding with Behemoth, except there was no titanic crater. Not yet.
He was hungry, parched, sunburned, as if he had spent days trekking through the desert without supplies. They were all phantom sensations, dull but present.
A shadow fell across the horizon as a figure traversed the world. It warped and defied perspective--one moment an unfathomable presence that blotted out the heavens, the next a distant humanoid figure that walked toward him one careful, measured step at a time.
Behemoth was approaching.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND? the world rumbled.
Cyril blinked, and he was back where he belonged--in reality, clenching Clear-Surface’s soul gem inside of an obsidian-coated arena.
“What was that?” Loras demanded immediately. “For a moment, your mental link flickered off and back on. It was as if you had suddenly died for a moment.”
Cyril rubbed his forehead with his free hand. What had that been? Far more real than a dream. A vision? A hallucination?
A memory, he realized. Am I starting to remember what happened? How Behemoth and I came to bond?
Sighing, Cyril turned the figurine over in his hand, examining it. “Adaptation it is, then.”