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Dimensional Cores: The Raiders (draft)
Episode 61 part 2: Shadow Jacket

Episode 61 part 2: Shadow Jacket

I turned the ring over in my hand. It didn’t fit my fingers. Not even my thumb could hold on to the metal band. That was fine, the ring was ugly anyway.

All I really wanted was the essence and quintessence construct it held within. The symbols inside looked so interesting. I still wanted to try and make a wind-based bind.

Actually, with a wind-based bind, they’d probably break out right away… it might have something to do with the shadow aspects. Perhaps a concept attached to it?

Bind… was bind a concept? It had to be. Getting trapped or stuck was something that’s existed for a long time. I remember reading a story of a supermarket worker falling behind a freezer and getting pinned against a wall. Apparently the freezer was so loud that no one could hear him.

There was another story of an abandoned house that smelled really bad, only for the new owners to find the previous owner stuck inside the wall. Apparently they were in the attic when they fell through the floor board’s and into the wall cavity. They died in a similar way to the freezer guy.

(Authors note: credit to the research of those stories goes to the YouTube channel scary interesting.)

Alone and trapped in darkness, with no one to hear your cries, or pleads for help…. Not even your prayers could get out.

I got sudden flashes of the basement I was once locked in. Personal experience was the best for concept based aspects. For example the memory of fire didn’t produce very many heat aspects.

Even though dad showed me how to start a camp fire and how to maintain the flames, it wasn't enough. It might be because it was a long time ago and I can only remember the basics.

Basically, the memory hadn't left a strong enough impression for good results. It was disappointing to be honest and if I wanted to get the concept down I would probably have to hop into a furnace.

I also thought about using the memory of that world. The one Lorie showed me. The way the fumes attacked my lungs and the harsh heat and dryness on my skin. The only issue was, I didn’t want to take inspiration from a fire that had ended an entire world.

In any case it would be a weaker copy of someone else’s work. I’d rather find concepts I was familiar with than use copies of concepts I could never understand, because I hadn’t lived through those experiences.

It was also dangerous to base anything off a flimsy idea, because if that idea was disproven like how Zubu undid my apathy. Then I could be caught off guard. Concepts were everything to a sorcerer.

As for this whole bind thing. My memory of that cold dark place could work. Especially when I add the experience I had with the hole in the well. The only issue was, did I really want to make that aspect? The thought scared me. Manifesting my trauma was not something I wanted to experience. Squirmy was enough.

I needed power though. To save the people I love, I shall embrace what scars me the most and use it against my enemies. “Yes, its perfect I’m already an orphan! Now, all I need is a cool super hero name!” I tilted my head in thought, “Hmmm… Since bind was my super power, from today forward I shall be known as Bondage…”

Snowball chuckled, “Maybe you shouldn’t go with the first one you think of. That one might get you arrested.” She suggested.

“Yeah…okay.” I sheepishly agreed. “I just don’t want to be Robin.”

I gathered up the shadow aspects in the room, along with the momentum aspects needed for every spell. The memory of being trapped in that dark basement came forth transforming the shadow aspects into something horrific.

For a moment I swear I could hear the cry’s of a little boy lost in the dark. Just like that all shadow aspects now carried that memory. I kind of wish I hadn’t thrown that memory in there, but now my mind had forever entangled the two as one.

“Oh, no! It was the apathy aspects all over again, and I’m not sure how to break the concept away from the tangible shadows!” I panicked.

Actually, was shadow aspect a concept? It was hard to tell. Sometimes the lines blended together. Like heat and cold. Those were human terms after all.

I think all aspects are based off of concepts. This was more like one of those situations where all voices make sounds, but not all voices are real.

I fed the aspects into the ring and watched with my Qi sight. Inside the ring was a spinning magic circle. It sped up as aspects were introduced. I wasn’t sure when the spell would activate, but it sure was taking in a lot of aspects for such a weak spell. It was already connected to the power of the void, so why wasn’t it manifesting?

The part I found Interesting was that the ring itself wasn't enchanted like other items. The enchantment it held was very stripped down. Aside from the slight boost in stats it was mostly there to connect the item to the system, with as few connections as possible.

I suppose it was too make room for the magic circle around the bind spell. It was temporal in nature and had a lot of suspension runes attached. It was also an advanced spell with not a double circle, but a triple one.

With all the suspension runes I wondered what exactly it did. Suspension runes usually froze stuff in time right? Did that mean the bind spell was frozen inside the ring?

It basically acted like a mold of sorts, but the suspension spell was way to advanced for me. I don’t think I can replicate it at my current essence control level.

Lorie and Mr. Brutus lied to me. They said I couldn’t use molds. Knowing them they probably didn’t want me chasing a rabbit down a hole only to realize it was impossible to follow.

If I’d known about it, I probably would have went against them and wasted my time trying to learn magic I couldn’t perform. Knowing my learning skills I would have figured it out eventually, but Lorie didn’t want me messing with advanced magic. Mr. Brutus and Lorie both taught in a similar way and by that I mean on a need to know basis.

I guess that’s what love was right? Tricking your favorite people into doing something because it’s what’s best for them. It infuriated me, but at the same time I knew they were only trying to help.

The ring was kind of hot. It seemed to vibrate in my hand. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was normal? Then like a collapsing nova the ring cracked and shattered into black bolts of lightning. They wrapped themselves around me and Snowball holding us down. “What the fuck!” I cried.

“This feels weiiird maaan!” added Snowball.

I tried to struggle against the black purple bands, but they were really tight. Snowball also tried, but she looked odd. Her face was kind of red. Was she not able to breathe?

“Somethings! Somethings awakening inside me! And I’m not sure if I like it or not!” she seemed to be squirming as if in a tickle fight. I had my own issues to worry about.

It was like being stuck in a straightjacket. I started panicking getting flashbacks to my time in the asylum. “No! Let go! I won’t steal pudding anymore I swear!” I cried as I fought against the bindings.

No matter how much I tried I couldn’t get free. Eventually I broke into a sobbing mess. The spell however didn’t last that long. The bands began to break down allowing me to slip out Eventually.

Once I got out I crawled into a corner and wiped my tears away. *Sniff Sniff* “That was so scary.” I cried.

Snowball seemed to make strange noises so I hugged her to make us both feel better. This helped bring my racing heart down.

Okay, calm down. What went wrong? I put the right aspects in and the spell worked, but it destroyed the ring. Actually, I put a lot of aspects in there. The power from the void was also a lot.

Why didn’t it activate when the right amount of essence was met? Right, because I was casting through a mold and didn’t direct it out of the ring. That means the spell circle grew too strong for the suspension enchant and broke it. “I’m such a dummy. How did the circle look again?”

I tried to recreate the bind spell and managed to remake it within a minute or two. Like I said it was a platform spell, but with a different shape and affinity. In other words, super duper simple. I activated it on a chair and somehow crushed it in the process.

“Okay… so maybe that memory infused Shadow aspect works a little too well. Sorcery is so dangerous. How am I still alive?” That’s when I remembered my upgraded lower spirit body. “Neat! I’m both adorable and durable enough to be punted!”

I pulled myself to my feet then went to look for the item I actually came for. A lot of glass was in the way, so I had to be careful.

It had to be here. I know they sell them. I started moving around the broken glass while using my null aura as big soft mittens to protect my hands. Surely enough, I found what I was looking for.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Within the glass shards I found a silver round stone. Not just one, but one medium and two small ones. Opening their status screens, it was confirmed.

Item Name: Mana Stone (Small)

Focus: 0/50

Rarity: Common (C)

Type: Utility

Durability: 1000/1000

Effects:

1: Mana Storage I: Allows user to store up to 50 mana for later use.

The larger one read,

Item Name: Mana Stone (medium)

Focus: 0/100

Rarity: Unique (U)

Type: Utility

Durability: 2,500/2,500

Effects:

1: Mana Storage II: Allows user to store up to 100 focus for later use.

I had no idea what the focus to aspect ratio would be, but it was worth a try. Before doing anything. I took a look out the broken window.

I could see the boss’s midsection moving across the land and knocking down buildings. At that rate it would get here within the next 5 minutes or so.

That was why I came this way. I wanted to scavenge a few items while I waited for my chance to hop up on Squirmy’s back. I was gonna burn that bastard alive.

Seeing as I had the time, I began channeling hydrogen aspects into the advanced fireball spell I had been working on for the past 30 minutes. It was only at the stage of warmth and was essentially an invisible flame. I’d been using it to generate a few heat aspects for me.

I hadn’t had much time to work on it. If I wanted to, I could have fed it so much power that the spell would fully manifest, but for now I wanted to build the spell first, so that I’d have something special ready for when it came time to drop it on Squirmy.

So far I had tweaked the runes a bit and worked on spell stability. Every time I had a little free time I’d send pulses of void energy through the spell to test out if the power flowed correctly. This allowed me to root out the little mistakes and adjust as needed. As far as I could tell, the spell should be able to hold a ton of power.

As expected the hydrogen aspects quickly turned into heat aspects, as the hot air began creating sparks of light. Everything was contained so I wasn’t worried. A good amount of the heat aspects were being siphoned away by the system, but the remainder was easily pushed into one of the small mana stones.

The little mana stone greedily drank up the aspects going from silver to red with little to no time. To my surprise it managed to eat up a good amount of heat aspects without instantly filling up.

It was at 30 units after 2 minutes. If I was still a normal player. I could instantly fill up the mana stone with a thought, but doing that would result in null aspects instead of just heat, which was what I needed at the moment.

Once it was topped off, I got a sudden notification.

[Side-Grade]

Congratulations, you’ve created a new item. Your ‘Mana Stone (Small)’ has turned into ‘Heat Stone (Small)’

I checked the status of the Heat Stone.

Item Name: Heat Stone (Small)

Focus: 40/40

Re-gen: 1 (M)

Rarity: Common (C)

Type: Utility

Durability: 800/800

Effects:

1: Heat Storage I: Allows user to store up to 40 heat aspects for later use.

2: Heat Absorption I: can regenerate heat aspects on its own at a rate of 1 per minute.

“What! It can re-gen on its own?” I said in shock.

That was useful, but I did lose 200 max Durability and 10 units of storage space. Still, that means this thing is wired to the system and will generate aspects for me even when in a cold environment.

I wouldn’t call this a loss. This was probably more useful. As far as I could tell each unit of aspects was enough to fill half a layer of aura. That gave me enough heat for quite a few fireballs. I mostly needed it for the finisher I was working on.

Hold on… didn’t this mean the system charges more for spells than what is actually needed? If I remember correctly, manabolt was 5 focus. That’s way more than what you actually need to cast the spell. One focus was probably enough.

I guess it try’s to keep the energy in your body balanced. Like if you use a fire spell it then needs to pull out all other aspects in order to keep the essence in your body as null aspects.

Otherwise you could end up with a surplus of cold aspects and not enough heat, wind and momentum to cast another fire ball. I can imagine some guy with a full mana pool only for his spell not to work because he has no heat aspects.

I took a look out the window. The boss was still a few blocks over. My guess was only off by 2 maybe 3 minutes. I loaded the stone into my inventory. Then looked around the room for anything else that might be useful.

Everything good was tucked behind the counter. The display case had a lot of magical items, but nothing super useful to me. Mostly because it was no longer compatible with my… biology.

Was ascending a bad idea? It felt like a lot of items in this world were now useless to me. It wasn’t my idea. That’s why I needed to adapt. As I had that thought I felt a pull in my chest as quintessence was used to create a chat window.

[Princess Aku] I can help!

She had been pretty quiet. I was actually happy to have someone to talk to.

[Isaac] How so?

[Princess Aku] Behold!

I felt energy beginning to well up in my chest before extending out into my clothes and spreading like the fungal roots of mycelium.

[Isaac] Oh, right! I forgot about that! What did you enchant them with?

[Princess Aku] I gave it the same stuff the pretty kimono had.

[Isaac] Nice!

[Princess Aku] you are welcome! Please save mama now.

The pink window closed leaving me to think about the fact that Aku thought of Alice as her mom. I mean she did help with character creation, but we were currently stuck in the same body making the whole thing kind of awkward. Thoughts for later.

I needed to see the effects this would have with my stats, so with a thought I brought up the childish pink window once more.

Item Name: Purest frills (white/blue)

Rarity: Unique (U)

Type: Outfit

Defense: 20

M-Defense: 80

Durability: 25,000/500 (5x)

Effects:

1: Meridian Purification: When cycling, essence corruption will be easier to purge from body.

2: Conduit: Essence becomes 2x easier to gather and control.

3: Divine regeneration: Heal 10x faster over time.

4: Divine Aura: your aura will clean your body and surroundings.

Enchantments:

1: Durability IV: item will last 5x as long.

2: Haste IV: increases movement speed by 80%.

3: Elemental Resistance IV: reduces damage from all elements by 70%.

4: Repair: Durability repairs over time. (Life aspects required)

Equip effects:

Charm Boost: +200%

There were a few changes to my character sheet. My essence control had doubled and with the ‘+6’ was now at 12. I tested it out by gathering up some aspects. The speed I could gather it had definitely multiplied by two. It was also much easier to control.

The thing was there still wasn’t enough ambient essence to make a difference. I mean sure I could gather it faster and had better control, so crafting spells and cultivation were twice as easy.

I might even be able to control more spells at a time, but the issue was that there just wasn’t enough essence to cast that many spells. Even if I increased the range of the aspects I could gather by activating my Qi sight, I don’t think I could gather enough to reach my spell limit control.

The mana stones should help with that. Heat was what I was struggling to get. Even with the fuel to heat trick it would take a long time to make it work since the system was always trying to steal the aspects I produced.

It made me happy to be able to move energy around the way I can, but it sucked that there really wasn’t that much to go around. It’s like learning to tap dance only to lose your left foot to an infection. I mean, sure you can still do it. Your performance is just way sadder now.

The ‘Outfit’ thing in the ‘Type’ section was a surprise. The only time I’ve seen that was when you get yourself a special type of set gear. Meaning I could only have these benefits if I was wearing these exact clothes.

Removing one would lead to devastating stats. It might be a flaw in Aku’s enchanting, but not that big a deal considering the benefits. One good thing about it was that these clothes would be treated as a single item, so equipping them would be instantaneous and they would also be kept together in my inventory. Perfectly organized.

“Your getting distracted again.” Said Snowball.

Moving on. Like the kimono my ‘outfit’ now had resistance to all elemental types of attacks. It was strange. Normally the wording was protection, but for some reason it turned into resistance. It even showed up in my character sheet at the very bottom. There were now four of them.

Resistances:

Fire 70%

Water 70%

Wind 70%

Earth 70%

Lightning 70%

Now that I thought about it resistance made more sense. Since it was my aura resisting the damage not my gear protecting me from damage. It also gave me a defense of 20 and a magic defense of 80, which wasn’t much, but would help with my aura.

Funny thing. In-game magic defense didn’t mean it would protect you just from magic. It meant any type of energy attacks. Things like the burning light from the sacred art ‘smite’, or the electric fire from Shade’s plasma gun.

I tried bringing my aura up and got it to 20 layers. It felt a lot better now. Much less flimsy. Like being covered in a thick layer of slime, but it wasn’t sticky. It wasn’t exactly a level one aura, but it was close. At least when it came to protection that is.

As far as I could tell. It was like I had an extra layer between each segment in my aura that was devoted specifically to elemental defense. The shape of my aura was also a bit different. That was probably where the magic defense and physical defense came in. In the future I might be able to mimic it naturally.

The effects of the kimono wasn’t as noticeable back on Chikū, because of the constant pressure Mr. Brutus was exuding. For one the cleaning effect didn’t work very well. The only thing that actually worked was the conduit effect and maybe the self repair. Though that last one took forever.

I was pulled out of my thoughts, when the building began to rumble. Squirmy was approaching. It was time, so I stuffed Snowball into my inventory while adding null aspects to my aura. Then made my way outside.

There were centipedes hopping off of the Boss’s back. Each one level 50 or above. They were getting stronger. I wonder why. I didn’t have time to deal with them, so I readied two bind spells and started dashing forward.

As soon as the first centipede lunged at me, I bunny hopped my way over it’s attack then activated the double bind to capture two of the higher level ones. Interestingly enough exotic aspects like the memory infused shadow I used were harder for the system to take. It was like it couldn’t identify it as well.

My sword appeared in a flash of light as I sped forward cutting down another one that was in my path, before hopping up on the head of one of the shadow bound monsters and using it like a Qi pulse spring board to launch myself up and onto one of Squirmy’s massive legs. From there I used it’s upward movement to jump onto the boss’s back.

I was met with more of the arthropods. Each one with a stinger dripping with poison or acid. I avoided their attempts to harm me while using my blade to cut limb and head alike.

From there I began powering the advanced fireball by forcing more power from the void into the spell and feeding aspects into their respective runes.

The ball of hot air began to spin and glow. Slowly growing into a perfect red nova. Small and calm, but very hot. It felt like it could hold much more. I couldn't wait for it to fully mature.

The flame was so stable that I almost couldn’t look away. Squirmy’s back was covered in spikes making it harder to travers. Centipede mobs rushed towards me ready to attack, but they were no match for my sword. Even their acid couldn't burn me thanks to my boosted aura.

With each enemy I encountered, I drained aspects feeding them into my aura, thus forming new layers on top of the old. Piece by piece, I forced my natural aura to split and grow new sections.

This was something that should have taken days, but in the short time I had, I gathered the energy into layers using my experience and new control to sculpt my hard shell into something greater.

The battle was too easy. Even the tendrils that extended out from under the chitin were met with the narrow edge of my blade’s aura. What I couldn’t cut I tied it up with bind.

The heat aspects I’d put into the heat stones were slowly being used. Each unit forming a neat little spell I named “Delay Fireball”. Which was a combination of the landmine spell and a simple fireball.

I didn’t set them off right away. Instead I left them behind attaching them to the massive chitin of the Bosses back. It wasn’t time yet. I needed to get to the top. To the head for the big one.