A warm feeling suddenly pressed upon a Spirit.
The warmth touched and stimulated the Spirit out of its damage-induced stupor. However, before the eventual awakening, the warmness vanished.
Thankfully, this was not an isolated incident as another came, touched, and stimulated the Spirit before it vanished again. However, when the next warmth came, the Spirit had been evoked enough to realize it was receiving information in the form of brief visual stimuli.
The visual stimuli, the glimpses, were of very odd creatures that seemed like a fusion of two separate animals. A raven’s body and a cat’s head. Additionally, the strange creatures seemed very hostile to the Spirit as they attempted to harm it by attacking it.
Realizing the danger, the Spirit urgently fought back through rough impressions of a combat scenario rising from within its depth.
Soon enough, all of the hostiles were dead and dissolving. Following their demise, two further warmths spread over the Spirit before vanishing. After them, with no further external stimuli for its present needs, the Spirit slowly settled down and returned to its version of sleeping.
Yet, as if no time had passed at all, the scenario repeated itself.
The warmth spread over the Spirit before vanishing. Then, the second woke the Spirit only to realize the hostilities, making the Spirit initiate combat once again. When the hostilities ceased by there being no more hostiles, the Spirit enjoyed the little bath of warmth before settling back to sleep.
However, unlike the first time, this time, the Spirit was far more expecting of the pattern going on, and it had not been dissatisfied. When the warmth came for the third cycle, the Spirit instantly woke, fought, and enjoyed itself.
Not only that. On the third cycle, the Spirit chose to delay its sleeping in favor of wonder. A wonder of what was happening and why it was happening.
It was that wonder which made it remember things beyond the warmth and sleeping cycle.
It was that wonder which made it remember who it was and what it was. And when it remembered who it was and what it was, the Spirit realigned itself with the physical Mind in order to recognize what it should do. As such, the Spirit sidelined everything and focused on breaking out of the stupefaction forced onto it, and moments later, the child-like form the Spirit inhabited changed into its teenage form.
With the change, Adamu finally woke from the coma he had been forced into by direct damage to his Spirit.
“It… It… it worked?” Adamu weakly murmured.
“Ha… Haha…”
Laughing with hysteria, Adamu rocked his vocal cords for not only had he managed to save himself from the Eldritch corruption but also from the indoctrination of the Source of True Light.
“Haha… Ha… ha.”
Regardless, the laugh did not stay for long because the pain throbbed with the reminder that while he had indeed succeeded, it was not without a price.
Nevertheless, despite hoping it would be so, Adamu knew better than to delude himself into thinking it was the pain that was the price for the cleansing. No, the pain was merely the wrapper of the gift it had given him.
The problem, however, was that Adamu would be unaware of the gift/price until his Spirit recovered, with the most likely option being the manifestation of new psychological cues developed as Adamu’s Spirit mended slowly over time.
As such, what would manifest was out of Adamu’s hands, literally.
It could be something benign, or it could be something extremely detrimental.
Naturally, Adamu hoped it would be the first, but he knew the truth. It was far more likely to be detrimental because the mending scars on his Spirit were induced by trauma, and trauma scars attracted trauma-filled experiences, thereby making it very hard to resolve psychological cues once formed.
Of course, there were ways, but all of them took time and effort, and even then, the cues may not vanish entirely.
Done with pondering the initial information, Adamu’s thoughts settled down.
He looked around the small cave and gave a glance above himself and at the place where the Orb of Rebirth should have been, only to ignore everything else and sit down in a cross-legged meditation pose.
Naturally, he did not dive deep, but the bulk of his thoughts settled on everything that had happened since he awoke. As such, Adamu examined every action of his right up to this very moment.
He examined them. What caused them? What were his reactions? Why were his responses as they were? What could he have done to alleviate his problems? And lastly, what had he missed that could have been extremely significant to his survival?
Thankfully, while no Memory Recall Spell was used, since the memories were very recent, Adamu had very little trouble bringing them forth. However, when it came to the last two days of his recollections, things became more challenging.
The main culprit became the Spirit leakage during that first encounter with multiple raven/cat creatures. Following that was his encounter with the Eldritch, sending him into a half-crazed state.
After that, only pain and nothingness surfaced from his memories.
That being the case, he left the last memories for after he went over everything else.
In the end, after examining his earliest responses and challenges, Adamu admitted that while he had been somewhat unconcerned with things, his reactions to the environmental challenges and the clear absence of Magic were not inaccurate.
Only they were not outright right, either.
However, because the situation kept changing and adding further challenges, he could not adapt as fast as he should have. No, it would be better to say that he saw no need to adapt faster.
No, he was The First of Men, so it was natural that he would have overcome everything, one way or the other.
Still, therein lay the trap.
Because he was The First of Men, things had escalated as they did on the simple premise that Adamu had not taken things as seriously as he should have.
The loss of access to Magic became the first stepping stone that had tripped him. Adamu was so used to having Magic for everything that being without it made him feel even more naked than being without actual clothes on his body.
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What should have taken but a thought usually actually became difficult and cumbersome at the very least and utterly restricting in the worst case.
Then came the initial challenges of the Ilusion, the stupefaction, the creatures seeking to consume him, and the increased difficulty as the days passed, almost as if the world was punishing Adamu for not adapting fast enough.
Then there was the gazing at the origins of the True Light and True Darkness with the culmination of events resulting in Adamu meeting with the Eldritch inside a Dream/Nightmare Plane because that was the only logical conclusion Adamu reached after considering the sequence events.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing if you live long enough to use it. Adamu nodded in his mind. Mmm… Even after my future self told me of the danger, even after I experienced the things that I did, it actually took being corrupted, followed by being cleansed, to actually make me finally recognize the truth.
The truth of this Realm.
Thinking about it, Adamu’s golden eyes instantly turned cold.
Evidently, it was not an actual phenomenon because there were no profound powers to enable any such functions. But if anybody stared inside Adamu’s golden eyes right this moment, they would recognize the malicious emotions forming and condensing into cold and dreadful sensations of absent positive emotions, thus causing Adamu’s golden eyes to emanate a cold embrace even without any profound powers fueling the process.
“This is not a world of survival of the fittest.” Adamu determinedly voiced his realization, even though none heard him. “No… This World is a World of Death, Strife, and War, and if there was one thing that The First of Men were good at, then it was those three.”
“Hmph… Just wait till I uproot everything from the ground up before branding my very own face on everything… well, my new face.”
Done evaluating the obvious, Adamu’s intention settled on the less apparent ones, like the memories of his induced madness.
The first time he went over the sequence of that day, Adamu had a feeling that he'd missed something very consequential. So that was what he now examined by going through every memory that he could summon forth.
Still, it took him multiple times to notice the abnormality.
The reason was simple yet quite complex because, for some reason, his mind had refused to record it. Every time his attention went to the moment he urgently called out a name, the name was not there, as if something or someone had used an eraser to erase the memory.
Yet, as far as Adamu knew, there was nobody there that could have done so.
If it had been done by some external hand, Adamu, as he was right now, would not be able to tell. Still, he had a doubt that was the case. No, Adamu’s intuition told him that was not the case. And if that was not the case, that meant it could only have been accomplished by himself.
Then the question became, why would he be erasing the name from his own mind?
Only two possibilities emerged in Adamu’s mind.
The first possibility was about his subconscious doing it to either hide or protect something. Which would mean it had to be something significant, as nothing else would make sense to Adamu.
Thus, while the mystery remained, Adamu just had to find it and be prepared for the answer because his mind doing things on its own usually was for a damn good reason.
The second possibility, however, held a far darker theme.
It was not Adamu’s subconscious that hid the name, but a different one. If that were the case, it would mean there were two minds or two personalities in one body.
This made more sense when Adamu considered that every night, when the Illusion called, he had been forced into stupefaction, thus allowing the little boy to emerge in the form of a Spirit Body instead of Adamu.
Mmm.
What if it is a combination of both? Because I doubt the second mind would be able to erase my memories. Not with how weak it was and how it behaved inside the Illusion. Adamu theorized. Wait… That would mean I erased my own memories to… to… to hide or protect the second mind/personality.
No… That is the wrong line of reasoning.
The correct would be that I am purposely allowing the memory concealment to happen because I want to hide or protect the second mind/personality because… because the second mind/personality is too weak and I am too strong.
Therefore, I am purposely hiding and protecting it because I don't want to assimilate it.
Yes… that's it. It has to be… I can feel my intuition nudging me this way because, under normal circumstances, I would not allow a second mind/personality to form inside me. That would lead to all sorts of problems down the lane of progress.
Yet, I am allowing it this time, subconsciously at least, because of its innocence… because I am inhibiting its body instead of it.
Yeah… that has to be it.
It's the only logical conclusion.
Now, all that remains is figuring out what to do. Obviously, the obvious answer is not the solution to the problem. However, I can't pretend everything is fine, either. Not when too much hinges on me fighting and exploring the Illusion with full awareness from the start.
That leaves me with either negating the stupefaction and thus replacing the little boy's mind/personality or coming in contact with the second mind/personality to resolve our differences and maybe even cooperate for the benefits.
Honestly… The second is better, but the first takes priority. Only it will take some pondering to resolve it on top of everything else, with food being the number one priority.
Meaning, that if I don't catch anything during the coming day, there will be cute squirrels on the menu.
Having stretched his trance despite the stress-induced upon his damaged Spirit, Adamu called it quits and ceased meditating.
When his eyes gazed at the cave opening and the ordinary darkness beyond it, Adamu was reminded of one last fact that had caught his attention. At the same time, it was worth pondering as it related to the raven/cat creatures.
“Let me see… One on the first Night.” Adamu began counting as he remembered their meetings. “The second was outside the Illusion. The third came the following Night. Then, on the same Night, one died outside the cave and five of them went for the injured me. That leaves me with eight strands of Pure Essence and nine dead raven/cat creatures.” Nodding, Adamu focused on after that since that one was very hard to recall. “I have glimpses of the events, but I can't be 100% sure of it, thus leaving me with no choice but to summarize the number of strands by today's standard, which was five. So fifteen strands of Pure Essence, as I recall three instances of combat, I think, plus the eight from before leaves me with twenty-three strands, which sounds a lot but could be very little, as well.”
“It's not like I have a benchmark by which to mark my progress.”
“Anyway, the strands aside. Why are these creatures coming so hard for me?” Adamu wondered. “It's obvious that the approach is not working. If there really is a big mum or daddy, then it should be smarter than the small ones, hence recognizing the pattern going on.”
“After all, it's not like there is an infinite amount of the small ones. Or is there?”
“Mmm… No. Definitely not. Still, that means there are lots of them, either way.” Adamu admitted and focused on his own actions and responses, especially since he was not sure that the reprogramming of his subconscious might have worked a bit too well from just one meditative trance.
However, if another mind/personality existed inside him, it might have explained it. Regardless of that, Adamu considered what to do next.
There were a few options to choose from since clearly he wasn't ready to leave the fake cave and face the big mum or daddy.
Not as he is now, weak and recovering.
“Wait… Since the little guy can defend for now, I'll focus all my attention on the real world.” Adamu nodded. “First, I need food. Then, I need some weapons. Then, I will finally verify the Realm Grid corruption through a Ritual.”
“I've been delaying that in favor of figuring out an effective Essence methodology.”
“Anyway, if even Rituals are a no-go, then fine, nothing changes. However, if I can execute Rituals?… That would be a game-changer if a very arduous game-changer to set up without any tools.”
“Oh… I am already salivating at the possibility of making this cave into a mini fortress.”