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Shatter

The world seemed to shatter only to reveal that it was nothing but an Illusion.

It may have been an unbelievably detailed illusion, but to Adamu, it remained an Illusion because he refused to address it as anything else. After all, if he did, it would mean he would have to acknowledge its other less desirable features and that Adamu refused.

Either way, when his eyes gazed at the origin of the multicolored light inside his small ‘birthing’ cave, he knew for sure that he was back in the real world. What followed next was him twitching his body as it had slept for a few days, at the very least, and that meant sore muscles, especially with stone being the bearer of his body.

As such, after a few minutes of flexing to get rid of the stiffness in his spine, Adamu stood up and faced the cave opening and the ordinary darkness waiting within. However, just as he was about to enter, his eyes settled on something green in the periphery of his vision.

Turning his head, Adamu saw a big green leaf.

Crouching, Adamu opened the leaf and saw a handful of berries.

Examining them for a second, Adamu closed the big leaf and left it where it used to be. However, having remembered its existence, he also remembered the little stone-cutting tool he had painstakingly made.

Picking it up, Adamu made his way outside the cave and the mountain that housed him.

Through the ordinary darkness caused by the absence of Light, Adamu soon reached the True Light, illuminating the world during the Day. However, just seeing its presence made Adamu’s Spirit shudder with excitement.

Almost as if it was witnessing a longtime friend making an appearance.

Taking a second to accommodate himself and the feelings, Adamu refused to budge forward before the sensations settled down. When they settled, Adamu left the passageway and entered the illuminated world. Still, once more, he did not rush to exit, but step by step, he examined the sensations of his Spirit producing inside him.

Step by step, Adamu acclimated to the True Light. However, he repeated the procedure when every part of his body felt the warmth on his skin.

A few times, Adamu’s Spirit echoed with pain, thus causing his body to twitch unconsciously with desire. Only his new resolve to treat this world as a world of Death, Strife, and War hindered the greater reactions from occurring.

As such, Adamu took his time to tame the wildness from his Spirit and Body.

Then, when Adamu had largely regulated himself, he noted the position of the Sun from the corner of his right eye. Then, taking a deep breath, his neck and body twisted to face the Source of the True Light in the sky so his golden eyes could stare at it.

“Praise be…” Ceasing midway, Adamu struggled to stop himself before being forced to close his eyes.

Only after the sensations ceased somewhat did he open his eyes again.

“Praise be…” Once more, Adamu struggled and stopped himself. Then, he closed his eyes and accustomed himself to the sensations burning in his Spirit.

What followed next was Adamu’s gradual acclimatization of seeing, stopping, and adapting, only to repeat the motions more and more with longer intervals of seeing, stopping, and adapting in between.

After about an hour of doing just that, Adamu managed to control himself despite staring at the golden Sun in the sky. However, the longer he stared at the Source of True Light dawning upon this world, the bigger the frown on his face became.

Vague feelings and recollections emerged from within him when he stared at the Sun. The more he stared, the more those mystical feelings and remembrances combined to deliver him a message. A message that his Spirit and Mind knew deep down but failed to alert Adamu because neither his Mind nor Spirit were ready to face the consequences of the information.

Still, part of the message came through and combined with a few other pieces of memories to ignite Adamu’s intuition. Intuition regarding the salvage of one of two major problems caused by the very recent event he had undergone.

Parsing through every thought that manifested, Adamu considered the resolution very thoroughly because it was counterintuitive to his and his predecessors' experience as the First of Men. Still, Adamu was not one to dismiss his guiding intuition, so he considered it from as many angels as he could at this moment.

At the same time, Adamu evaluated his current state and possible future states of being before consenting to the intuited guideline before going to one knee to do something that no First of Men had done in a long time.

Adamu clutched both palms and intertwined his fingers before his chest. After considering all the words he needed plus some that he never knew nor noticed he possessed, he poured all of the heartfelt gratitude he could muster into his praying gesture and voice.

“Praise be to Ina, The Light of the World.” Adamu pronounced with full emotions behind it, thus causing the words to reverberate with the world around him. “I, Adam, thank you for your help when I needed it the most. In return for the help received, every Dawn, Noon, and Dusk, I shall dedicate a Prayer in your Eternal Name, enunciating your Benevolence for as long as I stay in this Realm protected by your Grace.”

Almost immediately with the reverberation, a Ray of Light descended from the Source of True Light rising over the mountain horizon. The Ray of Light enveloped Adamu for a few moments before eventually vanishing. However, when Adamu felt the Rays hit his body on top of noticing the sunrise in the distance, he urgently reconsidered his thoughts to once again acknowledge the true start of the gesture.

“Praise be to Ina, The Light of the World,” Adamu proclaimed in his bid to announce the Dawn Prayer. “May She Reign Eternally as the Rightful Throne in the Skies Above to banish the Darkness Below Forevermore.“

A tiny moment passed when Adamu felt another Ray of Light shine on him, stimulating a brief sigh to echo before Adamu’s mind unwinded from the stress.

With the Dawn Prayer complete, Adamu stood up, picked up his stick and stone cutter, and made his way to the forest. On the way, Adamu once more went over the reasons he just made such a huge commitment.

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Before making the Oath, the idea was to simply expose the burning spiritual scars to the True Light again, thus making the spiritual scars bleed again. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Thus, while fresh, again metaphorically speaking, Adamu would acknowledge their presence through active recognition and affirmation of their existence.

As such, thanks to those actions, the spiritual scars would be transformed from an unwilling trauma into a willing one because when something gets done willingly, it restricts the automatic negative connotation of the experience no matter the trauma induced.

However, since all that action would do was neutralize part of the psychological negative cue manifestation in the future, Adamu would need to find a way and make something positive about it.

Nevertheless, Adamu never expected it to come in the form of an Oath.

As such, through the Oath, neutrality was abandoned immediately as well, and on top of that, the Oath provided a framework for the spiritual scarring to be filled with gratitude and other positive emotions.

Additionally, the framework would reinforce itself with every prayer complete.

Thankfully, Adamu was worldly in knowledge, so he added a conditional exit clause in the Oath to avoid becoming a zealot believer of Ina.

Luckily, Adamu knew a few ways to fulfill the clause, even without leaving the Realm.

Unfortunately, as Adam went over everything again, this exact scenario could not be replicated with the other spiritual scars caused by the Eldritch corruption, after all, Adamu was not a fool to pray to one of those.

This meant that in the future, he would have to be extra creative to find the best solution for the negative psychological cues manifested because Lust, as Adamu suspected it to be, just loved being filled with negative experiences, thus making it even harder to transform into a positive one when corruption was involved.

“Oh, that one looks good.” Adamu said as he veered off his already familiar path. His goal was an old tree. Though, it was not the old tree that was the true goal, but the tree vine wrapped around it.

Once by its side, Adamu circled the old tree and observed the vine tree and its curves, or better said, the lack of curves since this specimen was closer to a tree than to a vine, as such when it had attached itself to the old tree it grew relatively straight into the air instead of around the old tree, thus giving the vine tree a rather thick and firm quality, unlike many others.

As such, this vine tree proved to be the best choice for Adamu to cut down since he had no true tools to accomplish the task otherwise. Hence, Adamu relocated his stone cutter into his mouth and began to climb the old tree because the vine tree was quite thick near the ground. As such, Adamu’s sensibility was to avoid as much effort so he could cut a decently sized stick for himself.

Thus, after climbing a few meters, he found a relatively good purchase and began to use the sharp end of his stone to slam into the vine tree trunk.

Thud Thud Thud

All in all, it took time, effort, and energy, and Adamu had little to spare.

Still, holding the vine tree stick in his right hand counted as success itself because the texture of the vine tree was thick, firm, and flexible enough to become either a spear or a stake, and either of those two would be a godsend to the current Adamu.

With the two-meter-long stick in his hand, Adamu continued his journey to the river.

Soon, Adamu arrived at the long-familiar bending river bank.

“Still no fish?” Adamu suspected it would be so. Hence, he did not despair. No. Instead, he made his way upriver in the hope that a barrier had to exist somewhere to stop the fish from fleeing any further from his apparent Bloodline Aura leakage.

Honestly, it made no sense to Adamu how they sensed it all, but it was the only explanation, thus, it was what it was.

In the end, Adamu found that barrier and the fish huddled together as if he were the scariest predator alive. However, Adamu made no rush to jump at them because this part of the river had a fast current on top of looking quite deep, as well.

Both facts made his need for food a burden to be overcome.

Additionally, what he was seeing was from a distance, and Adamu dared not to get closer because the fish might take his presence as an excuse to rush down the river.

“Hmph… Even if I spend some time sharpening the stick to penetrate their scales, it's more likely to miss since this body's musculature was not conditioned for spear throwing.” Adamu noted. “Plus, I would have to be very close to actually hit anything through that current.”

With a head shake, Adamu went down a different line of thought. “Do I make a trap downriver somewhere?” Considering for a moment, Adamu negated the option, although not completely. ”The trap can wait. I need to fix the Aura leakage first, yet there is no Mana or Essence by which to do so. Hmm… What to do?... What to do?... Oh? Worth a try since I don't have to move from this spot.”

Placing the long stick and his primitive stone cutter on the ground, Adamu sat with his legs crossed and focused on meditating.

However, the trance he sought had the opposite purpose of diving for one’s Mind and Spirit. It still held parts of those, but they were not the main component. As such, there was no need to close one's eyes because this trance was considered a Waking Trance.

A Waking Trance needs one to be completely immersed into the present sensory input delivered by the physical senses, or any other senses if you had them, all while extracting oneself from the experiences manifested by the sensations.

It was a contradictory state of being. Only contradictions themselves were exceptionally common when confronted with profound powers.

Sometimes, the more contradictory something tried to be, the more powerful it became.

Regardless, since Adamu's current body had never done it before, it took quite some time for the Mind and Spirit to synchronize enough to manifest the trance, but when it did, Adamu’s vision blurred and cleared instantly.

It blurred because Adamu no longer observed anything in particular as if no focus existed in his eyes. On the other hand, it cleared because his vision no longer focused on anything, thus causing him to notice everything his vision caught.

However, this was not the trance Adamu desired.

No, this state of seeing yet not seeing, observing yet not observing was but the first among many steps on the road of Divination Magic, Magic that focused on scrutinizing and understanding things, phenomena, and even sentients.

Contradictory, the same Waking Trance spawned another branch of Magic, Concealment Magic, Magic where the user purposely tried to hinder the perceptions and understanding of things to others, even when Magic itself was used to accomplish it.

Soon, Adamu felt his Spirit strain from the effort, and with no Mana to offset and lubricate the stress caused by his Spirit, the pressure bled onto his Mind.

Thus, every moment the Waking Trance continued, Adamu’s focus dwindled. Luckily, this was a passive state of mental and spiritual focus so the drain was on the lesser side. However, applying anything fancy would spike that drain, but for an experiment, it was worthwhile.

Moments after the Waking Trance manifested, Adamu focused and imagined himself contracting yet remaining the same.

As such, Adamu manifested a contradiction within himself, only this contradiction focused on a phenomenon called the Kyrilian Field, or as the less educated on Magic terms knew it, the bio-electro-magnetic field generated by the nervous system of every living biological creature.

The contradiction of contracting yet remaining the same was not the goal of Adamu. No, to achieve it without Magic or other profound powers was considered impossible. Instead, Adamu focused on acquiring the sensations of the Kyrilian Field and its nature.

Once he had it, the amount of input information reaching his Spirit spiked since usually it was regulated by the Mind automatically, and therefore, without any manual controls. However, once the Spirit was involved, manual control was indeed achievable, hence making it possible to regulate the field, and that was Adamu’s goal, although not in the form of making it do things it could not.

No, Adamu’s goal was to make it vibrate differently, or in today’s case, to mimic the tree upon which Adamu’s back lay. After all, trees were living biological beings, which meant they, in fact, possessed a Kyrilian field as well.

Only things did not proceed as Adamu first imagined them to.