The Tree of Life was well... larger than life, an existence so large you’d have to stand a kilometre away just to observe it all. Contrary to its name though, it was a barren thing, with no leaves present on its thousand branches, free of any foliage and the usual critters that signalled the presence of life.
The absence of any greenery, however, served to emphasise the presence of ten tiny objects distributed haphazardly across its expanse. They were the golden apples Arthur and Alyssia had been tasked to retrieve and now, without the presence of the tree’s guardian, the lesser hydra, they could do so at their leisure. The glowing golden fruits, however, were the furthest thing from their minds as they sat beneath the tree's shade, leaning against its massive trunk.
Arrayed on the ground in front of them, were three distinct objects, a small steel bowl that almost seemed to glow when observed from a certain angle, a green orb that executed a potent poison that killed the grass around it with little consideration for the massive tree’s healing aura, and finally a wooden box that tried and failed to appear ordinary.
“I hate you, you know that Arthur,” Alyssia said emphatically, pointing accusingly at the bowl he’d purchased from Ikea for four dollars. “You're telling me all you did was pour some blood in that and, voila, you're on your way to creating your own personal soulbound item. How- how is that fair,” she cried out, waving her hands aggressively. Arthur couldn’t help it anymore. He’d tried to keep it in but he couldn’t take the look of incredulous confusion on Alyssia’s face anymore. He started to laugh, enjoying the moment, or at least he did until she threw a clod of mud directly into his mouth.
Sputtering, he spat the soil out even as he tried to grab her, a futile endeavour considering the difference in their relative agility stats. It still took him a minute to give up chasing her though, and Alyssia’s smug look of satisfaction made him want to carry on and wipe it off her face. Damn, she’s so childish Arthur thought, conveniently ignoring the fact he’d chased her around for the past sixty seconds with a lump of soil clenched in his fist.
“Can we be adults, here or do we need to carry on with this foolery?” Arthur asked condescendingly, a look of sad disappointment on his face. Alyssia, the damn minx just grinned infuriatingly at him, her cheeks dimpling in joy. “Maybe,” she replied. “How about you put that mud down and then we’ll talk.”
Damn, she has an older sister, doesn’t she? She wouldn’t fall for such a shallow trick. Taking his losses like an adult, he dropped the mud from his hand and then extended it out for a handshake, particles of soil still stuck to his fingers. It was petty, but he’d take what little victory he could.
“Truce?” he asked.
“Truce,” she replied but didn’t take his hand. “We don’t shake hands in my world,” she shamelessly lied. Arthur didn’t call her out on it but left his hand hovering in the air between them, rotated so his open fist faced the sky. “Cut my palm,” he said. “We’ve spent enough time relaxing and I’m tired of using shadow bombs to make myself bleed.”
"Fuck!" He cursed.
She didn’t hesitate for a single second, and did she have to cut him this deeply? The words had barely left his mouth and the next instance, a line of read was spreading across the middle of his palm. He didn’t complain out loud though. After all, he’d been the one to ask Alyssia to cut him and if he didn’t move quickly, his regeneration would mean he’d have to get cut again. Rushing over to the bowl, he held his hand over it, wincing as he used the fingers of his free hand to spread the flesh of his wound to prevent it from healing so fast.
Alyssia watched the spectacle from the side in morbid fascination for the thirty seconds it took to fill three-quarters of the bowl up. By that time, his wound was practically gone and he deemed the blood enough to fulfil his purposes. Faster than he could react, Alyssia poked her finger into the liquid and directly into her mouth. Arthur looked at her in shock wondering for the first time if she had a screw loose. “What?” she asked him, finger still stuck in her mouth. “I was wondering how it tasted.”
“And?”
“It tastes like normal blood,” she replied. “Boring.”
Arthur shook his head in bemusement. He truly feared for Artemo, with an older sister like Alyssia, who knew how he would turn out. “Well, I’m sorry my blood doesn't taste like strawberry milkshake,” he retorted. “Hopefully you’ll find this more interesting.”
Picking up the green hydra core, he identified it.
(Lesser) Swamp Hydra core (Elite++) A potent treat for any growing monster. A source of potent poison.
Besides the shadow panther's core, it had the highest rating he’d ever seen, just on the cusp of epic tier. He’d intended to consume Rare cores only for his remaining opportunities as they were guaranteed to provide stats and nothing above and beyond such as a title or skill, as he’d learned from his limited experience eating the things. Stats really are the best. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Hydra's core was too great an opportunity to pass up. It significantly increased his chances of getting a legendary class and coming from a monster that made regeneration its entire personality, it was almost certainly guaranteed to give him vitality, the stat he currently sought after most.
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If things went perfectly, consuming this core would shoot him up to a thousand vitality and free up his unassigned attribute points to hopefully push another stat to 500 and unlock the paragon title for it. He’d consult with Alyssia first but right now he was leaning towards willpower. If there was one thing he had learned in the locus of power, it was that his aptitude for ether manipulation was terrible and willpower was the stat that governed one's control over magic.
Hopefully, fixing his soul would help matters there, and they certainly would, but had a feeling he wouldn’t turn out to be a magical prodigy.
“Hurry up,” Alyssia demanded, “You’ve been staring into the distance for the past thirty seconds. It doesn’t take that long to read a single line of description.”
Arthur huffed but followed her direction, gently placing the green core into his shallow pool of blood. He’d been delaying long enough and it was time to get a move on. He watched eagerly as the now familiar scene took place. The Hydra's core gradually dissolved into his blood, albeit far slower than any other material he’d used. Alyssia watched beside him, eyes wide open in rapt attention. He knew that she was seeing far more than him, even his amateurish aura control enough to recognise that Alyssia had applied the full brunt of her own on the magical reaction taking place.
“Arthur, it's your call. You’ve got a lot more experience than me here, but I think you should add a stabilising agent to this elixir. I’ve got some Moon-dew that will work in my bag.” She looked away from the incomplete elixir and met his gaze. “As things stand, the elixir you create will be too unstable and might fail altogether, your blood's not yet strong enough to handle the hydra's chaotic power. The moon-dew will help deal with the poisonous nature of the mixture too.”
Arthur didn’t hesitate for a single second. “Put it in,” he said. Alyssia knew far more than him about what was going on. He’d quite literally stumbled into monster core elixir creation when a bout of desperation had overtaken him after the shadow panther fight. There was no nuance or skill to his methodology; after all, his creation only contained two ingredients. He trusted Alyssia on this far more than he did himself and even he could see that the core had stopped dissolving properly, something that hadn’t happened in any of his previous creation attempts.
He didn’t see Alyssia move but the next moment, she opened her hands and let some blue leaves fall from them. Its effects were noticeable almost immediately and he let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding when he saw the reaction was back on track.
Even still, the elixir's creation took a full two minutes longer than any of his previous ones. By the end of it though, Arthur had his completed product waiting for him to drink. Alyssia’s mouth was agape as she stared at the now-green liquid within the bowl.
“I, I can’t believe that actually worked,” she whispered. “I mean I believed you when you explained the process to me but I thought you’d missed out on a key detail or something. But that’s it. Two ingredients to create one of the strongest epic-ranked drinks I’ve ever seen. Fuck, you didn’t even have to stir it.”
Arthur brought the bowl to his lips but hesitated before he put the stuff in his mouth. “Is it safe to drink? My identify says it's good but I trust your observation skills a lot more than I do my own.”
Alyssia nodded her head.
He didn’t wait a second longer. He couldn’t. His urges had been getting harder to resist. Arthur was certain that the him of four weeks ago would’ve drank the elixir before it’d even been finished but he'd been tempered over the past few days. The elixir burned as it went down. Literally. Even after the neutralisation provided by the moon-dew, the hydra’s poison would not be denied. It dissolved the skin off of his lips scalded his tongue and left his throat blistered. He idly wondered how bad it would’ve been if Alyssia hadn’t added the extra ingredient.
The pain didn’t stop him from drinking though. If anything, he was only getting more voracious as the elixir went down the hatch. Far too fast, the bowl was empty and he put it down with a dejected sigh. Alyssia took a step away from him and looked down at him with concerned eyes. “How are you feeling?” she asked. “Your soul's about to go through some serious scrambling. This last core is going to break its shell past the critical zone. It’s gonna hurt like hell.”
“I’m fine-” Arthur was cut off as a gut-wrenching agony overcame him. It was all-encompassing, he could feel it in his bones, his hair, his eyes, even his nails. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt before as if his very existence was being unravelled at the seams and he was being made anew, better and yet incomplete.
Alyssia had warned him that eating the final core would hurt a lot, breaking your soul-shell beyond a certain threshold tended to do that, but this was far beyond anything he could’ve imagined. His eyes were open but his brain was unable to interpret the visual stimuli it received. It was like someone had woven threads of molten metal between the fibres of his flesh so finely it became a part of his genetic makeup, every strand a searing sensation that burned unlike anything he’d ever felt before. The sweet release of unconsciousness was denied from him and so he suffered through it all, waiting for it to end.
There was a limit, a threshold beyond which the brain was no longer able to interpret pain. Unfortunately, Arthur was experiencing this through his soul and if there was a limit here, he hadn’t run into it yet. It hurt Alyssia to watch Arthur in this state but she didn’t look away. His limbs were spasming and parts of his body disintegrated one moment and were healed in the next second, the insane amount of vitality running through him battling against the breaking of his soul.
With her aura mastery, she could observe far more than her eyes could see and things weren't looking too good. She’d predicted he’d have two hours before he had to consume the dragon's core and finally fix himself up. Right now, it looked like he’d barely get a quarter of that time. There was a sudden change in Arthur's body, where she felt an explosion of vitality unlike anything she’d ever seen in a humanoid before, and she knew then that he’d pushed through the 1,000 vitality mark as he’d wished.
For a brief moment, he was a bastion of potent regeneration even stronger than the Tree of Life. The next moment his aura of regeneration returned to a more reasonable, albeit still insane level, and she could see his eyelids flickering widely. He’d be cognizant, soon enough and she had to make sure things were ready for when he was. Grabbing the steel bowl, she gave it a quick rinse with her water flask and filled it with Arthur’s blood. He was bleeding from so many places she was spoiled for choice.
She picked up the wooden box and hesitated for a second before putting it back down.
She’d let Arthur deal with the dragon core and didn’t want to risk ruining his elixir creation. Arthur groaned something under his breath and she rushed over to him. He didn’t say anything else, but it was a good sign. Success or failure, everything would be decided in the next hour.