It is a day in the young Imogyeran’s life. Three weeks have passed since ‘that’ incident.

The boy has just finished most of his tasks and is currently in the middle of scrubbing the ground of the kitchen.

His eyes are as dead as a fish; the red color of his iris has turned a shade paler and he has his eyes almost closed. His motoric movements are sluggish at best and everything about him is off the mark. The child’s usual sharpness and efficiency are nowhere to be seen. Many people have tried talking with him but they all quickly stopped due to his weak responsiveness and absent mindedness.

<>

These words come from one of Imogyeran’s closer relationships in this mansion. Miss Layerstone softly told him these words and sees him off. In response he simply bows his head slightly and turns around to be on his way off to his dorm. He moves slowly and inambitiously, opens the heavy door by leaning his body against it and slowly grinding it open and closes it behind him. Recently he has been given the authority to lock the door from the inside, which he accomplishes.

He waits for a few seconds, listening through the door, whether anybody is close to the door.

Nobody there.

..

*Siiiigh*

I let out a long sigh and shake my tired body for a few minutes. Then I do some basic stretches and lightly jump on one spot for a second or two.

Time for the usual

I smile and say out loud in a voice inaudible to the normal human ears:

<<’Donmir’>>

At my call he arrives. I smile brightly, happy to see him and give my best friend a big long hug.

..

In the last weeks Imogyeran has devoted 110% of his focus on the communication with his spiritual familiar ‘Donmir’. This training included not only the communication with ‘Donmir’ himself but also with the residual spirits surrounding him.

The positive side-effect was a slow and steady strengthening of his body through the repeated diffusion of the spiritual beings through his muscles, bones and skin. The effect might not be much but the long-term benefits would be quite positive if left under constant influence.

Then is it the case, that the boy has been lying to the entire household and simply pretended that he was sick?

The answer is both a yes and a no.

Since this ‘person’ represented literally the first time in his life that Imogyeran could open up to someone other than himself, Imogyeran naturally became very attached to ‘Donmir’ and the other spirits.

In fact the phrase ‘Attachment’ would be a major understatement of his obsession with the other worldly beings that he noticed filling his world for the first time.

His obsession with them has become so high, that he became disillusioned with the real world, which is one of the most dangerous thoughts to have for a person this young and this deeply connected with a world that is basically the equivalent to the netherworld in some senses of the meaning.

In short, Imogyeran was almost pathologically obsessed with a world that wasn’t his world.

And then there is the night:

Today marks the 10th time that Imogyeran visited the room in his subconscious and started the process of the so-called ‘Rite of knowledge’.

..

*BARK*

I wake up at the barking sound of ‘Donmir’ and look around myself.

I am finally back at my room, that is at the same time not really my room.

I can be as loud as I want to, I can say what I want to say and I can do what I want to do.

<>, I say while throwing my body back on the ground and looking up at the top of the room.

It’s so cold.

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The surroundings become a bit darker when I think that. I hastily stand back up and run towards ‘Donmir’. ‘Donmir’ has made himself comfortable in front of my bed and is looking at me.

I rush up to him and hug him tightly until my trembling subsides. After a while the light returns to the room, though little by little.

<>

I haven’t figured out, what that dark thing is but I am very scared of it.

After being sure that it’s safe again I let out a sigh of relief and start my climb on top of the bed. ‘Donmir’ is assisting me with all his help and after a long time I reach the cozy part of my bed.

*Pant* *Pant*

<<*Pant*-Why does this thing have to be so high- *Pant*- up?>>

On top of the bed I take a long break. I use the time by ruffling through ‘Donmir’s... fur I guess?

<>, I shout into my room while jumping up.

<>

I look at ‘Donmir’ and he looks at me with what I think is a worried expression.

<>

After a bit of bantering and pleading I get ‘Donmir’ to do ‘that’ for me. He sits down in front of me and I hold his body in my arms.

I take a single deep breath.

<>

I close my eyes and focus on ‘Donmir’

..

In short, the rite of knowledge is a kind of ritual to channel information into your mind by using the spirits as a bridge.

In the world of Gaia, spirits are everywhere and they have been everywhere ever since the people could remember. But just because they are so many in number and just because they can be used by the people for their own benefits, this does not mean, that the spirits do not have memories or emotions. In fact the line that is separating the spirits from being alive is an infinitesimally small one, as can be seen with the creation of ‘Donmir’:

The spirits can feel, think and remember but their feelings are shallow, their thoughts are hollow.

The only thing that they truly keep with them for the ages is their memory.

Every time somebody uses a technique that resonates with the spirits, they leave a sort of imprint inside the spirit’s hollow consciousness. The spirits themselves won’t be able to discern their meaning themselves but this property of theirs is the deciding part of this ritual.

Imogyeran has become proficient enough to establish a connection with ‘Donmir’.

‘Donmir’ in turn is a spiritual being and thus automatically able to connect to the spirits around his vicinity. This allows Imogyeran to indirectly connect to those spirits using ‘Donmir’ as a bridge between them. These spirits in turn will be able to connect to the ones adjacent to themselves and so on.

After establishing a connection with them, Imogyeran then proceeds to communicate with them and slowly tries to extract the information out of them, which he wants to extract. ‘Donmir’ in this case also plays an additional role in being a filter, that roughly filters the spirits for the information that they possess.

This method is theoretically able to establish a connection with any spirit in the entire world and to gain their information and history.

However, as anything inside this world, this method as well has its major flaws:

1) The information gain is limited by the type of spirit doing the mediating:

Since the nature of ‘Donmir’ can be summarized as both sorrow and water, he can only communicate really well with spirits sharing the same type of attributes as him or similar ones. This multiple transitioning between the spirits causes a significant drop in either the range that this technique covers or the speed at which the information are gathered and collected.

Additionally the spirits of the water-nature and the spirits of the sorrowful inclination are both not very suitable to information gathering due to their innate inclinations of life.

If one wants to extract the maximum benefit out of this technique, then a spirit of the wind nature with an inquisitive or quirky inclination is more effective.

2) The mental burden on the user is very heavy:

The idea of connecting to the spirits and being conveyed their experiences of many days, weeks, months and even years in a measly few hours is obviously tremendously strenuous on the human mind and if done consequently often, it may lead to a drastic shortening of one’s life if a person overestimates their own capabilities.

3) Mind-Deprivation:

Any instance, where you build a connection with a spirit and your own inner consciousness, you inadvertently give the spirits a free space to connect to and influence using their own consciousness. The longer a spirit has ‘lived’ (loosely meant), the more of a consciousness they will develop. Some spirits will naturally transcend this infinitesimally small gap between their state of being and life through the simple passing of time.

Others might simply be deserted spiritual familiars with a similar origin-story to ‘Donmir’.

If such a spirit comes into contact with the part of his mind, that is in its function utterly incapable of defending itself, the spirits will be able to siphon their mental energy through this method and, were they to harbor any ill intentions, could very well mentally disable the user of this technique.

Needless to say, the more the user wants to acquire from the spirits, the more likely they are to meet those spirits and interact with them.

In fact, the signs that the people around him have noticed around him show that this very case has already happened to him on a micro scale multiple times in this short amount of time.

Luckily the effects are mostly temporary in Imogyeran’s case.

The reason being, that the spirits have a very high aptitude in measuring a person’s intentions and mind and are heavily influenced by their mental world. Simply put, most spirits that could damage Imogyeran in his core being, prefer to be friendly to him for they see the purity of an innocent child gleaming from him. As long as he keeps this attitude of his through his life, he will never be truly hated by the spirits.

Furthermore the few strays that actually do intend on inflicting harm on him are drastically hindered by ‘Donmir’ and __. inside his mind.

Today, Imogyeran is experiencing the memories of the famous swordsman Muramasa Origin, who has been active inside and built a Dojo in the Dondonpan area a while ago.

He uses the sword as a strut for both himself as well as a his spiritual familiar, a water serpent, to fight the enemies. His style of fighting is an aggressive one, that is focused on dodging the enemies attacks and quickly dealing enough damage to their joint areas to disarm them.

Muramasa has already died a few years back but both his sword-style as well as his spiritual familiar ‘Naga’ are still roaming the world.

Imogyeran is currently communicating with that very ‘Naga’ and experiencing her master’s life.

<>

Against his glittering eyes and childish smile beaming out happiness, even the familiar of a famous master is awakening a soft-spot inside themselves.