“Any chance you can unfreeze the rest of my party before we continue?”
“Not even a little. Let’s just get this over with.”
“Alright, fine, though by the way, real quick, will I remember all of this afterward?”
“You will, and so will they, or at least they will know something happened but not what. Not like it matters since you will tell them anyway.”
“Wait, you are going to let me tell them?”
“Yeah, I don’t see why not. It’s not like they will learn anything groundbreaking to break reality with. Now, about your drake.”
“What about it? Aren’t you just going to delete from existence? I figured that's what fixing it meant.”
“I can’t. Well, that's not true. I can. It will just mean a portion of your soul will go with it.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, sadly, I am not as all-powerful as I once was, and souls can be tricky. Either way, basically, and to dumb it down by a lot. Instead of your Chaos Mana triggering a Chaos Event, it was unintentionally directed by your will, which shouldn’t be possible until way later on. However, it happened, and the mana was pushed to make a drake on top of already empowering the spell like it usually does. The issue is that Chaos Mana was unable to create a soul because even it has limits, so it instead decided to pluck a bit of yours and expand on it.”
“Uhhh, okay, I guess that makes some sort of sense. Also, are you saying I will be able to control my Chaos Events if I rank up?”
“Control is a bit of a strong word. It's more like directing it in a certain direction and hoping the result is to your liking. Basically, think of wanting to direct it to summon a monster to help you in battle, and there is a chance it will as likely summon an imp or a manticore.”
“Well, Damn.”
“Yeah, look, the important part here is that you need to be careful when using your Chaos Mana to empower spells that conjure creatures. Not that you can’t or that I will stop you, since free will and all that, but that you should keep your will in check while doing it.”
“Okay, I will keep it in mind, so what's next?”
“Well, I am going to fix the problem, then leave. See you around.”
Then Tesilim felt and saw as the drake and its energy disappeared. Afterward, he felt pain in his chest right where his soul was supposed to be, and everything went dark.
----------------------------------------
Time resumed.
Alyx fell, Rose tripped over him, and Lili was brought back to reality when the power that had been washing over her faded. Meanwhile, Jasmine saw Tesilim disappear from his location only to appear a few dozen feet away, unconscious on the ground.
Jasmine rushed towards Tesilim while Rose checked on Alyx, and Lili stood still, looking like a fish out of water, her body trembling with power and her mind reeling at the suddenly missing energy.
Tesilim was the first to wake up when Jasmine jostled him. He was a bit confused until he remembered what had happened and quickly assured the panicked Jasmine that everything was fine.
“Guys! Alyx isn’t waking up, and I can't scan him properly. Lili, get over here!” They heard Rose yell from where she was squatting down by Alyx.
Tesilim and Jasmine quickly rushed over, though not before Lili, who had been snapped from her trance by Rose’s call. Lili quickly scanned Alyx, forcing her way past his innate defense, and found that his body was fine. Pushing harder, she reached his soul and was quickly rebuffed by the power of two deities. She could pierce through since they could only do so much via their conduits but chose not to.
“He seems fine. Whatever happened smacked his soul a bit but his two goddesses kept it from taking damage. I think if we give him a minute, he should wake up.”
“Speaking of what happened,” Rose commented, her face grave, anger in her eyes as she stared Tesilim down, demanding an explanation. Her stare also brought the attention of the other two ladies, though for different reasons. Lili was looking at him with hungry eyes as if he had something she needed, and it definitely was not sexual. It was as if she wasn’t looking at his body but more like staring past it and looking at something deeper. Meanwhile, Jasmine looked like he had some explaining to do, almost like she had just discovered a secret about him that completely reshaped how she viewed reality.
“Well, it is a bit complicated, or maybe it isn’t. It depends on how much you all know about the World Crystal, and I feel we should wait for Alyx.” Tesilim said, trying to avoid eye contact as well as the blame for the stuff that had just occurred by looking at the ground, the sky, and the trees.
For Rose, it was like everything involving Tesilim suddenly made sense. It was like she had found the protagonist of one of those many stories she had read about in their world. Whenever someone was involved with the World Crystal, things usually got rather hectic. The World Crystal only dealt with gods, and the fact that it interacted with any mortal tended to shift things around in the planet's pecking order, for good or for worse.
A growing horror grew in Rose, knowing she was at the center of something so big and dangerous, yet at the same time, her sense of adventure and pride to show what she was capable of bloomed in her chest.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
In Lili’s case, it came more of a shock so big that her hunger disappeared. It was one thing to hear Tesilim say things about the World Crystal, even if his screen supposedly proved it. However, going through what she had just experienced, there was no doubt. Only so many entities could do what had just been done.
Her mother had told her that even the gods themselves could not control Chaos Mana. They might be able to contain it, keep it at bay, and possibly re-direct it, but to remove it and have it disappear, well, everything had limits. She herself was one of those things who could remove it or, more precisely, consume it, and that was just the gift from her dad. And needless to say, as a mortal she had plenty of limits to counterbalance that particular gift.
The event made Lili reaffirm her decision to stay with Tesilim. She had seen a lot during her 300 years of life and knew that sticking with this elf would show her even more.
Meanwhile, Jasmine was unsure of how to proceed. There was this other individual here with a connection to the World Crystal. What did he know? Did he know about her? Was this whole thing a ploy of the World Crystal? Did it influence her in some way to make her come to Wildwood, where it knew she would find Tesilim? Why would it do that? More importantly, how was Tesilim connected to the World Crystal? And why did the World Crystal intervene so publicly? The questions raced through Jasmine’s mind as she watched the elf.
Eventually, Tesilim noticed the shifting emotions. Rose’s face switched from sheer terror to a look of determination. Lili was staring at him, her mouth wide open, and noticing him noticing her, she switched to a wide smile, eyes filled with amazement and acceptance. For Jasmine, well, her face was going through various emotions. Anger, worry, distrust, hope, and finally acceptance as she met his eyes, and he saw the resolve in them.
Thankfully, before the silence could grow, Alyx shot up, looking around with manic eyes. It took the gnome a couple of seconds to gather himself as he looked at everyone before finally settling his eyes on Tesilim.
“What happened!? Tell me everything!”
“Woah, there, buddy, you okay? Lili said your soul got slammed.”
“Yes, I am fine. It's not important. What’s important is for you to tell me what happened. Where is the drake? What happened to the mana? My goddesses said something about the World Crystal intervening. Is that true? How did it feel? How did it act? Did you talk to it? Did it respond?”
“Yeah, Tesilim, please explain. You said you were waiting for Alyx to wake up, and he is awake. Rose added, getting a “shut up dude” look from him.
However, he had said he would explain, so he did. First, he began by catching up Rose and Jasmine with his story. He gave a quick breakdown of the Earth again and explained how he got to their world. He described the pain he had gotten in his chest and about the system he had gained as well the blessing from the World Crystal of Earth. Then he moved on to his conversation with the World Crystal.
That took a while since he had broken down everything into as many details as possible so Alyx could write it all down. He explained how the World Crystal could speak and how the voice came from everywhere. How it understood the references from Earth since it knew everything Tesilim had known due to the connection it established, which at the same time was the reason why Tesilim’s system worked. Tesilim also added how apparently the Crystal said it had limits with souls being one of them for some reason. He then explained the situation with the drake, what had happened with the Chaos Mana, and how his will had accidentally triggered the events that had set the entire thing into motion.
Of course, that also meant explaining Chaos Mana to Jasmine and Rose since they deserved to know instead of just giving them the “because of innate magic” explanation. One thing Tesilim didn’t explain was the exact details of each of his chaotic abilities, except stuff like the Chaos Boost and Chaos Event. The only other thing he didn’t say anything about was the supposed future of his power since he felt like keeping that a bit under wraps.
After his explanation, everyone seemed to be deep in thought, so he used that moment to finally look at his notifications, which he had been ignoring from the very start of the whole mess.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Warning!
Your use of Chaos Boost on your Summon Drake Spell has caused the spell to go awry.
🔷
He needed to stop ignoring these things. Not that it would have helped at that point since this came after he was almost done with the spell. He hadn’t checked because he wanted to get the spell right, and funnily enough, it had done the opposite, though he couldn’t truly blame himself for something he unconsciously did.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Warning! Chaos Event has failed to trigger.
Chaos Mana has been affected by your Will.
Chaos Mana is attempting to create a Soul.
🔷
Then, this was right as he was admiring the drake.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Warning! Chaos Mana has failed to create a Soul.
Chaos Mana has begun Soul Extraction.
🔷
Okay, so this is when a piece of his soul got snatched.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Warning! Soul Anomaly detected by World Crystal.
World Crystal has stopped Soul Extraction.
🔷
That was when time began to slow down. Then, after a bunch of talking, the World Crystal fixed the issue, and then he got this.
🔷 Crystal Notice 🔷
Congratulations! You have gained a new ability.
Ability: Summon Chaos Drake.
See your abilities menu for more details.
And don’t make this a habit.
🔷
Alright, that last one was definitely personalized by the World Crystal. Tesilim didn’t know it could just do that, but it made sense; it was the developer of this whole system nonsense. In a way, it made Tesilim happy since he now had someone to blame for any features he didn’t like.