I find my vision blurry, and like I’m tumbling. Looking around, the shaking suddenly stopped. My head was throbbing with pain as the world slowly stopped spinning and I saw Neld over me.
“Gods man, I thought you had died, What happened?”
Sitting up, I groan before answering, my speech slow and slurred.
“I did what you said, I made a pathway from my core to my arms and back. Then I moved the energy through the pathways and immediately collapsed.”
Neld tsks at me waving his finger at me like a child.
“You silly silly man, you're not supposed to circulate your energies till you have a completed circulation system. The feedback from the unspent energy will cause temporary damage to your soul! You're lucky you got away with just passing out. When your energy circulates, it's pre-portioned by your body to let the energy meld with your whole body, so unless you have unheard of energy manipulation, you need to let it melt through your entire body, not just a part of it. Now, can you stand? We need to get moving.”
Pulling me to my feet, he gathers his breath for a moment from helping me up and then we head deeper into the tunnel, the cave entrance slowly disappearing behind us, turning into a small mote of light before being snuffed out by a slow curve in the walls. Once the light became naught, Neld held up his hand and created a small ball of gray light that illuminated the walls and floor around us. As we walked through the winding tunnels of the cavern, the sound of dripping slowly began to grow louder, from non-existence to an ever present pattering driving me further and further down the mines. I nearly fell off the side of a cavern before Neld snapped me out of my stupor.
“Careful James, you walk off that ledge and there's no telling how far you'll fall.”
He says before walking away, carefully stepping so he doesn't slip off the edge of the cavern. Looking down, it seems pitch black, yet I could have sworn that something caught my eye. Deciding my mind is making shit up, as it's known to do, I push forward with Neld traveling through the cavern until the ledge abruptly stops.
“Ah looks like we’ll have to turn back.”
Neld said as he motioned for me to move back. As I stepped back, a small crack formed on the ledge. Standing still, I looked at it closely and saw a small black needle chipping away at the inside of the crack. Turning to point it out to Neld, I felt the ground suddenly give way, looking down to see nothing but pitch black, the air suddenly very apparent as it rushed past my face.
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For the second time in one day, I found myself coming after being knocked out. Looking around, I couldn't see shit, but I could feel my arms unable to move. My left leg throbbed with pain, but my right leg was luckily only in slight pain. Trying to pull myself up, my sense of balance was fucked, leaving me tumbling to the floor, unable to catch myself. Taking a second to let my mind settle, I twisted and writhed on the floor till I had my back up against the wall I was originally against. Pushing my heels into the stone, I gritted my teeth from the pain of my body weight being pushed up with two legs. Finally finding my feet flat on the floor, I start walking forward, straight into a wall.
Ass right back on the floor, I attempt the same maneuver five whole times, getting ever slightly closer to my goal of… not being in a cave? Neld, he would be able to fix my body. new goal acquired, finding that boy.
With sights set and mind focused, I stand myself up, my back raw from the previous attempts, skin almost certainly scraped onto the wall like the remaining cheese on a cheese grater. Slowly and carefully moving forward, I feel the hairs on my nose brush against the wall, pulling away fast enough to nearly fall over, only catching myself with the convenient wall I almost walked into by slamming into it back first, spinning on my heel to not have to stand once more. Pulling myself off the wall, I move forward, deciding to walk sideways so my shoulder brushes the wall before my face. Using this new and improved method of walking through this pitch black cavern, I made substantial progress at a previously unheard of pace, moving through the cave faster and faster as the walls showed themselves through such simple tells as causing the air to react differently from my movements, or how the tips of my hairs get tingly when I get too close, with each and every step it became easier to move through the caverns. So after another couple dozen times walking face first into a sudden turn in the wall, it was almost a pleasant surprise when the floor was not where my foot happened to be placed.
Falling for a second, I land on my knees, leaving my legs not feeling too spiffy, but at this point it was just a drop in the bucket. One thing that made itself very apparent was light, beautiful amber light leaking out from the cracks of a door right in front of me. Opening the surprisingly nice dark red wood door, my eyes were assaulted with bright light, making me squint until my eyes adapted to the sudden influx of brightness. Once my eyes adapted, I was able to see the room I walked into was lit by floating balls of golden light floating around the room, the floor was stone, but the walls were boarded, the roof also stone. There was a table off to the corner of the room with a couple tools, a black candle, and a metal tea kettle. The floor was eye-catching, as it had a large ritual looking diagram on it. Carved into the stone was a giant circle with symbols inscribed along the inner line, each symbol corresponding to a corner on a polygon, the polygon then having each vertex having a line drawn from its center to a final character in the middle, each line leading into the unknown character fluidly.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Walking over, I look around the ritual looking diagram, fascinated with it. Clearly the characters have meaning, along with each one corresponding to a corner, of which is led to a central character. Fascinating. Wait, don't I have a ritual? Looking in my inventory, I was right, I still had the familiar summoning ritual. Thinking about pulling it out, a pamphlet and pen spawn in my hands. Placing the pen off to the side, I open the pamphlet and read it over.
The first page was a diagram of a very similar ritual to the one on the floor, a large circle with 4 characters on the inner line, then a square connecting each character. In the center however, there lay one more circle that the lines curved into, leaving the center of the circle empty.
Looking at the instructions on the second page, it read out what to do.
‘Using the pen, draw the diagram as seen on page one. Once it’s finished, you will be provided with an arcane catalyst. Once the catalyst is sparked, immediately place it into the center to begin the ritual.’
Seemingly straightforward, I grab the pen and try writing into some unoccupied stone, the tip of the pen digging into the stone like soft clay, leaving the actual drawing only moderately difficult because of my abhorrently shaky hands. Once I had finished with the square, there was no space left so I moved to a larger unoccupied space and tried once more, this time being able to finish the ritual outline. Placing the pen to the side, it melted, like wax from a candle. The liquid it turned into was opalescent, flowing into the diagram until every part was filled. Then a small prism fell in front of me, landing on the floor where I picked it up. The prism was shaped like a rectangular prism with a pyramid on each end.
Trying to pull a minuscule amount of energy from my core, I focused intensely, finally drawing some to my palm where it was all instantly taken by the prism, leaving no feedback. Opening my eyes, the prism glowed a bright blue, then purple, then a mix of green and orange. The prism changed colors rapidly, heating up faster and faster until it hurt to hold. Tossing it onto the ground in pain, I kicked it with my shoe till it was firmly in the middle of the final circle.
Everything was still, except the prism rapidly changing colors, switching between them so fast it just appeared as white in my vision after a few seconds. The prism started lifting upward, the ritual seeming to follow as half of the liquid from the pen held the exact same shape but lifted up into the air, reaching the roof around eight feet into the air, stopping before the prism lifted itself straight up, the pyramids having their tips point straight up and down. Then, energy of every single color shoots out from every corner of the prism, connecting the angles of the ritual. The crystal turned dull as the lines of energy seemed to hold it in place. After a couple seconds, the last of the fluid from the pen connected the top and bottom parts of the ritual, the energy from the prism replacing the original diagram.
slowly, the top circle began spinning clockwise, the bottom spinning in the opposite direction. The spinning got faster and faster, the low whirring turning into the sounds of a passenger plane propeller from mere feet away. The lines connecting the top and bottom wound around till they formed a solid wall around the large circle of the ritual, the inside completely hidden from view as the walls refused to move inward with the twisting. After half a minute, the spinning rapidly slowed until the bottom and top came to a near stop. Looking closely, they were not slowing down from lack of energy, they were struggling against what I can only assume to be the elastic properties of the fluid. Then, the walls dented inward, and with that every aspect of the ritual was sucked inward toward the epicenter of where the prism was during its outburst of energies.
With the last vestiges of the ritual drawn into the torso-sized ball of multi-colored energy and opalescent fluid, it stopped spinning, instead seeming to be being forced into a shape by some outside force. After a minute, it became apparent the shape it was taking was that of a cube, the colors being melded together, their brightness dimming with each passing second until it became a uniform black color, the fluid from before maintaining its opalescent properties all the while. The process slowed and slowed as it neared completion, the cube taking shape as a black equally sided cube with thin rectangular grooves throughout its whole shape, each line being partially filled with the fluid from before, leaving a slight indent with watch groove. It resembled a circuit board with the way the lines were formed, along with the silvery opalescent fluid looking similar to the metal used in the aforementioned board. The black parts looked smooth, yet they did not reflect the light heavily, in fact they seemed to be nearly pitch black, as if nearly no light was bouncing off it, in direct opposition of the silvery lines etched throughout.
Thinking about moving forward to try and grab it before it fell to the floor, the cube suddenly moved in a straight line right up to my face.
{Greetings, by decree of the system, I am your soulbound companion, please accept the prompt for optimal results.}
The cube spoke directly into my mind, a jarring experience only slightly made easier by its soothing low voice, mechanical in nature undoubtedly, but I respect a machine that can speak so smoothly and without unnecessary fluff words and expressions just to extend what they're saying for some reason that is almost certainly useless in nature.
Taken away from my thoughts of the cubes pleasant voice by a black screen with opalescent text.
[permission is required for a soul bond between a {Inert} and a system Numen
Do you accept a soul bond between you and (N/A) Y/N
Accepting, the cube melted into the mix of opalescent silver, and lightless black. The fluid flowed into each of my fingers and the base of my palm, carving spiritual tunnels through my astral body, working its way through my channels, expanding them in a way that puts the pain from before to shame. Eventually, after collapsing face first, ass up onto the floor, the fluid had made its way to my core, melding with the casing before completely disappearing from sight.
{Environment showing unprecedented amounts of potential. Would you allow me to use a portion of your soul space as an artificial space of my own? As a non-organic being, I do not have a soul space, merely a spark and spiritual frame. Do not worry, with soul matter like this, the amount it would take is imperceptible.}
“Ughhh, do whatever you need, just make the pain stop.”
{understood. Recommencing soul integration.}