It will take hours further before they reach their intended destination. Jin is going at his carving with renewed fervor, Many-Grasping is recovering, and Li Shu is watching over them both as she cycles her own Qi, continuing her advancement.
She matches Raika, in that regard. They both need to become stronger. Raika can taste her friend’s determination, the burning desire to push and be held equal, even if her power falls into a completely different category than Raika’s.
It’s a noble goal. She’s excited to see how far her friend will go.
But she has further to go. So she dives back in.
By this point, she’s recovered enough Qi to rebuild her gestalt. One mind for the exterior world, one for the Body, and one for free thinking. It’s enough for her to make it down into her inner world again, manifesting as the Soul.
They need weapons.
It’s not enough to form things on the fly, to generate and degenerate material as needed. That takes time, energy, space, none of which she will always have in abundance. She’s not a bruiser, deep down- the pursuit of overwhelming reserves as an advantage is fine, but as the requirement for victory is a failing. She needs tools she can use.
Dao, she can imbue into things she creates on the fly, but again, that takes more time, more thought. She can use it more efficiently.
If she optimized her energy usage, she could store much more Qi, keep the exponential growth of her natural formations going.
If she crafts weapons, she won’t need to spend time in battle doing so.
Being able to create things mid-combat is a massive advantage and one of her primary abilities, one that has served her well. There’s no need to discard her adaptability, one of her greatest tools point blank. But just like she set certain baselines for each body she makes, integrating pistons, better muscle patterns, and skeletal structures built on the principles of architecture and engineering, so now does she need to add more foundational pieces.
It’s not enough to be able to make weapons on the fly. She needs an arsenal she can rely on.
And seeing as she can’t wield Qi outside her body, there’s no need to even consider artifacts or enchanted weapons.
She’ll make her own.
Raika’s Soul stands up from where she sat, and begins to walk towards the hillside at the end of the valley.
Past the pond, the depths of which hold her Heart, she sees the hillside that was the burial ground of a Nascent Soul. Now that same being is fused to the sky above, manifesting as limbs of clouds that cover a night sky, dropping rain of lightning and tribulation down onto the earth.
[Divine Strikes Of Starry Tribulation] rains spears of lightning and rain like starry eyes onto her as she steps atop the burial mound of Souls, and the garden of her Dao.
She walks between the spears, rusted and bent from the decay of time. She wanders past many of the trees, bushes, and blades of grass that exhibit the patterns of reality, Dao manifested as florae in this strange space.
She makes it to the top of the hill. She feels her Heart shift, eager to join her in an act of creation.
The space of her inner world bends until the trees at the top of the hill make a space, opening up a clearing at the peak.
The hill isn’t taller than the valleys. She can’t use it to see over into the other parts of her internal landscape, the fields of ever-spawning matter. The landscapes that have been violently altered by her latest struggle. She doesn’t need to.
She calls what she needs to her.
The world shifts and reshapes, and a rock forms from the ground, the color of bone. She sits in it, and it shapes itself to her being, becoming a throne and comfortable seat in one. Red moss crawls from points of contact, adding extra cushioning.
It’s as good a place to meditate as any.
Wobbling up from the necklace around her neck, Dink hums in agreement.
It’s time to work.
In her last battle, she ate all or part of no less than six cultivators, and while it cost her almost a third of her total “landmass”, she kept something more than flesh and Qi from each of them. Reaching forth, she pulls these things to her now.
Over a distant hill comes a star that screams.
From the ground at her feet, a clump of ever-shifting wax and clay is dragged forth.
From the sky above, dancing between raindrops, comes a piece of night sky.
From far away, floating at the very edge of her inner world, she drags home a ball of roiling energy.
From the shadows behind her eyes, she pulls forth a thing of punishment and cold.
And one more thing. One which rejects her authority.
It doesn’t fight her, doesn’t start to tear at things. She would feel it if it did that. But it doesn’t come when called, and it’s heavier than the other four put together.
[SOMETHING BAD IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS].
She waits.
It doesn’t seem to move or shift from where it is in her soul-space.
Ok then. It can wait.
She looks at the Nascent Souls in front of her.
They are her, and hers, and all of them are incomplete.
The first, and most annoying among them, is the soul of one of the two Domain-wielders who she killed at the beginning of her battle at the fort. It’s… fairly self descriptive. [The Screaming Star] is an orb of light, about twice the size of Raika’s own soul-body, floating in the air and emitting a constant ringing tone which fluctuates wildly in volume and pitch. It glows, an off-white and bland color which seems almost at odds with the blaring noise it generates, making the hill, her own soul, and the rest of the inner world tremble at its sound.
Previously, Raika fused two Nascent Souls together into [Divine Strikes Of Starry Tribulation], the very sky above her. The thundercloud limbs, starry skin, and constant storm of alien rainfall is a Soul, just as it is a part of her inner world. However, it wasn’t a perfect fusion- through her Heart, she felt the separation between different concepts, the Dao and the stuff which Dao is a pattern of being drained away to feed her garden and other parts of her.
So. Fusion and absorption.
First things first: the screaming is very annoying.
She reaches out to her Heart, and it senses her will, moving forward with her. The pond begins to ripple, the flows of her Dragon Veins (the Qi patterns of her inner world) fluctuating as they begin to enact the great working.
First, she pulls at the scream.
The sound, pitch, tone, the very concept of sound leeches away from the Nascent Soul, pulled down into the garden. Several bits of grass that she previously felt resonate with Dink and its powers grow, turning into small shrubbery, and then into flowers that chime and play notes as they shift in the breeze.
The Soul that’s left behind feels… empty.
[The _________ Star] starts to shiver, and pieces of it begin to flake off. There are parts of it missing now, and its structure can’t sustain that. Just like failing to strike her down broke the Soul that was once [Perfect Strike Of Tribulation], missing a piece of its foundation is more than enough for it to begin to fall apart into nothing, the dregs of its pattern to be absorbed by her inner world.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
But there’s no need for that. She’s got other plans for that material.
With a flex of will and a strain that she can feel deep, deep down, she pulls the [The _________ Star] and [Endless Whorling Plasma] together.
The latter soul comes from the Plasma-wielder she faced, the most destructive member of the trio she fought. Her Nascent Soul ended up half-broken, as the soldier was not afraid to drain her core and every other part of herself to sustain the massive energies she wielded, but it is still intact. She didn’t quite get to the point of burning through her own cultivation to strike at Raika.
Which makes it kind of perfect.
She’s not entirely sure of the process. She can feel it more than before, surely, but it still feels alien, and her Heart handles most of it. She can tell there’s a strain to it, too- like a deep muscle ache, but further back, behind the bones of her.
Still, the Heart doesn’t complain. If anything, she senses an eagerness from both sides of it that feels rather distinct. The Heart feels like a mixture of pre-written responses, a sort of ingrained instinct, and a proto-mind, child-like and still only partially formed. In that way, it almost reminds her of Dink; fresh consciousness, still wrestling with the unknown and how their patterns interact with the world. But both its Intent and its instincts sing from out of the pond- it has ingrained knowledge of how to manipulate consumed Souls, and it is eager to do so.
Slowly, the half-empty star and the roiling ball of heat and energy join into one.
The sky brightens.
It still rains. There are still visible stars.
But now there is a sun.
It looks less like a sphere and more like a whirlpool of flame, but the [Star Of Roiling Plasma] glows bright and direct, elements of plasma and radiance intermingling to shine in all directions with heat, light, and radiation.
Raika’s soul can’t sweat, technically, but the effort of the fusion, and of the last few moments, has her feeling like she should be. Psychosomatic, sure, but then isn’t everything in her inner world? At least to some extent?
Interestingly, she notes that some of the qualities have been lost. The prefix of “The” has vanished, as has the property of “Endless”. The nature of the newborn, still-incomplete Soul is not a perfect collection of the other two, but a fusion. By their nature, they are neither endless nor singular in this place.
She did also eat, digest, and reshape them. It’s only natural that things would change, even if she’s not entirely sure of the process, or how they changed.
She looks at the bulging, ever-shifting mass of energy that floats before her. The world bends in towards it, like it has its own gravity, and she can feel the Dao of Flame, Plasma, and other, less-developed flora in her garden begin to grow from its mere presence.
Which is her cue to send it away.
[Star Of Roiling Plasma] ascends up to the heavens, burning a hole through the clouds and starry sky of [Divine Strikes Of Starry Tribulation]. Their natures aren’t opposed, per se, but they don’t quite relate to each other, really. But now her sky has two suns in it- one, a central ball of monochrome, a rainbow of radiation at its center, and the other a smaller but living star, made of ever-shifting energy.
She could absorb them. In theory, she could just absorb all these Souls, convert them into landmass in her inner world and Dao for her garden.
But she can get Dao from comprehension and practice, and she can make landmass from Qi and CHANGE. Souls themselves are much rarer.
And she needs tools more than raw power.
As the [Star Of Roiling Plasma] radiates its concepts out into her world, she turns to the remaining Nascent Souls.
She only glimpsed two of them previously, and the soldier that had the complex iron maiden technique never really revealed a Domain or any manifestation of his Soul. Still, each one of them is distinct enough that even without her Heart guiding her to the right conclusion, she gets the gist of each of them quickly.
One of them, and ironically the strongest, despite its size, is the small off-white homunculus that was pulled up out of the ground. [Reshaping of Waxen Worlds] is mostly made of a substance similar to wax, but also has elements like wet clay and glue. It’s heavier and less mobile than in the presence of the star now above them- without its heat, it moves slower, but always ever-shifting. It makes a “plap” sound as it slaps its hands on the dirt, making little noises like bubbles of air and acting a lot like an infant playing in a mud pit.
Beside it are two considerably grimmer visages, though very different in tone. One of them, which most surely came from the wielder of the iron maiden technique, is something like a set of scales, balanced unevenly and sprouting with so many spikes that it looks like some kind of urchin. It has no face, no features, not even the sense of animation that comes from things like the [Star Of Roiling Plasma]- it just stands there. Menacingly.
Raika’s not a huge fan of [Judgment Sprouting Pain], but she can definitely see how the cultivator pulled off such a specific and complex technique as the iron maiden, considering how closely it ties to the concepts of his Nascent Soul.
The other darkness-coded entity is… surprisingly peaceful. It is ephemeral, hard to even properly see, rather than a solid-state entity like the other Souls. She can only see it when she looks “up”, and only from an angle her Heart guides her to. It exudes complex concepts of dream, of weight, of sleep and of night, and when she does catch glimpses of it, it looks like a sleeping figure, covered by a pitch-black blanket. Its name is much more descriptive than its black-toned counter; [Sleep Beneath Black Skies].
The cultivator’s gravity and mass techniques were likely shaped by the nature of his Soul, and vice versa. It truly is a complex and symbiotic process.
And already, she can see that this isn’t quite lining up.
[The Screaming Star] and [Endless Whorling Plasma] had directly linked concepts, making their fusion almost easy by comparison. These, on the other hand, have a lot less connection between them.
Raika can see a potential fusion between [Divine Strikes Of Starry Tribulation], [Star Of Roiling Plasma] and [Sleep Beneath Black Skies], but… it was hard enough fusing two newly acquired and clearly compatible Souls together. Fusing together three, that were once five, even with a concept kind of linking them together, is a tall order, and she can feel the strain of her earlier fusion.
Better to wait, maybe?
Hmm. Then again, maybe not. [Sleep Beneath Black Skies] seems… unstable. The sky here is not black, and almost nothing is sleeping. Its concepts don’t match, like the lightning soldier’s tribulation Soul didn’t match. She’s a bad host for it at the moment.
Fuck.
[Judgment Sprouting Pain] she leaves off to one side. It doesn’t seem capable or willing to move (she’ll have to check if there’s any sapience to it, or if it never got there, later), and judgment, sprouting and pain are plenty at home in her, even if she’s not absorbing it wholesale. It should hold stable.
She calls forth her Artisan.
[Enacted Artistry Of Function] appears without regard for distance or space. Her inner world has no need of either while under the control of her Heart, which wields those concepts deftly, and brings the mechanical Soul to her.
It seems to “blink”, dozens of camera-eyes turning to focus on her between partially-connected masks and faces of brass and copper. It tilts its “head”.
“So I know you don’t really talk,” she says, “but how would you feel about some added growth capabilities? And / or a new friend?”
[Enacted Artistry Of Function] turns to look at the animated lump of wax and clay before it, which makes a popping sound of air escaping molten matter.
It turns to look at her.
It doesn’t really have Intent the way a person does, or a mind the way a person does… but it doesn’t seem particularly pleased.
“I know, it doesn’t match a lot of your Dao, but it does match a lot of your pattern. You and it are both about transforming things and using materials to make new transformations of… stuff. And there are a lot of things out there, of both artistry and purpose, that aren’t related to metal or mechanics like you are. I think it would expand your depth without changing you too much.”
She waits almost a full ten minutes before it seems to come to some sort of conclusion.
Artistry.
Function.
“I wouldn’t offer it if I didn’t think that you wouldn’t get more of both out of it.”
A long, drawn out moment of… well, not thought, but processing.
And then-
Enacted.
“Alright. Let’s do this, then.”
She feels her Heart shift, eager to use its power for another of its seemingly pre-prepared purposes. It reaches towards the two souls, the space between them melding as their concepts begin to fuse.
She expresses her will, doing her best to shape the transformation. It’s not easy to get her Heart to properly understand her, and more than once she has to exert her soul to stop the process and pull it back.
She’s not sure how long it takes, but eventually, it gets the message across. She cares more for the little machine than she does this brand-new lump of mobile ooze, and reinforcing [Enacted Artistry Of Function] with the new Soul rather than blending them randomly is the goal, and eventually, she feels that Intent click into her Heart.
Slowly, the process shifts.
And then- it’s done.
What was once [Enacted Artistry Of Function] is almost twice as tall as before, reaching a bit past her waist now. Where before it was a mismatched amalgamation of complex pieces, each serving a purpose (but none the same purpose), now there is a coating of a grayish sheen, like hardened wax acting as plates of cushioning in between some of the more intense pieces of internal machinery. The wax and clay mold and shift, ever-changing, their surface moving almost like an oil spill, and as if to match it, new gears, mechanisms and artistically complex metals appear, grow, and disappear.
Its overall shape is even more ever-shifting than before, but again, it retains certain elements. Its taller, but it has grasper limbs and mobility limbs, each one far more complex than before and using wax and clay as both padding and protective layers in places. It’s like a white and grey ooze is rolling in and about a body of a complex machine, layered with cameras, wheels, gears and pistons, all of which warp unnaturally into new configurations.
[Reshaping Of Waxen Worlds] and [Enacted Artistry Of Function] are no more.
Turning a face that is half-statue, half-mask, half complex machinery, [Artistry Of Reshaping Function] blinks a dozen camera-eyes and wet clay-lids at her.
“You doing alright?” she asks, heaving metaphorical breath in and out of her lungs.
Function.
“Good. I’m building some new tools, and I’d like your help.”