“So I said, ‘Value your life more than your possessions?’ and then growled at him,” Relay laughed.
Kai reached into the soul-splitting chamber and pulled out a black rough-cut gem. The laboratory had transformed in the hours since they started hunting in the deep waters of Arcadia’s ocean.
“That was after I ate both his swords,” the Eternal hovered, his blue orb shimmering with joy at recounting his adventure. “He willingly broke his connection with the spatial ring. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
Kai dropped the black gem with others of its kind. He’d been reorganizing the gems collected from the souls of the creatures his motes were killing. Standing before the wall of glass beakers, he sighed.
He had several containers for blue gems; Kai supposed those were water affinity types. He had three kinds of green gems, all sickly in color, and a host of poor-quality black gems.
“So you have the spatial ring now?” Kai returned to his stack of lanterns and fetched another black soul before placing it in the chamber.
“I guess. I tried to use it, but it didn’t work for me. You can try when you get back.” Relay orb hovered over the lanterns before turning, “I read the screens in the central hub.”
Kai lowered the collar and started the energizing process. “Then you see how pointless having multiple cores with the same energy type is.”
Higher-quality energy generated a higher percentage per hour compared to the lower-quality counterparts. The implications were clear; two cores with half the total energy would always generate less energy than one core with the same total energy. According to the math, multiple cores were wrong if the goal was energy generation.
“I also looked at the conversion lens you created and ran some calculations.”
The core in the splitting chamber separated and slowed. Kai removed the collar and fetched the gem. Most souls had a single colored gem; he rarely found two, but when he did they were of different colors. Even spirit beast knew not to cultivate two cores of the same energy.
Kai looked at the rough-cut rock in his hand, black and irregular. The energy type of these black crab beasts was the opposite of his purifying flame. It felt cloying, decaying, and corrupting. Oddly, that appealed to him since it would counterbalance his purifying energy.
All these gems are garbage. Kai tossed it in the jar with the others. His experience with the higher-quality soul gems showed that spirit beasts with natural affinities had refined, perfectly cut, and polished gems.
All of these beasts have weak affinities.
“What did you find?” Kai stepped back and pulled another dark soul from a lantern.
“The process you designed provides for a constant conversion throughput,” Relay hovered over the table with the conversion crystal setup. “But the experiments you ran indicated that more efficient conversions are possible. The ratio of pre-converted energy to converted energy must be at least two to one. In that case, since the conversion increases the pool of converted energy, the throughput can increase exponentially.”
“That is true,” Kai smiled. “This conversion system was designed before I understood the energy curve. Now that I see the scale of the energy requirements, I've been experimenting.”
Kai summoned a screen before them. It displayed his current energy system, cores, and meridians, with labels indicating his energy levels.
“You discovered the purple energy type?” Relay rotated to look at Kai.
“I just emptied that core and refilled it slowly. Once there was barely any energy there, it naturally converted into the right type for that core. I must have socketed it into a core with too much energy to convert. Had I cultivated like a spirit beast from the start, I wouldn’t have had that problem.”
“I see, so now you’re doing the conversion inside the core.”
“You were correct; it’s much more efficient. However, I failed twice already.”
Energies of different qualities complicated the process. Adding primordial liquid energy to the gaseous purple core reverted the core to primordial gas. The same happened when he added solid energy to the liquid core. Kai winced at the memory.
He was on his third attempt. The ratios between energy qualities were tricky, but so far, it was working. His crown core was well on its way to advancing. After that, he would do the red core, then the white. He frowned.
He didn’t like that he was calling them by color. The purple core was soul related, as demonstrated by his soul remaining in the world long after his body died. The red core was vitality or blood-related; it provided him with extreme cellular regeneration.
“What you didn’t see in my calculations was the spirit weapon's impact on energy type selection.” Kai pulled a sickly green soul from a lantern and fed it into the soul-splitter.
“It seems to me that the strength of a spirit weapon is related to how aligned that weapon is to the Dao of that energy type. I think of the Dao as the animating concept underlying the energy.”
He flipped the cap closed and started the process.
“The benefit of multiple weapons seems to be the utility of different options. But if they all have to align to the same concept,” Kai shrugged and watched the soul explode into a hazy rotating mass, ”you’re forced to sacrifice strength for utility. Far better to have different energies to maintain power while providing utility.”
Kai reached in and grabbed the sickly green rough-cut stone. Disgusted, he moved to his collection and threw it in with the other low-quality gems.
That does mean having to figure out spirit weapons that align with all these energies. That was another intimidating thought. A soul weapon? A vitality weapon? At least purifying flame is easy.
He looked down over his lab floor. Half the soul lanterns he brought were empty; he hadn’t found a good gem in the lot.
“I’m going to see how the motes are doing,” Kai shifted his awareness to his body.
He sat on the back of an inky black crustacean’s shell. The crab’s thick carapace was covered with wicked spines, sharp ridges, and an oppressive aura of decay. The aura didn’t affect Kai's supercharged body, and he found enough space between the enormous spines to meditate.
“So, this is the new spirit weapon,” the golden ferrox appeared in the water beside him. “It’s ugly.”
Kai laughed, water shooting out in a heated stream. The whole ocean floor was covered with black spiny crabs. Kai watched as they slowly raised long, spindly arms with hook-like claws and took lumbering steps with their spiked legs. It made the seafloor look like an armored beast with a million lazy claws.
“Look in their claws,” Kai sent technopathically.
Half of the crabs carried slices of putrid torn meat. Those that didn’t were headed in the opposite direction, against the flow. The sea was so thick with them that they were crawling over each other.
“So, they are taking meat to something,” Relay concluded. “Something powerful enough to command an army of crabs. Sure you want to meet that?”
“Exciting isn’t it,” Kai sent. The crabs by themselves were not that tough. Perhaps their master had a higher affinity for the decay energy.
Here we go. Kai turned his attention internally. The pressure in his purple core was building when he felt a pulse shoot through his body, signaling the solidification of his purple core.
Kai studied the core and ran through his list of soul weapons again when the core began to crack and splinter without any prompting from him. Moments passed as Kai watched lines and details etch into the core. First, it looked like a disk, then a circle, then after a moment, and all the details were added, it became clear it was a resplendent crown. The level of detail he observed was much higher than his golden core.
“I get it now,” Kai sent. “Soulforgers don’t need to work hard to understand the Dao because they get spoonfed a crystal clear symbol of the concept.” Is that why the Celestial Temple's method didn't mention spirit weapon formation?
Instead of manually trying and failing to create an aligned spirit weapon, they inherit the perfect weapon from the soul gems they fused. I bet being able to materialize the embodiment of the concept is more than enough to form a basic understanding of the energy.
Before experimenting, Kai shifted his focus to his red liquid core. Once he advanced it, he’d paused work on it; focusing on advancing one solid core at a time seemed prudent. He sent minuscule amounts of solid primordial Qi to his pelvic core for conversion. Having done that, he returned to the purple spirit weapon.
With a thought, he materialized the soul crown. Or he tried to. He felt the energy drain from his crown core, but then nothing. No crown appeared; nothing magic happened.
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That was anticlimactic.
He willed it to return and noticed the energy spike from the crown’s return.
It’s doing something.
Kai unbound his soul light and summoned the crown again. There it is. Of course, it’s a soul crown. Why was I expecting a physical crown? Kai reached for it and felt his arms pull free of his body. The way his arms seemed to slide free of his flesh was so eerie that he pulled himself back inside instinctively. After a moment to processing the experience, he continued.
“It’s a soul crown, the spiritual weapon of the purple core. You have to be able to see souls to see it.” Kai sent.
“In other words, I’ve got nothing to worry about.” Relay remarked as he settled on the crab's shell. “Still, what good is it?”
“I don’t know, but let me experiment.” Kai stood and swam away. The feeling of passing through his body and leaving it behind was strange, like the sloughing of space suit after having done a long spacewalk. He moved out and away before turning to look at his body.
There he sat meditating. His bright glowing hair rippling in the superheated water around him. And there, around his head, the ethereal purple crown hovered. It was surreal to see his illuminated body glowing like molten metal, seated peacefully in the dark water. With his closed eyes, his radiating face gave the appearance of a carved statue of a metal child monk. I'm not too bad looking.
“The soul crown allows me to control my soul independently of my body,” Kai tested the connection.
“I can see you just the same. As long as you can see you, I can see you.”
Kai looked at his soul form, it was a duplicate of the form he fashioned in his soul space. The body was formed of a translucent golden prismatic aura; his cores and meridians visible through it. They shined like gems through his 'skin'.
Kai turned and looked to Relay, hovering over his massive crab; it was walking in step with the others toward some unknown destination.
“Let’s explore ahead,” Kai shot off above the slowly flailing claws of the death crabs, weaving in and out of them.
The soul form didn’t feel like his body. There was no sensation of water or feeling of momentum, motion, or gravity. There was no tiredness or hunger. He was more like an observer moving through a still landscape. Physical things seemed insubstantial, but souls he could see quite clearly.
Out of curiosity, he reached out and grabbed a spindly claw. His hand closed over the soul energy of the death crab. Fascinating. So interacting with souls is possible. Kai pulled the crab’s soul free with a few good yanks.
He compressed it into a small sphere and vanished into his soul space, depositing it into a lantern that lit up with malicious darkness. He returned his awareness and found he was back in his body.
So stepping back into my soul space is a shortcut to my body.
“I’m going to see if I can find some different beast types,” Kai relaunched into the ocean.
“Six native types we should be looking for. Royal Jellyfish,” Relay floated alongside him. “Has illusionary type skills. This beast is in high demand from alchemists.” Relay projected an image for reference before moving on to the next beast.
As they flew through the ocean, Kai split his attention between reviewing the sea beasts and searching for soul light. He could spot the souls of the beasts as long it wasn’t physically behind something, even if it had excellent natural camouflage. Kai stopped with a thought.
What if my body gets attacked while I’m gone? The question floated in his mind. Would I even feel it?
Feeling nervous, he decided to return to his body. The trip back took little time; he resettled in his skin and dismissed the crown. Kai stood and held the spine nearest him. The crabs had grown thick and were now fighting each other to deliver their meat.
Go ahead and kill all these.
Kai sent the kill order to his motes. He’d been holding them back, trying to see where the crabs were going, but now that the direction was clear, he wouldn’t waste this chance at a colossal energy harvest.
Crabs to his left and right slowly began a waltz of violence, snapping as hundreds began turning on each other. It was a slow explosion of dirt, spines, and hooks. It looked like a tide of cruel barbs and deadly spikes—his crabs vs. the others. Kai returned his time perception to normal speed.
Crabs transformed into motes, draining the dead of their spiritual energy. Kai watched the black souls of the crabs fade away into nothing. It was a feeding frenzy. Thousands and thousands of crabs fell to the slaughter, and from those, giant crabs emerged that marched onwards to more violence.
He sat back and watched as his motes killed every crab in sight. Twenty minutes and all that remained was a graveyard of broken black carcasses decaying in silence.
Return.
Kai shifted back to his soul space. He wasn’t eager to repeat that pain. The giant crabs crawled over the carcasses to him before transforming into golden motes and entering his body. His core expanded once again. Kai paused his red-core cultivation temporarily while he accepted his motes back.
Once they settled in place, he resumed his red core, increasing the transfer speed. It took only a few minutes to solidify that core. He waited and watched as the spirit weapon revealed itself. Deep inside the core, a shape emerged, a tiny sphere glowing with crimson light. To Kai, it looked like a drop of liquid, but he couldn’t be sure.
He started advancing his purifying flame core before pulling up his energy levels.
Core
Energy Type
Energy Level (secs)
Energy Generation (hourly)
Crown
Purple III
13,230,510
529,220
Eye
Omni II
26,200
6
Throat
Omni II
20,050
5
Heart
Omni III
650,395,213
26,015,808
Sternum
Purifying Flame II
554,220
16,626
Abdomen
Omni II
22,050
5
Pelvic
Red III
15,923,510
636,940
Kai doubled checked and looked at his purifying core. Energy from his heart was rapidly transferring down to his sternum. After a quick check, he estimated it would be complete in ten minutes.
What’s the ideal weapon for a purifying type of energy? I can’t think of anything better than purifying flame. Kai spun up some chains of thought to concentrate on the purifying and perfecting aspects, others to focus on the consuming fire aspect, and others to consider the detoxifying and decontaminating aspect. A weapon doesn’t feel right; it’s more like a healing energy. But fire could be used to cauterize. Kai spun up more thoughts to focus on the fire aspect.
When he felt the pressure mounting, he was ready. The white core crystallized with little fanfare; inside, he watched as a single burning flame materialized. The purest of white, it flickered lazily.
And then he was done. Once he found another valuable soul gem, he could advance that core. Until then, he could only refine his body with these energy types.
“Cores are done,” he sent. “Starting bodily refinement.”
He started with his purple energy but found it did nothing to his body. His strange second nucleus was still flush with the purifying power that continued to refine it. His purple energy moved through and didn’t change anything. The same was true of the red energy. It passed through with no effect.
The solid white energy warmed him, supersaturating the nucleus of every cell anew, but otherwise did nothing. The cellular refinement didn’t accelerate. He didn’t feel any different.
He was about to send his motes back out and continue onward when he felt pressure from that direction. Kai floated up to get a better look at what it was. Into the glow that surrounded him, darkness pushed in, a cloud of inky black appearing over the jagged graveyard like a specter.
The inky mass writhed and twisted with a hundred grotesque tentacles and long dark strands of deathly energy. With translucent flesh shrouded with a black aura, it pulled itself up and surveyed the scene. The beast dwarfed him, easily thirty times his height.
Shrouded in darkness, It had a vaguely humanoid shape, but instead of legs had a wiggling mass of tentacles and tendrils. Arms it had in abundance, twenty, all gangly and mixed in with tendrils of death energy.
Its head was indiscernible, an empty void of only darkness. The whole of its form was a writhing mass of decay and death, and Kai could see its soul twist and contort with the flow of his deadly energy.
“YOU DID THIS?” coherent sound waves traveled through the water, strengthening as they moved away from him. Kai watched as the sound cracked and splintered the thick carapaces of the dead crabs.
“No need to shout,” Kai replied. His empowered flesh was capable of tremendous strength, even his vocal cords. He swam up the the height of the beast and made himself known.
“I take it back,” Relay joined him, “Your spirit weapon is cute. This thing is ugly.”
“DIE!” the beast exploded. A curving blade of black energy shot from the beast, targeting Kai. It traveled towards him with malicious intent and deadly energy.