I opened up one of the pentagonal sides, letting in a single enemy Lymphagon. I dissected and devoured it quickly.

"I need to level up. Need to grow a lot stronger a lot faster... but how?" I thought as I killed and ate the captured Lymphagon.

[Increase the number of your soldiers and you will someday prevail,] Keps commented.

"Is that what you did?" I mentally asked.

[I was a soldier and lived to follow the orders of my Alanian commanders and died fighting the Basque in the desert of Yomacham.]

"We're both old ghosts," I thought to him, looking over my menu. "Did any of the Alanian Academics have skills above their level?"

[You have skills above your level?] Keps whistled. [Count this old Archmage impressed - I've never seen or heard of anyone with a skill beyond their level!]

"What is an Archmage anyway?" I asked.

[A mage with all of their skills above level one hundred,] he replied. [Respect that comes with age.]

"Did you actually research things?"

[I killed our Empire's enemies with greater and greater efficiency, if that counts. My Rewind made me nearly invincible,] Keps boasted.

"Rewind? That's a Vitality, skill, yes?"

[Yes. A top tier skill granted from a big investment in Vitality.]

"Then how did you die?"

[Ran out of mana,] Keps laughed heartily. [As powerful as Rewind Archmages are, they can still be permanently ended by a very persistent enemy. Took down around three hundred of the bastards with me before they killed me for the 90th time.]

I reassessed my situation. I had 13 Lymphagons. I was invisible to the whale. It was time to go on the offensive.

My Lymphagons contained a small bit of my soul and were about as intelligent as flies. As they held parts of my soul they were my Astral phylacteries, my tools... not only could I command each of them, but I could pass information to them, modify them.

I moved the [Tether] from one Lymphagon to the other, binding the [Sectus-Anima] skill to each one of them using [Conjugo-Anima] and the [Modify] on my Infoscopes.

When it was done, I ordered each Lymphagon to start indiscriminately firing upon our enemies.

One by one, each of the twelve sides of my shield turned into Sectus turrets. From every direction, they began to fire at the passing enemy Lymphagons. In moments, the bloodstream became filled with corpses, which slammed into my shield and became absorbed, consumed by my soldiers.

My experience skyrocketed.

The bloodstream became less populated with every moment.

Occasionally the Sectus fired by my soldiers missed, cutting apart the vein causing the ghost whale's blood to thin even further.

The ghost whale shuddered in discomfort as I depopulated its veins.

The further I flew down the vein, the more catastrophic damage was being caused to the whale.

I was back inside the heart. Level four Sectus blasted into all directions. The Phantom shuddered, silver clouds bursting from its damaged heart. My shield absorbed the clouds of spilled mana and soul. The heart released us forward.

I kept rapidly moving my Tethers from one Lymphagon to the other, absorbing the gained power and experience from them. My shield and I started to grow in size, glowing with more defined, emerald brilliance.

On and on it went in an endless carousel of destruction. I started to laugh giddily as the enormous monster wailed in agony, granting me more and more experience as it perished from within.

As I shredded the bloodstream and veins, I scanned the walls, determining my position. Soon enough the heart became so weak that it barely pushed me forward, so I had to start to rely on my own tendrils to push me along. I released them through the gaps in the shield, crawling down the vein akin to a Pholcidae or daddy long legs spider.

There were no longer sufficient Lymphagons in the bloodstream to oppose or to do any damage to me. Whatever the whale was producing was being cut down by constant Sectus fire from my segments.

I suddenly noticed that I was almost as big as the entire vein.

I slowed down the rate of my attack to let the whale regenerate. It was glorious. I was winning!

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I glanced at my experience stat.

Experience:

[10'783/11'250]

Yes.... Murder was really paying off!

I crawled along the vein, ignoring the thinner paths into which I could no longer fit.

The heart. My target was the heart. It was weak, barely pumping blood now.

A segmented wall unlocked before me. I crawled into the chamber of the heart and stayed there, letting my murder-shield decimate the monster's heart from within.

Silver blood, power bloomed all around me.

I noticed that my tentacles were growing paler, that I was becoming less myself... and more of something... OTHER.

Something that wanted to dominate and feast.

Argh!

I retracted my threads before they lost their emerald luster and let the Lymphagonal shield absorb the power of the heart, extracting only the experience gained.

The whale screeched horrifically as its heart was being cut up from within.

I ignored it, reinforced, tightened the dodecahedron shield around me, so that its cries would not bother me and let the Lymphagonal killers do their job of finishing off the heart.

As the heart of the beast slowly died under my ongoing assault, I stilled my soul and carved the memories that were Klint / Keps out of myself with [Sectus-Anima]. I didn't want them to completely dissolve into me as I grew, wanted to preserve them as much as I could.

I had missed some bits, but it didn't matter that much. I fused whatever dead memories that I could define as the two Alanians into Legonnie.

There. You are safe my friends...

I listened. No more thumps. The blood was no longer moving. The heart was dead. The whale made no sound now.

I glanced at my experience.

Experience:

[11'277/11'250]

Yes! I had enough to level up! Finally!

The world suddenly shook. Brilliant, silver ripples went across the entire dead vein.

The vein's containing wall bent inward and tore apart. Something... no, a new Astral Phantom had entered into the vein!

It turned and went straight towards me, as if it was here for me, as if it had been stalking, searching for me.

The thing had a hollow shell at the front, but it was otherwise shaped like a more monstrous version of Legonnie. Its shape was more defined, had sharper edges to it akin to a Star-Polygon fractal. It was way bigger than me!

My nearest Infoscope defined it as:

[Astral Hunter LV 97]

Holy shit.

[Yep. Something's got your scent. A real nasty [Wisdom] skill-maxed Hunter from the looks of it,] Keps noted.

"H-how do I stop it?"

[You're a smart kid. You'll think of something, lad,] Keps replied.

"B-but, can't you help me?" I stammered.

[I'm mostly your imagination, akin to a person in a lucid dream. I'm woven together from very degraded Astral imprints. You're mostly talking to yourself. I can't actually make decisions for you, only give you advice based on what my shards still remember,] he replied.

"Wait... if you're not real then how am I talking to you?"

[I'm just a static memory, a projection, a person you're daydreaming about, as your soul's energy vibrates the soul shards that once sat in my grandson's locket,] Keps answered. [Without your will and energy I am just an immobile, dead, empty sky-ship. I have no will, no motivation, no goals. A few very decayed soul-shards do not, cannot make a full person.]

"No ideas for how to escape the Astral hunter?" I sighed.

[This is not a situation that I've encountered before,] Keps said and fell silent.

The thing suddenly rushed toward me and grabbed me in its silver threads. Then it punctured out of the whale's body with a flash.

It wasn't eating me. I saw that it was rushing through the astral, past diatomic megastructures. The Hunter taking me somewhere... perhaps to feed its children? Did Phantoms have children? Did Phantoms even behave like this?

I saw an Alanian obelisk beneath me.

I aimed all of my [Sectus] at the abomination's claws. Thirteen lymphagons and three Infoscopes fired Sectus at the same time. The Hunter wailed as I escaped from its grip and swam down, heading towards the obelisk.

It was the same Alanian Astral Engine of Skyisle I stayed at twelve years ago! I rushed towards it.

I found a hole in the shield and folded all of my lymphagons into my embrace so that they could safely pass through it.

Phew.

A monstrous, hollow-shelled Phantom slowly emerged from behind one of the massive columns made up of corpses. I recognized her right away.

Hollow Mother.

The Star-Polygon fractal squid rushed inside the larger hollow-shelled creature. It belonged to her!

Mother was searching for me and now she had found me.

Another Astral Phantom flew out of her.

Unfolding, it turned into the shape of a human girl. I already knew what was going to happen next. The human ghost would pass through the shield and attack me.

"Do not run away, little brother," she sang to me without a voice, her hair vibrating to produce the words, floating closer to me with each second. "You have grown stronger and our Lady wishes to guide you, give you a Motherly Embrace!"

I peered at the fracture in the Astral Engine battery. I recognized it. The Mystic tree sat right on top of this crack!

Somewhere, directly above this battery was Leemy and her crystals that had 40 of my soul shards. I pushed all of my mana into [Infoscope 1], peering through layers and layers of the Astral Ocean.

It wasn't enough.

I snapped all four of of my Tethers to my Infoscope to magnify its ability to move across the Astral planes.

I felt, saw something sparkling with violet... and reached out with my Infoscope, burning through everything I had gained from devouring the whale.

I saw a hollow reflection of the Mystic-Willow-Oak imprinted in the Astral!

I pushed my spell forward.

My Infoscope suddenly tore, punctured through the weak barrier between dimensions, and my Tether snapped in place forming a connection between myself and Leemy.

Yes!

"Hey! Where do you think you're..." the ghostly girl behind me howled as I folded all of myself, along with my lymphagon shield into the Tether spell pushing out of the Astral into the physical, burning through the remnants of my mana and nearly shredding myself completely in the process.