The golden clouds of the nexus had begun congregating in the sky by the time they eventually exited the dungeon, courtesy of Daruk and Aodhán, who had taken the opportunity of their leisurely walk to harvest more metal ores. After exiting the dungeon, they made their way to the cafeteria, and after a nice dinner, they all headed to their individual preoccupations.
Aodhán went to the pavilion and exchanged almost all of his share of cores for coins. He didn’t really need them, courtesy of Varéc, whose nightly bribes were nearly enough to push him to the advanced class as it was. He also sold off all of the tin, copper, and lead ores he’d harvested, leaving only a few ounces of steel he’d managed to harvest on their way back and the silver head of the Ironclad golem.
The sale of ores only earned him a couple silver coins and some coppers, but Aodhán was happy with his earnings. Leaving the pavilion, he made his way back home and took out the stack of textbooks on essence threads that Daruk had given him the day before.
He summoned Varéc out of his spirit and took a seat by the window, content to just read while Varéc did his own thing in the corner. He spent the next few hours reading, soaking in the experience of several people who have tried the technique or at least a semblance of it. Essence threads weren’t a new thing; in fact, from what he read, they were the baseline or inspiration behind the use of ancient Runic tattoos by the Calodans.
The widening of essence threads was a common practice amongst the ancient people of Calodan, but the technique had been relegated to the side because of how slow and bulky the entire task was. There were millions of essence threads, all connected to various parts of the body, and widening each one was a task that would supposedly take hundreds of years just to complete. Many people didn’t have the patience for it, and frankly, Aodhán didn’t either; however, a sentence he read at the end of the first textbook gave him hope. Slightly.
The essence enhancement technique is a long and arduous one because the older a person becomes, the more essence threads their spirit produces. It is therefore advisable to begin the thread-widening process at the very moment of one's awakening if there is to be any hope of ever completing the technique before death or ascension. The technique is, however, a slow one, and the only known way to even out the widening—production process of essence threads—is to employ the infusion of chaos through an opening, a feat only a few people might be able to accomplish during the early stages.
Daruk had mentioned this the day before, and Aodhán smiled when he realized that once again, fate had granted him a head start. It wasn’t an assurance of success by any means, but it was something, and he could work with that.
After a few more hours of reading, Aodhán tentatively decided to practice what he’d learned. He made his way to the training room and pulled out a trio of tier 23 evolved cores, ready to absorb them and heal himself with an advancement in case things went south. After that, he settled into a meditation position and closed his eyes.
Perhaps because he’d sensed them before the essence threads revealed themselves more readily to his mind's eye, their bluish glow seemingly brighter than before.
Two of the textbooks he’d read had referred to the essence threads as a sort of micro-cellular network connecting all pathways to the body, and the more Aodhán observed the mass of winding blue threads, the more he compared it to the idea behind Andrew’s new skill.
The mycelium network of fungus consisted of a vast network of branching, threadlike hyphae that connects trees and other plants through a symbiotic relationship to enable communication, resource sharing, and even defense coordination. Using that some analogy, essence threads were basically a mycelium network connecting the body to the pathways in the spirit. The word vast was almost an understatement, and Aodhán wondered how he was supposed to find the essence thread or threads leading to his eyes, and more importantly, how had Daruk done it?
Aodhán mulled over the matter for a few minutes before shrugging and putting it aside. There was only one way to find out, and that was by trying.
Letting out a deep breath, Aodhán focused on the mass of branching threads, his mind eye following each one to detect where they started from and where they ended. Needless to say, it was a hard and frustrating task, because half an hour later, Aodhán was completely lost. He had found the threads connected to his eyes easily; there were a bunch of threads, about a dozen for each eye, but the problem lay in not losing track of the threads when they inevitably became tangled up with other threads.
Aodhán was frustrated, and after another half hour he was more than ready to give up. He traced the threads for what he assured himself was the last time, mentally straining to follow their winding path despite the vast number of distracting threads. He even harnessed his willpower when he noticed himself faltering, and when that wasn’t enough, he reached towards his seal for assistance.
All he did was pull out a very tiny amount of the golden lightning, but the moment heat engulfed his entire body, the threads shone in his mind's eye, and when he refocused his attention on the bunch of threads, the others seemingly scattered to make them more obvious. The moment the heat subsided, the threads dimmed and their complexity returned, but Aodhán had already gotten what he needed.
Not knowing what he could use the tiny bolt of golden energy he’d extracted from his seal for, Aodhán raised a hand and activated {Lightning Beam—Green}, letting out a beam of green electricity at the opposite wall.
Not willing to risk losing sight of the essence threads, Aodhán kept his eyes closed even as the room thundered and creaked around him. Whatever had happened, he would check it out later.
With the essence threads connected to his eyes still firmly fixed in his mind, Aodhán traced them to their root, a large pathway that curled around his neck. Why the threads had to be so long, despite its roots being so close, Aodhán couldn’t understand, but he didn’t bother questioning it; instead, he let out another deep breath and opened up his spirit to the origin plane.
The infusion of chaos threatened his focus, but Aodhán refused to let all his hard work be undone. He focused on the root of the essence threads, and with a muttered prayer to all the gods listening, Aodhán channeled several strands of chaos-energized willpower into the essence threads.
The feeling was weird and nice at the same time. It felt like twitching a limb for the first time after decades of inactivity. The feeling increased as more energy burrowed into the threads, spinning like a drill to open and expand them. An hour passed by, but Aodhán barely noticed as all his attention was focused on not losing sight of the threads and enhancing the new sensations he was feeling. An hour turned into two and two into four. By the time Aodhán opened his eyes next, it was only a few minutes from dawn.
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He had done it though; he had widened the bunch of essence threads connected to his right eye considerably, and now they glowed a bright blue. Aodhán had closed off his spirit to the origin plane hours ago, unable to take the strain for more than an hour straight, and that was when he realized just how much faster he was at widening the threads with chaos compared to the use of pure energy.
He was approximately three times faster, which was scary because according to the textbook, this speed would only even out the process. Now he understood why the technique had been relegated to the side.
Wanting to test out the technique, Aodhán directed energy from his pathways and into the widened threads, expecting the usual movements of energy within his normal pathways; instead, energy zipped through the thread almost as fast as he could think, and the next instant, his right eye practically exploded with clarity.
Aodhán hissed in pain as the world exploded with color and his sight sharpened. He quickly reversed the flow of energy, but the damage had been done. His eye burned and watered from the pain, and Aodhán realized he must have burned every single nerve ending in the eye, because the next moment, his vision darkened, and he completely lost his sight.
Well, not completely. His left eye was working just fine, and Aodhán would have panicked if Daruk didn’t go through this exact same thing almost all the time. Aodhán hadn’t expected the speed of energy within the threads to be so fast, although, in retrospect, he should have considering the size of the threads. Because of that, he channeled much more energy into the threads than his evolved eye could manage and had thus blinded himself.
Sighing, Aodhán leaned against the wall, waiting for his minor regeneration to kick in, and that was when he remembered the seal-infused beam he had shot at the opposite wall earlier. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of any damage on the wall or floor, but there was one fascinating titbit.
During his last training session, Aodhán had brought in a few stools to aid himself and had forgotten to take them out. Well, it turned out that two of those stools were the victims of his lightning beam, as evidenced by the mesh of vines and leaves now jutting out of them. The stools had been converted into an amalgamation of wood and vines—one that wasn’t entirely unpleasing to the eyes.
Fascinated, Aodhán moved closer to observe the stool with his one good eye, and when he reached it, he tried to raise it up. The stool resisted, and he frowned when he noticed several threadlike roots sticking to the floor. He applied a little more force, and the whole chair shattered, scattering into several pieces of wood and vines.
Aodhán sighed and muttered to himself. “I must have ruined the self-repair enchantments.”
It was a little confusing, because without the seal, the Sylvael lightning couldn’t ‘give life to a dead wood.’ The seal usually added fascinating additions to the effects of a skill, but Aodhán had never expected this. It made him question what extra effects the other lightning hues might have when unfused with the seal’s quintessence.
He shook his head and discarded the amalgamation of wood and vines to the wooden floor. The green lightning was still a mystery despite the experiments he’d conducted with Gwendolyn, and now a new question had been added to the whole puzzle. Could green lightning destroy enchantments, or was this just a coincidence?
Aodhán was more inclined to go with the former option. Perhaps, naturally, the green lightning wasn’t capable of such a feat, but with the power of the seal added to it, it had surpassed its initial limits. Aodhán wasn’t really excited by the new addition, as decay was something he could already do with black lightning; however, the Sylvael lightning was proving to be much more versatile and dangerous than he’d first imagined. The frozen Rithclaw Daruk had given him the previous day was still in his spatial storage, but as much as he would have liked to begin experimenting on it, he couldn’t do it alone.
He studied the effects of the skill for a moment longer before standing up to pick out the cores he had set aside earlier. His sight was still impaired, but gym exercises would be starting soon, and he couldn’t afford to arrive late. Mentally cataloging a series of experiments to perform after the forge matches today, Aodhán walked out of the training room and made his way to the bathroom, tiptoeing when he found Varéc still sleeping in his living room.
He needed to have a conversation with Varéc very soon, concerning his nightly hunts, but that time was definitely not now, not when he was half blind and sleep deprived. Varéc could be a handful sometimes, especially when it came to his nightly hunts, and Aodhán knew he would lose the eventual argument if he tackled it right now.
He couldn’t escape it though, because the moment he finished from the bathroom, he found Varéc glaring at him with a majestic pose from his bed and sighed. “I was busy blinding myself and completely lost track of time. I’m sorry.”
Varéc growled in annoyance, tiny bolts of lightning arcing out of his snout, and Aodhán cringed as he felt a pang of guilt. Through gritted teeth, he lied, aware that Varéc could sense his emotions just as easily as he could. “I swear, I was too focused on my task to hear your thoughts and growls to be let out for your hunt. You know, we really should talk about where you go for these hunts. It’s not as if the sector is crawling with evolved creatures.”
Varéc snorted, not at all tricked by his attempt to change the topic. He still went along with it though, detailing his adventures to a particular sky dungeon housing a host of high-tiered creatures. Aodhán listened, fascinated by this particular dungeon guarded by a group of advanced-class soldiers.
Unfortunately, Varéc’s story quickly came to an end, and he returned to their previous conversation. Deciding to find out more on the matter when next he visited the library, Aodhán decided to simply apologize and be done with the damned conversation. “Okay, fine, I’m sorry. I was busy; I heard you calling, but I was working on something so delicate I couldn’t leave it to attend to you.” He glared at Varéc and wagged a finger. “You know, we really need to discuss your hunting timetable. It’s clashing with my sleep and ruining all the best things in life.”
Varéc growled in outrage, his horns bumping into the roof and tearing furrows within it.
“It’s not my fault you’re big and can’t get out of the window on your own." Aodhán growled back and yanked his uniform from his wardrobe. “Besides, if you do not hunt one night, it won’t kill you.”
Varéc growled again, and Aodhán shook his head in resignation. “Look, I enjoy all your bribes, but you have to be considerate too. We’re a team, Varéc, which means we have to do things that work for the both of us.”
Their discussion continued for a few more minutes, after which Varéc, thankfully, returned into his spirit with an agreement to shift his hunting hours to a more agreeable time. Aodhán’s right eye was already healing, although he still couldn’t see shit with it, and at this rate, Aodhán suspected that it would take nothing less than five hours to get his sight back. He needed to be more careful with these threads.
With that settled, Aodhán made his way out of the house and joined Daruk and Andrew, who were already waiting for him. He scowled when he saw Daruk collect a gold coin from Andrew and muttered. “Betting against one's own family. That has to be illegal somewhere.”
Daruk laughed. “Oh, I’m sure it is, but better to be a criminal than a loser all for the sake of family.”
Aodhán snorted and then launched into the result of his experiments with the threads as they made their way to the gymnasium. Andrew couldn’t learn the technique because he hadn’t gained a seal yet, but he was definitely taking notes for when he finally did. They arrived at the gym with a few minutes to spare, only to gasp in shock when they found that the difficulty of the exercises had been increased once again.
Before them stood an entire suit of null armor, and Aodhán just knew that he wouldn’t survive this exercise without his soul leaving his body.