“What is essence? Most alchemists would tell you that essence is not a literal substance, that when we say earth essence or soul essence, we refer to two different things, that essence is just another word for stuff or matter. I will tell you that this is wrong. I will tell you that essence is the foundation of all reality. Everything from the air you breathe to the space in which you stand is merely a different form, a different element, of one single substance, and that substance is essence.”
From “The True Structure of the World Vol 1: Essence” By Simon Relkweist
12th Waril, Summer, 374th Year, 84th Era, 2nd Age
Joseph stood in his garden at the top of the Ashbourne family tower. Paths of pale, yellow stone flowed out from a central court through wildly varied beds of flowers, bushes and trees. Some were chosen for rarity, some for their significance in bio-alchemy and some for their magical properties. The one consistent feature of the vast collection of flora was their exquisite beauty. The garden had been his mother’s project, assembled over a period of 97 years.
Abigail Ashbourne hadn’t been especially powerful, she had barely stepped into the adept realm, but her compassion and ability to find an acceptable compromise in almost any debate had earned her a great deal of respect among the high councillors.
Of course, there were few left on the council who remembered her; 400 years was far beyond an adept’s lifetime and three of Kathresh’s six elders had been born after her death. Joseph remembered though, and maintained the garden as a way to keep just a little of his mother alive. One of many small things he did in memory of those lost to time.
On this night however, the garden’s beauty was disturbed by the ritual he had set up in the central courtyard. Walking around, he compared his setup to the translated notes in his hand.
378 candles of varied size, shape and colour littered the patio. Thousands of tiny symbols, drawn in everything from salt water to blood, wove between the candles combining to form yet more symbols. Three small, silver vases each containing specific flower arrangements and three dozen millilitres of warm honey, were positioned at the three points of a trigram, which itself was within a circle drawn in the blood of a new-born goat slaughtered under the shadow of a summer night. And, of course, all this was prepared mere minutes before the alignment of Athrikos. A celestial alignment of several dozen stars, supposedly in the shape of an ancient warrior, which happened but twice a millennium.
Joseph chuckled quietly at the absurdity of it. Witchcraft was the most bizarre school of magic. Its rules were almost completely arbitrary, empowered by collective belief and reinforced through use over countless millennia. He wouldn’t have even bothered with this had he not spent several hours a day for the last five years translating the ancient aelthiri text containing the ritual. Especially given that witchcraft was technically illegal in Kathresh.
In truth, he had done it more for the challenge of the translation than any tangible gain. All the ritual really did was summon a random object to its location. The interesting part was that said object came from beyond the void. On the off chance he didn’t blow up his own tower, the opportunity to study an entirely different set of physical laws was too fascinating to pass up.
Seeing that all was in order, Joseph stood in a circular space formed by some of the runes and faced the distant blur that was Wyrmhold, the tallest mountain in Kelric. With the ritual’s centre placed between him and it, he began to recite the first High Vethrali passage. It had taken months to get the pronunciation right; aelthiri languages had such strange, breathy words. Something to do with their lungs if memory served.
“I call on the mighty spirit of Athrikos.”
At this pronouncement, the formerly still air was filled with swirling eddies of wind. They started off weak, but in the 17 seconds between the first and second passage they grew in strength, pulling leaves from branches and petals from stems. The candles remained strangely unaffected.
“I call on the lost souls of Fer’sandus.”
With the second passage spoken, the flames of all the candles turned deep purple and the winds, now even stronger, drew the fires up into the air to form a second collection of runes several times the size and complexity of those on the ground. Joseph watched the impossible tongues of flame stretch and flicker for almost a minute before speaking the third passage.
“I call on the powers of space and void and crazed ambition.”
A series of immense cracking sounds began as gaps in the world appeared all around and pure nothing made mind bending patterns across the ground and sky. Supporting enchantments held everything important together but the damage would cost him several crowns with the Fairgraves.
The cracks grew in both number and volume as they spread, eventually affecting the neighbouring towers several hundred metres away. Joseph frowned at that, had he known this was coming he would have performed the ritual somewhere more isolated; he’d have to go and offer to cover the repairs as an apology.
“Let the immutable void be torn asunder and the relics of the mysterious beyond answer to my call.”
As he spoke the fourth and final passage, dozens of spacial tears converged in the centre of the original ritual circle. The vases of flowers burst into amber flames which surged through the holes in reality, spreading light along the cracks, and reaching out to somewhere else.
Seconds, then minutes passed as more and more of the strange honey coloured fire flew into the cracks, lighting an ever-greater proportion of them. Just before the light reached his neighbours, everything, the purple flames above, amber flames all around and the spacial tears themselves, collapsed down into the ritual’s heart with a resounding bang and plunged the garden into shadow.
Visibility returned moments later when Joseph willed the garden’s lighting enchantments to activate, revealing a scene of devastation. Cracks littered the pathways, most of the plants had been shredded, and lying unconscious in the centre of it all was what appeared to be a young human male.
Joseph had barely a moment to observe the being’s strange facial features before his rising guilt for tearing someone out of their world transformed into abject horror.
The smell of burning flesh filled the courtyard as bursts of white, blue and violet lightning began ripping out of the creature’s body, growing as they consumed the air itself, before being suppressed by the tower’s enchantments.
Joseph reached out and grasped as much of the surrounding mana as he could. He transmuted it to restoration and funnelled it into the dying creature’s body, even as it continued to collapse. He was using so much mana that the ambient levels started to drop. He’d be alright for a dozen minutes or so, but not much more.
“Marius! Marius, fetch Maria Haelend, NOW!” he yelled, projecting as much urgency through his aura as he could. Moments later he felt a burst of active mana as one of his flying carpets left the tower. With help on the way, the panicked elder turned all of his energy to keeping the person he had summoned alive.
12th Waril, Summer, 374th Year, 84th Era, 2nd Age (same day)
Darkness blanketed Kathresh’s inner city. The grand towers lay in shadow, the streetlights reaching no higher than the fifth floor of the buildings. Few people walked the streets, but those who did could see the light from the occasional illusion covered window standing out from the otherwise black monoliths. Above the towers they could see the swirling mess of multi-coloured stars crowding the sky, some so tightly packed as to be more blurs of colour than distinct points.
Were they looking at just the right moment, they would see a tiny black spot disappearing for only a moment in the gaping, horizontal crescent void of Lunas, before shooting across the sky on its breakneck journey toward the heart of the inner city.
As she clung to the edge of the speeding carpet, Maria briefly regretted putting so few stat points in strength. Marius was pushing the carpet hard enough that the barrier enchantment which was supposed to surround it had failed. Maria had been forced to lay flat on the offending lump of platinum thread, holding onto the front tassels with every scrap of her pitiful 37 strength. She was fairly sure that the clasp holding her hair together had been ripped away by the wind at some point as the grey strands were whipping around as if possessed.
She didn’t really know what had happened yet, Marius had just shown up and dragged her out a tenth-floor window of her family’s tower with only the barest mutterings about an emergency.
It wasn’t quite the worst summons she had received. That prize went to Elder Varith teleporting her halfway across the city into a chamber full of monster guts. It came very close though.
Given how hurried Marius was, she doubted this would be a minor problem. If the brilliant light that had radiated out from the city centre was an indication, she imagined that the problem would be worse than a slightly cracked soul.
Maria’s absentminded musings cut short as they drew close enough to Elder Ashbourne’s tower that she could both see and feel the enormous whirlpool of mana indicative of an elder sorcerer wielding their full might. She began using her Meditation skill to keep her mind calm and ready. Few things called for the kind of power on display and Maria wasn’t foolish enough to be less than fully prepared.
As the carpet landed, she took in the devastated garden with cold eyes. Shards of wood, leaves and petals lay strewn among the broken stone and earth. Elder Ashbourne stood at the centre of a circle of burnt-out candles and smoking symbols. His formerly pale green robes were covered in burn marks and his white, waist length hair was a bedraggled mess.
Lying before him, being pumped with enough mana each second to heal a hundred men, was a body that rapidly alternated between a healthy human, albeit one of neither the northern nor southern race, and a charred corpse. Thick gouts of lightning tore out of his body before being dissipated by one of the tower’s many enchantments.
The elder turned to them as they stepped off the carpet, “Marius, go fetch the lightning templates, all of them. Maria, try to find out why the restoration efficiency is so poor, I don’t have any attention spare to look.”
The panic in his dark blue eyes and the urgency in his aura would have moved her into motion had she not already been halfway across the garden.
“Is his body node damaged?” She asked as she placed her hands on either side of the patient’s head, the contact triggering a passive class power to give her better access to his mind and soul.
“I can’t find it, he was summoned by the ritual, for all I know his species may not have a soul,” Elder Ashbourne responded, the strain of controlling so much mana clear in his voice.
Even as the elder spoke, she reached the same conclusion herself. The being clearly had a mind, though it was a cluttered mess with far too many nuclei, but he had no spirit and no soul. That seemed to be part of the problem; several tethers of mind essence directly connected his mind and brain despite not having anywhere near enough power to breach the barrier between the material and spiritual planes.
The resulting holes in the murum were, in turn, generating bursts of spiritual and material lightning which ate into his mind and body. Although, there seemed to be a third, unknown form of lightning coming from the body itself.
The driving force of his mind seemed to be coming from the brain, so she would have to sever the cross-planar tethers and then maintain pressure on his mind’s flow while stopping the whole thing from dissipating due to the lack of an anchor.
“He definitely has no soul. I can preserve the mind but I won’t be able to help with the body at the same time,” she told the elder as she healed the damage that the lightning was doing to her. She’d numbed her own pain, but that power was useless on her patient since it targeted the spirit.
“Do what you can. When Marius returns, I will stabilise the body and surrounding space, and then make enchantments based on your magic. I should have enough platinum in my storage orb.”
With Elder Ashbourne’s acknowledgement, Maria drew on the essence fused within her flesh and set about cutting the tethers causing the lightning. That was immediately complicated by new tethers reaching out from the creature’s head to make even more holes in the murum.
Dedicating part of her focus to keeping the tethers in check, she set about keeping the creature’s mind flowing. As rivulets of animus spilled out from the tethers that should have connected to his brain, she grasped them and fed them into those that should have been taking animus in.
She had to change the flows around several times as different combinations caused various problems from nuclei collapsing, taking gods knew what information with them, to discs spinning wildly out of control in ways usually only seen in deranged minds.
She found the right combination in the end. Although there was no way to know what damage had been done to get there and any information that would have come from the brain and body would be missing.
As time went on, the lack of a soul to anchor the creature’s mind became more and more of a problem and the structures of his mind started to drift apart and dissipate. Eventually, Maria had to support the entire structure herself. She still had no idea what half of it did, but there was no better option.
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Finally, just after she started having to restore her own mind from the damage caused by overuse and exhaustion, enchantments started stepping in to take over. Beginning with the simpler tasks of holding various clusters of nuclei and discs together before seizing control of the loose flows of animus.
By the time she could stop severing the ever-forming tethers that reached out from the creature’s brain, Maria felt like she’d climbed Wyrmhold. She had just enough time to read the first system notification to pop into her mind before she slipped into blissful unconsciousness.
[You have restored, maintained and helped to fully support the mind of a soulless creature from beyond the void. You have attained a Grand Achievement: +10 Achievement Points.]
3rd April 2019?
Nathan was confused. He focused on that, studied the feeling, observed it, analysed it with more focus than he had ever given anything. It beat thinking about the pain. Christ it hurt.
It wasn’t like a papercut or stubbing his toe, it was like every instant of pain in his life, every scrape, every bruise, every cut and that one time he’d dropped a cabinet on his toe while helping Uncle Bob move house. All of it rolled into one giant ball of pain and magnified by some unreasonably huge number, like pi without the decimal. Actually, that would be infinity, which wasn’t a number. The point was that it hurt. A lot.
Everything burned and ached and stung, and cutting right through all that was an awful throbbing emptiness which was somehow worse than everything else.
The fact that he could think through it was a big part of the reason for his confusion. There was, however, another significant source of bemusement.
A game-like message hung in the back of his mind waiting to be acknowledged. This was confusing for several reasons, not least of which was: how did something immaterial hang? More importantly, how did he get to this state of total sensory deprivation, discounting pain and lit-RPG flags.
The last thing he remembered was stacking tins of mushroom soup before being plunged into utter, all-consuming agony, which eventually transitioned into utter, not-so-all-consuming agony. It still hurt just as much, but he could think through it. Albeit with difficulty.
One thing he’d noticed pretty quickly was that while he remembered stacking soup tins, he didn’t remember where or why. Was he working in a supermarket, a village grocery shop or just putting them away at his parents’ house?
And in that vein, what did his parents look like? He knew what his sister looked like, that she could be both annoying and good company at seemingly random intervals. But he had no idea what her name was. Best friend: Steve of unknown appearance, though he definitely had blue eyes. Favourite food: nothing. Colour of the sky: … green?
If he had to guess, Nathan would say that he’d been hit in the head and this was probably some kind of near-death hallucination or a lucid coma dream (if that was even a thing). He didn’t know if indulging a delusion was a good idea in this situation, but if the choice was pain, confusion and boredom or pain, confusion and not-boredom, he figured the answer was fairly obvious.
That could have been the inexplicable calm talking though. He was fairly sure that he should have been in headless chicken mode rather than pondering whether or not to acknowledge a probable hallucination.
[Sapient being detected, updating user files.]
[Error, User ID not found.]
[Emergency protocol EP74,829 triggered.]
[Creating User ID.]
[Welcome to the system Nathan Emmanuel Fellwood. Please read and sign the Host-User Contract at your earliest convenience. If you wish to withdraw consent, please do so in the settings menu. No skills, abilities or other bonuses gained will be removed unless you request it.]
[You have gained the Pain Tolerance ability.]
[Pain Tolerance 1st Lvl 1: Your capacity to endure pain is increased.]
[You have gained a level in Pain Tolerance.]x9
[You have gained the 1st tier bonus for Pain Tolerance. Increase your realm to level further.]
[Pain Tolerance 1st Lvl 10: Your capacity to endure pain is increased. Pain is no longer debilitating.]
[You have gained the Lightning Resistance ability.]
[Lightning Resistance 1st Lvl 1: You are less affected by harmful reactions and transmutations with lightning essence.]
[You have gained a level in Lightning Resistance]x9
[You have gained the 1st tier bonus for Lightning Resistance. Increase your realm to level further.]
[Lightning Resistance 1st Lvl 10: You are less affected by harmful reactions and transmutations with lightning essence. Harmful reactions and transmutations with lightning essence occur at a slower rate.]
[You have endured and recovered from extreme damage. Vitality +1.]x8
Well, that explained how he could think. Assuming that he wasn’t delusional of course.
Nathan didn’t know anything about realms or transmutations and he had no idea where the lightning resistance came from; maybe God hated mushroom soup. Regardless, one of the messages mentioned the “Host-User Contract” which conveniently popped up to replace the previous wall of text with Wall-of-Text 2.0 (now with more text).
It would probably just be a random jumble of legalese that his deranged mind had assembled to look like a terms and conditions document. Still, he imagined that reading it would be more interesting than doing nothing.
By the time he had finished reading it, Nathan had revised that assessment. In spite of the odd word that he didn’t understand in context, this thing was a masterpiece. Maybe more people would read the terms and conditions if they included things like “The user will not burn people to death in the name of the Host,” or “The user will not create depictions of the Host for the purpose of dropping them off of cliffs.”
Admittedly, most of it was fairly sensible stuff like not interrupting the system’s operation while it was warping reality, or not intentionally altering system mechanisms to gain unearned power. Every now and then though, there would be something completely nuts and for a brief moment the horrifying agony would be forgotten in a gale of mental laughter.
Nathan’s favourite after reading the whole thing, and it was a difficult choice, was “The Host reserves the right to feed the user’s reproductive organ/s to a nest of venomous scravels should the user, while of adult age and sound mind, refer to the Host as a “stupid poopy head” more than once.” He didn’t know what a scravel was, but he’d make damn sure to use his one chance to insult what seemed to be God at the most ridiculous time possible.
There were some slightly worrying parts about the user accepting that the system would read their mind and a corresponding “The Host agrees not to access mental records except if it is necessary for the protection of the system or Kelric.”
A mind-reading system would have been less of a concern if he hadn’t received a demonstration that this might not be a delusion after all, in the form of another system message that came just before he finished reading the contract.
[You have gained the Reading skill.]
[Reading 1st Lvl 1: You are better at reading and learning to read.]
The message itself wasn’t proof of anything, but by the time he’d finished the last dozen or so clauses Nathan was sure he was reading … better? He couldn’t tell if it was faster, but it felt noticeably easier than before.
If he took that to mean that the system wasn’t a delusion (which was still technically on the table) it raised a few important issues. For one had he been isekai-ed or was this a system apocalypse? If it was the latter, was his family okay? Actually, if it was the former, could he go home?
After stewing in questions he couldn’t answer for a while, Nathan eventually concluded that regardless of the situation, the best thing to do was prepare for the future in the only way he could: grinding like a madman. Jumping back to the start of the contract, he began to read through the enormous document all over again.
The second time around wasn’t quite as fun as the first, although since he’d forgotten most of the content (agony and memory didn’t mix well) he still got some enjoyment out of it.
Strangely, he got his second skill update much sooner than the first, barely over halfway. After thinking about that for a while, the best explanation Nathan could come up with was that since he was actually trying to get better, he was progressing faster.
Giving the question a mental shrug, Nathan got back to reading and received another level several clauses after he passed where he’d gotten the last one. Then, he got the next level at a different point entirely, detailing how the Host would get a 1% cut of all of his “sentiment”, whatever that was.
After that, he gave up on figuring out how the levelling worked and focused on reading the contract, only stopping for the occasional spike in pain.
It felt like he’d read through the contract at least a hundred times before getting to level 10. Although, he couldn’t be sure since he had barely been keeping track.
By the end, he was very glad to be finished with his self-imposed task. No one could read the same thing that many times and not get sick of it. Excited to see what bonus he would get for level 10 Nathan brought his unread notifications into focus.
[You have gained a level in Reading]x9
[You have reached level 10 in Reading. Increase your realm to level further.]
[Possible instance of glitch G4392 detected.]
[User has not signed the Host-User Contract.]
[Possible instance of system abuse SA26 detected.]
[If you are not guilty of system abuse, please remain calm. An administrator will contact you shortly to review your case.]
[If you are guilty of system abuse, please remain calm. An administrator will contact you shortly to review your case and enforce the appropriate penalty.]
Huh. So, not only had he not gotten a bonus for getting Reading to level 10, but he might have been abusing the system. Fantastic. The part about penalties reminded him of the venomous scravels. While he didn’t know what they were, he didn’t particularly want to find out. Another important question was: how soon was “shortly”? What period of time would an apparently world altering system consider sh…
[Administrator Fariel: Alright let’s see what we’ve got here the… REALMS ABOVE THAT’S… Just give me a second. I'm going to read through your files. If you can even hear me.]
Unlike the previous notifications, this one practically bludgeoned its way into his mind’s eye, writing itself out as he watched. With his newly minted level 10 Reading skill, it didn’t exactly take long to read.
Nathan wasn’t really sure if the administrator being surprised was a good thing, but he was more concerned about whether he’d be able to talk to them. He didn’t exactly have a mouth.
[Administrator Fariel: Yeah, I can hear you, you read the mind reading bit didn’t you? So, after looking through your files there are a couple of things I need to tell you. First, you are technically guilty of SA26 since you deliberately used the system without signing the contract, thus avoiding giving the Host their 1% share of sentiment. However, given the very obvious extenuating circumstances and your lack of knowledge on the subject, no penalties will be levied against you. We’re supposed to extract the owed sentiment even though it’s ludicrously inefficient, but I doubt anyone will care if I waive that in your case. Second, you need to sign the contract before levelling any other skills or abilities.]
Well that was a positive, he’d been worried for a second there. The notification shoving itself in his ‘face’ was still annoying, but it was a step up from mysterious penalties.
[Administrator Fariel: Oh. Sorry about that, it’s standard procedure for SA26 since most of the time the people who do it are kids who think they’ve found something new. We just give them a good scare and most of them stick to the rules. I’ll change the settings.]
This time the message hovered around until he focused on it, like the other ones. So… I have a few questions about what’s happening. By the way, are most people really fine with the mind reading? Nathan thought, addressing the administrator as best he could while disembodied.
[Administrator Fariel: The system is older than many species. Most people don’t even think about it. It’s not as if you care.]
Well sure, but I’ve clearly suffered some kind of brain damage. I hardly make a good case study. In that vein, what is actually wrong with me?
[Administrator Fariel: You’re in a different reality. Our physical laws don’t really agree with yours. If you look at your status, you’ll see that you even have a racial ability for it, which is its own problem. The name’s pretentious as anything but that’s because Vashniel was given free reign when she created the void-walker algorithms. She’s a bit weird.]
So, it was isekai then. Nathan thought about seeing his status, expecting an RPG-like menu, and a large notification appeared before him.
[Status]
Name: Nathan Emmanuel Fellwood
Age: N/A
Species: Void-walker
Realm: Mortal
Level: 0
Strength: 3 (3/10)
Agility: 2 (2/10)
Vitality: 10 (10/10)
Tempus: 4 (4/10)
Scope: 4 (4/10)
Stat Points: 0 (0)
Achievement Points: 0
[Class/es]
N/A
[Skills 1]
Reading 1st Lvl 10
[Abilities 3]
Echoes of the Barren Cosmos 1st (Innate)
Lightning Resistance 1st Lvl 10
Pain Tolerance 1st Lvl 10
[Echoes of the Barren Cosmos 1st (Innate): You are the sole origin point for an entire universe’s sentiment. All sentiment that you produce is 10 times more intense.]
The status notification was made up of four tabs. Nathan opened all of them. Reading through the notification, it occurred to Nathan that trying to find some form of status should have been one of the first things he tried. It was almost its own cliche. Then again, he had a pretty good excuse for being distracted.
I don’t know what half of this means, especially not in this context. Also, and I definitely should have asked this sooner, what the hell is going on?
[Administrator Fariel: I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t have time to explain it. I’ve already delayed filing my report too long, we aren’t really supposed to interfere much. I’m going to register you as “in need of monitoring” which will give me an excuse to check in later. Just know that you have a chance of recovery, and maybe try to train some more skills. Memory Technique and Multitasking are great choices if you can find a way to get them. Look at the mental stats as well, the status will give you definitions for most things if you ask.]
Fariel?...
…
…
Nothing.
Status:
[Status]
Name: Nathan Emmanuel Fellwood
Age: N/A
Species: Void-walker
Realm: Mortal
Level: 0
Strength: 3 (3/10)
Agility: 2 (2/10)
Vitality: 10 (10/10)
Tempus: 4 (4/10)
Scope: 4 (4/10)
Stat Points: 0 (0)
Achievement Points: 0
[Class/es]
N/A
[Skills 1]
Reading 1st Lvl 10
[Abilities 3]
Echoes of the Barren Cosmos 1st (Innate)
Lightning Resistance 1st Lvl 10
Pain Tolerance 1st Lvl 10