When Shaun had bonded the air last time he had made many mistakes that he had to go back and fix before he could actually start the process of bringing the mama into his body, this time he chose to take the time from the very beginning to ensure that he did it all right the first time. He had chosen his two affinity to use pretty quickly as they were obvious choices, He had ruled out fire and nature almost instantly, fire would not be useful in the slightest given he would need to push into the water and nature wouldn’t have any ability to properly capture the water mana he needed.
He did test his earth and air affinity in the water before he decided though, they were much harder to move around, his earth having much more resistance to the surrounding ocean than his air did, but he was still able to properly form and move the spheres around.
He wasn’t planning on changing anything about his approach to forming the water bond, he created his spheres as usual, checking each one twice once he was done, making sure he was confident in his work before moving onto the next stage. He used air as his first sphere to grab the mana mote he needed, there was so much of it around him that it wasn’t hard to pick one to trap. When he sent his air sphere out, he had no issues with capturing the water mana, it was simply floating along with the water current and didn’t move erratically or try and escape him like the air mana did.
When he brought the water mana closer to him, he immediately felt the water shift around him, causing him to slightly lose balance on the ocean's surface. Pulling the water to him too quickly had caused all of the water surrounding it to follow in its direction, causing a wave to be produced that came directly towards him. He had to stop what he was doing, nearly losing all of his control due to the unsuspecting wave, which would have proved disastrous if it had occurred at the wrong moment.
He had to stop moving his sphere towards him at this point, needing to calm back down and slip further back into his trance. Shaun realised just how risky what he was doing was, if the water shifted at the wrong time, especially when he was moving the mana inside of him, he could end up blowing up parts of his body like he had with air. It didn’t stop him from continuing though, just approaching the task with more caution. He hadn’t risked everything already to stop at just the four affinity he had, he wanted to leave this stage of the tutorial with a full set of five, and this was the last one he would need to get to complete the set of basic elements available to him.
He continued bringing the water mana towards him once he had stabilised, much slower than he had before though, it still caused movement with the surrounding water but to a lesser degree, one that he could pretty much ignore. It was going to extend the entire process out again but he wasn’t going to be reckless.
When he was ready to bring the mote of water mana inside of him, passing the barrier of his skin, he stopped for only a split second before continuing, the risk of doing this part had greatly reduced when he upgraded his race so he was a lot less stressed about the repercussions and the effect it would have on his skin and body. When he crossed the line and started pushing it into his mana channel he started having trouble breathing, at first it was annoying but the feeling grew to be very uncomfortable after a while. Just as he finished placing the sphere back in place he couldn’t hold back a cough, breaking him out of his meditative trance. He coughed again and again, and with each heave he expelled water out of his mouth, without even realising it, when he had brought the water mana into his body he had effectively started to drown himself. Thankfully he had already put the mana in its place, otherwise it could have been let loose throughout his mana channels and wrecked destruction.
If he wasn’t already annoyed and over being in a water dungeon he would be now. Everything that had to do with the water element had been nothing but a pain, first it was wasting hours of his life swimming around for no reason, next it was completely missing a group of monsters that he would need to go back and find, and now, it was nearly constantly drowning with every step he took with bonding the element. If quitting was an option he would have done it, but he wasn’t a quitter when it came to gaining power. Having the water element better be worth it.
He was rattled by the experience of nearly drowning form the water mana and would now have to come up with a solution to fixing the water that would flood his body without breaking out of his trance every time, if he didn’t he doubted he would even have the time to finish bonding the element before the counter hit 0 and he was forced out of stage 2, without completing the last dungeon.
He needed to experiment, and to do that he needed to continue with the process of bringing in the foreign mana. He captured another mote of the mana and this time, much slower than last time, brought it towards him without causing a massive wave to knock him about. When he was at the point of bringing it inside of him he made himself more aware of his entire body, specifically his lungs. As soon as he pushed the mana through his skin he felt the change, his lungs started to fill slowly with water, as if his whole body had been saturated and it needed to find an exit, his lungs being the only place where it could find escape. He quickly moved the sphere into its place, and when that was done tried to expel the water from his body using his air element, he wasn’t quick enough though. Before he could stop himself, he again broke out of the trance and started heaving, expelling the water that had invaded his body.
He felt as if he was close to figuring out a solution, moving air through his lungs had helped but he just wasn’t quick enough. He repeated the process three more times, the last time he fully saturated his lungs with air, and when he brought the mote into his body, forcibly ejected it using his affinity. It wasn’t a comfortable process, and it made him split his focus, pushing his enhanced mind to its limit, but he did manage to stay in a trance the last time.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Now having a solution in place, he continued on with gathering the water mana. It was slow, needing to be exceptionally careful the entire time, but he did manage to get there in the end. If he had to compare it to all of the other bondings, this one was taking the longest and was probably the most dangerous. Once he was filled to the brim with water mana he now looked at getting the bonding completely finished, he hated this part more than any other and had always caused him the most issues. Releasing the foreign mana and getting it moving and condensed had led to issues in the past, and with how he was reacting to water, he expected that there were going to be complications with doing it now.
What was making the entire thing harder was that he now had a lot less room in his mana channels to be able to move things around comfortably, with each element he had added the space between them had shrunk, looking at the space he was left with now he couldn’t even imagine being able to form any more affinity after this.
He knew he was just delaying now, thinking of anything other than the task he needed to complete, but he wasn’t going to lie and say he wasn’t scared of what was about to occur. Instead of delaying any longer he got the spheres moving, getting them to a speed that he was comfortable with. When he released the first mote of mana he expected a chain reaction chaos to start, but rather than the disaster that he envisioned he was pleasantly surprised at just how happy the water mana was to just flow along.
Sceptical at first he didn’t release any more of the motes, rather he just watched the one he had released flow through his channels. When he was happy that nothing had changed he opened up a second sphere, again with no problems being caused by the stray mana. When he continued opening up his spheres, the water mana bonded to each other without resistance and happily created the stream that he needed.
This was both shocking, but really should have been expected. Water liked to be together, forming lakes, streams, rivers and oceans, so doing the same thing inside of him was understandable. After all of the problems he had had getting to this point, having the final step be so easy was almost anticlimactic, he wasn’t going to complain though.
When the only thing left to do was condense it all down into a tight thread he didn’t give it a second thought before applying pressure, as with every other bonding he felt when it was done after everything clicked into place.
*Affinity Detected: Water*
*Water (Affinity): The multiverse is made up of many elements but water is one of the most cohesive. Through your connection to the water around you, you are able to control and manipulate the smallest droplet to the current of an ocean. All water is connected, forming a cycle that all mortals are dependent on, it is needed to sustain life, for the living to grow and for a species to thrive. +10 Vit, +10 Soul, +5% Vit, +10% Soul*
It was different, not bad necessarily, he wouldn’t make that conclusion until he actually tested it out, but it was definitely not very straight forward when it came to what the element would actually do, not compared to some of the others.
*Title upgraded: Elemental Prodigy to Elementalist*
*Elementalist: Having successfully bound five base elements as an Affinity you have done what hasn’t been seen in many eras. Title upgradable. +20 to all stats, +20% to all stats*
The title upgrade was nice, there were not many changes except the boost to stats and also moving from describing something that could be done by the truly peak members of the multiverse to now something not done in eras.
Before he had a chance to test out the affinity or get back to hunting monsters, he felt his whole body tighten, something inside of him was changing, and he knew where to look. He had spent enough time inside of his mana channels to know what they felt like to know when something was happening with them. He quickly turned his attention back inside of himself, and before he could fully comprehend what was happening he saw each of his affinities pulsing, but not just as singular streams, it was if they were each forming connections to each other, bonds that seemed to create one full structure rather than the now five separate streams.
There was nothing he could do to stop such widespread change, he didn’t have the ability to halt or even change the process, if it was one, or even two, of his affinity he might have had a chance, but all five? It would be a pointless exercise. He had no choice but to watch the changes that were occurring, he noticed that the affinities were not bonding with every affinity he had, instead it was as if they each chose two and started forming strands between each thread.
Starting with his first affinity of earth, it bonded with nature, which then bonded with water on the other side, which moved into air, and followed by fire which then bonded back into earth. It formed a circle of interconnecting elements, it was beautiful to watch, but he also didn’t understand why it was happening. The threads of affinity started tightening towards their neighbouring threads, condensing down even further until it formed what could only be described as a single stream of affinity. He could still make out the individual threads, their colours making them stand in contrast to each other, but now there was also a blurring between them, like it was harder to see where each began or finished.
The process finished with a final pulse and he was free to move again, no longer sensing any changes occurring inside of him. He expected to get some notification as to what had occurred but even after waiting for a while nothing appeared. Whatever had happened wasn’t something that would be announced by the system, it was going to have to be something he would need to find out on his own. Add that to the list of things I will need to research when I hopefully find somewhere where this information is kept.
When he gave up hope of any explanation as to what had happened, he reverted back to his usual steps after bonding an affinity, testing out what it could do. Before he did that he checked to see how much time had passed in this dungeon. Three days! I have been in here for three full days!
He had wasted time swimming around at the beginning of the dungeon but he had now spent almost twice the time he usually did when bonding an affinity. It meant that he only had hours left before he ticked into the fourth day and would potentially lose out on the orb he desperately wanted. He didn’t have time to play around any longer, he needed to find the monsters and quickly, he was now on the warpath.