Two days had passed before finally Carter and Luna emerged from his workshop.
“Is he okay?” Both Lily and Harumi hadn’t slept at all due to worrying constantly.
“He’s dead… Luna couldn’t save hi-“ before Carter could finish his sentence he was punched in the back by Luna.
“He’s fine, I didn’t even need to be there, Carter surprisingly works incredibly careful and efficiently.” Luna was amazed at how Carter worked so fast and diligently for two whole days straight while she only watched.
“Oh geez, praise me more?” Carter acted all shy which drew only disdain from all three girls.
“Whatever, honestly I have no idea when he’s going to wake up so buckle him.” Carter didn’t mention it but he wasn’t sure that he could complete this surgery but by fate or a miracle he actually did it.
While everyone was preparing to wait for Solstice to wake up, he was facing something new.
In his mindscape he was met with an incredibly old elf and to his side stood Victor.
“Hmm, it seems our descendant has finally awakened his power.” The old elf said while examining Solstice.
“Who the hell are you?” Victor asked.
“That doesn’t matter to you, hitchhiker.” The elf said and he flicked his hand, when Victor tried to speak again his mouth was gone.
“Anyways, my name is Arondir and I’m going to teach you.” The elf slowly turned around and flicked his fingers which changed the entire mindscape they were in into a dense forest that surrounded a massive tree that was emitting mana that was multiple times denser than the core room he trained in.
“Where is this?” Solstice felt nostalgic being here.
“This is where all life started, this is the universal tree.” The ancient elf flicked his fingers again and you could see all kinds of elven kids running around the village while many adults were just watching and talking.
“Things were peaceful when things first started, but clearly things changed.” He flicked again and slowly the scenery changed to fire burning everywhere two factions had formed in the village.
“Two clans began to fight for power, one wanted to use the power of the tree to create slaves while the other wanted to create more life for the universe. Who do you think won?” The elf asked.
“I’m assuming the second faction?” Clearly life had spread throughout the universe.
“Wrong, the slave faction did.”
Slowly Solstice could see bodies piling up while the winners looked more deranged as time went on.
“Slowly the tree and the elves who controlled it began to corrupt and this led to a schism in the tree. All that was left of the good half is me.” The elf chuckled,
“You're the good part I presume?” Solstice was at a loss for words.
“In a way, the blood that was spilled during the battle was absorbed by the tree and this gave birth to a dual consciousness within the tree. This is what caused the schism.” Slowly the mindscape went dark and all three of them stood there.
“Why are you telling me this?” Solstice was confused why he was being told this.
“I merely wished to inform you, just know that at the center of this universe is this tree and that clan. How you handle this information is up to you.”
“Is there something you want me to do?”
“Honestly? I wish for you to establish order again, but for the current you. That’s impossible, after defeating those “invaders” I will bring you back here again.” The elf slowly walked forward and placed two fingers on Solstices forehead.
“Good luck little one.” As soon as the elf removed his fingers Solstice was assaulted by the worst pain he had felt in his entire life. He began to scream and claw at the ground while Victor joined him moments later.
“FUCK!” Victor finally got his mouth back and could only scream this one word. For what seemed like an eternity this kept up until finally after an unknown amount of time did it stop, slowly Solstice looked over at Victor and both were astounded by what the elf injected into their mind.
Back in the real world over a year had passed and Solstice hadn’t moved a single muscle all this time.
“Is he still alive?” Luna asked with a defeated look on her face.
“His soul is intact; I’m assuming undoing the seal activated something is all so give it time.” Carter had been listening to the same question over and over again for the past year and tolerated only because he knew they cared.
Suddenly a huge influx of mana rushed into the bunker and began to funnel inside of Solstice.
“Fucking main characters.” Is all Carter said as he idly watched the scene unfold.
The amount of mana funneling inside of the bunker was making Carter and the girls get dizzy and almost pass out, luckily Carter activated an artifact and put a force field over himself and the girls to wait out the mana storm. Beside Solstice a figure began to materialize and after a few minutes the figure of a slim man who seemed to be around 30 years old appeared and opened his eyes. Both eyes were surrounded by seven rings and the pressure emitted from the man was palpable.
“I didn’t expect this, it’s not permanent but at least I can do this sometimes.” Victor looked over at a mirror and saw his hair color had changed. He used to have blonde hair, but it had changed to pure white now.
“Probably because of my connection to the kid, I guess I’ve got to be grateful even if it’s just a little.” Victor rubbed his face and turned around only to see everyone ready to attack.
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“Woah woah calm down. I’m the guy bonded to his soul, so if you kill me, you could kill him.” Victor pointed over to Solstice who was still absorbing copious amounts of mana.
“Do you have any idea as to what’s going on? This is going to attract a lot of unwanted attention from the abyssal creatures.” Carter warned.
“No idea, one second some old elf was talking to us and the next second we both were writhing in pain for what seemed like a year.”
“It was a year.” Carter said blankly.
“What an asshole.” Victor thought back to the old elf and could only feel disdain for the man.
All of a sudden, a giant pressure descended on the building and made everyone buckle for a split second.
“Oh, shit oh shit he’s here.” Carter immediately ran to a button and pressed it, followed by the press was all the windows being covered by metal.
“What the hell is outside?” Victor asked.
“Basically, the ruler of the abyss? Dudes been here since the dawn of time, and I don’t think any of us are going to live past today.” Carter said while heading straight to his bar in hopes of drinking the last of his alcohol before he was eaten.
Suddenly a door was ripped open and all they saw was a giant black claw pierce the door.
Outside stood a dragon who was so black that it seemed to absorb any light that touched it. This was the person who everyone ran from in the abyss and his name was Orpheus. He was cast away millions of years ago due to rampaging across multiple worlds before finally a clan of humans subdued it. They were unable to pierce his scales, so they tied him up and used a ritual to send him here, from then on, he either slept or hunted for mana rich prey. Clearly whatever Solstice was doing drew the attention of the slumbering dragon and he wanted to eat whatever was drawing in all this mana.
Slowly the dragon who was over two hundred meters tall began to shrink down into the form of a humanoid dragon and walked into the base. Orpheus had black hair that went all the way down to his waist and it was also so dark it absorbed light. He began to sniff and slowly found himself next to a slumbering Solstice.
“Absolutely delectable.” Orpheus began to lick his lips and looked around only to see everyone petrified by the pressure he was unconsciously emitting.
“Don’t worry, I’ll eat the rest of you later, especially you elven girl.” Orpheus said eat but he clearly meant something else entirely.
Before Orpheus could start eating, he felt his body slowly start curling up and his bones began to break, but no matter how much he tried to fight it he couldn’t.
Finally, he used his ability that mutated due to being in the void so long, he was able to nullify magic completely and this freed him from the effects of the gravity, but severe damage had already been done.
“Fuck that hurt, better finish you off now.” Orpheus clawed down and struck Solstices chest in hopes of ripping his heart out, but another unforeseen event happened. His hand was caught by Solstice who finally opened his eyes and met his attackers.
Solstice had a different aura surrounding him now and it scared the ever-living shit out of Orpheus.
“I’ll leave, just let me go please.” Orpheus pleaded with Solstice.
“You said you’d eat me, then “eat” her. I think I should repay the threat, yeah?” Solstice reached forward and pulled out a jewel that was located right above Orpheus' heart that sat on his skin. This jewel was responsible for the magic negation he was currently experiencing.
“What is this, Carter?”
“Whatever lives in this dimension has the ability to grow it. It’s like an evolutionary trait, scum from across the universe are sent here all the time and this trait allows them to turn those scum into helpless scum.” Carter had researched the creatures of the abyss when he first arrived, and this adaptation was absurdly powerful.
“Interesting, can we use it?”
“Fuck yeah we can use it, just give me time to mess with it,”
Solstice only nodded to this and looked back at Orpheus; he knew he was about to die so he did what any feral beast would do. He immediately yanked his arm that was held by Solstice so hard it tore off and he tried to make a beeline for his escape. As soon as he made it to the doorway a white orb appeared and the closer, he got to it the more force was applied to him until finally he was repelled backwards straight to Solstice.
The last thing Orpheus saw was a foot come down and smash his head into meat paste.
“I feel incredible, and how the hell are you visible to everyone Victor?” Solstice finally snapped out of his trance-like state.
“Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m going to go back to my old form, I don’t know if this is permanent or not.” Victor immediately vanished from the naked eye and returned to his ethereal form.
Slowly the power Solstice showed began to dwindle down until he reverted down to a peak S-Rank.
“I still feel so strong, the difference between A and S-Rank really is huge.” He felt as if his body was reconstructed perfectly to suit his every need,
“I need to examine you now, but fix that door please?” Carter begged.
Solstice immediately used his new power and made the ambient mana turn to metal and made a door that was as sturdy as the previous one.
“I see you can use ambient mana easily now; how did that happen?” Carter asked.
“I had some weird meeting with an old guy in my mind and he injected a lot of stuff into my head.” Solstice couldn’t really explain everything, he still needed to recollect himself,
“Fair enough, let’s just go to the range and test out your powers.” Carter pulled Solstice to the range as fast as he could while ignoring the three girls who were frozen from surprise.
“Did he just kill that dragon with no effort at all…” said Lily who was the most paralyzed of the three.
“I didn’t see this in my visions. I might as well throw that advantage out the window now.” Harumi muttered.
“I need to go to the bathroom really quick.” Luna said while covering her lower part.
“Try to crush the dummy.” Carter barked,
Solstice laughed at how excited he was and just followed his order. With barely a fraction of his newfound power, he conjured a black hole in the center of the dummy and they both watched it vanish out of existence.
“Sometimes I wonder if there’s justice in this world.” Carter walked over and patted Solstice on his back.
“I think it’s time to finish up your book and move on to space.” Carter never believed in miracles but ever since he met Solstice, it was all that ever happened.
With the help of the rune Carter implanted into him, Solstice was able to finish the remainder of his book and put most of it to practice within a week. He had fully mastered graviton constructs and could maintain multiple weapons and a set of armor with ease. He could also practically control gravity by increasing the zone, decreasing it, pushing and pulling. It didn’t matter, the amount of help the new gave him was priceless to say the least.
After two weeks of mastering his gravity, he saw Carter come out of his workshop and hand him a book that was half as thick as his first.
“This pertains to space magic, once you finish this, I’ll let you dabble in time and lightning since you have those naturally, the rest is up to you to learn from others or figure it out yourself.” Carter was amazed himself to see how much of an improvement the rune made on the idiot that was Solstice, this only fueled his passion, and he sprinted back to his workshop to keep working on more rune ideas he could test on Solstice and his almost invincible body now. Like that multiple week's passed once again everyone was incredibly focused on their own books, Solstice would get pulled into the workshop for more runes every other week but in his downtime, he was quickly mastering space magic in hopes of passing his mother's skill level, it took more finesse but space magic to Solstice was much easier to learn that it was for gravity. The time it took him to master space magic was a measly two months before he went knocking on the workshop door, he was only met with silence, so he quietly walked in, and Carter passed out on a blueprint for a rune. When Solstice saw the rune both he and Victor almost lost themselves.