An hour after Osiph departed and the Life Mage had cleared me, I sat on my bed chatting with Mel about her life as a sapient codex. I was kind of depressed to learn she had been stuck in a cube inside Osiph's library for the majority of her awareness, only being pulled out to interview a potential vessel.
There was a sudden change, no feeling, nothing physically changed, but I received a notification. A light blue box formed in my vision accompanied by a melodious chime.
Ding!
Item received: Grimoire of the Celestial Giants(Legendary)
Fate lays amongst the stars, waiting for you to reach out and call upon them. Choose; one who seeks out the heavenly bodies. Increased Mental Defense +3 all Stats per level (Beginner) +6 Free Points per level (Beginner) +1 Luck per level (Beginner) Affinity: Karmic
Ding!
Ability Earned: Transmogrify. (Unique)
Direct your will upon your Spiritual Matrix and rewrite your very soul. Cost: 1000 Mana per second during transformation. (Beginner) Cost: 100 Mana per second to maintain transfiguration form. (Beginner)
Ding!
Integration complete, you have successfully absorbed the Core of a Grimoire (Grimoire of the Celestial Giants)
Ding!
Title earned! Keeper of Tomes. (Uncommon) You have successfully absorbed a Grimoire, may this tome light your path to success. +1 to Luck per level
Ding!
Title earned! Survivor's Decimation. (Tancendant) Surviving unspeakable horrors has put you on a path that will bring ruin and destruction to those who slighted you or choose to stand in your way +3647 to base Luck +20 to all Stats per level (Beginner)
Ability: Eternal Wrath
Ability: Divine Retribution
Ding!
Ability: Eternal Wrath. (Unique)
Hate that has welled for eons is a resource primed for tapping deep inside of you. Suppressed but never forgotten, oppressed but never silent, repressed but ever vigilant. Enter a state at a 30 percent boost to all Stats Backlash based on duration. In this state, sensory information is blocked but reaction speed is increased moderately (Beginner) Passive reaction speed increased slightly based on Dexterity. Backlash decreased moderately based on Toughness
Ding!
Ability: Divine Retribution. (Unique)
Justice will not be swift but carried out with grace and poise. A quick death offers no chance of reflection and you are merciful. Allowing them to repent before their end shows your benevolence. Cast a Mark of Retribution on one target at or below your level once per day (Beginner) and the shall be placed with the debuff Marked for Death. Level Disparity Based on Intelligence
Marked for Death: Instantly bring the target's Health Points to 0 after 24 hours of objective time. Will not affect resurrection skills, items or other means of stopping a true death after the goal has been met (Beginner) Requires priests with Lesser Blessing or higher to cleanse (Beginner)
Ding!
Title earned! Remnant's Curse. (Legendary) You have experienced damage to your inviolable soul and survived. As if the pages had been torn from your Grimoire itself, rendering it incapable of storing external magic formations Does not affect formless or internal mana. Formless mana is slightly more efficient. -1.6 health per second +9 to luck per level
Ding!
Title earned! Bonded familiar. (Epic) You have made a bonded pact with a creature of the infinite multiverse. Few claim to have those they can truly trust and fewer still know what it means to share a mind and soul. +6 to Intelligence per level
Ding!
Bonded familiar: Homunculus Librarian. (Construct)
You have bonded to and accepted the responsibilities that come with a Homunculus Librarian. Requirements: Level lower than 5. Base Intelligence 30+ Effects: Ability: Library of knowledge (Beginner) +10 percent to Mental Defense
Ding!
Ability: Library of Knowledge. (Epic)
Store and organize memories to view with enhanced recall. Store up to 1000 books 184/1000 worth of information with perfect recall. (Beginner) Able to clear unwanted books from this space to make room for others.
Ding!
You have made a Soul oath. Soul oath cannot be broken without a disparity in Willpower of no more than 5 percent. Bound to: Osipheos the Curator
Oath: Anything and everything I (Osipheos) say, with only some allowances on questioning me(Osipheos), but otherwise complete trust. Soulbound
Ding!
Title earned! Calamities Relative. (Divine) You have successfully surpassed fifty million years of subjective time, a feat achieved only by Divinity and those striving for it. +30 to Luck per level (Beginner) +10 to all Stats per level (Beginner) Ability: Thief of Time
Ding!
Ability: Thief of Time. (Unique)
Use your experiences as a weapon to enlighten those who misjudge you. Through physical touch, tap into the depths of your torment and share this understanding of pain both physical and emotional. Compresses the target's perception of time based on the factored mana cost. Base cost and compression start at 100 yrs per second at 100 mana per second Cost decreases moderately based on Willpower. Causes Mental and physical aging
Ding!
Title earned! Sage of Patience. (Divine)
You have successfully meditated for more than 10 million years of subjective time. Even the Gods have little patience for such things. Base Intelligence set at 1596 +10 to all Stats per level (Beginner) Ability: Divine Meditation
Ding!
Ability: Divine Meditation. (Unique)
When you enter meditation, create a personal time-compressed zone to fully recover resources and reflect on your Path. Duration in subjective time: (10 percent of Wisdom: hour) Last 1-hour objective time. Cooldown: 1 hour. Decrease cooldown by (Mana Regen) seconds.
Ding!
Title earned! Mana Bath. (Divine) You have successfully refined your Core and Pathways for more than 10 million years of subjective time. + 30 to Intelligence per level (Beginner) +10 all other Stats per level (Beginner)
Ability: Mana Expulsion
Ding!
Ability: Mana Sphere. (Unique)
Due to the amount of refinement of your Core before integration, your Spiritual Matrix is more closely integrated into your nodes thus the physical body. Expel a burst of mana out of your nodes creating an omnidirectional pulse of pure mana (Beginner) Cost: 100 mana/second (Beginner) Durability of barrier: Magical damage absorbed by the barrier is spent as your resource powering the Ability. If mana is depleted and the barrier breaks, the remaining damage will be directly done to your health pool. Bypassing armor and defensive items. Size of mana pulse based on Perception. Does (10% Intelligence) damage on touch (Beginner)
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Error: Core is not fully integrated, Experience lost.
I looked at the list of Titles I had earned, speechless.
"I guess you owe an apology to all those storybook heroes you admonished about gaining powers after a traumatic event." Mel giggled inside my head.
"I'm going to have to agree," I said, shaking my head, and smiling at the list. "That is a lot, and mostly of Divine rarity too. Though all the descriptions are rather dramatic if you ask me, referencing revenge and gods more than once."
"Well, I'm sure that most who receive these Titles would be gods, or close to it. If a Journeyman can live to see two centuries pass, imagine how long the Ascended live for. The Mental Defense from your Grimoire would explain why you survived in the first place. Then, the longer you survived the more acclimated you became."
I nodded, having caught that as well. "I can't see any other explanation for it. I'm not particularly special."
"As for the dark and brooding motif, well it suits your whole life experience pretty well if you ask me. I can see into your mind and I can validate the turmoil that those descriptions are referencing. I know you haven't figured out exactly what it is that you want, this still being fresh and all. Regardless of your path forward, I believe that these abilities will assuredly help."
"Like you said, I don't know what I'm going to do. I made it out but I lost everything and everyone. For so long I thought about revenge. I still plan on investigating even now, but the fervor and the fantasies of killing those Lizard creatures faded with time, and I lost the rage keeping it alive. Everything faded; the grief, the fear, the will to live. I don't know why I'm even alive. If I hadn't accepted the deal with Osiph, maybe I could have rejoined my family and been at peace."
Mel appeared in my vision sitting at the edge of the bed. "That's bullshit and you know it. Not that you're secretly full of anger and can go berserk at any moment, but that's kind of my point. Why are you alive, let alone not completely out of your mind? Why did your subconscious fight so hard to stay intact through everything, to stay alive? By all accounts you should be a bumbling wreck, babbling incoherent gibberish. Despite the impossibility of you even surviving that, you are sitting here completely… mostly sane." She finished off with much less enthusiasm and a tight smile.
"I don't know, I feel better. I feel more in control. I'm sure I'll have to address some things as we move forward. Until then I will just try and get through the transition back to the real world as best as I can, and see where it takes us. I'm glad you're here Mel. I can't thank you enough."
"We're partners now, we go through it together. Now open up your status screen, then use that token to call the old man in here, so we can get ready for a swim." She beamed up at me before popping back out of my vision, making me smile at her antics. She really did remind me a lot of Ren.
"Don't think I didn't catch that employment clause in your description. We are going to talk about that when we have time."
"Can't get anything past you." She said sarcastically in my head. "Come on, hurry up, you're stalling."
"I'm not stalling. You're stalling." I mentally stuck my tongue out at her, and I could hear her laugh.
Mel was right though, she knew I was excited about seeing what I could do. The soul damage worried me though. Not being able to cast spells was a hit to be sure. I had dreamed of being a mage since I was a small child. We had a small dungeon located near the city, and I would follow the men coming out of the local Adventurer's guild until they passed the city gates. I would pretend I was a part of their group and that we were off to fight a go fight the denizens of the deep and claim the treasure at the end.
Though again, I scoffed at myself for being so petty as to focus on anything other than that I was free. I had escaped, and that was truly all that mattered. To sacrifice being able to blow shit up with fire, for that, seemed like the easy tradeoff. So I turned my attention back and rubbed my hands together greedily, for the moment I had spent my entire childhood waiting to see.
Name: Cassieus Hinari
Level: 1
Affinity: Karmic
Class: N/A
Armor Rating: 80
Health: 180/180
Health Regen: 0.02/sec (1% Vitality -0.16/sec Soul Damage)
Mana: 15,960/15,960
Mana Regen: 159.6/sec
Stamina: 140/140
Stamina Regen: 1.4/sec
Stats
Strength:4
Vitality:18
Endurance:14
Toughness:8
Agility:20
Dexterity:15
Perception:12
Wisdom:16
Intelligence:1596
Willpower:12
Luck:3647
Abilities
Eternal Wrath
Divine Retribution
Transmogrify
Library of Knowledge
Thief of Time
Divine Meditation
Mana Sphere
"Well isn't that something?" Osiph said after I shared my Stat page with him.
He had come within minutes of me activating the token he had given me.
"Those are some very good Titles to have so early on. Especially, the two that increase your Intelligence and Luck base Stats. By the time you get your Class, you are going to be a little monster. Most Paths offer between twenty to thirty-five of each Stat, per level with 30 Free Points. So you drew the short straw with that one, while a Karmic Affinity will be very entertaining to use and very useful. I believe your Titles more than compensate for the deficiencies of your current Path. Fifty-three per level to most of your Stats with eighty-nine into Intelligence and forty-one into Luck. That in of itself is something, as Luck only ever comes from Titles, the Path you're on, and how nice the universe you are in is feeling that millennia. I am warning you now to not grow complacent, it will wane as you pass into the higher tiers, where everyone has their own Titles. Maybe not all Divine Rarity Titles, but it will close the gap. I shall urge caution and to help prevent unwanted attention though, with how fast these will compound, along with the other stupid Abilities you got in there, anonymity will be your friend. You should try to stay out of the foremost thoughts of the people you come across. Try to be as forgettable as possible, for reasons that fall under do whatever I say." He laughed as he relaxed on his chosen bench. "Well, I am thoroughly intrigued, why wait the extra couple of hours? Let's just get you out of here now."
"We're pretty far out still. I may be reckless but I'm not stupid. I don't know if I'll be able to do anything to any of the water creatures that live out here. Closer to the shore, maybe. With my training from my clan, and the gear you gave me. As well as knowing my Core was going to fully integrate. But now, after finding out I can only use internal mana and the more powerful creatures. I am unsure of my likelihood of success."
"A clan you say?" He said ignoring me. "I didn't take you for nobility. Training, hmmm?" He tapped his chin in thought. "Military faction?"
I shook my head. "The Hinari clan served a minor noble merchant house as retainers, I was trained as an escort guard for their caravans and shipping routes."
He nodded. "Excellent. I do not doubt in my mind that you will succeed, why would I send you to your death where I couldn't even watch?"
After not getting a reaction he continued.
"I will set a marker on your map so you don't end up swimming in circles. We do have a schedule to keep, after all. I will monitor your progress, however, I will not intervene. This is a test, and it will not be a very effective one if you have an easy way out."
"Why would I want a way out?" I shrugged, both of us standing up.
I couldn't help myself from grinning internally. Mel and the description of Eternal Wrath had been right, as I felt the rage deep inside that hallway of infinite vault doors. I felt the pull again and followed its tether back now that he had full access to the first floor.
At the end of the connection, I sensed the large swirling orb of fiery orange and blood-red energy, hovering above a stone altar that took up its own massive room. It sat locked away behind one of these large steel vault doors in the Library where it couldn't bother me until I chose to deal with it.
Osiph gestured toward the balcony.
Taking a step out, I felt the cool spring breeze rushing past the ship. We were on the top floor of the massive ocean liner. He nodded as I did something dangerously stupid.
I jumped off of the balcony, without another thought as I abandoned a perfectly comfy ship, to instead go swimming, for god's knows how many miles, while also fighting off what was most likely going to be a bunch of sea creatures trying to eat me.
The stupid grin never left my face as I reinforced my body, before hitting the surface of the water below.