Vision of the Progenitor flared as his aura ignited.
He surveyed the scene: the caves, illuminated in hues of orange and red, opened up into a cavern the size of a football pitch. Numerous cave mouths and crevices lined the shadowy walls behind him, while the lip of the plateau dropped off towards what Ori remembered was a perilous cliff, hundreds of feet deep. He moved before the demons, grouped in threes and fours, fully registered his presence. Each demon, coated with dust and grease, was as much armoured by hardened slabs of muscle and fat as by any iron plate or leather armour. They were a ragged bunch, seven feet tall, resembling bovine-looking barbarians, yet their physical appearance was no less imposing. Behind them was a creature that had haunted him since entering the Crucible. Less than half the size of the rest with a strangely boyish face, the Imp cocked its head at Ori as he appeared outside the Crucible. Wasting no more time, Ori aligned the tip of Seraphine’s Beacon with the Imp and Channel Lightning, aspected with his transcendent affinity.
The slender lightning bolt instantly covered the two hundred feet to his target. Coloured in an unusual prismatic light, the spell appeared oddly subdued; even the snapping thunder was less than Ori had expected. And for a moment, he and all the surrounding demons thought his attack a mistake, a childish overestimation as it struck the Imp out in the open.
However, after he ceased channelling just a second later, the targeted Imp seemed to disintegrate. It was as if Thanos had snapped the grotesque infernal creature out of existence, its ashes glowing with a silvery, burning iridescence, portraying a final beauty in death that it never showed in life.
It was a creature of the Nascent rank, at least twenty-five levels higher than Ori’s zero, and who knew how many years of toil and effort to reach its station. And it died without knowing, its expression of mild curiosity lasting longer in Ori’s memory than it did so as it disintegrated.
Ori was, if not impressed, then at least momentarily taken aback as the surrounding demons displayed confusion and wariness rather than the unthinking rage and aggression he had anticipated.
Seizing the moment, Ori slid behind the stone wall that Crucible had conjured from the floor for cover. His seemingly defensive manoeuvre spurred his assailants into action; they drew weapons and their shouts escalated as Ori assessed their speed, he could feel the ground tremble under the weight of their charge, the ashy hot air alive with cries of wrath.
He watched for any unforeseen ranged attacks and then reacted. Arcane Hands materialised in the blind spots of three foes, his Split Mind coordinating their movements. Unbeknownst to their weilders, knives were unsheathed and with vicious intent, turned against their owners.
Surprised shouts and cries halted the charging group as phantasmal hands stabbed repeatedly. Their knives and shivs plunged into the hollows of shoulders and sliced exposed necks into ribbons of bloody flesh, with brief fountains of blood erupting from opened arteries.
As the nearest three demons died, some renewed their charge towards Ori’s position, while others futilely attempted to combat his phantasmal appendages.
At the nearest one, Ori summoned his fourth and final hand, testing the might of an ethereal construct empowered by his will, against the mass of a galloping demon. Its charging presence was more akin to that of a bull as it raised its massive, black sword—a slab of metal four feet long and almost a foot wide—into the air, preparing to cleave Ori in two. Ori’s hand appeared around the demon's neck, its body halting against the sudden, semi-corporeal appendage as if caught on a wire. Ori marvelled as he felt the greasy texture of the demon's meaty flesh, its oily sweat, the swallowing of its throat, even the pulse of its carotid artery as if it were right in front of him instead of ten yards away. His hand wasn’t quite large enough to encircle the creature's entire neck, but as he lifted the being off the ground, a second hand joined after finishing its bloody work on the demon's comrade. Ori could feel the moment the demon's Adam's apple crunched under the growing pressure of his grip. He continued to squeeze, a force and pressure Ori had yet to fully test, as flesh and vertebrae gave way under his vice-like grip. Combat once again slowed, as if in witness to the spectacle of a seven-foot, Awakened demon lifted a foot above the ground, its spasming legs turning sickeningly still as its neck suddenly popped, its head lolling before tearing off from the rest of its body, collapsing to the ground along with the body in a bloody heap.
Driven by his affinity for Modern Warfare, Ori shifted his stance. From a cautious, but successful first strike, he had moved to probing attacks that allowed him to gauge his strength, then learning that he was more than a match for the remaining foes before him. In a heartbeat, his objective shifted from survival to total victory as he silently cycled through various tactics.
Determined to let none escape, Ori raised Seraphine’s Beacon and called upon the Nascent Lightning wand’s will fragment to unleash Chain Lightning aspected with his inherent affinity towards the creatures furthest from him. The lightning, tinted with the same prismatic aspect, emitted more of a muffled hiss than the expected thunder, manifesting as a branching tendril that struck four of the furthest demons.
These demons had hesitated, undecided whether to charge, flee, or cautiously surround him. Their weariness and intelligence were concerning, but as his weaker area-of-effect spell struck, a similar burning disintegration followed, removing four more Awakened infernal demons from fate. Nine out of the original fourteen demons, including the imp, had perished, with the remaining five growing desperate. Driven by fear and rage, they charged with maximum offence, choosing decisive aggression as their only way out.
It was then that Ori finally moved. He remembered Poppy’s void dance, steps he could not replicate on his own, a rhythm to a dance he could not remember, but it did not matter. His peak mortal physique, his two-fold-unified dexterity, and his Vision of the Progenitor combined to move him faster and more accurately than his Awakened foes. The wide ledge of the cave provided ample space for him to momentarily kite his adversaries while his wand recharged and his Arcane Hands resumed their bloody work.
They clipped feet and bashed limbs, causing demons weighing over two hundred pounds to stumble in their charge. He poked at eyeballs and twisted weapons out of grips; his manipulation and manifestation of his hands during combat improved with every action.
One of the demons, either by activating an ability or focusing its breath, suddenly accelerated, its speed far surpassing that of the rest of the demons and Ori's own. It then distracted Ori by throwing a knife at him, its small, dull, spinning form no less lethal than a slice from a sword. An Arcane Hand reacted, swatting it from the air reflexively, before disappearing and reappearing with its grip tight upon the charging demon's helmet, tugging it downwards with all the force Ori could muster. The demon, unaccustomed to such speed and with reduced balance, faceplanted into the rocky dirt due to the leverage Ori's Arcane Hands could produce. Ori's intent, strong enough to crack the skull and break the demonic horn under the pressure of one chimeric hand, flattened the face and iron helm into something unrecognisable, turning its bulk into an obstacle for the chasing pack behind it. However, after placing too much attention on controlling two sets of Arcane Hands, Ori had lost situational awareness. Behind him approached the end of the open plateau with his space to manoeuvre rapidly dwindling.
With his real hands, Ori once again lifted his wands. Choosing to see the difference in effect, Ori this time used Chain Lightning, aspected only with his standard lightning affinity. It blasted out of him in a flash of blue actinic light, its intensity both in sound and light enough to daze him as the spell struck, it cooked flesh and caused nerve and muscle to spasm. The smell of ozone and burning hair filled his nostrils as the echo of its thunder was broken only by the sounds of the moaning, twitching monsters. As the final four demons convulsed on the ground, incapacitated, Arcane Hands armed with swords and knives finished the fight the same way a butcher would dress a pig.
And then everything slid into a deathly calm.
Ori lowered himself into a combat squat, his expression impassive as he surveyed his bloody harvest. With Split Mind, he used one part of his awareness to watch for any activity or attention that his fight might have attracted. Meanwhile, another part of his focus observed the sea of Peritia off-gassing from the expired corpses. More emerged from the air around them, swirling to gather into him and then through him. Feeling it interact with him, so close to awakening as he was, he could imagine the legends of his Demon Bane and Duælist accolades growing, while the Peritia that should have nourished his soul sped away from his form.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Ori watched the flow move towards a direction beyond the edge of the rocky plateau. Before he moved, using the final part of his Split Mind, he examined his mental state in the way Lady Seraphine instructed him to after extended periods of mana use. Despite the rapid spell casting, Ori should have felt mentally drained but due to either his Mana Nexus, his refinement, or mind characteristic points that were substantially higher than when he'd first learned spellcraft, he felt fine. Perhaps better than fine as he was not even physically winded from the roughly twenty seconds of high-intensity sprinting and spell-casting. He shook his head, deciding to shelf those thoughts for now.
Looking at the steaming corpses staining the ground, Ori considered his emotional state. Although he should have been disturbed by the blood, the stink of burning flesh, and released bowels, and to some extent he was, Ori couldn't quite understand the calm he felt. The shakes that had always accompanied his adrenaline rush were gone, replaced only by a mild tenseness in his muscles that he couldn't quite relax. He wondered if this was part of his humanity that had been burnt away in the Crucible, or merely weakness, then questioned what the difference was, or if it even mattered.
Beyond such existential questions which he had no time for at the moment, Ori's predominant mood was elation. He had been actively suppressing it, but now he allowed one part of his mind to fully luxuriate in the feeling of victory. Despite being outnumbered fourteen to one by opponents who were physically stronger on paper and armed only with a handful of wands and his Dreamwalker's Ward, he had dealt with them quite literally without breaking a sweat. It was hard not to become cocky, to carry the wrong lessons forward and overestimate himself in future battles. But beyond the fact that he had won—and winning was, obviously, good—was the sense that survival no longer seemed so hopeless.
That seed of hope, which had ignited as a tiny flame in his mind ever since meeting Seraphine, was fuelled by bloody-minded determination. Now, evidence of progress acted like gasoline, making that small candle flame burn like a forest fire, while a certainty that he would escape this place crystallised with diamond clarity. It wasn’t just pure willpower and belief; his fledgling combat experience now enabled him to visualise how he could escape, planning actions and reacting to possibilities as they unfolded.
Vision of the Progenitor cast its gaze over the bodies of his fallen adversaries, searching for enchantments this time. Many of the weapons and some scraps of armour bore minor enchantments, such as sharpness or durability enhancers, but something caught his eye as he returned to the spot where he had vaporised the Imp. Only grey dust remained of its flesh, while some scraps of fabric and bands of metal lay in various states of disrepair. Among them, was a ring, its enchantments still intact—an enchantment Ori had studied in detail before leaving the last trial.
He scraped off the remaining flecks of cooked flesh and examined the ring with his sight. The void-aspected spatial storage item was an intermediate enchantment designed for High Enchanters, as the complexity and steps required for safe verification of the enchantment's function took time and a level of skill Ori didn’t believe he had reached. Even still, Ori would have prioritised learning and crafting the enchantment if the stored items had remained within after soul-bonding the crafted artefact and taking it with him beyond the final trial. As that was not the case, and the version of the spatial storage item that did allow stored items to travel through fate was far more complex, Ori had passed on the endeavour, focusing his attentions on wards and enchantment breaking.
But with such a ring now in his possession, the utility of a small space to store weapons and food indefinitely within a time-frozen environment was obvious.
After confirming that the enchantment was untampered with, Ori doused the object with as much Purifying Light as his Mana Nexus could channel, instantly cooking the ground surrounding him. As the intensity of the light annihilated dead flesh and dried blood within a radius of five yards, Vision of the Progenitor captured the moment a curse was dispelled from the artefact—likely a nasty surprise left for anyone foolish enough to steal the Imp’s possession, Ori suspected. His Purifying Light funnelled into the enchantment's void space as if reaching inside, its radiance suddenly swallowed by the ring's inner space as the spell burnt away stored flesh and trophies that Ori feared to identify.
Satisfied, Ori inspected the contents while wearing the artefact on his little finger.
It was an odd sensation as his awareness sensed items within the void. They were arranged almost in a three-dimensional grid, neat and orderly, with like-items grouped for easy assessment. Several stacks of coins, gold, silver and copper, each forming a larger respective pile in the grid, each one could be accessed, taking out the entire, or individual pieces as Ori desired. Other forms of currency were scattered around the grid, Each coin stamped with the sigil of a long-forgotten realm, suggesting transactions with cultures or entities best left alone. There were shards of obsidian glass, sharp and gleaming faintly with residual magic, likely used for scrying or other nefarious purposes. Wands, sources and spell-crafting paraphernalia with a distinctive necrotic aura littered the floating grid in the void, while innocuous materials, perhaps reagents or ritual components took up the majority of the used slots.
Further exploration revealed a small, intricately carved box, humming with an aura of malevolence. Ori hesitated but then, driven by both necessity and curiosity, opened it. Inside, he discovered a set of ancient scrolls, their edges frayed and ink faded but still pulsing with dark energy. These scrolls contained spells of binding and banishment, likely stolen from a witch or warlock unfortunate enough to cross paths with the Imp.
Knowing he had no affinity towards these magics, Ori returned the box to the depths of the ring, his mind now turning towards finding Freya and continuing his escape.
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"Hello little glow bug," Ori said as he crouched at the cliff's edge overlooking the lava lake below. Following the trail of Peritia that had flowed from him after combat, Ori had found the spot his Bondweaver instincts confirmed to be his familiars location. As a non-corporeal entity, she could move through unenchanted objects as if they weren’t there, phasing through rock with ease as long as no magic interfered with her passage.
‘Took you long enough,’ said the clipped, internal female voice that filled many of his recent dreams. Ori was suddenly overwhelmed, fighting an urge to hug the frail-looking butterfly, realising just how much he had missed her actual presence and feared his dreamwalking dreams had been just that. The glowing figure, though greatly faded from the version in his dreams, rose out of the ground like a ghostly, prismatic butterfly.
"You alright?" Ori asked his relief and joy in reunion turning into concern as he took into account her diminished appearance.
‘Don't mind that. I chanced a tiny bit of mana used to scry on our erstwhile captors. Ori, I'm literally one percent away from the Peritia needed to evolve. I feel… I feel…’ Freya said, her excitement crumbling into something more vulnerable, her emotions overwhelming her typically stoic demeanour.
"It’s okay, let’s get out of here."
‘Oh? Since when did you learn the layout of this place?’
"I haven’t, just figured with this ring, I should go back to raid the armoury," Ori said, flashing his newly acquired storage artefact.
‘Hmmm, I would have cautioned you about rifling through the very likely booby-trapped belongings of your adversaries, though it seems like you got lucky.’
"Ha, no luck required, just a lot of Purifying Light. Got rid of some curses and some of the nasty stuff too, though if you’ve got any more words of wisdom or insight into anything I might have missed, I’m all ears?"
‘It is likely tracked by karmic ties, as infernal demons do like to keep track of their minions.’
"Right," Ori said, as his eyes flared, his bondweaver and Fate affinity peering deep into the artefact in question, searching for threads that led beyond… "And found something, should I cut it?"
‘No, not yet, not until we move beyond these levels so as not to raise alarm.’
"Alright, well, I need to get me some loot. I’ll fill you in on my plan as we go."
‘Very well, use your inner voice, and while I’m honoured to see you replicating my corona, such a light show at your scale is far too conspicuous.’
"I literally have no idea why it looks like I’m burning or how to turn it off," Ori said.
“Oh,” Freya said in confusion.
‘Any ideas?’
‘Have you tried making yourself less… well, visible?’
"I mean…" Ori began, but as soon as he willed it, his corona, as Freya had described it, faded, along with his additional arms and the celestial glow of his eyes. Ori wanted to pout.
‘Good enough. Like so much to do with magic, most of it can be done with enough will. Now tell me about this so-called plan of yours.’
Just before they could leave the plateau, a rumble caused Ori to glance behind him towards the entrance of the Crucible, or at least, what had once been the entrance. The door sank into the floor, and the wall it had erected as cover collapsed in on itself, turning into wet sand.
‘Oh yeah, almost forgot,’ Ori said to Freya, whose form zipped into Ori's forehead in mild confusion and panic. Ori casually made his way to where the doorway had been. The stone pyramid construct that had once sprouted from the ground sank with the doorway, its form shrinking until only a rough stone floor remained, along with another metallic ring, this time a dull copper that seemed to almost disappear into Ori's skin as he picked it up.
Vision of the Progenitor attempted to glean insights into the object but was confronted by a tight knot of tightly interwoven enchantments at a density that Ori considered somewhere close to that of a microchip. Expecting a smug declaration or abrasive quip about its superiority, Ori was strangely disappointed when all he sensed was silence from the artefact that had radically transformed him over the last three weeks, even though it had told him to expect otherwise.
Shrugging, Ori slipped the ring onto a finger on his left hand, next to the little finger that contained his looted storage artefact.
"Let’s go," Ori said, as he left behind the location that had been the source of so many mixed memories.