"Can I grant you access or something?" Every word was followed by more stabbing pain.
"Unfortunately, no, young master. The room's access was set to Moxlin alone, so only you may enter with directed access, a limitation of the head servitor not being active. I may only override such matters if she threatens the manor and is labeled as an invader by the defensive arrays."
Axl grit his teeth and slowly got up from his seat, every motion duly punished. He reached the doorway, every step added agony, and he realized that if he took one step further, he would die. The temper would collapse onto him in its entirety, and it was designed to test the limit of his body, mind and soul over several days, not all at once.
He looked back at the hammer, and Axl felt a crooked, sadistic amusement from it.
"Mind if I take you along, buddy?" Axl asked the hammer, feeling a thread of surprise coming from the tool, followed quickly by eager acceptance.
"Young master, wait," the servitor sounded alarmed. "I warn you that altering this chamber in such a way will likely destroy it. From what I gather, that pillar is holding the artifact in check for the room to perform its function, and I doubt we have access to the artistry required to repair it."
Axl would've grunted in annoyance, but didn't want the extra helping of pain that would bring, and simply looked at Aria. She had a frantic, disheveled look to her, her face contorted in genuine worry that he hadn't seen in the elf before.
"That bad?" he asked, and Aria just looked away and nodded.
Axl grabbed the hammer and lifted it from the pillar.
He nearly lost his balance, the hammer in his hand far lighter than he expected, but then it was gone from his hand. Worried something went wrong, he looked around and at the pillar, but it was nowhere. With a pained realization, he looked at his soulspace, and there it was.
He didn't have any time to consider what this meant, since the tempering continued, and just standing added tremendously to the pain. A message from the system made him pause, its ominous tone not particularly reassuring.
>>Quest: Body tempering to metal
>>Update: Peak F-Grade trial has become an untethered temper.
>>Reward: Rewards upgraded, boosted by Geas of the Weak.
>> WARNING: Untethered tempering is not system-verified.
Aria and the servitor stood aside as Axl trudged out the room, each step adding a slamming weight to the heaving of the regular pain of the tempering. The damage was steadily building, the needles into his gut starting to bleed as they tore into the muscle and skin outside his liver.
Slowly, with each step, Axl realized that he could diminish the additional damage by moving with the pain, not with the lulls between them, as he previously imagined. His whole body was thrumming in place with the surging pain, moving and stilling as he slowly closed the endless distance to the cultivation chamber, barely twenty meters stretching into an unbearable eternity.
Eventually, he made it, and he placed his hand in the center of the elaborate door, activating it, letting the servitor push them open. Aria stood to the side, eerily still, eyes wide and glaring.
Within the cultivation chamber, a storm of Mana formed a wall Axl couldn’t look within, an opaque churn. His body was now fully unlocked, he could tell now, able to wrestle any part of him from the tempering, but at great cost to both the effectiveness of the practice and his ability to survive it. He resisted turning on his healing, his ability to direct Vitality, all of that, but he absolutely needed [Mana Shroud] to help Moxlin, so he gingerly turned on the Mana-detecting ability of the Skill.
The impenetrable wall of churning air became a more sensible mess, the clashing attunements forming strands of competing Mana that Moxlin struggled to control at the center of the room. Axl gingerly held out his hand to the churning Mana, letting a lull in the pain for him to think of how to help. Then a quest notification surprised him.
>>Quest: Assistance in Lineage ascension
>>Assist in correcting Moxlin's deviated Lineage ascension, at the risk of death or deviated cultivation.
>>Reward: (none)
>>Accept? Yes/No
Axl accepted without hesitation, then waited as the quest updated.
>>Quest: Assistance in Lineage ascension
>>Assist in correcting Moxlin's deviated Lineage ascension, at the risk of death or deviated cultivation.
>>Pending approval by Moxlin.
He stood, waiting for two interminable bursts of tempering, increasingly afraid that Moxlin wouldn't accept his help, that she would want to do this on her own. But then he felt the quest click in place, accepted. If Axl could breathe out in relief, he would've.
Axl walked into the churning Mana, almost falling over at the currents that were so thick they felt like flowing water. Carefully, he approached Moxlin, seeing the sorry state of her body, and took out his best F-Grade healing potion and poured it over the little spider. It wouldn't be as effective compared to drinking it, but she couldn't afford the lapse in concentration that would bring.
Next, he sat next to her, within reach of her little legs, just outside the tight circular glyphic construct that was the fulcrum of the room's array. For the next several rounds of tempering pain, Axl simply observed the room and its Mana flow, seeing how Moxlin was bringing in the Mana into her body and molding it into an order of her own in the room. Or at least that was the goal, the Mana in the room was too unruly, fighting too effectively against her efforts.
He quietly observed, still not entirely sure of how to help, and before he noticed it, his liver tempering was completed. The second of painless reprieve was used by deepening his [Mana Shroud] and looking at the room around him, at the array's function, at how Moxlin was cycling the Mana. A new set of stabs pierced his gut, aiming at the large intestinal tract, the pain now somewhat lesser than with the liver, but more constant, the lulls not true pauses, but mere diminishing of the pain. Oddly, this felt easier to Axl, and he welcomed the change as he focused his attention on the awry cultivation churning around him.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
After a few hours of this, he noticed Moxlin tap one of her forelegs, a subtle gesture that almost threw off her concentration, but made four glyphic syllables glow in front of her. Axl understood what she meant and got up.
Slowly, with the ebb and flow of his own pain, Axl made his way to a far wall, to where a bunch of used-up flowers had been fully extinguished, not even ash left behind on the now-empty concentration node. This was the first node that he needed to refill to help balance the array again. It was a clever idea of Moxlin's, in fact, one he hadn't considered until she spelled it out for him.
Instead of weakening the array, they would strengthen it, make the Mana denser, but less clashing in its attunements. This should not only fix the deviation, but might even improve the results. There were risks, of course, the big one being that Moxlin felt confident dealing with the larger amount of Mana, if only it were somewhat less chaotic. Axl was afraid of this, but from what he saw of Moxlin's ability to deal with the existing Mana, he couldn't think of a better solution.
That first node of four he had to replace required a treasure related to earthen stability, something to quickly bring the Mana storm to heel and prepare for the next infusions. Luckily, he had just the thing in his inventory, and he brought out a handful of the branches from the tree of spiritual obsidian he'd obtained in the crossroads trial. He snapped them into tiny twigs, packing them as tightly as he could without harming their Mana, then carefully set them on the node, the construct keeping the reagents in place on its own.
Almost immediately, a dense, earthy musk filled the room, the churning Mana feeling less like rampaging water and more like churning loam. Over the next few minutes, Axl sensed Moxlin's reach extend further and further, more of the room's Mana being corralled into her control.
Slowly, Axl made his way to the second node, a single step every hour or so, sensing the timing Moxlin needed for the second correction to be made. The pace became torturous, with nothing important for him to do anymore, he had to return to balancing his mind against the pain again, and he resorted to going over and over the plans for correcting Moxlin's array, but he could feel even that minor strain redoubled his pain. Somehow, the mental effort worked against the grain of the temper.
When the large intestine tempering finished and the small intestine’s began, Axl reached the second node, glad for something to do as the pain welled up in his gut. He even had to take a few cycles of the new suffering to regain his ability to think, this step of the temper apparently redoubling the intensity of the pain again. He briefly wondered how the slit a regular cultivator was supposed to deal with this kind of thing? No wonder it had over 99% lethality, it was just the fourth step in seventeen, not even a quarter of the way done, and it felt impossible.
Regardless, Axl reached into his ribcage ring through the pain and took out the red ball of metal he'd earlier concentrated with the transmutation forge of [Gastric Cauldron], the refined F-Grade metal a decent enough source of metallic density that Moxlin needed right then. He'd hesitated on this choice, wondering if the Ulmric Tungsten was better, but the slab was far too big, and even if he managed to cut off a properly sized chunk of it, it likely would be too much for what she needed.
The ball slotted into place, and unlike the previous correction, this one caused no overt change to the ambient Mana, the metal's attunement seeped into the array itself, stabilizing it and letting Moxlin's will extend into it further than before.
Axl slowly made his way to the third node, then sat, not looking forward to the large break he needed before the third correction. Days, in fact, with nothing to do but endure. The small intestine step tempering finished, then he continued into the next ones, each one a lesson in the various flavors of agony. His reproductive system, then skin, bones, blood, and lymphatic system each came and went, his mind teetering at the edge of sanity as he oscillated between monitoring Moxlin's array, checking his rapidly deteriorating body, and the unfiltered morass of painful memories that stabbed at him worse than any mere physical agony.
Numb and with his willpower nearly drained, Axl took out a vial of corpse-rot he'd collected from Alifren as she turned undead. This was a very lucky break, a seam of fear cutting through Axl as he realized this was the perfect fit for the manifestation of desecration, and really the only thing he had on that front. If he hadn't bothered collecting the stuff, they'd have to come up with an entirely different plan.
With this addition, an ominous presence joined the Mana's churn, slowing it further, but making it seem far more dangerous, as if death itself lurked deep within the roiling folds in the air.
Moxlin was doing well, even her posture more certain as Axl risked a look at her at the center of the array. She hadn't entirely fixed the problems, and there was quite some work to be done, but the situation was rapidly improving, and her will was now evenly spread across the entire room, as it should've been from the beginning. He hoped it would be enough.
Axl made his way to the final node, and sat, continuing his own efforts as the ninth step of the tempering finished and the next began. His muscles were all targeted, and he almost died, the pain so all-encompassing and extreme, all the rigors of moving around finally coming due. Each round of pain now was compounding on each step, each twitch, no matter how small.
With this, Axl realized he wouldn't survive like this. The damage he had accumulated in addition to the intended tempering while still and in control would push him over the edge, even with his body as sturdy as it was. As if to revel in the realization, the hammer in his soulspace joyfully agreed.
His attention narrowed, focus reigned back in. In a way, his mind was rejuvenated, his will rallying at the realization of certain death. This was familiar, the kind of problem he could solve. First, he simply endured the muscle tempering, stillness in every aspect of his being, realizing he'd be useless as such huge swathes of his body were assaulted.
The next stage of the temper was his ears, nose, and throat, the pain sharper and more directed, but easier to manage, and here Axl realized there was an additional problem. He needed to activate the fourth node soon, and he wasn't quite sure what to use. Ironically, the fourth one required the purity of water, literally the most common attunement in the firmament, and he really had nothing good to use for it.
He was so averse to his water-elf nature that he'd steered clear of any water-based natural treasures, not wanting the system to get any ideas on offering him more on that front. They were so cheap back in the longhouse, he could've gotten them by the handful, and he'd not even bothered taking any of the various reagents his manor produced. Moxlin had placed them in the array originally, but they needed a bit more, quality-wise in particular.
Briefly, Axl wondered if he should leave the room and get more, or tell the servitor to get some, but he'd still need to refine them in his [Gastric Cauldron], and he was sure that would kill him with the ongoing temper.
He went through the items in his ribcage ring and other ring as well, even the G-Grade leftovers, but nothing was a good fit. Surely, he should've picked up some random thing here or there? Water was slitting everywhere, water-elves and rain-elves and river-elves the most sizable majority, even in the chaotic mess of elves in Piril. But he wasn't a water-elf anymore.
Axl smiled, realizing that was the answer. He was now an F-Grade treasure, from his new Lineage, and one part of him was most certainly very water-attuned. His fingers dug into the side of his neck, and with a wet tear, he pulled out his gills, the metal needles in his throat helping him pull away the severed flesh cleanly, even as blood freely poured down his body.