Book 2: Chapter 49: Gains II

  “You want to do what now? Oh, you really are insane, I love it.” Obby cackled in his mind in a way that had him second guessing his plan, if only for a moment.

  Uh, yeah. I figured that anything I come up with will just be subpar compared the what The System already integrated into my body by bringing me here. Upgrading something like the aether gate at my neck with the Lattice Spiral is a different beast than straight up trying to create the aether gate from scratch.

  “So you want use the soulgate… as spare parts?”

  Alex sighed and shook his head. His idea wasn’t as simply as junking is soulgate, that would be truly insane. And if he couldn’t fix Mage core, at least anytime this century, then at the very least, he could salvage something from the wreckage.

  That left him with two options.

  His Soulgate, the metaphysical bridge between body and soulspace, was a System-designed masterpiece, the perfect conduit for aether energy in a living body. So if he wanted to create an enchantment that would improve his aether flow, he had two options.

  The first option was to mimic the Soulgate’s structure. Essentially, the idea was to install a second circulatory system, but for magic instead of blood. His own magical cardiovascular system. Arteries of aether, veins of magic, a heart that pumped cultivation instead of blood.

  Was it risky? Yes, but it was also doable. He knew enough anatomy to navigate it, and he’d already started mapping out the structure using Korran’s body as a reference. It wasn’t only the glyph tattoos that Alex had been studying, he was also looking at the man’s soulgate. Probing its structure to understand the center aperture, the meridian points, and everything threaded together in between.

  His heart would act as the aperture, his arteries the meridians, and so on. He actually rather liked this first plan.

  Then there was option two. And that one… that was the reason Obby had mentally cackled like a gremlin with stolen fireworks.

  The idea was to pull the entire outer portions of his soulgate, and rerun it through his body like plumbing. He could set them in place how he liked, and they were made perfectly, as The System had built the structure. Meridian clusters would be spaced equally throughout his body, and the threaded veins expanding out from each point. It would all still be connected to the soulgate at its aperature. Since disconnecting it entirely felt suicidal.

  The soulgate may not have many uses for him anymore given that his mage core was now shattered. But it still had key functions, such as connecting him to his soulspace itself. He didn’t know what cutting that connection would do, but it didn’t just kill him outright, it certainly wouldn’t be good.

  Further, the Wyrm-heart was still nestled inside his soulspace. He didn’t fully understand the constitution ability yet, or if he even wanted to keep it long-term, but he wanted it to remain for now.

  Lastly there was the bond with Obby, severing his soulgate would mean he no longer would have the bond with the magical rock. And, he was pretty sure it would kill Obby as well. Instead, he was going to do the same thing he had done in crafting his Augmentor Spell. Use the foundation to build a different house.

  He went over everything in his mind, letting Obby see his reasoning behind it all.

  “Again, it’s insane. But its something that I’ve never heard of before. Either no one has ever tried it, or they didn’t survive to tell the tale.”

  So then, are you going to help me or not?

  “Yes, I’ll help. If not to ensure you don’t die, and thus, I don’t die, then to have a hand in putting my stone-print on System history.” Alex felt the sentient rock smile, if it could smile. Again, the mental sensations he got through their bond was wildly unsettling no matter the time that passed.

  Okay then rockboy, let’s do this.

  Alex laid out everything he’d need on the cold ground, a series of items he had scavenged from the bodies of his war victims and traded among the camp.

  He had a mixture of LatticeFlux powder and Soulweld resin, a Ghostveil Elixir, and the faintly humming aether-threaded needles he’d borrowed —totally not stolen— from the healer’s tent, and a handful of the highest-grade healing droughts he could scrounge. It looked less like preparation for enchantment, and more like he was about to commit a crime against his own anatomy. Which was exactly what he planned to do.

  Obby hummed in the back of his mind, equal parts anticipation and morbid glee. "You do realize this is where most people faint before the fun even starts, right?"

  “I’m not most people,” Alex muttered, stripping his clothes and armor off and sitting cross-legged, mentally tracing out the first meridian lines of his soulgate. “And besides, if I pass out, you’ll wake me up by screaming, right?”

  "Oh, I’ll scream," Obby said, mock-cheerfully. "Though maybe not in a helpful way."

  “Well, please try to be helpful. Your life is on the line as well, so… “

  “Yes, and that’s kind what makes this so exciting doesn’t it? Is this how your fleshy’s feel when you’re on the battlefield? It feels, tingly. I like it.”

  “Uh… sure.” He shrugged a response and picked up the jar containing his prepared mixture. It was a foul smelling solution, and his gagged as he smeared it over his body. He had Allie help him prepare it, as she was more advanced in Alchemy than himself.

  She didn’t warn him about the smell.

  Holding his breath, he pressed on anyway. The rising heat of his skin told him it was working, or he was dying, he didn’t know which. But eventually he felt the burn dive into his body and settle around his soulgate. Slowly, it heated the metaphysical construct, like a forge heating metal to be molded.

  The Elixir came next, at least it didn’t taste horrid. Alex drank the vial in one gulp, and the moment it hit his stomach, the energy flashed through his tissue and attacked the aperture of his soulgate, kneading it weakening it in a way to make it almost stretchy, elastic. It was an elixir designed to allow people to force feed their cores by bypassing the soulgate restrictions. Now, he was using it to allow him to treat it like a step-child instead, that being he was going to abuse the shit out of it.

  The first incision wasn’t a physical things, He used his glyph stylus, pressing it through his body the disgusting smelling solution he had rubbed on himself before, and cut precisely along his gate with the sharpened tip. He reached inward, gripping the severed threads of aether that formed his Soulgate’s outer lattice and pulled. It felt like dragging nerves out of his spine with pliers. Sweat broke across his forehead instantly.

  Lines of faint light unfurled under his skin, glowing veins that weren’t there before. He guided them, forcing them to spread where he wanted them, arms, legs, spine. They burned, but they obeyed his will. The smell of heated ozone filled the air, sharp and bitter.

  Every time his vision blurred, he forced himself back with sheer willpower. “Keep… moving…”

  "Oh, this is beautiful," Obby whispered, almost reverent now. "The System made those lines to stay inside, and yet here you are pulling them out like a madman tearing at loose wiring."

  He simply grunted and continued his careful work. Obby did help, highlighting pathways and clusters in his mind to give him a road map for his work. He also went back to double check the lines he already placed down, finding mistakes that Alex had to go back and correct.

  Things mostly went smooth, mostly.

  When one of the glowing threads snapped back toward his chest, Alex bit down on a scream, chest seizing. Blood pooled at the corners of his mouth, dark against the faint blue light crawling under his skin. His hands shook, but he caught the thread, anchored it back into the network.

  A meridian cluster came next, he gently held it with his energy, shifting it through his tissue like snaking a precious glass ornament through a labyrinth of jittering stone spikes. Eventually he got it settled in the back of his navel area. His barely got to breath before he moved on to the next one, spacing each meridian in a line along his spine.

  Then, yet more threads had to be routed, more veins of aether light threading through his tissues, muscles, bones, up his neck and into his brain cavity. Nothing was ignored. He was a mad plumber that was reworking every pipe in the house.

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  Hours passed in agony. Hours of rewiring himself, drawing his own magical circulatory system while every nerve begged him to stop. Potions went down his throat one after the other until his stomach churned with bitter herbs.

  Finally, he set a final thread and the last connection flared. The veins of light stabilized, running parallel to his real blood vessels and beyond. Aether thrummed through him in a steady pulse, his heart now covered in a net of ather threads, was both biological and arcane. For a moment, he felt as if he were glowing from the inside out.

  A System chime rang in his ears:

  Alex collapsed backward, breathing hard, staring at the greyscale sky. “Still alive,” he rasped.

  "You cried throughout the process, but...," Obby said, mockingly, though there was a thread of pride in the voice. "You mad bastard. You actually did it."

  Alex laughed once, weakly. “Told you. Old foundation, new house.”

  “True, well call me thoroughly impressed. You’re a fleshy boy with real balls.”

  Thanks.

  He wiped the sweat from his face and looked down at his body through his sixth sense and his aether sight. The threaded aether lines were slightly different from what he mapped out with his temporary ink markings earlier. That was simply due to the complicated nature of the soulgate, but also from Alex making changes on the fly to improve his design.

  Despite the changes, he was certain it would still work, that is, the medium for his new spell. He had been thinking ahead for exactly that, designing the spell’s medium to be his new aether-channel glyphwork meant he didn’t have to worry about the chants or focus

  “Will it still work with the changes you made?” Obby asked.

  It will work. It’ll be even better, guaranteed. These meridian points will focus and control the energy much better than my own design. It might even lessen that strain after deactivation. The level of success was better than he expected, even if the sheer amount of pain he went through was also drastically higher than he anticipated. In the end, it was worth it.

  “Good, now we can focus on the really big task. Increasing your wisdom stat!” Obby’s large eye spun rapidly in front of his face, as if trying to hypnotize him into obedience.

  Alex glanced at his experience point pool and sighed. It was just like last time, he was putting it off until the last minute. Obby was right, just as Celeste had been when she gave him the warning about constantly looking out for others instead of himself.

  Time to push forward, to make himself stronger, only himself. And a little sentient rock.

  ***

  He was already undressed due to his aether channel enchantment, so he didn’t have any reason not to move forward. So he took that plunge towards power and had fully refined each of his stats up to a base of fifteen. It took a lot of pain, and more black goo he thought physically possible to be contained inside his body by volume, but he had done it.

  “Having all stats at fifteen is a great breakthrough, it harmonizes the body, mind and soul, making everything stronger together.”

  He didn’t need Obby to explain that part, he felt it already. His body was a fine tuned machine. He could feel every tendon and muscle move as he flexed, every bone pulled as the ligaments strained against them. And the aether flow in his body was pristine, Obby’s bond, stronger than ever. The sentient rock had even started adding more details to his illusion body.

  More, horrible, terrifying, nightmare inducing details.

  But none of that was the end of cultivation in this world. There was always the next step. Which was the reason he sat looking at the cup of Spiritual Herbs and Seraph Hallow Dust. The dust was an item he had bought all the way back in the Dungeon Ship of the Dark Den. It was supposed to help with the next tribulations, after a base state of fifteen.

  It was a wonderful achievement, but he didn’t have time to celebrate.

  And you are absolutely sure I’m going to need it?

  “Without a doubt. The first is always the hardest remember. And it won’t just be painful, detox this time.” Obby confirmed.

  Alex frowned ad looked down at the small cup of brackish fluid in his hand.

  “Those first three, with the black gooey stuff, are just the beginning. That is the Refinement Tribulation, or the Water Tribulation. Simple enough process really.” Obby’s lanky thing-body began drawing a diagram in the air. He ended up encircling an image of the numbers 5/10/15, in a water glyph. He then formed another set showing 20/25/30, and encircled them in an earth glyph. “The next three will be the Earth Tribulations, or the Enduring Tribulations. These will be actually dangerous, like you can die if you can’t handle them, unlike the refinement tribulations.”

  Okay, I get it. I just wish these cultivation processes could be less… gross? Humiliating? Fucked up?

  “You and the whole universe meatboy, now hurry and chop-chop.” Obby wiped away the images he had produced and clapped his ‘hands’ together. Alex heard a clapping noise, even though the body wasn’t even real.

  Bottom’s up.

  He drank the Seraph Dust concoction in one go and brought up the info he needed from his status screen.

  The liquid settled in his stomach, but hadn’t activated, not yet at least. He took a deep breath, and mentally started spending experience points once again. His Willpower climbed up to the point he felt the change, causing him to mentally waver, unsure.

  And then the world somehow, someway, flipped itself inside out.

  It wasn’t a flash, or a surge, instead it felt like something inside his bones decided to turn into knives and start carving its way out from inside him. Alex felt his veins burned, as if something denser than molten lead was being injected into them with the world’s largest possible syringe.

  Alex doubled over on the floor, the cup clattering away forgotten. His vision began suddenly tunneling to visions of black-and-gold pinpoint fractures that spiraled wildly. The aether energy contained in his body which was just a second ago a smooth harmonious river, suddenly slowed to a painful crawl, grinding like stones in a mill.

  "Oh, this is beautiful," Obby whispered, disturbingly delighted. "The Earth Tribulation has begun."

  He couldn’t respond. His jaw locked as his muscles seized, pulling tight as if every tendon wanted to snap. The black sludge of refinement had been awful, like purging tar, but this was worse. His body wasn’t pushing out corruption; it was imploding on itself. Every part of him was being crushed, and compacted. It was if he was being destroyed and reforged at the same time, as if the System was trying to turn him into a diamond by sheer pressure.

  His heart thundered in his chest. And he felt as if it was literally beating heavier, every pulse sent shockwaves of dense, thick blood through every inch of his frame. He swore he could hear his own bones creaking under the pulsating waves.

  Then came the hallucinations, or maybe not hallucinations, maybe it was something real. He felt himself sinking into an endless cavern of rock, surrounded by stone pressing inward, layer by layer. The weight of the earth above him was suffocating. The pressure whispered into his skull, taunting him, Do you endure? Or do you break?

  Through the crushing dark, Obby’s voice cut in, faint but present. "Keep breathing, meatboy. It’s called the Enduring Tribulation for a reason. You endure. Don’t let it snap you."

  Alex grit his teeth, forcing air into his lungs despite the pain. Every breath was a battle, every exhale a roar. Time stopped meaning anything; there was only weight, pain, and the stubborn, furious thought that he would not break.

  Somewhere far off, the Seraph Dust concoction sitting in his stomach finally stirred. The liquid which was also being subjected to the pressure inside him, sudden solidified, then exploded inside him, sending ripples of energy outward. As the ripples moved through his tissues, the earth-pressure buckled slightly, like the world itself acknowledged the pulse.

  Then, with a final cracking sound, like stone splitting under strain, the weight lifted. Aether surged back into him in a violent rush, filling every crushed space, expanding him, reforging him. His body hummed in rejoice.

  Alex collapsed back, staring at the sky once again, chest heaving. Every part of him hurt, but beneath that pain was something else, solidity. His body felt like it had been carved from rock. Heavy, grounded, unyielding.

  Obby chuckled low in his head, sounding almost impressed. "See? Congratulations, you survived the first Earth Tribulation."

  He groaned. “That… sucked. Is it always that intense?”

  "Oh, no, the tribulation gets easier each time, just like before. Even Earth Tribulation don’t typically kill you when you fail them though, even if its possible. Typically they just cause permanent petrification of certain areas of the body. Joints, usually, or around the area of the essence gate.”

  Alex thought back to Duke Orien Velcryn and the strange arcane techno-prosthetics the man had on his legs. Was it possible that the Duke had undergone an Earth Tribulation and had somehow failed, if not completely than partially, requiring him to live the rest of his days searching for a way to reverse his fate?

  He couldn’t help then thinking of Celeste and her cracked mage core. Of the unfairness of the Heavenly System above and its unrelenting trials, test, and tribulations. How many people either perished, or were forever changes for the worse because of The System’s apathetic approach to life and the pursuit of power?

  Are the Earth Tribulations where most people fail?

  “Usually anyone who made it through the Water Tribulation refinements, will have a high success rate in the Enduring Tribulations. But partial failures are common, total failures are far more rare. The Wind Tribulations though, that’s where it gets worse."

  He rolled onto his side, a shaky laugh slipping out despite himself. “Of course it does. It always gets worse.”

  Still trembling, he sat up. There was no celebration, just the quiet certainty that he had taken another step forward. One painful, insane step closer to being strong enough to face what was coming.

  But he wasn’t done yet, there was still more he had prepared.