Aetherios System: Whirlwind

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: