Chapter 8 - Rune Cage
By afternoon, Liesel was back in the Saffron Helm. After submitting her job, she went to the market to get things for the next step of fixing her soul—Ash-Binding Spell.
It was late into the evening when she finally managed to copy the spell perfectly on the evocation paper. It took her over two hours, and about half of the evocation spellbook's pages were scraped, littering the floor.
Learning the basics of spellcraft was a necessity in the academy. It was a rigorous course that lasted over two months, and a mandatory one.
Liesel wanted to be one of two crucial branches of the military: White Crusaders who fought demons in the depths of their territory and kept the Inceptus and the whole of the empire safe. She had even enrolled in the course with that preference and had been trained to be one of them, until her broken soul manifested.
Most of those courses designed for the mightiest warriors of the empire over four years had been wasted, and now she felt a little dismayed by her deteriorated copying skill. It should have taken her a minute or so, but that was just the reality of unpracticed skill.
"Done?" Auram asked, leaning over Liesel's head like she was staring down a cliff.
Liesel nodded. She was feeling a bit anxious. If it didn't work, she had been played by the Custodian. But she also hoped it didn't. She'd be free from whatever the Custodian intended for her, too, and she had not invested enough to feel compelled to partake in his machinations.
"Are you going to evoke it now?"
Liesel shook her head. "It's the last part of the equation. A Sealing Spell. Currently, my entire soul is tainted by Ashdust. If I try to seal it as it is, my entire soul would be ripped to shreds, and I'd die in misery."
First, she cleaned out the floor. And then she opened the sealed container. Mist fell out of it. Inside the container, there were two vials of liquid.
"These are standard attribute enhancement potions. Fairly expensive, but a necessary part of the equation," Liesel said. She picked up one; it contained a milky white liquid. "They can basically double my attributes for a few minutes."
"Uh... That echoes death."
"Most of it is very concentrated Materiality, mixed with the essence of attributes. Essence rarely comes from dead things," Liesel nodded. "One is to raise my Perception attribute beyond the first threshold, which would grant me the ability to see my soul in its entirety, and..." she gestured at the other container. It had a water-like liquid, but the vial was twice as thick. "That's a Control Attribute potion. My control attribute is very high. That's what makes it possible to fight and abuse Materiality Enforcement so effectively and efficiently. Still, I am not confident that, in the minute I will have to see my soul, I'd be able to gather all the Ashdust at one spot, and concentrate it even further. So I am going to raise it as a fail-safe."
"This one," Auram pointed at the clear liquid, "it's maliciously dangerous. Despite the sealed vial, I can feel the current inside it. Feels as though my wings are about to crumble to dust. I think you should just use multiple perception enhancers rather than drink whatever abomination is in that vial."
The Control Attribute Enhancer was expensive, so much so that she had to put the Captain's Crest as collateral. It was the second hardest attribute to enhance. The Crest would sell for quite the sum in the collector's market, especially in the Iron League, far removed from the Soul Seeker's Branch that solely existed in the imperial core.
"It doesn't work like that. Once the effect of one enhancement wears off... I'd have to live through the recoil. Most of my soul veins that channel Materiality through my body will collapse as soon as the enhancement potions cease. It would take almost a week to recover enough to use magic again. And if I don't use the spell before that happens, the ashdust would spread throughout my soul again. So basically, unless I use both of these, I can't make any progress," Liesel said. "If you do need an assurance, the total value of raise attributes shouldn't exceed my mental fortitude."
"They don't?" Auram raised her brow. "Even though you are using two."
"My control attributes sit at seventeen, and perception at eight. Compared to thirty-three in my mental fortitude," Liesel grinned as Auram's eyes widened. She doubted the spirit knew what those values meant, and probably used the context of the two values to assess the third. It wasn't as simple. Mental Fortitude couldn't be enhanced by anything. It had to be natural, and that was untrue for every other attribute, whether they be physical or mental.
"Your numbers are so unbalanced."
"They are what they are. I have had little say in how they develop," Liesel said. She had tried her best to keep her attributes well-paced, but her deformities made that impossible. Her Control Attribute developed due to the Enforcement abuse. Perception was impossible to raise without having a Materiality Core. So she was stuck, and she had no clue why her Mental Attributes were so high.
"That sounds great then... but even so, it feels dangerous. Wait, I'll go and talk to the Custodian. There has to be a better way."
"It's fine. He gave me the knowledge that I needed. I should be responsible for myself from here on," Liesel waved her hand dismissively. "But you should leave now. I need to focus."
"Please don't just die," Auram said. She vanished, leaving behind a puff of smoke.
Liesel meditated for the next few minutes, slowly discarding all the thoughts swirling inside her mind. Once her mind was calm, she uncorked the first vial and swallowed the bitter, burning liquid that was as opposite to the milk appearance as possible. She picked up the other vial, and her entire body thrummed from the Materiality currents hissing from the liquid as soon as she opened it. There was no time to worry. The Control Attribute was the most dangerous and equally as important. It was the reason that even without much energy, she could stand toe to toe with people of a higher tier than her. It was almost an unfair attribute if you could control it.
As the thin liquid touched her tongue, her entire body recoiled from pain, as if lightning was unraveling every fibre of her being. She pushed the liquid down her throat regardless.
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It turned into vapour before it even reached her stomach, entering her Soul Veins, and went into her mind. She could follow it so naturally that it took a moment to realize it was the effect of her rising perception.
[Perception temporarily raised to 16
Control temporarily raised to 34]
Liesel closed her eyes. It took a moment for her to reel in her expanding sense and focus it only on her soul. She could see it, her soul. This was the first time she had seen it, but it shouldn't be the last if she could perform her job correctly.
Her soul was an amorphous blob in the same spot as her chest, but in a different shade of reality, the grey shade of the soul. It was filled with translucent energy that was Materiality. From the blob, hundreds of tendrils spread outward, twisting and weaving into a form that looked like a human body, missing all the flesh, bones, and skin. And it shouldn't be that way. Her Soul should have an identical form to her physical body. That would be a perfect Soul-Form. Very few were born with it. Most people had a partial form, which didn't have an outer shell, skin. And Soul veins inside it.
At the very least, the incomplete Soul Form was a necessity to cultivate your Materiality. It provided a container to hold the Materiality and eventually create a Materiality core. Liesel's deformed soul had very little space, and as such, it could only contain a tiny amount of energy.
Liesel channeled Materiality throughout her Soul Veins, finally able to see how the Materiality flowed inside her soul. She knew in theory, of course, but seeing it was a marvel that she couldn't afford to appreciate.
Even now, her soul was filled with Materiality. And to exorcise the ashdust that created lumps in her soul veins, the first step was to squeeze all of the Materiality into a single spot into a pseudo-core. It would require about the same technique as the one used to form the Materiality core.
She spun the Materiality into an orb inside her soul as she applied force on the outer edges. Slowly, she squeezed it into denser and denser form. The goal was to make it dense enough that it could interact with the ashdust, which itself was a very heavy Essence.
It took a lot of energy to condense all the Materiality into a semi-solid core that remained intact even when she dropped the control to hold it together. And yet, it was still not a Materiality Core in the true sense. This was nebulous core, the stage where most ascendants would presume her to be. And she could have done this a long time ago, but what good would it have done when her soul was tainted by the ashening?
Liesel resumed applying pressure.
The orb spun and shrank, and then her control slipped. The trapped Materiality exploded outward, lashing onto her soul form. Her entire body and mind froze momentarily, and then she resumed. Liesel had been expecting something like that. She didn't have the luxury of being patient and methodical. Bruteforcing one of the most critical steps of soul cultivation was bound to be painful. She was a little more reckless now, aware that the outcome did take away some of the hesitation. A nerve in the back of her mind was burning in agony. It was warning of the backlash that was about to begin.
Once it was there, about two-thirds the size of the blob that was her soul, she stopped spinning the orb, but kept the force on it steady. She released the pressure from a tiny spot, and a tendril of Materiality leaked out from it. It was less like the fast-moving energy she was used to. It was heavy. She did it in another spot and then latched her control onto both tendrils. She spun them together and squeezed them tightly until they were twined into one. She pushed it back into the nebulous core.
She repeated that process over and over again. The translucent shade of the orb slowly grew darker and denser. The liquid itself was becoming more viscous. And the specks of ashdust were rising to the surface from it. Soon, she reached the point where releasing the pressure on a spot didn't immediately leak the Materiality.
Liesel increased the pressure, squeezing the Materiality Orb. Stop. Being so close to theoretically forming a Soul Core, Liesel was tempted, but that was not the goal today. Such a high Control attribute could allow her to form the Hardened Core, despite having half the quantity of Materiality as the poorest Ascendant did, but that would only hinder her in the future. She had to be patient.
For now, she focused on the actual goal. She drew tendrils of Materiality and spread them into every vein of her Soulform, one at a time. When the viscous Materiality met the asdust, it trapped it inside. Where it had hardened into a knot, she had to strike it until it dissolved into the tendrils. She repeated that process over and over. Her headache grew worse, urging her to act faster.
Her nebulous core was tainted grey soon from the ashdust in her body. It was dark ash-grey by the time all of the cursed particles were absorbed into it. It looked ill.
Now, to expel the Ash-Dust from the nebulous core, Liesel started spinning the core again.
The final part was to gather all of the ashdust on the surface, and then gather it into a tiny spot. Then, Liesel drew out a tendril of Materiality from that spot. Grey as ash and nothing like the rest of the translucent Materiality. She squeezed at the base of the tendril, cutting it off from the rest of the energy orb. And then she squeezed it into a tooth-sized orb. That was all the ashdust had been in her soul. It only took this to thoroughly destroy her bright future.
She opened her eyes. The nerves on her hand were red and visible through the skin. It took a little effort to reach for the spell parchment. Her hands were covered with sweat. Some of the healed wounds had torn open, and now she was bleeding from here. At least, she had the foresight to take off her clothes. She directed the Materiality into her finger and evoked the spell. The runes on the pages lit up, and then materialized into reality.
Liesel closed her eyes and felt them through her enhanced senses. She drew the runes into her soul. She had seen the diagram. There were six runes, and they'd trap the ashdust in a cube form. First, she formed a square with four flat sides and let it hang in her Soulform. And then aligned the two runes in parallel right below the Ash-Dust-infused Materiality. Applying pressure on the Ash-Dust to keep it still in one spot, she pushed it into the rune square. As the book had said, the ashdust finally lashed out like it had a will of its own. She felt its rage, directly at her. Her veins burned in pain. But she lifted the parreled runes, trapping it inside the rune cube.
It was easy, all things considered, but some part of her had been worried it might explode again. Just like that, she was free from her curse. She could grow like any Ascendant. She could be better than them.
Liesel opened her eyes. Would this spell work on the actual curse itself?
Isa's pained walk still lingered in the back of her mind. More than likely, she was replacing her mother, for whom she couldn't do anything, with Isa. Does it matter if it can help her?
If she was feeling any different after purifying her soul from the Ash-Dust, she couldn't tell. For now, her mind and body were burning in pain. She was losing her ability to even move. There was a burned mark in the middle of her chest, and it sizzled on her flesh. It should turn into a tattoo that would go away when she destroyed the sealing runes.
[Nebulous Core Formed!
Materiality Capacity increased: 40-->70 (The growth will manifest over time)
You can now Cultivate an Archetype:
Select a skill from available options to open a path.]
[Assassin: Binding Shackle
Warrior: Ironbind
Caster: Blank Shot [Not enough Materiality to use, but other requirements are met]
.
.
.]
[Due to your highly unusual circumstances and high Control attributes, as well as control over Soul, a forgotten Skill has been made available:
Weaver Archetype Skill: Soul Unravelling
Unravel the souls of your prey and absorb their Materiality, Cultivation, and Aspects
Attribute Requirement:
Control: 15
Mental Fortitude: 23
Dominion: 1]