Chapter 74: Assembly
Valens locked himself in the room after the shower. He weaved a Blockage around the door for good measure. He wasn’t sure what awaited him beyond the Gate of Surges, but with a former Wailborn in the house, and the old, dusty walls of his room, he decided he couldn’t be too cautious with his arrangements.
The bed creaked when he poured himself over to it, partly since focusing on the frequencies of his chest cavity was almost like an out-of-body experience. He might as well make himself comfortable in the process.
Think of it as a meditation session. Clear the mind, and clear your chest. Deep, long breaths.
He took each of them with focus, feeling a gentle calm settle over his mind, immersing himself in the rhythm of his breaths. Then with a tap of his hand he sent a Lifeward into his chest cavity, followed by a Hexsurge tailing it quickly. He watched the mana strings worm a silent way across to the deep nothingness that nestled in his chest, and slowly, the frequencies painted a picture in his mind.
It was a door. The Gate of Surges, to be precise, the alien alloy with which it had been constructed gleaming with a metallic hue. On its face was a great circular array, sprawling outward like veins from a heart. The Void Sphere cocked in the middle of it pulsed slightly as if it felt Valens’s touch upon its surface.
The world within, is it?
Valens sent the Hexsurge threads into the string-like threads across the door. The multiple facets of it, the spheres circling the Void Sphere in the midst of them, remained muted save for the single one shining a weak light down near the leftmost corner.
The last time he tried to open this door, his mana proved insufficient, but that was him trying to brute force his way to the other side. Now, the Hexsurge threads found the little crevices unseen to his mind’s eye. They leaked inside through them like the waves of a fog. They filled the dark sphere from within.
Its light grew harsh in moments. Valens nearly sighed at the efficiency of his new skill. It used more mana than a Lifesurge, sure, but there was something insidious about those threads unlike the bursting vitality of lifemana. They carried the unmistakable touch of Void inside of them.
Too complex, and yet it feels simple. Then again, the System acknowledged my mastery over this skill as just Basic while I’m considered a Master on most of my old skills. But this Void… It feels like it has close ties to the Spiritum. The boundaries between the frequencies there are different. Layered, and squashed in a way that remains separate from each other, but not entirely disconnected.
The Necromancer’s web was the most clear application of Void that he had ever seen until he came across the world of Spiritum. Hundreds of creatures had been bound to him through a web of dimensions that could be used to fuel them with mana, and relay the commands of a mind like a network. Yet, Valens cut through those layers as easily as carving a block of dirt from the ground with his Lifesurges.
He didn’t have a tight control over that web. He wasn’t aware that I infiltrated the layers, at all. That’s likely something he was given, not a skill that he learned by himself.