Malevolent Warlock: Sin Of Eternity

As time slowly passed inside the tunnel, Levi went from throwing a tantrum every single day to doing so every hour.

The test was grueling.

Sitting in one place doing nothing of substance for even a single month was hard. Three years was another thing entirely. Levi clearly hadn't signed up for this mentally and it showed with every outburst that bounced off the cave walls.

But as Levi slowly went insane, Leon sat there unfazed.

His mind was his toughest attribute, forged through countless experiences until time had stopped being something that pressed against him.

It was only a measure.

Three months passed.

Then four.

Soon half a year was gone.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

At this point Levi seemed to have finally given up.

The tantrums stopped. The cursing stopped. It coiled into itself and began secreting a strange sticky liquid, coating its own body in it slowly until it was sealed inside a makeshift cocoon.

Leon watched it for a second.

"Finally some quiet."

He settled deeper into position and closed his eyes.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

He hadn't been idle all this time.

The transcendent stage was just within his grasp and he needed a solid foundation under him before it landed. This wasn't a stage to stumble into carelessly.

It was fundamental.

At the transcendent stage a cultivator changed in their very essence. Not just their output or their techniques but what they were at the core level.

The mechanism of that change was the magic well.

A reservoir formed from within, filled with magic, sitting inside the cultivator like a second organ. One that couldn't easily run dry and could release energy in full force when needed, powering attacks and movements at a scale lower stages couldn't touch.

The well had three levels.

Bottom, middle, and top.

Filling the bottom was the first stage of transcendence. The middle was the second. And when filled entirely to the brim, a cultivator broke through into level six.

Magic king.

But the well wasn't a fixed shape throughout history.

Some were enormous, the size of massive tanks. Some had extra levels that sat outside the standard framework. And on rare occasions, some were bottomless.

According to ancient records the human king had a bottomless magic well.

An inconceivable storage of magic. An output that could be scaled upward without ceiling, compounding until the destruction it represented stopped having a clean description. In his generation he was the number one talent.

What it took him to fill that well, only he ever knew.

'I wonder what special characteristics mine will take.'

Leon turned the question over without urgency.

He had mana, soul energy, life energy, fu shu energy. The bloodline of a drake. A soul that had sat in the void for a thousand years. Badur's Gates. The grimoire of death.

Whatever formed from that mixture wouldn't be ordinary.

And three years in seclusion might not even be enough to fully internalize it.

"Look into yourself."

He said it quietly and closed his eyes, beginning the slow work of drawing his energies together toward a single point. Mana, soul, life, dark. All of it pulled inward.

These were his materials.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Day passed into day.

Leon sat in contemplation from morning into night, night back into morning, and the time moved around him without his participation.

One year passed.

In that year, he formed the foundation of the bottom part of his magic well.

He examined what had taken shape and sat with it carefully.

It wasn't bottomless.

He noted that plainly and moved on.

But it had four source holes.

Four distinct intake points, formed directly from the mixture of his energies. Each one corresponding to a different current. It meant his well wouldn't store a single type of magic. It would hold and cycle four simultaneously, drawing from any of them in full force without needing to convert between them first.

That wasn't standard.

He stayed with that observation for a while.

Then he noticed something else.

Three silhouettes sat inside the well.

The first was a giant drake, its shape unmistakable even in the abstract space of his forming reservoir.

The second was made of soul energy, humanoid in outline, completely still.

The third was a door. Large and brutal in construction, similar in feeling to Badur's Gates.

Leon's focus shifted left without opening his eyes.

The beast Actualization was still present. Still anchored to him from outside.

So these three things weren't connected to it.

They were independent.

"It's still early to come to a conclusion."

He said it to himself and went back to meditating.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Another year passed.

He didn't move an inch.

Stillness had stopped being a discipline a long time ago. His body breathed. His energies cycled slowly. The cave sat around him.

Nothing else was required.

Then —

[Your patience is a sign of a tempered mind. Please proceed into the fourth test.]

Leon opened his eyes.

There was a figure in front of him.

The space had changed. He'd been moved into a different section of the inheritance without noticing any transition, transported mid-meditation with no sensation of movement whatsoever.

The figure had something on its face that looked like a smile despite its edges being ghostly and indistinct.

"You are…."

Leon was taken aback.

[I know you're not a member of the hydra clan. Quite unfortunate. You have such talent.]

The man's mouth didn't move.

The words arrived directly, intent carried cleanly without sound.

[I apologize for using this Echo Shard. Unfortunately time has taken a toll on my preparations. I see you have one too? That's good. I assume I'm not the only one behind you.]

The ghostly silhouette spoke calmly, its presence steady despite being clearly diminished by time, using whatever remained of the system woven into the tunnel to push its words forward.

"Echo Shard?"

Leon raised his brow.

He glanced inward for just a moment.

Is that what the system was called?

Was it the same thing sitting inside him?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ the thing Altor had given to him?