(8. A) Dead Asleep? How Long?...Acceptable...
"-Am I awake again? I feel stiff? That's not the right word. This feeling is more akin to paralysis to a lesser extent...-", Aaradhya woke up with a grumble. He tried to move but all that reacted was an unintentional twitch of a finger.
"-No-", a little chime rang out.
"-Yes.... -", Aaradhya waited for the confirmation chime, but nothing came.
"-NOW-", the little bell rang out.
"-Did you think this would work Wilfred? We both know Death's Sleep stays active until the end of a full restoration. I don't know how you managed this but If I were to hazard a guess, you are locked in the automated assistant. As such, I respect your knack for self-preservation but I'm afraid you've just signed your death certificate...-", Aaradhya frowned at this petty move. The notice flashed in the dark behind his eyes. A subtle paralysis expanded as his breathing and heartbeat shut back down. Only his brain remained active, for now at least.
"-Looks like my guess wasn't unwarranted. He really has influenced my assistant. Or maybe the personality it would develop later on uses Wilfred as a launching off point? -", he turned down every setting related to the freedom the automated assistant would have.
"-Yes. Before I go back under, show me what's new-"
"-Good achievements. Hm, now I'm interested. How long was I out? -", Aaradhya checked his system display settings for any information he could to see how long he was unconscious, but nothing.
"-It must really be a hidden feature. I doubt with how specific these options are, that there wouldn't be something. Though, now that I think about it, the setting may be related to the blessing display in this particular case…-", thankfully, he had the time to focus on the task at hand.
"-There has to be something to streamline my search. A search bar, or maybe a question mark that works as a
"-Hm. This guy really is trying everything isn't he. I'm pretty sure the representative takes the assistant and gives it more of an advisory position. Choosing that would essentially turn Wilfred into a librarian rather than a personal secretary. I'll take a system directory-", Immediately after his choice, a solid white bar showed up at the top of the screen with a spyglass icon to its left.
Aaradhya focused on that icon and mentally typed in, "Options for visualized blessing time tracker related to various states". A list of about 12 dozen options rolled out. Aaradhya read through each one to find what he wanted.
From there, it was smooth sailing. Aaradhya changed everything he could think of since he now didn't have to search through the settings little by little. Mostly, he reorganized everything into presets that he could alter on the fly rather than adjust little by little. By the end of his simple and not over the top in any way whatsoever, optimization, his system resembled a world class DJ'S digital soundboard where everything had a specific and interesting purpose.
"-And done...-", his thoughts flickered as the last few neurons fired off.
-GoR: God of reality.
"...What?", a man raised an eyebrow to a fellow guard beside him.
"I said, do you think our lord will wake up soon? The priest said it should be around the time since color has been returning to his face over the past day or two", a rather young boy reiterated.
"Don't check. We do not have the right to look at the young lord. Be patient, there will be a sign", an aged and unintentionally gruff voice huffed from across the room.
"Should I get the high priest to check if he isn't busy? He should know since he shares a divine and earthly connection to the lord?", a third and youthful voice asked.
"Recruit, you go since you are so impatient. And be quick...", the gruff leader sighed with audible indecision for a long minute before he commanded the boy to head out.
"-It would also seem that the perk didn't activate properly. Oh, could this be the activation process? If that's the case,
-SOUL SANCTUARY lvl.1
*RESOURCE: Bank
Simple Creatures: 7/100
Advanced Creatures [Average intelligence]: 1/1
Superior Creatures [Similar Intelligence]: 0/0
*PASSIVE: String Master (10x Buff Multiplier limit)- Multiplies the physical, mental, and spiritual strength of a personally controlled undead by the proportional amount of spiritual investment
*ACTIVE: Eternal Rest (10x Base Regeneration [100x Max Regen])- A hibernative state where the body, mind, and soul enter a regenerative sleep.
*ACTIVE/PASSIVE: Tether (0 Tethered Subjects [1 Total Subjects])- Force a connection to a soulless biological entity and control it like a marionette OR connect to the souls of another living being to form a binding and symbiotic connection of thought, emotion, and power
*ACTIVE: Soul Splinter (~.09% Increase to power [1x Activations])- Split a soul and reinforce existing soul strings. Can be used to forcibly empower the hold over any creature, living or dead. OR expand the number of soul strings available for use at the cost of the soul being used. Reactivating the skill more than advised results in a forced
[Classes]:
-Soul sense (Early Beginner): Sense, store, and mold Spiritual energy
[Skills]:
"-How unexpected. I learned everything except the
"-One, how can I see the damage to my soul before it's healed? It would be a good learning experience. And two, are there any ways to reduce the impact of Wilfred's assimilation? My personality seems to have only superficially won the battle for control. His weak stomach and mindset wormed their way into my head-", the help center directed him to information that would either directly solve or assist in his objectives. Unlike an automated assistant, the help center gave options and not the best ones.
"-I see paywalls exist even in fantasy worlds. I guess the only thing I can do is purchase what you need-", The help center merely told him to purchase an expansion from the store to expand its database as there were no found results for his question. It instead provided a list of every single book or comprehensive list of techniques that Aaradhya could learn, with the spirituality-based ones at the very top. Aaradhya opened the store and clicked on
"-The first may help me purge Wilfred's useless influence but the latter may actually be useful in the long run. Above all, it should keep me busy until I can forcibly adjust to this kind of life-"
"-First, however. The real damage likely has something to do with my blessing or rushed actions from my birth. I should be able to see it should I return to that world of fog. The one problem being, I don't know what I did to get there. -", he calmed his emotions and entered a very focused state. Once he bought the handbook, general information about the spiritual world floated around in his brain. Most of it, he remembered from when the godly sponsors were forced to share the data but now... well now, things he didn't remember floated up into his thoughts.
"-Interesting. From what I can gather, I wasn't born yet but I was within the body chosen for me, so I still had a physical form. I was on the brink of death to start off as my essence was lowered into the body I would inhabit. Likely, my body and soul were barely connected which explains the spiritual world. Arguably, my soul was drawn to the physical entity that was alive prior to me entering it. Like a moth to a flame? -", as if to say he was on the right track, the world around shifted into an even less definable mass of light. The light in the distance shattered into pieces then swirled uncontrollably. Like a solid that instantly turned to a liquid, the light green sheet over everything oozed out of sight and revealed the fog behind it. Once the filter came down, the fog shifted into shapes and sharpened. One of these felt... familiar.
"-I'm outside of my physical body? Hm, is this the influence of my blessing on soul sense or the ability itself? Regardless of the answer, how does any of it work? -", Inside of this physical body, he made out a golden orb with a cracked blue ring around it. Green flame nearly consumed this blue line even through the dense fog. He reached towards the orb and after a few moments, his vision blurred. Back out in the physical world, his color paled to a ghastly sheet, and his breathing simply stopped alongside all of his bodily processes. He was no different from a corpse in every way except, his body didn't rot or collapse.
His body slowly snapped back into the position he laid and for no more than a blink, a person with dark holes for eyes, rotten teeth, and blood matted hair stared straight down at his physical body. It was only now that Aaradhya paid attention to the crystal dome that surrounded his body. Weird marks etched into the surface with each swirl and image glowed with a green- brown haze which held this scary looking person back.
"- Ah. So that must be what a loose spirit looks like in this world...-", fog then erupted from his peripheral vision and this person's features disintegrated. The entire world exploded as everything swapped out for endless darkness. He experienced something similar to a black out the comparison quickly came to halt at the naming. The dark background swirled until he was surrounded by an endless fog filled Abyss. Instead of a calm sea of darkness below and fog above, he saw chaos. A giant glass like shatter cracked along the entire abyssal expanse with the point of origin being where he pulled up a blue tether. Wisps of green flame and blue sparks could still be seen from where it stretched into the sky.
Sapphire light rose up from the depths and clotted around the rift like blood would for a cut. On the fog side, the blue light fizzled, rising up to create a long tunnel of mist around the crack. Green particles clustered around this mist as they mixed and dispersed into the fog all around. For some reason, his mind flashed back to when he pulled his mother's echo together to use her body. The green seemed to almost... attack? No, it slowly chipped away in his case.
"-I used an ability I wasn't prepared for and suffered for it. Hm, but it seems that unless you are somewhat special, the flame immediately attacks. In my case, it's trying to weaken me. My blessing is likely what makes it difficult for me to burn-", Aaradhya touched the glass-like crack in the ground and frowned. A golden line, similar to the color of his own body in this world of fog, rested between the fog and Abyss almost perfectly.
"-What an Interesting ecosystem. The white fog seems to pervade everything without limit yet, when it tries to get through the ward it simply rebounds. Hm, but does this mean I can only perceive the Abyss below me and the damage because the fog can't get through the barrier? If it could, would I notice the crack? Furthermore, does that mean the form I currently see is just a projection of my soul and the abyss below hides my true form?", the barrier also sent a shiver (?) through the green as it rebounded and dispersed ever so slightly. Blue light immediately flooded to each of those locations and when it did so, the green burned away at the thin spots in the blue corridor. The green burned away at the blue but a few seconds later, the fog rolled in and destroyed both. The blue, reactively retreated but the green pressed on, taking the largest amount of damage.
The corridor once again entered a stalemate.
"Very interesting. The green preys on the blue, and the fog indiscriminately wipes all of it out", he sat down near the rift, opened his system inventory, then clicked on the handbook.
"I might as well spend this time productively. I don't know how much longer I have-", golden wisps hovered just around his head like a scattered halo for a moment as they sank into his golden body.
The words...
"-Spiritual Realms and what they mean to you-", exploded across and burned into his mind. Following that burst of info, a new tab loaded in under the inventory screen. A journal tag specifically tied to the inventory animated itself to a hologram of a book. A page flipped over to a tech tree on spirit realms.
At the very bottom of this tree: "-Emergent Fog-". The tree only showed an orb with chaotic gray and white swirling liquid. Three separate curls of green, blue, and red danced in the orb with wild abandon.
"I assume this means the abstract information floating around in our heads can be translated into the system once we buy the relevant unlocks. If so, it might be worth it to just buy the training manuals of things I might not even touch in the short term. Though, that's a decision for after I see how this data is formatted", Aaradhya clicked the dot and it split into a pie chart with four different animations. Only three played but all four were encompassed by the fog.
"-Emergent Fog: The DeFacto term for the world beyond the veil of life. The most dangerous of any spiritual realm, in that all things are equal in their evaluated worth (Based on a scale Death set)-", the fog in the background of this graph shifted as gold lettering printed onto the screen.
"A succinct beginning and end to the description. These slivers of light must be the forces that exist within the fog Sadly, nothing new to add from what our sponsors established", Aaradhya spun the pie chart with muted expectation.
"-(Green) A spiritual particulate given off by life-giving planets and some organisms that developed a filtration system for the fog. It provides enlightenment and spiritual understanding to the living by dispersing the experiences and understanding of those who have died, fostering a roadmap to life and growth before it comes to be... -", the description ended there but after half a second, gold lettering extended the description.
"-As a Spirit Guide, you can harness this particulate in the physical world and forge a bright future for generations to come. There are several ways to approach this grand task, but each way has its benefits and drawbacks. You can generalize (Click Here) or specialize (Click Here) if you have an approach in mind-", Aaradhya's finger unintentionally hovered towards specialize but he pulled his hand back.
"I will see if there are options for what I had in mind later", he swiped the chart to the side.
"-(Blue) This is the essence of one's soul. The blood and breath of one's life beyond the pale. All living things generate this essence to some degree, but most let it go to waste as it dissipates. Some can harness this rich essence and stabilize a life for themselves within and outside of the veil. Excessive care should be taken before any steps down this path... "
"Interesting. The text looks as if it should continue but, ah wait. I get it. This is sort of like a research journal in a game. That makes this easier. I should just have to buy the Ghost's Tome and I'll get the rest of what's missing-", Aaradhya nodded. As soon as he came to this understanding, the tech tree expanded.
"-Developing Waters-", opened up directly above the root and spread apart into three undiscovered orbs. The center most orb shot up one more branch, but the line didn't connect to anything as fog obscured it.
"Ah, so it works on what we understand or can infer about the information we possess... huh...", a wave of instant euphoria hit him like a truck all of a sudden. The boundaries of his vision slowly collapsed as his immediate surroundings sharpened up.
"My time is up. Fair enough. I've been conscious for far longer than I thought I would be. When I wake up next, I'll look at the other two and focus on what I can do to improve... myself...", he couldn't fight back against the wave. This time, every fiber of his being tingled.
*POP*, the golden light making up his body shattered.
Green particles swarmed like army ants over the golden fireflies but unlike what happened with his mother, the flame did not even touch him. Instead, the particles were swallowed as the golden light flew into the Abyss unimpeded. The chaotic scene remained, but over time, the wards stretched out and connected. The sapphire light then surrounded and hardened around these wards, returning the abyss to a tranquil emptiness.