Back to reality

With a stir, Tlou slowly opened his eyes. His surroundings were just as he left them. He sat up and opened the system interface.

User: (assimilation 100% )

Fragments (1/24)

Skills: Vessel acquisition (passive)

Vessels (1)

***295

**565*

***65

##886

Other than the assimilation coming to completion, there seems to be no difference. He ignored everything and focused on the vessels

Vessels( 1)

Heydar (Active)

ID: Heydar Pour Roya, male, age:??, ###

Skills: Skills demolished, data lost

Strength: 5.2

Agility: 3.3

Dexterity: 1.0

Health:7/10

MP: 14.3

Defense: 2.3

Affinity: Poison, Venom, Lifeforce

My health went down again, he noted. "Heydar..." he muttered. "What have you become?", he stared at his palms. They were old and had many sickly blemishes as if to rot. In his dream, Heydar was young and lively. He was innocent and excited to study magic. Now his body was rotting and he lived alone in a tower too large for one man. The air filled with poisonous fumes and a permeating rot.

Tlou felt even more foreign in this body than when he first arrived in this world. The dream felt as real as a memory, and in that memory, everything was different from the present. His sense of identity had faintly begun to include Heydar as an aspect of himself, but not quite him. But that was young Heydar, soon to be novice mage, not this. It's fine, I'll uncover more memories with time, I even might not have to read those history books. On the topic of books, I wonder if Heydar still has those beginner books given to him by Yaghma.

He ate some more pills and observed his health slowly reach 10/10. He got off the bed and went to the broken window. The fog is still here...Is it like this all year or is this an effect of one of the seasons? he gazed outside for some time before his arm rapidly changed forms.

Some of the forms were very odd like a humanoid arm with webbed fingers and blue scales, others much more normal like a gorilla arm. He felt himself grow exhausted as he changed forms but he still kept going. His arm turned back into the blue armed one with webbed hands, this won't do. He dispelled it and his arm kept changing till it eventually turned into an arm with membraneous wings that resembled a bat. Good enough. He flapped the wing in the direction of the window and the fog was pushed back a bit. He kept flapping the wing and trying to flap the wing but the fog was too thick. He dispelled the arm and gave up before his core's energy was depleted.

After dispelling the arm he looked at his usual wrinkled old arm. I'm way faster than Heydar was in the dream, even my first attempt was faster. On his first attempt he took a while to concentrate on selecting an augmentation for his arm but this time he was able to get one within less than 5 seconds. Even Heydar needed about 10 seconds to switch to one, and that never changed even after months of learning more magic

He had already gone through most augmentations for his arm but decided not to check them all for the sake of not exhausting his core. He left the room and went back to the hall full of paintings, parts of the floor were charred along with the paintings that fell on the fire. Even after that, there were still many more. He walked all the way to the large portrait of the lady that looked at him last time. Maybe it can tell me more about the castle? He stood there for a while but couldn't muster the courage to inquire about anything. He was still slightly spooked by the portrait staring at him in anger. It was like a scene out of a horror movie. But as far as Tlou was concerned, the paintings couldn't harm him. When he threw the orbs of fire they could only sacrifice themselves to put it out. No magic was used at all, it was still a scary site at the time though. *Grrr* his stomach rang, "I'm hungry.." he expressed. From transmigration till now he had yet to eat, going up and down the stairs was very tiring, especially with Heydar's old body.

"Then go eat" a voice resounded. He looked around but couldn't tell which painting it was from. "From where?", his question was met with a collective sigh from many of the portraits. "I don't know go figure," a painting said, "Downwards," another said, it did not say how far or where. It seemed as if he was being given the cold shoulder. Are they still mad about the fire? He didn't think about it too much. He honestly didn't feel bad about it, the paintings were just talking objects to him, not alive. Even if they were he would not feel bad, because they were not human

He left the hall and started descending the stairs. He didn't stop to explore the other rooms. His cane supporting him all the way to the ground floor. He looked around and decided to enter one of the doors. It thankfully led to what seemed to be a kitchen. There was a fireplace with a few ladles hanging on it, and a table in the middle with a few pots and plates. The walls were lined with shelves of many more utensils and cutlery, another wall was full of barrels.

The table had a few things covered with a cloth. He approached them and the cloth off, revealing what looked like bread. It was crusted and didn't seem too old. Tlou wasn't really concerned about rotten food. Heydar's body had a few patches of mold and rotten infections itself. And the odd smells upstairs made him believe Heydar would probably remain as fit as a fiddle even after consuming gallons of rotten milk. But he was still glad the bread was not rotten, his taste buds weren't willing to spare him from disgusting tastes, in fact, the whole kitchen didn't have any odd smells. That made him very glad

His palms were slightly dirty. He looked for a water source and there was thankfully a bucket of mildly dirty water. Not nearly as dirty as his hands, clothes, or general being, so he gladly still washed his hands with the water. He tilted the bucket and let the water flow into his palms and they washed each other. He didn't directly place his hands in the bucket out of concern for the water. His hands were really dirty, he would taint the water and it wouldn't be usable later

After washing his hands he bit into the bread and tore a piece out with great effort. The bread was a bit stale but he still liked it. He ate a whole loaf with some water from the bucket to help go down

I'm stuffed, at least Heydar had the sense to maintain the kitchen and actually use it. For a moment I was afraid I would be met with pills and poisonous plants. Tlou took another loaf and began exploring the kitchen with the loaf in hand, occasionally nibbling on it. He found what seemed to be a large larder there were hooks in the ceiling with odd creatures that looked like blue-furred hares with no ears. They scared him a bit but he soon found his cool. A table further inside had drawers with white pale hard jelly and brown cones. He set aside his cane and picked a piece of the jelly before putting it in his mouth for a taste. It tasted a bit like flour, just really crude. The brown cones tasted sweet, they were sugar. It made him a bit glad because he didn't know how to make sugar, he could probably grind wheat variants to make flour but making sugar wasn't something he could do. Truthfully speaking he couldn't do anything. He was betting on magic to somehow put some clothes on his back. " Speaking of magic", Tlou quickly finished the loaf and sat down in the larder. He closed his eyes and began sensing his core. Stage 1 red core? This surprised him a lot. Heydar was stage 4 at the age of 15. He was now an old man. Older than the Yaghma in his memory, he should at least be in the late stages of orange. Rather than be advanced his core had dropped to stage 1. This disappointed Tlou a lot. The dream of Heydar was very vivid. It felt as if HE pushed all the way to stage 4, HE studied the magic books from cover to cover, HE spent hours on end learning spells, HE tried to reduce his casting time. But now what? were all those months for nothing? All into smoke

He sighed and adjusted his mood. He stood up and left the kitchen with another loaf in hand, he had a very large appetite. He wondered when exactly it was that he would fill up his stomach. He went to the room on the other side of the hall. Inside was a large table. There were statues of horses on either side of the room. three more doors on each side of the room were closed. He went into one of them.

He was met with a small library that had many books, scrolls, and what appeared to be stone tablets. So not only have the people of this world long discovered paper but also keep stone tablets? In Heydar's dream, he was engrossed in studying and didn't get to learn things outside of magic for the whole duration of the dream. Heydar's settlement had huts reminiscent of Southern Africa but both Yaghma and Heydar looked West Asain and the current castle he was in reminded him of a thane's but also a mix of an English one.

Tlou decided not to think too much about the different cultures of this world. Maybe these are the influences of past transmigrators? The thought was something he could entertain, he didn't consider himself a special case in any way.

He went through the books and was happy to find that the library had a lot of material on magic. He didn't do anything other than reading titles and skimming. With a stage 1 core, what would be the point? The stone slabs had some archaic texts in the same language as glyphs, he assumed there were spells. Heydar didn't understand glyphs just like the rest of the magic world. This was likely an old spell. He focused on his core and tried to cast a fireball spell just like in the dream but it was simply too hard. Stage 1 red core was really just useless, the suction force created was just too minute, not better than nothing.

He picked up one of the slabs and inspected it closer. Suddenly the system interface appeared

[ System fragment within vacinity]

Heydar was startled. He inspected the slab further and realised that one of the glyphs was glowing with a purple light. The color's the same as the light. "Am I meant to smash it like the orb?", Tlou didn't want to destroy the slab. It could potentially be a really powerful spell or a useful one and the system hadn't displayed anything useful so far. Knowing how much I have to live is pretty useful though..but do I really have to smash the whole thing? Only one of the symbols had a fragment, not the whole thing. Tlou had only been in this world for about a day. He wanted to hold tight to every advantage he had. "Let me try something", his arm rapidly transformed. It was now long and thick with long hair and sharp long claws. His arm turned into a sloth's.

With his new arm, he scratched at the glyph and kept tracing it again and again. His claw went deeper and deeper until eventually he was met with a very small wisp of purple that shot out of the stone and buzzed around. It moved erratically like a dragonfly before charging at Tlou's chest. Tlou now having experience didn't flinch or resist. Once the light entered Tlou felt a buzz in his head and intagible whispers. The system interface appeared again and flashed strange symbols until it settled again, the buzz and whispers disappearing. He opened the interface again

User: (assimilation 100% )

Fragments (2/24)

Skills: Vessel acquisition (passive)

Vessels (1)

***295

**565*

***65

##886

The assimilation didn't change at all. It was safe to assume that it wasn't referring to assimilation with the system

Vessels( 1)

Heydar{lvl 10} (Active)

ID: Heydar Pour Roya, male, 3.2 years, poison avatar

Skills:

[Active: glyph attraction{lvl 1}, glyph arrangment{lvl 1}, spell projection {lvl 0}]

[Passive: n/a]

Traits:???