Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

Atlas spoke as he stared at the page before him, the line he just read seemed to match with what those assassins had used.

The page showed much more than it had just moments ago, it was completely filled from top to bottom as many new and strange names appeared one after another.

[ Title ]

[ Shadow Explorer - Rank S ]

[ Acquired title through meeting certain conditions, user will be able to use the derived Abilities through this Title ]

[ Derived Abilities of the Title —

[ Shadow Shift: User can Shift between shadows at any distance the user desires, the distance is proportional to Spirit energy usage ]

[ Shadow Reaper: User’s first damage at the Target will land fifty times more damage ]

[ Shadow Rei-Kokuin: User can use Osmo ???Bloodline’s Active Vector Rei-Kokuin with Shadow as an Element in it, making it twice as powerful than normal ]

And that was all, the gap between each ability was clearly intentional, spaced so that he could read slowly and take each one in properly, and as Atlas read through to the last line he became sure that what he was looking at was ridiculous.

”What...in the world is this?” Atlas stared at the page with wide eyes, the first line had reminded him of the assassins and the movement they had used to appear and vanish during the fight, but after reading everything through his mind had moved far past that and landed somewhere else entirely, this was the most absurd thing the Codex had shown him since Rei-Kokuin itself, and Rei-Kokuin had already set a very high bar for absurd.

There were only three abilities listed on the page but his focus wasn’t on the number, it was entirely on the descriptions, and after reading through them twice he spoke, ”My first damage is fifty times more?...How is that even possible? Damage comes from an attack, so if the attack itself isn’t strong enough to begin with, how can it multiply fifty times from nothing?”

He couldn’t put his finger on the mechanism behind it, it felt like the Codex was showing him something that operated outside the logic he had built up until now, something that would only make sense once he actually used it in a real situation and saw the result with his own eyes, so he pushed that question aside for later and shifted to the third ability.

His eyes widened again, ”Twice as powerful?...and Shadow in Rei-Kokuin?”

He understood the twice as powerful part well enough, Rei-Kokuin becoming twice what it currently was would be a significant shift in what he could do with the Active Vector in a real fight, but the Shadow element was something else entirely, he had no framework for what Shadow as an element even meant in this context, whether it was a separate energy, a property that modified how Null moved through space, or something that existed in a different category from anything he had encountered so far, and the Codex gave him no further explanation beyond the name itself.

He turned toward the back of his left hand and saw the circular mark still sitting there unchanged, he frowned at it, ’I thought this would develop into something by now...like Reiden’s markings did after Fuzai-jū, but nothing has shifted with it at all, I just don’t understand this Codex and at this point I probably won’t any time soon.’

He turned back to the page and exhaled, ”That first ability does seem similar to what those assassins used...but this is clearly something far beyond that version of it, I’d have liked to test all three right now but my priority is reaching S-rank first, that’s gotten delayed too much already because of that Monster I ran into on the route here.”

He gave the abilities one last look, then closed the Codex and the Stylus attached itself back to its side automatically.

”Terminate.”

It returned into his chest as usual.

He turned toward the box filled with the five cores the Rosaria Household had given him, and almost immediately that familiar irritation came back as the same thought surfaced again, he still had no knowledge of how Spirit absorption actually worked as a conscious process, and that gap had been sitting there quietly this whole time without him doing anything about it because every other priority had been in the way.

”Tch...it would be useful if I had a Spirit Absorption Trait at least.” He spoke with that irritation clear in his voice as he reached for the box and opened it.

The Spirit radiating from the five cores hit his senses at the same force it always had, that dense concentrated pressure that never stopped being surprising no matter how many times he had opened this box since the Rosaria Household handed it to him, ”It’s still a surprise that this much Spirit is packed inside something this small...”

He sat down and began taking the cores out from their sockets one by one, arranging them in a circular pattern in front of him as he spoke quietly, ”I can only focus and try blindly...”

He had no frame of reference for how to absorb Spirit from an external source, the only method he could think of was to try the idea that had formed in his mind and adjust from there if it failed, and if that failed he would try something else, and he would keep adjusting until something actually worked, because giving up was not something that had ever been a real option for him and he had no reason to start treating it as one now.

He had been alive this long without knowing exactly where the will to keep going and survive even came from, he had held on through Ormolio’s outer slums, through the years before finally arriving...at the Eternal Ruin, through being thrown into it like something disposable, through fighting with nothing but the Codex and raw desperation for the longest time, and through everything that had followed since then all the way up to this moment, and all of it had led here, to this Ruin chamber with five Abyss-Rank cores arranged in front of him and an actual clear path forward that he could see for once, so the idea of stopping now didn’t register as a possibility at all.

He fixed his eyes on the arranged cores for a long moment, the dense Spirit energy radiating outward from each one in slow steady waves, then exhaled once and let his eyes close.

He went into a focused state slowly, his mind narrowing down to a single question and staying there, how to absorb Spirit from something outside himself rather than letting his body do it passively from the atmosphere without any input from him.

’Is it like eating?...No, eating takes something in but that’s not absorption, the body pulls what it needs from food afterward as a separate process...but my body has already absorbed Spirit before, during that time I was unconscious in the forest after the fight with that Monster, I woke up with full Spirit reserves and I hadn’t done anything consciously to refill them.’

He thought further back, to every time he had completely drained his Spirit reserves inside a Ruin or during a fight, and every time after resting he had come back to full without actively doing anything about it, which meant his body was absorbing atmospheric Spirit on its own as an automatic process, something that had been happening the entire time without him paying any attention to it because it had never been something he needed to control manually before.

’So the body already knows how to absorb...the atmospheric process must be automatic, which means the mechanism already exists inside me, I just have to run it intentionally and direct it toward the cores instead of the surrounding air.’

’When I release Spirit outward to use Traits, the flow moves from inside me outward...absorption has to be the opposite direction, pulling inward rather than pushing out, the same mechanism just reversed, and if I can direct that inward pull toward the cores specifically then the Spirit inside them should move into me rather than dispersing outward into the air.’

He opened his eyes and looked at the five cores one last time, the Spirit still radiating steadily from each one, dense and patient, not going anywhere.

He placed both palms flat just above the arranged cores without touching them, closed his eyes again, and then...he tried to reverse the flow.

Nothing happened for a long moment, the silence of the Ruin chamber sitting completely undisturbed around him.

Then the core closest to his right hand flickered, its glow dimming very slightly, and Atlas felt something move inward through his palms.

- - -

[A/N: This Author is on his knees and begs for golden tickets, please give him and make him smile...

Also 2 Chapters from Monday, I am and was quite busy this whole week, sorry for the late updates, I would like you guys to give me some motivation through gifts and Supergifts so I can write more Chapters.]