Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

Alex paused for a long time before speaking again.

“You wish to merge with Midnight to become my Sword Spirit?”

“I wish to continue living,” Godslayer said truthfully. “This is a desperate attempt of mine to do so. A gamble.”

Alex was at a loss for words. Losing Midnight had been a big enough shock, and now he was getting another one.

Godslayer was restless, worried about what Alex was thinking. “Do you not approve?” he asked. “I’m sorry. I should have waited longer before suggesting this. I just… I have no other way of surviving.”

“Let me think,” Alex said, falling silent once again. His eyes roamed the endless skies of his Spiritual Sea, as if the answer to his many questions were in the horizons in the distance.

After a long bit of silence, Alex looked back down at the crystal, two important questions filling his head.

“How likely is it to work?” Alex asked.

“It’s a gamble, but the chances are in our favor,” Godslayer said. “Since I’m already separating from the soul, I need another anchor, and Midnight’s remnant is the perfect one to connect me to you.”

Alex slowly nodded. “Should you fail, what is the danger to Midnight?”

“There’s no danger,” Godslayer said.

“None?”

“No more than what he’s already been through,” Godslayer said. “What I’ll be doing is the equivalent of filling a half-filled bucket with water from my own bucket. I will help fill that bucket, but even if I fail to do so, my water will only splash elsewhere. None of the water in Midnight’s bucket will be touched.”

“If I succeed, you will gain a new Sword Spirit. If I fail, Midnight will still become stronger than he already was, pushing him closer toward forming another nascent spirit.”

“Either way, it’s a win-win for you.”

That explanation had done it. That was all Alex needed to hear in order to be persuaded.

“Alright,” Alex said. “I can accept that. When do you start?”

Godslayer paused for a moment. “Would it be possible to wait until you’re in the Immortal Transcendent realm?”

Alex thought for a moment. “Sure, but why?”

“I wish to make use of one of your Origins.”

“My Origins?” Alex asked in surprise, but then he remembered Godslayer asking for something similar a while ago as well. “You asked for a spare Origin last time as well. I did plan on saving it for you, but what do you want it for?”

“If I am to be a new Sword Spirit, then I want to truly be a new one. I want to shed whatever makes me Godslayer and become something else. However, I also don’t want what made me who I was to go to waste. I wish to transfer it all to that Origin.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “You wish to give part of yourself up to become my Origin?” he asked. “Had that been your plan all along? Did you know you were dying?”

“No, I didn’t know until recently. It is only these past few years after taking in Midnight that I realized just how weak I had become.”

“Is that so?” Alex asked. “Then what did you want from my Origin before?”

“I wanted to become your Origin.”

Alex froze for a long time. “What?”

“It’s surprising, I know,” Godslayer said. “I was surprised too when I came up with the idea. But I didn’t want to keep staying alive as a floating spirit in your head that can do nothing at all. I wanted to be involved more often, and since it is unlikely I’ll ever leave your Spiritual Sea, the perfect opportunity for me was to become your Origin.”

Alex had no idea if any of what Godslayer was talking about was possible at all, but he could empathize with Godslayer’s situation.

“Would that save you if you were to still do the same?” Alex asked.

“I doubt it. There is a chance, but the possibility that I will separate in the midst of that process and just die is far more plausible than not. The risk is too high for me to try. You wouldn’t get anything from that if I failed too.”

“I don’t care what I get from you,” Alex said. “I just want you to live. You’ve stayed with me for longer than Midnight has. You’re as much a part of me now as he was. Perhaps… more.”

Godslayer was grateful to hear that.

“So, take me through this thing you want to do,” Alex said. “You will merge yourself with Midnight, and then what? You will become Midnight?”

“I doubt I’ll become Midnight,” Godslayer said. “I will still be me, for the most part. But there will be a change. I might remain the same in intelligence, but I will certainly be something different from before.”

“Together, we will be neither Godslayer nor Midnight. We’ll be something completely new, I suppose.”

Alex nodded.

“And what about my Origin?” he asked. “What do you wish to put into them?”

“Mostly the aura that I carry. The thing that makes me who I am: Death and Darkness.”

Alex narrowed his eyes. “You will be stripping yourself away from Death and Darkness too? But that’s all you are, aren’t you?” he asked.

“I made the wrong choice,” Godslayer said. “Death and Darkness are elements of corruption. We thought that would be what was needed to kill the Undying Gods who used those elements as well. We succeeded, but in all the wrong ways.”

Alex sucked in cold air. “You created the sword for the Undying Gods?”

The world was truly a small place if that were true.

“Of course,” Godslayer said. “They were the enemy’s greatest fighter in every battle we fought. No matter how many times we killed him, he kept coming back again and again. The only way to kill someone like that was to use Death aura to keep them from coming back, and hopefully to use Darkness aura to destroy them.”

“At least, that was the idea.”

Alex narrowed his brows. “Did it not work?”