Eternal Cultivation Of Alchemy

The stable blob of light, like a bright glowing ember, remained in front of Alex within his Spiritual Sea. Alex looked at it for a moment, sensing its stability at first, and then his connection to it.

The two spirits had firmly merged with each other, and as a result, his bond with Midnight was also firmly settled onto the merged spirits. Even though he had never done so before, he was now bonded to Godslayer as well.

At least, a part of him.

“Midnight? Godslayer? Either of you in there?” he called out, hoping to hear some words. He waited for a moment and got a peculiar feeling from his bond, as if the spirit was trying to talk.

But it was far too weak to know how to talk, and so all it could do was give him back some primitive emotions.

Alex felt the confusion from the spirits, like a child waking up in a strange place. It at least trusted him, understanding him to be a guardian figure, just like a child would a parent.

’So young,’ Alex thought. ’They should be a Nascent spirit.’

He felt another feeling of the merged spirit calling out to him, asking for something he couldn’t understand just yet, but before he could answer, he felt a splitting headache form in his mind all of a sudden.

It was a pain not dissimilar to when he tried breaking the Storm God’s seal, only weaker.

Alex could handle the pain, but that did not mean he appreciated it. He turned around, trying to figure out what was causing the pain, when he saw that the black spot had made contact with his Origin and was pushing into it.

His Origin, a manifestation of his Soul, was rejecting the black spot that was the remnant of some other soul. It was a natural defense mechanism of the Origin, as any outside interference with an Origin would mean the death of the person.

But this time around, it had to take in the remnant of the Soul.

It had to accept it all, and kill it, so that all that would remain were the Death, the Darkness, and the memories of the Artifact God.

Alex left the newly merged spirit with nothing more than a reassuring word to answer their worries before turning to help with the Soul’s attempt.

Godslayer’s Intent here was even more vague now, making it harder for Alex to help it with just an Intent to add to what was being done. He still did, and watched to see what else would come of it.

The black spot was pushing into the Origin, and the Origin pushed against it, not allowing it to approach.

There was no resonating in this scenario, no merging. This time, the Origin had to do what it did and accept an aura that was given to it. However, because the aura contained a Soul, it rejected it.

Alex tried to get his Origin to open up and accept the aura, but that didn’t work at all. It did start accepting the aura itself, but the soul part of Godslayer was still being rejected, like two magnets pushing on each other.

And Alex had no way of flipping his Origin.

Alex watched the situation for some time, thinking of a solution. There was one solution he could see from the start, but not only was it quite bullheaded, prone to possible failure, it also came with an added perk of being extremely painful.

’Well, the Origin is willing to accept it, it’s just naturally incapable,’ Alex thought. ’So…’

Just because two magnets didn’t want to touch each other, it didn’t mean one couldn’t overpower them.

He would simply have to push on the black spot to overpower the rejection from his own Origin. So he did.

The intense headache was almost immediate, the pain spiking beyond what he faced earlier.

The entire Spiritual Sea reverberated with his pain as well. The skies darkened even further, the water underneath splashing around as though there was a storm going on up above.

Alex could still handle the pain. It had increased, but it was still a ways away from as bad as it had been when destroying the seal. Still, it wasn’t fun, and he hoped to be done with it soon.

His actions showed some result at least as the black spot came very close to touching the Origin as well. They were mere inches away from touching the Origin, and at such a small distance the Origin could do its task.

The Origin was like a sponge, ready to absorb any and all aura that was fed into it. It wouldn’t take too long to absorb it all, so Alex just had to wait for a little longer.

However, it wasn’t even just a few moments later that Alex realized something was wrong. The Origin was absorbing the aura, but without the Soul being absorbed, he wouldn’t get the memories. With just the Death and Darkness aura, there wasn’t much he could do.

So, preparing for the worst, he pushed the blackness even harder. As pain flared, he handled it the best he could and continued pushing.

The pain slowly reached a peak beyond which point he would likely fall unconscious. However, the blackness was now in contact with the Origin, so he did not have to go any further.

The Origin attacked the blackness, destroying the soul part of it. The destruction itself happened by the process of absorption. It absorbed part of the soul so it wouldn’t remain anymore.

It continued absorbing while Alex hung onto his Intent, ignoring the pain as best as he could.

At the same time, Alex could feel something being poured into his mind, knowledge that didn’t belong to him. Memories of the Artifact God.

The memories stirred within his mind, searching for a place to stay. The memories piled up more and more.

And when the final bit of soul was absorbed by his Origin, the pain vanished, leaving behind the flood of unstored memories to replace it.

Alex was taken over by those memories as he began viewing the lived life of Steelmind, the Artifact God.