Beastforged Bond

A few days were nowhere near enough to learn a new language. Even though my mind was roughly as advanced as a Master Blessed’s, it would still take weeks to reach a satisfactory level of understanding. But I did not have to be a native speaker or even comprehend most Aqae speech and words. The two scrolls were more than enough for the time being.

Breathing Tissue and Respiring Flesh. Both were fairly common Body Tempering techniques among the Mikoniv and the reason their race could advance through the ranks in the first place. Unlike humans with Worlds or the Caldera with their spirit seas, the Mikoniv had no way to store ether. Not only that, they didn’t have the equivalent of the weave either.

Instead, the Mikoniv created nodes inside their bodies. The maritime race lived in oceans flowing with water-attuned ether. To move swiftly through water, they learned to control water ether from a young age, allowing them to escape the greatest aquatic threats. It was a necessity, and they took advantage of it.

Their ether control increased drastically until one day, one of their prodigies did something that was both mad and prodigious. He was frail, but his control of ether was even greater than that of those decades older than him, so he used what he was best at to improve his greatest weakness. He forced mana into his limbs, something many had died trying to do.

The scrolls did not go into detail, but the amount of detail revolving around possible failures and problems that could arise if the user’s ether control was insufficient told me all I had to know.

Focusing back on the scrolls lying before me on the bed, I frowned.

The Mikoniv created nodes inside their bodies to strengthen their physiques, although the strengthening part didn’t happen just like that. If anything, the nodes were merely the first step in a long list of steps, for they only absorbed or distributed ether.

It required a set of different nodes to create a system that allowed the Mikoniv to absorb ether into their bodies and distribute it precisely into their flesh and bones, strengthening them physically. There were a lot of conditions and restrictions, much information that could be useful to the Mikoniv, whose anatomy appeared to differ quite a lot depending on where they came from, but the specifics were not all that important to me.

I didn’t have to know how many nodes a Mikoniv needed to advance past their ‘mortal’ shell or how to safely remove a Stage-1 node. While the part about upgrading nodes sounded interesting, I didn’t need that knowledge just yet.

What I needed was an in-depth understanding of Stage-1 nodes. That was the bare minimum if I wanted to create one inside myself as well.

There was a little more curious information about the Mikoniv, but it mostly revolved around Body Tempering up to the Adept Rank. After that, they seemed to do something else, which appeared to be the reason they could live on land as well. That too could come in handy if I ever wanted to reverse the effect and learn how to live in an ocean, though I highly doubted it would ever come that far.

“Nodes it is,” I mused to myself and got started.

Eyes closed, I focused on the weave and the Gates connected to it. The weave was intact and no longer damaged. Ether coursed through it, reaching every part of my body thanks to the circulation system created by the Blazing Gates. It was brimming with power and spread out in a chaotic order I had yet to understand.

I tuned out the empty Gates lingering near the weave, seeking to be filled and linked, and focused on the special Gates instead. Most of the Gates linked to the weave were special. A grand total of fifty-five Gates. Fifteen Wild Gates, fifteen Awakened Gates, and fifteen Evolved Gates, with five Earthen, five Blazing, and five Liferoot Gates each.

At the Unblemished Rank, I had only nine Gates, three of every type, and even after all this time had passed, I had only managed to fill one Guardian-ranked Gate. A Blazing Gate, the last of its kind. The Gates were massive, the Guardian-ranked one especially. They empowered my physique enough to push it to the peak of the Master Rank.

I was still not strong enough to fight a Peak Guardian beast with my bare hands, but with all my traits, Soulfusion, and some trickery, defeating a Peak Guardian beast shouldn’t have been impossible.

We defeated an Overlord before.

Aureus reminded me.

The Hellhound. Raffael Torch’s Soulkin. We killed it, but only because Raffael made a mistake, as well as because of Volix’s support. The Elemental Phoenix had already been at the Overlord Rank as well, and while I had barely scratched the surface of his old power, that had been enough to unravel more of it. It strengthened my mind and soul as well – my soulshare with Volix had. Now, however, that empowerment was missing.

Maybe, if Volix was still here and his empowerment still present, I would have long since figured out how to create nodes in my weave.

No, not the weave. I tilted my head.

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Inside the Gates.

That turned out to be impossible. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t form anything inside the Gates. Even though they weren’t sealed, the Gates were a no-go. The only thing I could safely do was move ether in and out of them. Anything else and I might as well shatter one of them.

“Nodes required a lot of ether, which hardly seemed like a problem. I have more than enough ether to spare.” Draining several Gates to create a node was more than fine. However, that led me to yet another issue.

“I have to crystallize ether to create permanent nodes?” Anything less than permanent would likely be more harmful than helpful.

Looks like you have to postpone your self-mutilation quest.

Sapsie chuckled.

“Didn’t you say it was a good idea?”

Did I?

The little World Tree wiggled in my chest pocket.

“You sure did. Not that it matters.” Sighing deeply, I closed the scroll again. “You’re right anyway.”

It made no sense to think that the Mikoniv could control ether well enough to create permanent nodes within themselves from a young age. Maybe they couldn’t, but I wasn’t going to create nodes in my weave only to see them fade away after a few days or weeks.

Or months. Possibly years. You might as well create nodes to improve your ether control. Just compress your ether as much as possible, and we will figure out how efficient the nodes are. Worst case, the nodes are useless and your ether control improves greatly. Is that really a loss?

Aureus reasoned with me.

“Fine.” I exhaled deeply and unfurled the two techniques once again. “I can give it a try.”

***

The days flew by without any results.

Ether was too unstable to be forced into a static form. Deliberately condensing ether inside the weave, compressing it again and again with brute force until the formless radiance thickened into luminous liquid was possible, and I was already fairly good at it, but that wasn’t enough yet.

Locating key intersections in the weave was time-consuming, because some intersections didn’t appear to be anything special until I realized belatedly that I actually used them the most. Interestingly enough, the intersections were tougher than the weave’s regular channels. The ether flow naturally slowed and branched smoothly there, creating the perfect place to start with. And that I did – or tried to.

Once the liquefied ether settled near the key intersections, the real process started. First, I pulled fire-attuned ether out of a Blazing Gate and guided it toward the intersection. Split into multiple streams, I circulated them in impossibly fine spirals, forcing the liquid ether to rotate in place. First slowly, then faster as the cycles intensified, the liquid ether spread outward.

As the rotation reached its peak, the outer edge of the liquid abruptly stabilized. A membrane formed around it, impossibly thin, translucent, and luminous. It resembled one of the ancient coffee filters my parents had used when we still lived in the Bastion’s poor, ether-scarce sector.

Within the membrane, the liquefied ether never stopped moving. It endlessly circulated as the filter refined everything that passed through it. Turbulent ether smoothed and concentrated as soon as it was pulled into the filter, and ambient ether was drawn closer, pressing against my skin, seeping into my body in an attempt to reach the filter.

While not a node and most definitely not what I initially planned to form, it was…something. It worked similarly to the Stage-1 Gathering Node I wanted to create, yet it was both more and less than that at the same time. The gathering effect was nowhere near the efficacy promised by the scrolls, while the filtering process was something that should have required a different node entirely.

Once I removed the fire-attuned ether from the filter, it quickly became apparent that the liquid ether filter wouldn’t last long. The membrane was already falling apart, and I didn’t doubt for a second that it wouldn’t last another twenty-four hours.

For my tenth attempt, the first of which succeeded, that wasn’t good. It also used the ether stored within an Unblemished Gate. All of it had been compressed to form the ether filter, which now slowly absorbed ether and filtered it into the weave.

Why don’t you attach it to the Gates? Even if you can’t create a node inside the Gate, you can always put one right at the opening. The leak is always at the same location, right? If so, consider that both the entrance and exit. If the Gathering Node absorbs ether and filters it into the Gate, all you have to do is compress it into liquid ether.

Aureus proposed.

That was a sound idea, one worth considering. In the best case, it wouldn’t lose too much ether even if the filter failed.

But that didn’t solve all my problems. Creating filters was exhausting.

Stop being annoyed! What even are you doing, day-dreaming about some nasty filters or nodes or whatever they are?!

Sapsie exclaimed, the irritation in her voice catching me by surprise

“What’s wrong?”

Are you serious right now? How did you not notice what happened?!

She called out, sounding actually offended.

Your World is fine now. Fully healed. Recovered and ready to be shattered agai—…No, let’s not do that maybe.

Huh? My eyes grew wide, and, without wasting any more time, I reached out to my World.

True enough, the last of the cracks had mended into the rest of the World, creating a perfectly smooth, unblemished surface. The last few cracks had been particularly difficult to heal and took a lot more Essence than I would have liked, but the final result was acceptable. The World, in its full glory, unraveled before my eyes, glistening in thousands of bright golden particles that were only waiting to be refined.

I could finally return to Blastor Refinery’s 7th Volume to grow the World!

You can do that, yes.

Sapsie said happily, yet her voice sounded strained.

But you may want to deal with the Spawn problem first.

“Spawn problem?” I called out, hair standing on end. What about the Spawns, and why was there a problem?

Did I not tell you? Oopsie…