The Conciege
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(TLO) Chapter 138: Enter
🕑 Added 2024-01-25 05:40:43 +0000 UTCVelroo stood as still as an unmoving mountain, all his skills and power and command wound tightly into his core.
He’d been standing here for days without food or water. At his level of authority, he needed none of those to survive. He could even go days without sleep. However, he ate when he could, not for sustenance but a simple indulgence in human pleasures.
A few days after his arrival two soul artists began venturing away from the group. In the scope of things, they were mere children barely on the path of the soul arts. If the soul art was a school they would be no more than children applying, preparing in the hopes that they would be called to take the application test.
From what he could discern, which was a lot, the stronger of the two served as the voice of reason while the weaker one seemed headstrong even if not blatant about it. Velroo could see why. He was a mere Iron fighting alongside a silver against silver level beasts. Impressively, he was holding his own.
Then they ventured close enough, and he knew the moment the boy felt him.
The silver soul artists, ever the voice of reason, tried to stop him, to prevent him from going further. Unfortunately, the young and bodacious were always prone to dive head long into things.
The Iron artist used a movement skill that took him from the reach of his companion then stumbled down the stairs and fell. He lay there a while and his companion hesitated to go after him. After a brief minute, the silver artist turned and ran. That he didn’t activate any skill proved he had no movement skill of his own.
Velroo smiled as he observed them both. He remembered the young days when he could simply use a technique through activation. Those had been inefficient times. Times when the soul limited the body. Those who walked the path of the soul arts long enough eventually come to shed the inefficiency of skills to tread the path of techniques. Still, that the Iron had sensed him was intriguing. At Iron, soul artists did not yet develop a sense for reia. That was a gift granted at silver.
………………………………………………
The lower floors were dark and murky.
There was no better way to describe them. Seth navigated with his minds rather than his senses and they guided him with the withheld pugnaciousness of a scorned child, with half-measured grumbles loud enough to be sounds but too low to be comprehensive.
He did not depend on his senses to guide him because the world was wrong to them. It was difficult to sense the walls or measure distance through the haze of incoherence. Once, he’d followed his senses out of nothing but curiosity and had run smack into a wall. It had hurt his nose and he’d decided he would have no more of it. At least until he was done with this quest.
His minds guided him in the darkness through halls and stairs, narrow and ominous. They were places parents warned their children never to venture into. Dark holes and petrifying corners that housed the shadowy villains of children’s tales. Not that he’d been told any as a child.
The building that served as the nest was far more massive than he’d thought. If he considered how many stairs he’d taken and how many paths he’d walked, the entire building was no more than an annoying façade. The bulk of its space was built below the floor. It was more an underground structure than its above ground representation. What exactly had this place been built for?
His mind led him through harrowed paths and broken walls. He followed them with a blind obedience unconsciously developed through a trust bred over years of mutual existence. He thought back to how much distrust he’d had for them in the earlier years and cracked a smile.
It was funny how he’d once thought they would try to take over; to claim his mind and drive him to madness. Now he knew it was not the case. But it didn’t mean he trusted them inherently. He could trust them on most things because he now knew he had power over them; knew they were his to command. If they had a power that could break him, they were most likely as unaware of it as he was.
Then think to us, a mind whispered.
There was a mocking curiosity in it. A threat veiled behind an inquisitive thought. Every now and again a mind thought it was funny and reminded him that he still had a long way to go. This thought came from a mind he’d since forgotten. In fact, it was so weak a mind he often wondered if it was merely a figment of his imagination. But he knew it wasn’t. He’d joked about it with his minds once and their response was anything but jovial. If he was not mistaken, they claimed it was a part of his actual mind. The recesses of his mind where the thoughts he wasn’t willing to hold onto went to die.
According to them, nothing good would come from indulging it.
He followed his minds as they guided him towards parts where the reia was denser. A tough ordeal, considering the reia was already dense everywhere. Sometimes he flared his awareness just to know how distorted the world was, to know how strong the reia around him was. During such times he stood as still as the dead and observed as hard as he could. The minute details he could gleam helped his minds guide him onwards.
This led him through more rooms than he thought possible. Through falling walls and empty rooms until he ventured into parts that seemed truly dangerous.
Slowly, he began coming across signs of battle. There were scrapes in the wall. They looked like animal claws and were too deep to be simple creatures of the old world. He refused to allow it deter him and his minds assured him there was nothing threatening as he continued to advance. Then he saw his first corpse.
It was a decaying reia beast. A distortion rose from its body, adding to the warping of the world in Seth’s senses and he wondered if it was some residue of reia the creature had or if the very act of its decay was what produced the distortion.
Reverend Ivan had said there was reia in everything. That if it could be thought of, it likely had a reia aspect. Height might not have a reia aspect but Seth wondered if death did. If the world had death reia present, after all, as rare as it was, there were soul mages who had affinities to life reia. If there was life, there had to be death.
As he wandered deeper into the darkness, he came across more beasts. Each one was as dead and decaying as the first, polluting the world with whatever reia they emitted. With each one he passed, his mind queried the existence of death reia. Since these creatures had died so long ago, long enough to be decaying, how possible was it that there was reia in their decay? How possible was it that he was walking amidst a pool of decay reia?
As he walked around them, stepping gently so that he did not dip his feet into something that would not wash off, he made the decision to speak more on the subject with Reverend Ivan if he still taught them when he returned to the seminary.
A single thought halted him.
We’re here.
…………………………………………………………
When the boy got up, he walked deeper into the area, talking to himself in whispered words and mild annoyances. Velroo found it unfortunate that the child would not go far in the world of soul arts. For his mind to already be fading at a mere Iron authority it meant he would never reach Barony. If this realm was smart, they would never let him.
His constant conversation with himself was proof that the weight of his soul was too much for his mind. He was already breaking, a point most of the weak begin to experience at gold. Most of such artists never make it past Barony. And when they evolved to Barony, they were already broken. It made them a danger to those around them. They became mindless monstrosities with no will besides violence and destruction. Those on their level and below would fall to them.
Eventually, the boy found himself at the door of Velroo’s room, and Velroo listened to him query his breaking mind; talk to himself.
“A fissure?” the boy asked himself, hesitating.
There was a moment of silence before he spoke again. “Any reia beast?”
Velroo thought of his experience with reia beasts and smiled. He’d come so far in so many years. It was funny to think there were times in his life when he’d almost died to such creatures. Times when his life had hung by a thread. Now they feared him, shirked away at his very presence. He’d once seen one commit the unreasonable madness of suicide just to avoid him. With closed eyes and a softened heart, he reminisced on old times.
“Anything I should look out for?”
The boy continued to speak to himself, hesitating, and Velroo was beginning to wonder if he was willing to allow the child into the room.
“Anything I should look out for?”
Yes, Velroo thought jovially. A man with a sword.
“Then how do you know it’s here?” the boy asked.
That one caught his attention. It seemed the boy’s sensory skill, whatever it was, had intentionally led him here. Was it directly to him? Had the child felt the presence of the void still open behind him?
“But there’s nothing to worry about?”
A smile split Velroo’s lips. The poor child. He was in a beast glade. There was a lot to worry about. Worse, he was about to wonder into what—by his standards—was going to be a hidden dungeon of a far greater difficulty.
He felt the boy’s growing hesitation ease and knew he had given himself a false assurance. This was part of the reason those with minds fading under the weight of their soul didn’t live long. They talked to themselves and gave themselves terrible advice.
Here was a child about to walk into a room with a potential adversary far stronger than he could even begin to fathom and he’d led himself to believe it was safe.
The door creaked open and the boy stuck his head inside.
He was young, no older than nineteen. There was a chance he wasn’t even nineteen yet. He looked into the room with a disheveled hair as black as night and eyes of liquid silver above a green shawl that hid most of his lower face. It was an interesting eye color for a soul artist, and a rare one at that. Velroo had only met a handful of people with eyes that color. He remembered enough to know he hadn’t enjoyed the company of most of them.
He watched the boy’s eyes widen in terrified surprise and knew the moment the boy had chosen to flee. He was willing to allow him when something else hindered him.
New Quest: [A Lesson in One Strike]
You have chosen to go beyond your world to help a seemingly helpless soul artist. Once a sage, you have taken it upon yourself to teach one of the new generations, to show them a taste of what it means to walk the path of the sword. Your choice has been made. However, you remain one who reached a pinnacle of the sword, you would not teach just anyone. So you have made up your mind, the new generation must prove themselves worthy of your teaching and you shall prove yourself insightful in the way of the sword. You will teach in one strike and they must learn from one strike.
Objective: [Find the New Generation] 0/1.
Objective: [Do Not Kill the New Generation] 0/1.
Objective: [Skill Learned by the New Generation] 0/1
Reward: Supremacy
Consequence: Divinity.
He stared at the quest with eyes still closed. This was the ‘New Generation’ his guide intended on having him teach? A breaking child? The boy wasn’t even going to live very long. And it wasn’t as if it had sent him to mend the child’s mind or something along those lines. It had sent him to teach the boy how to use a sword.
The boy closed the door gently, making a quiet escape. It seemed he had assumed he’d not yet been caught since Velroo’s eyes were closed. He truly pitied the child.
But pity was not enough to hinder him.
“Enter,” he commanded with a working of will.
Slowly, with a clear and thinking mind, as clear and thinking as his mind could be, the boy walked into the room and closed the door behind him.
The boy was about to be a tool in the working of something far larger than him. Something Velroo always suspected was far larger than even himself.
He opened his eyes to meet the child’s terror choked eyes.
“How unfortunate,” he said.
Objective: [Find the New Generation] 1/1.
………………………….
Seth stood before a wooden door partially eaten out by termites on his side. It wasn’t deep enough to bore a hole, almost as if the termites had grown bored halfway through the task and moved on to more interesting tasks. Only its top half had suffered it.
Whatever’s on the other side of this door, another mind thought, it’s where all this reia is coming from.
“A fissure?” Seth asked, finding himself slightly scared now that his destination was just before him.
We don’t know. We can’t even feel it. But all this is coming from in there.
Seth took a deep breath in preparation. Readied himself for what he would meet. He held the handle, turned it but did not open the door.
“Any reia beast?”
No.
“Anything I should look out for?”
No. Nothing there’s alive. There’s nothing in that room.
“Then how do you know it’s here?”
Because there is nothing alive in there but all this reia’s coming from in there. Whatever it is, we can’t sense it.
“But there’s nothing to worry about?”
Nothing alive.
“Alright then.”
The door knob still turned, he opened the door into the room.
He peeked inside and froze.
At the end of the room a man stood with silver hair. He was dressed in a deep purple robe with crimson red lapels that ran all the way down. At his hip was a mundane wooden sword and the man stood with closed eyes and hands behind his back.
Seth noted everything in a single glance and wondered how in the name of all the broken minds had his minds missed this.
The man had not seen him yet so he closed the door back very gently. It was almost closed shut when the man spoke.
“Enter.”
Seth couldn’t place his voice. It was old and commanding, yet gentle. It was a powerful sway over a conversation like an eagle battling a worm.
Every fiber of his being screamed at him to run, to take shelter under a rock and die in the silence of insignificance. He agreed with it and bolted from the door, ran as fast as he could as far as he could.
He stepped inside the room and closed the door behind him.
Comments
walid bennour
i think jabari is the endless one
Rehoboth Okorie
curious who is stronger between Velroo and Jabari
