Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 11

Ah, so he did have to acquire the subpillars one by one. Or if he didn’t, he’d at least be utilizing these spells via the Unholy pillar and paying a greater price to cast them.

Riven immediately got to work. Now that he had a solid base of knowledge to work off in terms of spell casting, he was able to progress at a much more rapid pace.

Even without the Blood subpillar currently within him, he was still able to force mana out of his soul and into his palms along the mana channels that his initial pillar had carved into him. Though he didn’t direct it through the Unholy pillar itself, rather, this new flavor of related mana skirted along the edges of the Unholy pillar instead. The mana channels were still there and the energy of his soul began to accumulate…albeit it had a different feeling to it than pure Unholy mana did. It was a little more…translucent? He couldn’t really describe the feeling otherwise.

He’d bet on what the previous book had said, though. As long as he had a complete vision and a good understanding of what he wanted, the system should provide him with the correct pillar given his will. The system would find its proper match as long as his soul had enough space left for the proper pillar, provided he had the affinity for this blood spell type.

He closed his eyes, sitting cross-legged on the velvet armchair as he concentrated on the vision of what he wanted while the timer overhead continued ticking down.

Visions of what had been drawn in the book entered his thoughts first. A spinning disc of serrated, sharpened, solidified crimson. A willingness and wantingness to hunt down his enemies, to cut them apart with the blades he would summon. A sea of red, a battlefield of the dead, a liquid that gave life, and a pack of leeches swarming toward prey. These images were merged into one to create the essence of what blood truly was. He lastly combined all this with what he knew of blood and cellular molecules from basic biology back home: the shape of the cells, the oxygen they carried, the other components such as platelets and plasma. They began to settle, forming a complex, flowing tapestry.

Much to Riven’s delight, the energy within his soul immediately began to respond. And to his utter bafflement, the Blood subpillar was incredibly easy to obtain. He was a downright natural—beyond natural, even, as it actually began to embrace his soul like a warm, long-lost cousin, and this blood magic seemed to be at home within his body, even more so than the Unholy pillar was.

His mind went dark as warm tendrils of red light began to wriggle their way up and around his limbs, his chest, and his neck—creeping all the way into his eyes as he let out a silent scream.

He saw it again—the myriad of memories that were bits and pieces of his life. The memories that made him who he was—all jumbled together just as it’d been the first time when he’d received Blessing of the Crow and had acquired the Unholy pillar. Only this time, instead of a mixture of the crimson, green, and black lights that symbolized Unholy energy, this time the energy was a pure, bright red. The wash of crimson power slowly drifted through the pockets of memories that made up his life, casually forcing them aside until it entered the central pocket of his soul, where a bright-white orb of glowing light glistened in the very center. Attached to that brighter, larger orb was the conduit of the Unholy pillar—stabilizing the left side as it pulsed with ropes of its own energy connecting the two objects.

The Blood subpillar didn’t bother stopping. Instead it continued to drift slowly onward, passing the Unholy pillar and his soul core effortlessly until it came over to the opposite side of his soul like a snowflake coming to settle down upon a silent, red-laden hill.

Tendrils of crimson came out and connected the Blood subpillar to Riven’s soul a moment later, calmly stabilizing the connection between them as Riven’s pain faded away into nothingness. Looking at it, he sensed a supreme state of calm… a sense of assuredness, as if the Blood subpillar had been waiting to embrace him for his entire life just to let him know that it was where it was meant to be.

His eyes flashed red for just a brief second when they snapped open, returning to the normal green an instant later as mana surged out of his soul’s Blood subpillar and entered the energy floating above his outstretched hands. The energy immediately condensed, crystallized, and roared to life as two spinning discs of solid red bloomed before him. They blurred forward, orienting themselves on their own and adjusting course to make a direct impact with the clay dummy’s head. The head was ripped open, flinging bits and pieces of the dummy everywhere. It was like a knife going through butter, and Riven was completely taken aback by just how fast and easy learning this new spell had been.

“Impossibly absurd affinity, huh?” Riven scratched his chin and raised his eyebrows, feeling rather giddy with himself and not being able to hide his growing smile as his heart began to race. “I suppose 100 percent affinity is a rather rare thing? What about my other pillars—what are their affinities?”

Unfortunately for Riven, he didn’t have an answer to that question just yet.

He spent the remaining two days practicing with the new spells he’d acquired. The Wretched Snare could travel somewhere in between ten and fifteen yards accurately before completely misfiring or falling to the ground, and his Bloody Razors would travel three times that length before losing momentum at his current level. By the end of it, he felt a true sense of accomplishment. Frankly, he couldn’t believe he was actually casting magic, and his newfound excitement over being a mage was far outweighing the minimal unease he felt about the upcoming battle. And as the last few seconds of his time in the alternate space fell away, he finally found himself back where he’d previously been on the drifting islands. It was still nighttime, as it’d been when he’d left, but the spell tomes he’d been using to practice his magical arts were now gone, as if they’d never been there in the first place.

Athela the Blood Weaver demon was back with him, too, though the dog-size red-and-black spider was blinking at him curiously with both of her eyes like she’d just asked a question to which he’d never given an answer.

Now that he’d selected his options and obtained his spells, his promised outfit began to bloom around his body as a series of items were put into place. The crude cultist robes he’d been given were exactly that—a worn, dark outfit that was very fitted to his body. It covered his arms down to his wrists and had an additional hood attached to the back, with a flaring gown and cloth pants underneath. The robes fit nicely underneath his cloak, though he had to tuck the new hood into his first one so it wouldn’t scrunch up.

He got some boots that were well fitted, too—though they looked ragged and worn. Next an oddly styled backpack of brown leather flashed into existence along the ground. The way it sat made it seem full, and a quick look confirmed that it did indeed have a basic survival kit: including a fishing net, a bronze hatchet, flint and steel, bandages, a vial filled with red liquid that he could only assume was a health potion, and a small rolled-up blanket.

In his hands he felt a sudden heaviness, which was accompanied by the materialization of a long, rusted scythe about five feet in length with a thin, curved blade at the top measuring about two feet. Taking the weapon in both hands and waving it around, he found the balance to be what he’d expected—but it was a little more awkward than he would have liked. It was leatherbound around the middle of the wooden shaft, devoid of any real decoration otherwise.

“Ooooooohhh!” Athela crowed, rapidly tapping all twelve arachnid legs with excitement as the notification popped up in front of her as well. “LET’S DO THIS! FIGHT TO THE DEATH, YEAH!”

He spared the demon a glance. Athela didn’t seem to know Riven had been gone all that time. At least she didn’t ask any questions about why he’d been gone or where he’d gone to. The five days of his practicing may have only been seconds here.

He steeled his nerves.

It was time, and just to make sure that everything was working right, he gave his spells a final try outside the practice room. Raising his free left hand and aiming across the small floating island, he thought, Bloody Razors. Instantaneously, two spinning, serrated discs of crimson each about a foot in diameter materialized in the air on either side of his outstretched hand and shot out in the direction he was pointing.

They were pretty damn fast, and they left thin trails of red liquid in the air behind their blurring paths for brief moments until they slammed into the earth twenty yards away—leaving the grass there torn to shreds in little patches around an indentation the magic had cut into the ground before fizzling away into the air.

They were pretty brutal weapons, and he was eager to see what they could do. Even if it meant killing someone else, he wasn’t about to die here in this strange place. Not after just having his world open up with the potential for magic. No…he was going to live.

“BRING IT!” his Blood Weaver screamed when she saw the notification and waggled a red and black spider foot his way. “I don’t want to go back to the nether realms! We’d better win, you hear me?!”

“You’re damn right we’re going to win.” He gave her an encouraging nod and adjusted his stance to ready himself, but he hadn’t noticed the other looming island closing in until right before the two land masses hit.

The cliff faces made impact with a thunderous clap of noise. Rock slammed into rock with a huge boom, shaking both islands in a spray of debris. The ground shuddered and caused him to almost lose his footing, but he planted down firmly and waited for the shock waves to pass. When the dust settled, Riven found himself by some stroke of luck looking at the same bald asshole who’d shoved him and told him to move it in the second phase of the trial.

Why is it that bald people were always assholes?

Bald people are the worst.

Riven knew it was petty. He knew it wasn’t a good reason to kill the man, but his reason was already set. Riven wanted to live, and even that small amount of injustice, rudeness, and arrogance made it all the easier to grip his scythe more firmly with deadly intent.

The larger bald man had surprisingly enough chosen a caster’s staff…but he also had an amulet. Something that Riven didn’t understand. How could he have two choices from the items list? Riven had only gotten the scythe. His enemy’s staff was long, about five feet in length, and had a gnarled knob end to it. It wasn’t anything special, but what Riven found really odd was the necklace around the sneering man’s neck. It had a small circular pendant made of white ivory, depicting a carved dragon with emeralds for eyes. The pendant was held up by a black cord of some kind, and the artwork was rather ornate.

Was that really the Minor Amulet of Protection from the items list? Looked rather fancy to be minor.

Aside from that, the other man had chosen a minion that hadn’t ever been presented to Riven. Perhaps it was because the other man had chosen necromancer or something similar?

It was a huge, skeletal, zombie wolf. The creature was large, as big as any other wolf from Earth, but it had only patches of rotting flesh or fur with bright-white eyes on glistening bones. The breath from the creature’s decrepit lungs came out as a gaseous cloud of green through fangs as it was snarling at Riven with a keen hunger. It looked alien and formidable as it circled its new master protectively. Just by looking at the creature, he guessed it might be able to crush his own spider minion rather easily—being two to three times Athela’s size.

The older, taller, balder man sneered Riven’s way and spat on the grassy ground between his feet. “We meet again, pig.”