Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 20

Oralmius? Weird name. A little bit on the grander side of things. Though just reading through the man’s writing over the course of the next while, Riven could tell he was a pompous asshat and the name fit him quite well. He obviously had a thing against peasants to boot.

Was this guy serious? Riven scowled at the book with distaste, but then glanced back at the crystal ball on the desk. Shrugging, he reached out and placed a hand on the glass orb and waited.

And waited some more.

And then he waited even more.

He even tapped the glass a couple times with his finger, and then he tried squeezing it, but nothing happened.

Riven sighed and shook his head. Taking the author on his word, he put the book down with a thud. “Guess it just isn’t meant to be.”

A little disappointed and with a sour frown, he turned to the next in line and made his way over to the smithing table—though he had no intention of being a smith at any point. He just thought he’d get a general idea of what each book had to offer him.

What he failed to see as he walked away, immediately upon averting his gaze, was the accumulation of the deep crimson cloud within the orb after he’d left. Simultaneously Riven’s Blood subpillar, the one attached to his soul, began to radiate small pulses that gave Riven momentary pause with a sincere confusion. He looked down at his hands, which had both begun to tremble. He wasn’t sure what that tingling sensation was, but it certainly felt…energizing.

Even beyond this new, unknown sensation and at that very same moment: in Riven’s bag, the ceramic vase he’d been unable to open or identify began to shudder ever so slightly.

The crimson power grew within the glass orb. It accumulated seconds only after he turned his back, being not quite what one would expect of a bright light that the reading described. That crimson coloring stayed there for just a few seconds longer, marinating in Unholy magics, and even caused the orb to crack slightly. The sound of chipping glass caused Riven to cast another glance back over his shoulder from where he now stood at the furnace, but as if sensing his gaze, the Unholy power immediately faded away before he could catch even a sparse glance of the crimson hue.

There was a long pause.

“Everything okay?” Hakim called out curiously, scratching his chin and frowning at Riven’s wide-eyed expression.

Riven stared at the crystal ball, stepping closer toward it and seeing that the glass ball now had a splintered chip in the base. He picked up the small piece of splintered glass, spared a quick glance Hakim’s way, then turned back to the crystal ball with growing concern and leaned over the item with furrowed brows. “Yeah…I just had a very strange feeling. Don’t mind me; it’s nothing important.”

Hakim blinked twice and shrugged, returning to his meal.

Meanwhile Riven continued to glare down at the orb in the flickering light cast by torches on the cave walls and stars from the skylights overhead. He turned his back to the others, steeled himself, and hesitantly reached out to touch the crystal ball one more time.

His mind erupted with blinding pain, his vision flashed red, and an internal shrill scream so high-pitched that he thought his head would explode pierced his thoughts. His pupils immediately dilated, and a feeling of dread overtook him amid a rapid-fire spike of his heart rate. Crimson light flared in the glass and ripped through his arm, sending jolts of silent electric currents through his fingertips that set his very skin apart to split open his hands and expose his bone.

He wanted to yell, he wanted to shriek out in horror and call for help, but he couldn’t move a muscle and stood lock-jawed with pupils expanding out to become so wide he didn’t even look human.

“You are not ready. Not yet.”

The voice was a ghostly whisper he could barely make out, so far away from him but simultaneously able to touch his consciousness with ease. It left a sense of intent, of foreboding, a warning not to try to touch the orb again. The electric currents rapidly dissipated, his hand rapidly regenerated to soak up all the blood and fleshy bits that’d ripped off moments before, and he found himself gasping for air over the table. He watched in real time as the crystal ball repaired itself, as the crimson light faded away, and sweat began pouring down off his chin to splatter onto the wooden table beneath him.

Rapidly he backed up, breathing heavily and staring at the crystal ball with an unexplainable fear. He didn’t know what the fuck had just happened, but even looking at the glass orb gave him an impending sense of doom.

The same could be said for the book on prophecy, and despite all logic telling him he should go open it up again to scour its pages and discover if there were any clues, there was some kind of mental block that absolutely refused to let him do so. A mental block that told him exploring this avenue of power would cripple him should he try to master it too soon.

He internally battled with himself, one part fighting to go and reach out again. To touch the crystal ball one more time and learn more of why it’d reacted that way. To read the words written on those pages and perhaps piece together whether or not what’d just happened was normal, but he instinctively knew it was not. It was anything but normal; even in this new world of fantasy it was not normal, and the other half of him absolutely screamed for him to just walk away and not turn back.

Riven wiped the sweat off his face and hands, realizing he was drenching the already bloodstained outfit he wore, and took in a shaky breath. Letting out a long exhale and straightening himself, he gave the glass orb a final long look before reluctantly gritting his teeth and turning away. Whatever or whoever that voice in his head had been, it hadn’t been hostile. That much he could ascertain just by the way his consciousness connected with it in a brief moment of time. It was concerned for his well-being, and he wasn’t going to play Russian roulette with powers he didn’t understand. Hell, it’d even started to rip his goddamn arm off! The voice had also said he wasn’t ready yet, so theoretically he’d broach this matter again in the future. And as much as his curiosity nagged at him, he put the matter aside with a tinge of regret to carry on—not saying a word to any of the others about what’d happened in order not to concern them. He was already concerned enough as it was and didn’t need other people flipping shit about ghostly voices in his mind or ominous powers surrounding his situation.

After a few minutes to calm himself down, and another small snack of freshly baked bread for stress-eating purposes, he settled on checking out the other stations in the cave.

Riven learned a little bit more about each of them as he passed them by. Smithing was a bit obvious, though Elysium’s mechanics had very different avenues and a wide variety at that. Crafts grew by tiers, rather than levels, that signified immense differences at each step above the previous tier. Each tier title somebody acquired made huge leaps and bounds in what perks they could offer, and if someone was good enough, they were even offered a noncombat class title concerning the craft that would expand those horizons even farther. Crafting classes were definitely an option; they often added in different unique stats and leveled up through progressing on that given class—but they would completely replace any combat class someone had. Thus if Riven wished to pursue a craft, he’d want to acquire as many crafting tier titles as possible but absolutely refuse any potential classes he might acquire options for on potential class evolutions.

Smiths could upgrade weapons based on what type of ore they had, build mana veins for enchanting items with the cooperation of an enchanter, have unique signatures that would employ special bonuses specifically based on what attributes their soul had, and could utilize various environmental ores that weren’t ever present on Earth. Those who practiced smithing apparently couldn’t utilize many of these special elements without massive drawbacks. Examples the book included were Lava-Forged Battle-Axe and Scimitar of Windsong. The Lava-Forged Battle-Axe could be created using an element called Molten Ubsrid, which was apparently a very rare material found at the bottom of volcanoes. The Scimitar of Windsong could be created using crystallized fairy dust intermixed with steel. The book even mentioned extremely talented smiths creating varieties of living weapons, though these were often the rarest and very hard to come by.

The cook, baker, or chef classes were rather unique as well. Most of it was based on a support role, where they were able to create foods that could give buffs, blessings, and resistances to those who ate them. Some foods could be created to keep a person from going hungry for weeks, and other, more valuable foods could even amplify one’s health and vitality by threefold over the course of an hour. The better and rarer ingredients were often sold for massive amounts of money, too. The book was quick to state that nobody could even utilize the cooking skill for these bonuses at all without having the class—meaning that in order to even begin to create such extravagant meals, you absolutely had to take up the cook class. Which was unlike most other crafting classes that could take on combat classes and do the craft on the side with lesser bonuses than one would get with the actual classes oriented to the craft, and it made those who chose the cooking classes a fairly appreciated bunch.