My doubts turned out to be unfounded.
As Nexxa had predicted, it didn’t take us long to charge the core, working together. Little under half an hour. By the end, my hair was sticking out like I’d been rubbing a balloon on it and my teeth had a strange tingle to them. An acceptable price for the amount of extra mana she’d channelled into me to do it. Converting it had been a lot easier than back when she first helped me reach Astral, but hadn’t been entirely without the occasional side effect.
“Sorry. New oath’s making it so I have to relearn my control. Probably gonna keep happening for a while,” Nexxa offered as explanation after a particularly aggressive jolt of storm mana.
“It’s fine. We’re just about done here anyway.” And we were. The powercore had all the energy it needed, I just had to cycle everything through the outer parts of the enchantment. A bare trickle of mana.
Ari and Bevel were waiting across the lake with Calbern, easily visible with Eagle Eyes, though little more than dots without them. They’d moved after the third time Nexxa’d accidentally jolted them.
Once the spell engine was completed, I moved towards them, though I kept a solid hundred feet between us as I turned back towards the double-stacked pyramids. The connection between it and my spell worked exactly as it was supposed to. That wasn’t a surprise, since there’d been very few changes needed after lifting the targetting from Recall.
Sending the precursor signal… didn’t work as well. It used more than half of the spell-engine’s mana when it wasn’t supposed to use even a thousandth.
Thankfully it wasn’t a complete failure. It turned out that one of Nexxa’s errant jolts had fried a small part of the enchantment on the spell-engine’s outer cage.
The fix took less time than recharging the core.
On the second try, the precursor signal worked perfectly. It even gave me a secondary ‘view’ of the area around the spell-engine, much like Secrets of Tethlin did with the pools.
“Okay… here goes,” I said, despite the fact no one was standing within a hundred feet. Might’ve been syching myself up before using my first self-designed Worlds spell. Instead of syching myself up, I probably should’ve considered if the spell engine’s design lined up with the concept for the spell.
In my defence, as I turned myself into a lightning bolt and shot myself at the spell engine, there wasn’t much time for thinking to be done.
Much like Nexxa’s earlier jolts, my arriving lightning form wreaked havoc with the outer frame. Thankfully the reversion to normal was entirely contained within the spell, the spell engine merely helping with the transport side of things.
This meant I arrived safely enough.
Other than taking the backblast from the spell engine exploding my face, of course.
Even with my high neural dynamics, I didn’t figure out what had happened until after I’d skipped across the lake twice. Was pretty sure I swallowed a jumping fish while I was at it. Never to be spoken of.
By the time we gathered by the spell engine, the only evidence I’d been struck was my ruined robes.
And the half-melted spell engine, of course.
“I think the core’s intact,” Ari said as she leaned over it. “Most of the frame is intact too. It was only the point of impact that overloaded.”
Bevel nodded seriously, though I heard a giggle when I kneeled down in front of the melted section.
“Master Percival, perhaps next time, one might consider sending an inanimate object as a test subject.”
“Would take a whole other spell. This one’s designed specifically for the caster. One with all eight of my affinites.”
“You know, we wouldn’t need this if you just ascended to Hydra,” Nexxa said, throwing her arm over my shoulder.
“And yet I need this to ascend,” I said, chuckling. “At least it’s not too bad. Better than a cracked engine cylinder. We can probably fix this in a couple hours. But we’ll want to figure out how to absorb any excess energy.”
The project was put on hold until our evening retreat into my palace, each of us going off to tackle our duties until then.
When we gathered the next day, I was feeling a lot more confident.
The outer enclosure of the spell-engine had been entirely revamped. Instead of a pair of pyramids, it now resembled a sparkplug, complete with the gap at the top for a spark to leap across.
Ari had suggested a lightning rod, but for the concept of controlling electricity… a sparkplug resonated with me more. It used electricity to govern a completely different energy to travel long distances, after all. In this case, it was empowering Worlds instead of igniting gas, but the synergy was good enough for me. And since the entire spell and spell-engine were customized for me specifically, my perception mattered.
I brushed my hands, going up onto my toes a couple times as I prepared to cast again, goggles in place.
If I got thrown across the lake again, I intended to be ready. One of the unfortunate limitations of the spell was that I couldn’t keep anything stronger than a first order shield up.
Right as I was casting, I noticed Starbreaker hovering over the lake nearby, watching.
Not ideal, but it wasn’t like the spell engine was some sort of state secret. A lot of it relied on the spell anyway, which was a lot harder to understand at a glance.
My thoughts cut off as I turned into lightning, as they tended to do. Interestingly, this time I maintained some awareness of my surroundings as I travelled. My high neural dynamics wasn’t able to get much given I didn’t have any traditional senses at the moment. But I could feel the approaching spell engine and the edges of the ‘tunnel’ I was travelling along.
And then I was there.
For the tiniest fraction of a second, I was held in place in the gap at the tip of the sparkplug-shaped spell engine. Then I was myself again, ejected from the gap. I was thrust a few steps away, but that was it. Could probably get rid of that, if we wanted to put in the time.
But we didn’t need to.
I could feel the change pushing at the edge of my consciousness. The final push to Hydra was waiting. A bit of light meditation and I’d ascend. Something I intended to do in the bath. The heated showers and baths that were now standard throughout Cape Aeternia would be a lot better than the ocean I used after I ascended to Pegasus. Despite Nexxa reassuring me there was no residue… I had my doubts. Especially with my stunted physical stats. They’d barely budged even after a month and a half.
Which, to be clear, still put me ahead.
Considering I didn’t intend to focus on the physical for any of my hydra integration selections, they weren’t likely to budge for a while.
Nexxa clapping me over the shoulder pulled me out of my thoughts just before the others arrived.
“It worked,” I said, unable to keep the shit-eating grin off my face.
“Course it did.” Nexxa’s arms were crossed, her grin as big as mine. “We built it together.”
“Congrats Papa,” Bevel said as she tackle hugged me, Ari only a second behind her.
Then they marched me to the bath. The actual ascension to hydra soul was anticlimactic, though I was glad I’d done so somewhere it was easy to get clean.
Perry - Status
Body - Tier 4 - Blossoming
Mind - Tier 4 - Refinement, Worlds Alignment
Soul - Tier 4 (Hydra) - 5-Slot Ensoulment, Repository Reincarnation
Progress: 1/5 Fourth Order Integrations, 8 Point Foundational Structure, Enshrined Astral Soul, Fulfillment Pegasus Alignment.
As I’d expected, the transition pushed a lot out of me.
In doing so, it’d halved both my strength and agility. At the same time, vitality had leapt from five up to just over twenty-five and my resilience had more than doubled, now sitting at just over ten. While those were improvements, Nexxa had nearly fifty in both once she hit Hydra, even without Tender’s trials.
Those trials would be useful once more, since my stunted status was gone. Even without focusing my integrations on them or doing Tender’s trials, I could expect both resiliant and vitality to double by the time I reached Djinn. At least, that’s how it usually went for most ensouled, according to Ari.
Watching the last of the sludge flow down the drain, I squeezed my fingers. The loss of strength wasn’t obvious, but the agility… yeah, I felt that immediately when I tried to cross my fingers.
My mental attributes hadn’t seen any increase from the ascension.
On the soul front… well, I was Hydra with one slot. No surprises there.
Now that I’d ascended, I could visit the Golden Halls to see what it recommended. Might’ve been avoiding them a bit after getting the citizen status, mostly so I didn’t get torn away for some unexpected project.
After having a couple relative weeks with my family, I was prepared if such did happen.
After getting dressed, I let Ari fix my robe properly, locking the flap in place. She also sat me down and cut my hair.
After, I grabbed Nexxa and headed for the Golden Halls.
Even our welcome was different, though not in a way that was encouraging. After exiting the nearby Waygate, the gazeebo like structure rattled worryingly.
“It’s excited to see you. Like a baby schul.”
Fighting down a shudder, I stepped inside, which seemed to stop the rattling. “I’d rather not compare the structure that teleports us to field clearing rodents from Arcadia.”
“Baby schuls are a lot cuter than the adults. I had one.” Nexxa leaned against the console as I poked at it. “Didn’t survive Sosa though. Used one of those green goons to squish it.”
“Damn. Sorry.” I paused as my hand pressed against the panel looking up at her.
Nexxa just shrugged as she peeked at the console. “It’s fine. Not like you had anything to do with it. So, what’re we looking at here?”
There were two things happening at the same time. My System, which I’d had mostly minimized popped up as the console responded, both displaying the same thing.
Class-5 Citizen status confirmed.
Processing.
Banked achievements. System Integration in progress.
New System Quest: Welcome to your Ascension, Citizen!
“Guess it’s working.” The Quest soon expanded, filling both my sight and the console with a list of public access locations.
Which, I noted, didn’t include Depths former prison.
“Think it’ll let me tag along still?”
“Considering the locations haven’t changed, probably.”
The System did indeed let her tag along. There didn’t seem to be many changes, though the lights tried to turn on a couple times, only to fail. The mana running through them puffed outwards before being sucked into the Ascension Halls’s storage. Likely to be sent back to the reactor.
Once I’d checked each chamber, the quest updated informing me quest rewards were waiting on my System integration.
“Disappoining. Time to check out your Hydra upgrades?” Nexxa asked when I filled her in.
I nodded as we stepped on the platform and were whisked away to the diagnostic chamber amongst motes of golden light.
One thing that had changed, though it was related to being Hydra-souled, not a citizen, was that the diagnostic chamber felt different. Like it was constantly sucking at my aura.
Apparently it’d been doing that to Nexxa since she first came in.
Questioning the System revealed that the aura filters were damaged and would need replacing. It issued me a quest to do so then informed me my Utility Access had been put on hold as my integration processed.
“Sounds like that whole citizen thing’s been more of a downgrade than an upgrade,” Nexxa said when I grumbled a complaint about the non-sensical updates.
“Maybe it’ll be better once it’s done?” Despite my suggestion I didn’t believe it.
The way Nexxa arched an eyebrow at me, I doubted she did either.
Didn’t matter.
Instead, we turned our attention to the diagnostic. At least it still worked for the moment.
Nexxa’s results were the same as ever. Still had the skull she was holding onto that would be a perfect fit for her, if not for the tail.
For me…
Well, it had an unhealthy number of options. Not only that, half of them were rated as ‘theoretical’. A little bit of sorting and I discovered I had a choice I hadn’t expected. If I wanted to, I could redo my specialization. I wouldn’t lose any of my existing progress with the affinities, but I could choose to enforce specific aspects and greatly increase my ability to wield them.
Which… was a lot more tempting than it was when I started out. The more I learned, the more I realized there just wasn’t enough time to explore all fields of magic. Not while living a life I enjoyed. Didn’t help that we were living through the end of the world.
Most of my common affinities gave me a lot of quality of life spells, but as demonstrated by the complications of building a relatively simple spell, it took a lot of specialized knowledge to create higher tier spells.
Didn’t hurt that I had enough affinity with all eight of my existing affinities to cast tier-4 spells in all of them.
“You’ve been staring at that phase-hawk’s feather for an awful long time,” Nexxa said, stepping up beside me and looking the readout over. “You thinking of narrowing your focus?”
“Maybe. Might do worlds and storm. Whatdya think?”
“What do I think? Storm’s the best, so obviously you should keep it. And worlds is alright, I guess.”
“Deep.”
Nexxa shrugged, stepping past me to look closer. “The wings are a bit much, don’t you think?”
I hadn’t been looking at the physical augmentations, but I had to agree with her. “What even is that wingspan? Thirty feet?”
“It says… forty-two when fully extended.”
“At least they’re incorporeal, so I wouldn’t be hitting them on everything.” I chuckled. “Not like your tail.”
“Oh right, I think I figured that out!”
“Oh?”
“Yep, check it out.”
Nexxa flicked a screen, bringing up something she’d been working on.
“Does that say… ten thousand thunder-imp skulls?”