{Congratulations to those who have survived the transition}
As I was losing consciousness I felt more than heard a message being transmitted through my mind.
{Thank you to the Arachne princess Se'Lanis, daughter of the Arachne emperor Ch'ungus, for creating the foundation for converting immortal energy to mana. She along with many others have assisted this universe and will be rewarded.}
{The immortal era is over. The era of magic and innovation has arrived.}
The voice stopped as abruptly as it came, though a few moments later a new message came through though this one was peaceful and calmed my dying mind.
[your reward is knowledge and life, all cultivation will be stripped as the eternal will disliked the old ways, levels will now correspond to locked abilities within your bloodline and other secrets the further you tread along the path. Your strength will be your own, just like everyone else. Good luck, little lordling]
Lightning struck through my body, waves of knowledge thrashed through my mind, it was over in an instant but I knew what I had to do if I wanted to survive.
I flooded my body with my own mana and cast cell growth on my unknown bloodline, I was bleeding out and this would give me a few minutes more to life and the materials I would be using to create my own consciousness core made from my own blood.
I cast cell manipulation on my own cells, the command was simple to understand: gather, harden, condense, and repeat.
As my blood began flowing towards the core my limbs slowly thinned, my blood was consuming my flesh and the living metal for material for my core. I managed to pull my thinning right arm from the manacle and reach my spacial pouch. I dropped a puppet onto the floor along with an energy crystal.
"Here is to hoping this doesn't kill me." I thought. My plan was to have the puppet place my consciousness core into its body. though if it would remember the command or not would be the difference between me having limbs and lying on the floor until my captors return for my corpse.
As the minutes ticked by my mana had nearly run out while fueling my spells, it was now or never, I focussed on my selfmade consciousness crystal until I felt myself being drawn into it. My mind went blank, there was only nothingness all around, I couldn't move, all I could do was think.
My thoughts felt different than how they used to, I didn't understand at first but a simple test of counting upwards as fast as I could in an allotted time was all it took. As I began to count I could see a countdown come into being in front of me, in ten seconds I easily counted to 1500.
My thoughts were moving at a ridiculously fast pace, beyond what an organic brain could process, I tested myself in mathematics first and solved problems that would usually take me minutes or hours normally could be answered in seconds.
It wasn't that I had become ridiculously great in mathematics, it was only my mind thought at a much faster pace. I began counting as I waited and I realized within this space I didn't have a body, I was a small orb of golden light, and as time went on the landscape began to develop.
It was agonizingly slow but eventually, a flat plain of black metal stretched out as far as I could see.
"Oh thank god, I can see!" I blurted out and my voice carried over the empty plain. It had been 12 minutes and 49 seconds since I transferred my consciousness, that kind of precision was cool yet creepy, shaking off the foreign feeling I began to look around.
A few minutes passed before I found something new, a small altar made from the surrounding metal had grown right from the ground. There were lines of golden light on and around the altar.
I circled above the altar and examined the lines of light, there were no runes or anything related to either cultivation or magic that I had ever read or learned about. I descended towards the altar, the lights glowed brightly once I was next to the altar.
I landed on the altar and my spells, skills, and bloodline were presented on separate sides of the altar. Everything was similar to my status page, my spells hadn't been updated but there was something new in my skill set.
Puppet creation: journeyman
Puppet manipulation: apprentice
String manipulation:
Ax:
Bow: unskilled
Crossbow: unskilled
Knife: apprentice - minor
Pistol: beginner - minor
Rifle: unskilled
Spear: apprentice - minor
Sword: limited
Staff: apprentice - minor
Strings:
Unarmed: apprentice - middling
It was an accurate assessment of my skills, to say the least. String manipulation was what caught my eye though, I had never thought about using strings as weapons before. As much as I liked using my spells to create issues within my enemies it took too much time and may not always affect powerful enemies. My guns were great but caused noise and couldn't be controlled or counted on all the time as my last attempt at using them.
Staves and spears were some of my favorites to use but would be disadvantageous on certain terrain. The fact I had inherited a string based combat art from that dead immortal yet never bothered with it was slightly ironic.
Ignoring the rest of my skills and spells I turned to the bloodline section of this light show. There was a drastic change to my bloodline, the fact that it wasn't blood was the biggest change, there was a tiny 'cell' that represented my bloodline but it wasn't organic.
Well, I suppose calling it either organic or synthetic would be correct, it was what my body was made of but it seemed that it was made from a metal alloy. The composition was made of several other metals only a few of which I was familiar with while the rest were represented as 'unknown'.
What was a bit strange were glowing runes within the bloodline section, focusing on one would transmit the knowledge within. It was all the information I had acquired on the bloodline of the Arachne race, I moved through a few other runes and noticed a few of the bloodlines I researched weren't there.
Thinking it over I did have physical contact with only a few bloodlines, and Rin had increased that exposure when we had been getting a bit rough in the lab. There was also the king slime bloodline in this archive of blood, it was obvious that I got it when I dunked Hextia into the vat of elixir.
My original bloodline was there along with the higher tired versions, they were surprisingly all completed including the archon bloodline. Like my new 'bloodline' the archon bloodline didn't resemble blood but was more like a tiny sphere of light. After examining the object of my childhood dreams I returned focus to my current bloodline, there was no name for it, and for now, I would keep it that way.
Until I figured out what I had become I would leave it unnamed.
"Wonder if that puppet is going to install me, it has been about five minutes since I died. Wonder what it will feel like in a new body." I wondered out loud, though my voice came from my mind it still projected across the near empty plain.
I felt a pulling sensation as soon as I thought about my new body, my tiny ball of light body shot into the air before plunging towards the altar, I flinched as I slammed into it.
There was no pain or any other sensation other than my arms moving in front of me to protect my face.
My eyes shot open and there they were my metal arms, good as new, as I inspected them words popped up around them detailing their properties. In the corner of my vision I could see a small silhouette of my body, as I focussed on it I knew that it was indeed me and that I had sustained no damage to my body, "Well this would come in handy." I thought as I went through this new form of enhanced vision and data collection.
I began looking around the room to see what else my new vision could tell me, looking around I saw a massive boot. I followed the boot up until I saw what the rest of it was connected to.
"Oh fuck."
Well, I found out where my puppet went, it had not moved an inch, it stood towering above me and my diminutive new form. Comparing myself to the puppet I was about 8 inches tall, and probably carried about as much punch as a small cat.
Turning around I kicked the nearest thing to me, which didn't budge, after a few more kicks I had finally vented my frustration and I examined my punching bag. It turned out to be my corpse. I palmed my face, 'this day just keeps on getting better and better' I mumbled as I started searching for my spacial pouch, once I found it I put my puppet away into the pouch. It would seem that the pouch recognized my ownership still just like my puppet.
Now how in the world was I going to sneak past a group of nasty pirates and board my ship and escape undetected?