Authority detected.
Divine Shard absent.
Analysing connection.
Incomplete Authority, missing Divine Shard. Path analysis.
Determination: Paragon. Exalt.
Yuriko blinked at the voice speaking in her mind. She didn't move, though she felt she could break the restriction anytime she wanted simply by pulling her hand back. What was it? Who was speaking to her?
Tower Spirit.
Name?
I am what I am.
What do you want? Yuriko sent back.
What do you want, Traveller?
The voice had become less monotone and hints of personality bled through. The Tower climber's entrance was here, and she only found it due to luck. According to Johann, she only had a brief window of time to enter it before it closed, but wasn't the opening slated for until the next couple of weeks?
What did she want? A way to get home, or rather, a way to travel the vast expanse of the world without spending years on the road. A way to continue to grow, a way to live, a path to strength. Damien gave her the Ancient's Way, even while he had been nothing but a whisper in her mind. Now that he was gone…
You seek Knowledge.
She supposed that was right.
You do not wish to complete your Authority?
Her what now? Authority? What was that?
Your Anima is filled with Quintessence. It lingers in the gaps, unused. Fermenting. The Tower will claim some of it. In exchange, your path to Knowledge will open.
'Are you telling me to go through the portal? Leave my companions behind? Again?'
You could. But that is not the next step on your path. Your Anima is strong. More than strong enough.
'What are you saying?'
You are strong enough to activate functions reserved for higher-tier climbers.
'Oh, that's nice.' Yuriko hummed, 'What does that mean, though?'
The voice seemed to ignore her. A low percentage of climbers possess the correct qualifications. You do. An incarnation will be created. Stand by.
'Wait! I haven't agreed yet!' Yuriko yelped.
Then she felt it. Something pushed down on her body, on her Anima. She felt it tug at her, then there was a piercing pain drilling into her mind. Her Anima spread out in defence, but her intention was only to wrap her around more layers of armour. Instead, she felt herself stretch to full reach, and she brushed up against the chamber's stone and the circuitry hidden within. Oh no.
Her Anima rolled over the rest of the base and well into the tunnels. She flinched when it touched the walls but she couldn't pull back. Not immediately anyway. Thankfully, whatever the plinth did prevented the mountain from siphoning her strength, but it still alerted the blobbies…or antibodies as Johann called them. The young man was screaming something at her, but she couldn't hear properly. Her ears and mind were filled with soft whispers that made the rest of her shiver and vibrate.
Investiture requires sacrifice. Ten percent of you will be used to birth your incarnation.
What?
Ten percent of herself? What did that mean? Would it cut her into tenths and take one of the fractions? Oh Ancestors! Is the Tower Spirit insane?
It began. She felt herself being torn apart. Her mind, her Anima, her body. Though it was not all on one side, but a part of every little bit of her. It was as if her cells were the ones being ripped, each and every one. That was fine. She could recover from that. Her Radiant energy surged to replace what was lost, even if she felt a bit strange. Dizzy.
At the very least, her mind wasn't quite ripped apart. No. She felt it. An imprint. A tenth of her strands of consciousness were forced to link with it, bereaving her of their use. That imprint left, surrounded by an orb of her flesh and blood.
Then, it was her Anima that was torn. A tenth of her Anima, which was roughly sixteen paces of reach, was similarly cut away. The Anima wrapped around the orb and compressed into it.
The entire thing took an excruciating ten minutes, and by the time she regained her conscious mind, the base was already at war with the antibodies and something that looked like its gigantic cousin.
Eh? Johann killed one of the big things by launching something really fast with his Anima, huh? Impressive.
Ah, but there was another one…
Her Anima pulled back as she regained control of it. She gasped and her knees were shaking, but it was done. Whatever the Tower Spirit did, it was done.
She felt a fiery pain radiating throughout her entire self, but it was most prominent within her cores. Her Animus and Ennoia Cores throbbed in the centre of her Anima and she could see a multitude of cracks forming along the surface. Her eyes widened in horror and she pressed down on her cores, hoping to stop them from breaking and dispersing.
She could lose her Animus core and the only thing that would happen would be that she would lose access to Animus. She would be able to reform it, but only if she returned to the Chaos Sea. If her Ennoia Core, the Radiance, broke…
It was the representation of her mastery and knowledge of Radiance as well as her Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords. If it broke, so did her knowledge and her memories of it. She might be able to recreate the cores, but it wouldn't be the same, and the progress she made would be lost.
She pressed down her Will and Intent, telling both to solidify and stop breaking. She could feel her mind strain as she forced her Will, and thankfully, it did.
Another couple of minutes passed. She felt the portal plinth completely activate.
'What's happening now?' she demanded. Her palm was still pressed against the obsidian.
Opening Gate. Trial begins.
'What…what do I have to do?'
She felt the Tower Spirit silently observe her, before answering. Trial is for Incarnation. There is nothing for you to do.
'But…what does that mean?'
Once the Incarnation's trial is complete, it will return to you with its spoils. If it fails, it will dissipate.
Consciousness tether detected.
Adjusting goals, adjusting entry point.
'What is the goal?'
Survive. Thrive. Learn.
Yuriko barely stopped herself from swearing out loud. What kind of goals were those? They were too vague, too all-encompassing. A lifetime could pass before they finished. The goal to survive…there was no end to that, right?
She could feel a certain smug satisfaction from the Tower Spirit, and Yuriko realised that the thing hadn't exactly been benevolent. It ripped her Anima apart without her consent!
'You rotter!'
You have an incomplete Authority. The voice said as if that was a reason to treat her that way.
You must complete the Authority.
What did that even mean? What was an Authority and…was it like an Ennoia? The ultimate level of it?
She could feel her connection with the severed self as it was pulled from within her body. It materialised in front of her, just above her palm, and an inch from the plinth. The circle surrounding her shone brightly with golden light. And then the portal opened.
She felt the pull, but she was both grounded and flying at the same time. The connection stretched as the orb was engulfed, then…it was gone. She could still feel it, but it was suddenly an unimaginable distance away.
"Your Excellency!" Johann yelled as he pushed his way next to her. "The trials! They're open!"
She stared at him numbly and nodded. "Yes, they are."
"Unusual, but…" He shook his head. "This is what I was waiting for. Thank you. I guess you saved me a couple of weeks of waiting time." He bowed to her and reached for the plinth, but hesitated when he saw that she had pulled her hand back. "You aren't coming?"
Yuriko smiled thinly. "No, I guess not. Not as I am. Besides, I can't leave my companions without even saying goodbye."
Johann stared at her for a long moment, then sighed. "Admirable, I suppose, but ultimately it is your choice." He coughed. "Please move beyond the circle. I don't want you to get pulled in accidentally."
"Alright." Yuriko sighed as she stepped back. The base camp was still fighting, and she saw another of the huge blobs breaching the wall. She pointed her finger at it and released a beam of pure Radiant energy. The blob took the attack for several seconds before it melted.
In the meantime, Johann touched the plinth. The circle, still gleaming with golden light, flared brightly for a moment, then the next, he was gone.
Huh.
She shook her head and walked away from the portal. She spread her Anima but winced and retracted it before it could go past ten paces. A stabbing pain made her wince along with the instinct that pushing it would only extend her recovery time.
The tunnel walls, except for the northern one, had their guns shooting at the antibodies. She wondered if they had enough ammunition to kill all of the regenerating blobs.
"I think we should help," Yuriko said to Fluffington, who barked in agreement. They had enjoyed the camp's hospitality even if the portal plinth practically ripped a hole in her. And…well, at least part of her was climbing the tower.
Then again, it also meant she could delve too. And she would be with the rest of her companions. She checked the connection between herself and her…incarnation…but nothing came up yet. How long it would take, she didn't know. Would she even be able to see through the other Yuriko's eyes?
Perhaps this was how she would learn to Manifest her Intent, a threshold she had to reach to advance.
Well, aside from the pain and the diminished capacity, this was a good thing. Yeah.
She drew her chopping blade from inside her backpack and walked towards the north wall. She still had to practice Severing Shard, and this was still the best place to do it. So she returned to the fray, not minding anything else.
____________
Yuriko didn't know how long she slept, nor how long it took to cross an unimaginable distance. Ancestors, she didn't even know when she split her mind, just that part of her was still in Dragon Fall City slaughtering things that didn't stay dead in an effort to master a sword style she invented. And the other part, the part that was currently wondering where and why she was hurtling down a tunnel through the gaps between the fabric of creation, was wondering what would happen when she actually arrived where she was going.
Her consciousness was housed in an orb of condensed Anima and flesh. Would she arrive and mould her body from what she had now? She'd appear a tenth the size of her normal self! And while her original body could replace the lost muscle, bone, and blood simply by using her Radiant energy, or Transforming to an Elemental Body, the current her could not.
So yeah, there was a chance that when she arrived, she'd die almost immediately, or turn into a diminutive form that was no good for doing anything.
All of a sudden, the end of the tunnel crossing space and time abruptly ended, and she was hurtling back into the material plane. As she expected, the fabric of reality started to tear at her disembodied consciousness. She was nought but an incarnation that shouldn't have been possible at her current Anima strength, and all that would happen with this venture was her demise. That and wasting the true body's strength.
Where was she? She couldn't perceive much beyond what her Anima could sense, and she was limited to ten paces from the orb. The other six paces of reach had condensed to act as the incarnation's core, leaving just ten. She was barely stronger than a freshly Actualised Ancient.
So it was to her great consternation that she felt a force guiding, no, dragging her towards the ground. It was night, and the Luminous Moon was hidden by the clouds.
And when she arrived, it was into a dying woman's body in the middle of a ritual circle written in blood.
Rotter.
End of Book 14.