For the past few days, Caster has been training with Moon intensely.
It wasn't like she didn't have her own responsibilities, but she simply decided to invest some time in Caster after seeing the immense potential he had.
She did leave a few times for certain reasons, but did return by the next day at most.
'Of course, a saint has to be busy. I'm lucky to be able to get trained here.'
Just a couple days ago, Caster recieved the memories he asked for. The Song clan really destroyed his expectations both positively and negatively.
Negatively because they couldn't find a memory to fight against his flaw.
It was unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped. A memory like that would be genuinely hard to come across. He was lucky enough to have some sort of resistance to his flaw.
His expectations were surpassed by the other memories though.
He was expecting an ascended memory for the storage memory he asked for... but it turned out to be transcendent one. Not to mention its quality... it was top tier among transcendent memories.
'Has to be.'
The memory was a ring called [Starhoarder].
It was a band of deep obsidian metal, darker than shadow yet gleaming faintly at the edges, as though rimmed by a hidden eclipse. When tilted, its surface reveals shifting starfields, constellations that do not belong to any known sky.
Its effects were beyond his expectations.
He summoned the runes again, to admire them again.
Memory: [Starhoarder]
Memory Rank: Transcendent
Memory tier: V
Memory type: Tool
Memory Description: [In the First Silence, before the stars were named, there were the [REDACTED], artisans not of flesh, but of thought and gravity. They wove space itself into shapes, folding worlds into hollows and locking suns into orbits with unseen chains. Their craft was not creation but containment: to hold the infinite in finite form.]
Memory Enchantments: [Infinite Vault], [Stillroom], [Hidden Firmament], [Singularity Rend], [Warp in Silence].
[Infinite Vault]
Description: The ring has a vault that is connected to your thoughts.
[Stillroom]
Description: Everything inside is preserved.
[Hidden Firmament]
Description: Anything that's inside can't be tracked and is hidden until unlinked.
[Singularity Rend]
Description: With just a thought willed into the ring, the wielder can collapse a stored object into a miniature singularity, hurling it outward as a black mote.
[Warp in Silence]
Description: Space around the wielder bends.
The vault part of the ring had three enchantments dedicated to it, meaning their effects would most likely be incredible.
And they were.
He had yet to test out the concealment enchantment, because he lacked the means to do so, but the vault truly seemed infinite.
He knew that it was obviously not infinite, it was probably much smaller than he thought it was. But the point is, that it is more than enough for him right now.
Preservation was good too. He could just store food for months and he'd have enough for emergencies, always. Though, he doesn't need to do that considering the second memory they provided him, unless we consider the fact that the food from that memory doesn't tastes good
[Singularity Rend], allowed Caster to sort of compress something inside the memory to turn into a sort of projectile, it was called a 'mote' by the memory.
The mote seemed to distort space wherever it landed, to a small extent, depending on the level of the thing used to make the mote.
Like a mundane object could never become a space distorting mote.
He tried it out with an awakened shard, and it wasn't apparent, but it did distort space slightly.
It was a nice addition to his abilities, but not only did it not have a high potency, it also consumed a ton of his essence.
It wasn't an egregious enchantment in any way...
But it wasn't useful to him right now, and probably never would, considering the fact that he has Book of Books.
It was the last enchantment that truly impressed him.
The ability to bend space it self.
With it, he'd be able to parry things much easier. But the problem was that the effect was constantly active, as long as the memory was summoned. So it would get unpleasant at times.
He knew that there was more to it, but he hadn't discovered it so far.
In any case, it was such a great memory that he wondered why they even gave it to him and not a saint. But after some logical thinking he realised that the saints don't need it.
There's simpler storage artifacts out there, and the thing is, the flashy enchantments like [Singularity Rend] or [Warp in Silence] are only useful to awakened or masters at best. Because the bending of space is something saints can passively do anyways.
The second memory he had recieved was the food memory he asked for. It was called [Pale Feast], and as the name suggested, the food was basically tasteless.
It was a simple clay vessel, glazed in faint pearlescent hues that seem to shift like moonlight on water. No ornament marks its surface save for a shallow spiral etched at the bottom, said to represent the turning of the seasons.
How it worked was that, as long as one filled it with water, it would turn it into a soup. The soup was very nutrituous, thankfully, and it would always be at least lukewarm.
If he used hot water, the soup would turn out hot as well, and luckily his [Aquifer's gift] allowed for that.
However, the soup didn't seem to have mystical properties like the water from [Aquifer's gift] does.
Nonetheless, it was a satisfactory memory.
Getting back to the training, Caster had dropped the use of [Evermelt] in his spars with her, else he'd get too dependent on it.
He simply wore the [Ashveil Tunic] for the spars, the awakened tier 1 armor type memory he had.
He liked it because it looked good on him.
It wasn't anything strong, but it was good to train in, especially because it didn't have any special abilities.
Over the course of the few days, he had improved his essence control massively.
Like the jump in skill level was incomparable.
A skilled saint teaching essence manipulation on top of Caster's own talent was what made his growth fast but that was not all. Caster having seven times the amount of essence as compared to others made it so that his training could last for much longer.
Yes, his essence would almost never be at full because he had seven times as much essence as others but only regenerated it thrice as fast as others.
He didn't know exactly what made his essence regeneration faster than others, but something did, and it was a good thing.
And it was only now that he started to actually think deeply about his aspect mess properly.
When Caster came to this world, there were two souls.
One that had gone through the first nightmare, Caster's soul, and one that had yet to go through the first nightmare, Keiron's soul.
After Keiron went through his first nightmare, his soul and Caster's soul incompletely merged together. At that time, he accepted that he'll play the role of Caster because of that.
But the incomplete merge gave him a second aspect ability, or at least what he thought was one at the time. Later he found out it was an aspect legacy.
He theorized that because he had read the novel, he had a chance to get corrupted by the knowledge he had from it, for whatever reasons, and so, the Fourth Wall wished to manifest itself fully as soon as possible.
It did so by seeming like an aspect ability at the start.
But when Caster unlocked his aspect legacy properly, it went to its proper place.
And then, he realised how unfair things got for him.
Because of their souls being mixed up, in an improper way, he got two flaws but only one aspect.
Not only did two souls get mixed, one of the souls went from ascended to divine aspect, or maybe both souls did, but the point is, he only has one aspect ability per rank.
Two flaws, but one aspect.
He has two affinities, Movement or space and Knowledge, but his aspect abilities are related to only the movement type abilities.
Both [Acquired Haste] and [Grazing] are from original Caster's part of the soul.
He has no abilities from the Knowledge affinity.
Because Caster had been training in essence manipulation recently, he had meditated a lot and analyzed his essence thoroughly.
Because of that he came to a realisation.
The spell only helps in the manifestation of one aspect.
If Caster had been like a parasite, perhaps both abilities would have been accentuated, but he was not. He, in essence, was one soul. It's just that the one soul was made of two souls.
The theories he made to himself got really complicated eventually and he decided that he was missing the mark.
But the most basic thing he theorized was that, the spell didn't help in awakening his powers from the other soul.
Because his aspect is supposed to be one, and not two, it might be that he gets two abilities per rank, but they are dormant because Caster needs to bring them out himself.
He won't have the spell do it for him.
But despite searching his insides a lot, he couldn't sense them so far.
'Maybe it's because I have too much on my plates right now?'
After all, one couldn't truly do everything at once, and even if one tried to, it wouldn't end up satisfactory. So Caster simply decided to wait on his hidden abilities for now.
However, despite all this, he wasn't certain if he truly did have hidden abilities or not.
Still, all this did result in something... because he analysed his current aspect abilities a lot as well.
The first thing he found out was that his Dormant ability, that he had prior to his aspect rank advancement, had changed leaps.
First things first, he didn't just gain speed while using his aspect, he gained the lightning affinity, Possibly from his [Stormsong] attibute, but he doubted it. It's probably a fuction of his aspect that he just didn't know about.
When he gained his highest speeds, lightning attribute essence starts flowing out, allowing for a high potency attack.
Moon said it was a waste of essence and that Caster should work on controlling the exuding lightning, but Caster has yet to achieve that.
But it wasn't that lightning would just randomly start radiating from his body, right?
Yes, it turned out that he had the capability to create lightning, however it's extent was ridiculously small for some reason. Like only at his highest speeds would he be able to get a decent amount of it to radiate.
He suspected it was because of the soul mess, again.
Something has gone wrong for his aspect, and he needs to fix it as soon as possible.
But he doesn't know how he could possibly do that.
Perhaps later on, when he fixes this, it would be like Sunny's shadows or Neph's flames that allow for physical enhancement, but for now... he has nearly no control over them.
The reason he didn't seem to be able to utilize the changes earlier was because his aspect had induced some muscle memory of sorts, or so he guessed.
It was rather pathetic of him that it took over an year to finally realise the mess he was in.
'Better late than never.'
Speaking of his stormsong attribute, its meager effect of manifesting essence physically or as energy seemed to have improved slightly after all his essence training.
He couldn't create anything useful with it, only a string at best, but he had memories that did that job better, so he couldn't help but sigh in disappointment.
'Hopefully, it helps me in creating weaves. Because I don't think I'm going to take that needle from the ebony tower...'
The last thing he had analysed was his second ability, grazing.
It was also under a bit of a mess because...
It only did half of its work.
The runes mentioned, how it allows him to graze people and utilize their powers, but so far, all of his testing has been for naught.
He could not seem to get that part of his power to come into play.
He analysed it for hours upon hours.
When he started his aspect ability, it seemed to damage the soul of whoever he locked in as the target, so in a sense, it did work. But it failed to activate the other part of the ability.
He went out of the jade palace to the wilderness and tried it on an awakened devil, but it didn't work. He tried it on a person, thinking of aborting the ability if it did start working so as to not graze the wrong person, but it didn't.
He couldn't feel the sense of it.
He was utterly baffled and in despair.
The sense of 'grazing' that the ability gave him inside his soul sea was real, definitely real. But it just did not seem to work in the real life!
There were two kinds of grazing, one that simply grazed at the soul from a physical distance. A really good ability, but the potency of soul damage wasn't too high.
For it to be lethal, it would take maybe a minute or two of continuous grazing.
Still, the ability wasn't weak on its own, it was just not meant to be purely offensive, more of a support type ability.
But the real deal was the second type of grazing. The grazing that would allow him to trap a soul and utilize its powers.
But it just didn't want to work!
He was beyond just dissatisfied with how things were going for him.
But then he had a realisation.
The ability only seemed to work inside the soul sea...
So what if, it was only meant to graze while in someone's soul sea.
"But then why the fuck do I not have the ability to enter someones soul? Why is my ability incomplete? Is it again because of the improper soul possession? Fuck!"
So now, Caster not only had to work on his essence control, learn weaving, get better at swordsmanship, search for his potentially hidden abilities, make more preparations for the future, progress with his futher plans, lead his group of people properly and make them stronger for the time he'll utilize them again in the future, find a way to resist his flaw better, train until he can utilize his memories and echo better, progress in his aspect legacy to meet Kim Dokja again, fix his soul mess somehow, avoid getting killed by the sword domain... but also somehow figure out a way to externally enter the souls of others, in a practical manner, to graze them... just so that he can utlize his awakened ability properly, something no other awakened has probably faced.
He really has way too much on his plate.
And it's all frustrating.
Everything seemed to be going his way earlier, but as soon as he delved deep into his situation he realised that he's under immense pressure.
Suddenly, everything seems to be against him.
'Fuck.'
He still had an idea for the grazing problem but for now, he decided to prioritize things.
The most important thing is that Caster proceeds with his plans. Not being able to utilize your abilities properly sucks, but he can't stop everything else for these. Especially because he doesn't have a lot of time left to enter the Chained Isles.
Moon has asked the White Feather Clan for permission, for Caster, and he recieved a yes, however it won't be until a few days later that Caster will be allowed to enter the place.
So for that, he needed to prepare for the Chained Isles.
It took priority over his weaving knowledge and essence manipulation training, but he couldn't avoid Moon's training sessions. So only weaving was paused.
Not like he had weaved a single thing yet, he only learnt about its basics through the book of books. Not even how to weave, but simply what exactly it is.
Caster wished to create strong foundations for it at the moment, because weaving before becoming an ascended is incredibly arduous to learn.
And while learning how to weave to improve his [Hourglass charm] for his flaw is very important, he couldn't let some things in the Chained Isles progress as they did in the novel.
And for that, he used the book of books to get as much information about the Chained Isles as he could.
His study sessions lasted hours at times, but it didn't take too long for him to reach a point saturation.
He found out enough, he didn't plan to stay in the Chained Isles for long anyways.
He just needed to do a few things there. Apart from them, the Chained Isles could get burnt to crisp for all he cared.
The problem was... what he had in mind, his plan, could make his already threatened self way more vulnerable to assassinations.
It wasn't a risk he wished to take, but he knew he had to.
The Chained Isles might just get thrown into chaos because of it.
Or, at least the Night Temple.
For now though, he was worried about the Gold Reapers. Caster had not been in touch with them for over two weeks now.
The reason was the Song clan.
Luckily they understood his situation, they weren't stupid after all.
He was a divine aspect holder, the pressure from everywhere isn't light.
Still, the Gold Reaper's weren't completely unguided, Caster had Cassie and Gemma lead them for now.
Because of that, they were steadily grounding themselves.
Caster had mentioned to Cassie, through his Communication Wall, to go to the shipwreck island on Chained Isles eventually, along with the Gold Reapers, and start working on ways to repair the ship there.
It would become useful soon.
Since Nephis and Sunny are also on Chained Isles, Cassie is bound to use their help. It should be fairly easy in that case.
Speaking of the [Wall of Impossible Communications], Caster had also connected himself to Moonveil now.
He revealed that he had an aspect legacy that allowed for that, it seemed like a weak aspect legacy, but considering how strong he was otherwise, Moon seemed to like the utility aspect of it.
Now Caster was connected to: Sunny, Effie, Kai, Nephis, Cassie, Gemma and Moonveil.
He could now connect to more people, but he didn't seem to want to do that for now.
It was a headache.
Even seven people were a headache.
Luckily he had the fourth wall.
[The first fragment, 'The Fourth Wall' is decreasing your stress.]
Without the fourth wall, Caster would have most likely collapsed from stress long ago.
He was always thankful to it.
He gave it credit to be the only reason that he was able to focus so strongly on his plans.
'Won't you speak to me again? Why did you just talk that one time...'
His thought lingered in the air for a while before he heard some crackles in his mind.
After that a wall of paper seemed to form inside his mind. It had something written on it.
⸢The Fourth Wall says "ti..ring..to..ta..lk"⸥
He didn't just sense it, he also heard it.
The voice was crackling and seemed immensely tired, like last time. Like something stopped it from talking.
Yet it gave an answer to him.
But after that, the fourth wall went quiet again.
Completely, utterly quiet.
As if it never spoke up in the first place.
'Thank you for answering... whoever you are.'
It wasn't exactly reassuring to know something sentient lived inside of him, but it was something good for him, so he was willing to get used to that discomfort.
Still, the fourth wall gave him an eerie feeling, just like the Demon King of Salvation.
He couldn't seem to fully trust either of them.
But he didn't have a choice.
The silver lining was that he could turn off the fourth wall, even if only for a moment.
'Haven't been to the waking world in a while... perhaps I'm too used to the dream world because of the shore. Hah... I should go to the waking world soon.'