Kael pushed through the lightless arteries of the mountain with a predator's focus. He did not move out of fear for the dark. He was driven by a violent and ancient hunger that was not entirely his own.
Echo thrashed against the walls of his soul like a storm. She did not just want to evolve. She demanded a foundation for the nightmare she was about to become.
Her biological imperative flooded Kael with cold clarity. To germinate her hive, she needed a living vessel of immense mana capacity. An initiate level creature would burn out in seconds under the strain of her spiritual architecture.
She required a Magus level battery. She needed a creature whose nervous system was already wired for high frequency mana output. Kael sought the hibernation chamber of the Bronze Quill Bear to claim a living vessel for Echo to claim.
He relied on the stolen memories of the stone monkeys to navigate. Those creatures knew every jagged twist of the subterranean cave. They understood which paths held wealth and which held certain death.
Kael bypassed veins of common iron and copper that would normally tempt a smith. He sought a place where even the emboldened monkeys feared to tread. He needed a location balanced between absolute danger and quiet isolation.
His goal was the hibernation chamber of a massive mountain predator. The stone monkeys avoided this specific cavern to prevent waking the beast. It was the perfect fortress of silence for the coming storm.
He reached the spot indicated by the flashes of monkey memory. He could hear little rustling sounds echoing through the dark throat of the cave. He followed the vibrations to track the beast.
The bear lay at the center of a hollowed stone cathedral. It stood nearly ten meters tall even while curled in a deep slumber. Its fur shimmered with a metallic bronze hue that captured his mana sight.
The beast was a monument of muscle and magic that swallowed the light. Kael could feel a majestic aura radiating from the slumbering giant. It was the kind of presence that demanded a bended knee.
A serene and peaceful feeling washed over his consciousness. A sudden wave of sorrow enveloped his heart as he watched the creature. He looked at the noble being and felt a deep disgust at his own nature.
Why would anyone want to hurt such a noble and ancient being? He wanted to berate himself for even considering a hunt against it. The bear was merely resting and minding its own business in the dark.
It was a sweet thing that deserved protection from the cruel world. He felt a rising urge to defend it against any who would come. He would stand as its silent guardian until the end of time.
[Compendium Alert: Mental Manipulation Detected. To revert to normal state requires 50 CP. Balance 30 CP. Would host like to continue?]
The warning flickered in his vision like a dying ember in the fog. It felt like a rude intrusion upon a sacred and beautiful moment. How could a cold tool understand the warmth radiating from this beast?
The Compendium was a mechanism of logic and numbers. His heart was currently full of a different and more profound truth. He stepped closer to the shimmering bronze fur with a soft smile.
Each strand of the coat looked like spun metal and felt like silk. It was a contradiction of materials that seemed soft yet indestructible. The bear let out a low and vibrating hum that shook his marrow.
It was the sound of the mountain itself singing a deep lullaby. The lack of points felt like a hidden blessing to his clouded mind. If he had fifty points, he might have silenced this connection forever.
He felt a primal desire to sit beside the creature and guard its dreams. The outside world with its constant struggle felt like a distant memory. He was ready to let the silence of the cave swallow him whole.
Echo shrieked within the confines of his soul without warning. It was not a sound of peace or noble beauty. It was a jagged blade of pure static that tore through his mental fog.
The pain was sudden and sharp enough to make him gasp. He stumbled back as his hands flew to his throbbing temples. The bronze glow of the bear flickered for a brief second in his sight.
In that moment of clarity, the majestic fur looked like rusted wire. The sweet scent of summer jasmine was replaced by the stench of rot. His stomach turned with a violent heave of pure nausea.
The mental manipulation fought back instantly with a wave of heat. The comforting warmth returned to smother the alarm of his soul. It was a tide of forced emotion that felt thick and suffocating.
Kael gasped for air as his mind became a bloody battlefield. He could see the bleached bones of stone monkeys near the paws. They had died in the same state of adoration he was now feeling.
Compendium, prioritize internal defense over complete restoration, he thought. He forced the command through a throat that felt filled with honey. He needed a bridge between his current points and his sanity.
[Query Updated: Partial mental shielding initiated. Cost 25 CP. Balance 5 CP. Warning: Mental integrity remains compromised.]
Kael did not stop with the compendium and cast his own shield. He channeled arcane mana in a thin veil around his mindscape. This was not a perfect defense but it was all he had.
The pressure on his chest eased enough to allow a single thought. The bear was not a noble guardian but a psychic anchor. It fed on the devotion and the lives of its mesmerized victims.
He looked at the creature again with swimming and distorted vision. One moment it was a god of the forest and the earth. The next it was a bloated parasite with metallic needles for fur.
Echo surged once more and her energy acted as a physical weight. She was his anchor to the world of the living and the dead. He felt her hunger mirroring his own growing rage and clarity.
He reached for the rings on his fingers with trembling hands. His limbs moved with the sluggishness of someone caught in deep water. The cold metal of the rings felt like a grounding reality.
He would not be another skeleton at the foot of this false idol. If the bear wanted his devotion, it would face his fire first. The honeyed warmth in his head began to sour into a bitter taste.
The Compendium acted as a thin pane of glass against a storm. Kael could finally see the predator for what it truly was. The bronze fur bristled and stood on end like a thousand spears.
The bear did not open its eyes but the floor began to vibrate. Pure terror flooded Kael's heart and dampened the mental effects. He held that fear tight and channeled mana into his shaping ring.
He targeted the floor under the bear to turn it into liquid. He wanted to drown the entire beast in the churning stone. Even with all his power he was only able to sink the paws.
A sudden nosebleed splattered onto the liquefying stone at his feet. His mana channels were screaming under the pressure of the magus beast. The bear finally opened its eyes and the shield began to crack.
Kael staggered back from the psychic weight of that golden gaze. At the instant he feared he would lose he compacted the stone. The liquid rock snapped shut like a vice around the beast.
The bear's front paws were stuck deep in the frozen granite. A roar of pain burst from its maw and shattered the silence. Kael saw that the bear was thrashing against its heavy shackles.
He did not wait for the creature to break free from the trap. He channeled a spike spell with his remaining soul mana. The energy gathered in a cold and jagged orb between his palms.
He shot the dark projectile toward the bear's massive chest. The spike sank into the beast with a wet and heavy thud. Kael could feel that the effect was very small against the hide.
The impact was negligible against such a mountain of bulk and magic. His rank was far too low for a direct kill on this predator. The bear was near the mid rank of magus power and fury.
Kael stopped fighting like a traditional mage and changed his focus. He channeled the shaping rune through his ring once again. He did not need perfection to win this battle of attrition.
Crude spikes began to emerge from the ceiling and walls around the bear. They shattered into dust when they met the metallic bronze fur. Kael did not slow down his frantic and desperate casting.
He hardened the tips of the spikes with the compact rune. He did not create perfect stones because time was running out. The bear was ripping its front paws out of the stone floor.
The compacted spikes were finally able to pierce the thick hide. A drizzle of blood leaked and then healed itself almost instantly. Kael cast the spikes again and again with a rhythmic focus.
The thrashing of the bear was shaking the entire cave compendium. The beast was confused as to why the prey was still fighting. It expected him to lie down and offer his throat to the blade.
Kael knew the spikes would only hurt the beast bit by bit. Most importantly he could hear Echo's warning in his mind. She wanted the bear alive for her own mysterious needs.
He turned the earth under the back paws into a liquefied state. The moment they sank he hardened the ground with compact runes. All four limbs were now pinned by the weight of the mountain.
At this moment the mental shield shattered under a psychic pulse. Only the partial barrier cast by the Compendium remained in place. Kael was once again subsumed in the thick and sweet compulsion.
The world turned sweet and noble as his mind began to drown. He could feel that something was fundamentally wrong with his thoughts. He did not fully lose control of his body this time.
The jagged edges of the cave softened into velvet curtains of light. The stench of rot vanished and was replaced by blooming jasmine. Kael felt his rage melt away like ice under a summer sun.
It was as if he were a spectator of his own life story. A part of him looked at the bear and felt a crushing guilt. The creature was weeping psychic tears that tasted of honey.
He wanted to reach out with his trembling hands to undo the stone. He wanted to apologize for the pain he had caused the god. At this moment a shriek in his soul stopped him cold.
Time slowed for a brief half second as the sound dropped out. Echo came out of his soul in a burst of turquoise light. Kael was trembling from the force of the shriek she used.
She went toward the bear's neck and started injecting her venom. The assault on his mindscape stopped as the bear lost its focus. Kael came back to the brutal reality of the dark cavern.
He could not believe he had been so vulnerable to the charm. He infused his cranial mana gate and his senses sharpened instantly. He focused on the lingering mana seeping through his mind.
He gathered that alien energy and funneled it into the Compendium. The sweet and sickly feeling vanished as the compendium processed it. His mind cleared for the first time since he entered the den.
[Input Received: New Mana Signature Gained – Cerebral Mana.]
Kael started to convert his own mana to this new signature. The conversion produced an ethereal energy that hummed with cold logic. He infused the cerebral mana into his mind for a permanent fix.
Clarity rang out like a bell in a high and empty mountain. Ideas started to bloom in his mind like rapid fire flowers. The Compendium opened and started absorbing this new mana greedily.
[Input Received: Energy received. 1 CP per hour while channeling this new mana.]
So the compendium could use this mana to replenish its own stores. Kael diverted his attention back to the fight in front of him. He saw that Echo was not trying to kill the bear yet.
She was injecting venom every time her stingers replenished their supply. The bear was staggering as the toxins hit its nervous compendium. Kael focused his mana sight on the beast to learn its way.
He wanted to see if he could extract the mental control rune. Magus level magic was notoriously difficult to capture for an initiate. He focused his entire being on the flow of the bear's power.
It was to no avail as the patterns were far too complex. He remembered that only initiate level beings were easy to harvest. He would need more than a few rings to steal this power.
A roar stymied Kael as it reverberated through his entire chest. The bear's desperation peaked as the venom clouded its mighty mind. It realized that its prey had become the inevitable predator.
The metallic fur bristled and thousands of bronze quills flew off. Their trajectory was so swift that he could not possibly react. The quills hissed through the air with a sound like tearing silk.
Kael tried to raise a stone shield but he was far too slow. Three spikes went through his body and pinned him to the wall. The impact was so great that it knocked the air from his lungs.
One spike punctured a lung and another lodged near his heart. Darkness surged at the edges of his vision as he felt the heat. His life force slipping away as his blood began to leak onto the cold stone floor.
Echo shrieked with a voice filled with genuine fear. She abandoned the bear and rushed back toward his dying form. The beast slumped in its stone shackles and began to succumb to Echo's venom.
[Compendium Alert: Critical damage detected.]
Darkness was shrouding his eyes and the last thing he felt was Echo merging with him and then Kael knew no more.