Chương 29: 15B. Into The Wilds

Dense spirit activity in the area didn't surprise Sam. The deeper one wandered into the Abyss, the more frequently they appeared. Lilac wisps danced around a low-hanging bioluminescent ceiling pod, painting the area in waves of violet and purple. Further down the road, noxious green smoke billowed from a cracked manhole cover. A flock of inky black ravens cawed and circled an old apartment building. Blacker-than-night tar trickled down its sides.

The thicker the miasma got, the more such sights caught Sam's attention.

"Is it true Greater Spirits don't work well with their lessers?" Sam asked, scanning their surroundings for movement. He had spotted a giant scaled bull and a pair of eyes sitting on stalks, tracking him from the edges of a murky pool. His new senses told him they were far too powerful for him to tackle. He'd taken a long roundabout route to avoid them.

"Even if there is compatibility between their attunements and domains?"

"Not necessarily," Oros replied. Her heightened senses detected threats long before Sam did. Whenever she detected a nearby creature or sensed the boundaries of their territory, she alerted Sam. At times, the familiar also urged him to challenge the weaker beasts in the area, but he refused. She believed danger and stress would do them good. Sam disagreed. He was still in the testing phase. If he got hurt, Iris's life would be in more danger.

"Your friend. I've been studying her closely. Two spirits in her. One has dominated the other to the point I can't tell if it's been assimilated or is subservient. Greater Spirits are generally pickier and won't share space with an entity that can challenge them or doesn't meet their purpose."

"And the other way around? How do normal spirits view entities like Oroboros?"

"They're desperate to serve," Oros answered.

"Any mortal who pairs with a Greater Spirit is destined for greatness. When whatever fragment they grant you returns to the source, the benefits will be greater than they would've been with any ordinary fool." Sam's former professors would've died for such information. They had theories about Greater Spirits but no real information. Ordinary spirits didn't function too differently. They too shared a piece of themselves with mortals.

The scholars of Trinity College had deduced that spirits working with the same mortal also absorbed ether from each other; with time, their domains merged and grew. It was a cumulative benefit for everyone involved. When the fragment returned to the source, it took everything with it, empowering the entity. Ordinary spirits had more to gain from such relationships than their greater counterparts.

"Oroboros, will he accept other spirits?" Sam asked after some thought.

"Once I manifest my second star, or further down the road—""It's unlikely," Oros interrupted.

"It's not that Father is unwilling."

"Let me guess, Genesis and Terminus don't work well with other domains as well as Blood and Impalement do with Air, Wind, or whatever Iris's second spirit grants her."

"That's only a part of it. Father doesn't trust other spirits to handle corruption. I suspect he'd only be willing to work with entities like him who focus on rebirth, renewal, and related laws."

"That's unfortunate." Sam failed to veil his disappointment.

"Don't you worry. There is more on the horizon for you. You need to fulfill your side of the bargain first. The rest will follow." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"So, feed you Corruption."

"Humanoid movement ahead." Oros's tone changed. He had little trouble sensing where she was coming from, but couldn't see through her eyes. Instead, she sent him a hazy image where the colors felt all wrong. But Sam saw a faint orange-and-red shape: a tall, gangly man. It was in a building near the giant stalk.

"You might not need to stay out for long, after all." Had to come pretty fucking far, though. The flow of ether through Sam's body and spiritual channels increased as he increased the continuous supply to IEF, pushing it beyond the self-sustaining levels. It was the moment of truth. He stayed low and moved swiftly, relying on Oros's location to close in on their target. A month of training, introspection, and vessel-building. If I'm not ready now, I never will be. Sam heard their target before spotting it.

Loud digging and smashing reached his ears, coming from a building whose second-floor windows cycled through every color of the visible spectrum. It was a beautiful, nearly mesmerizing sight. Sam worried that staring at it would lure him into a state of hypnosis. A handful of seconds left his vision unfocused and his purpose slipping. Oros's telepathic prompt forced him back to reality.

"Illusionist or mind-warping spirit?" Sam asked.

"Might be the side effect of a light spirit, too," Oros replied.

"What is the thing doing? It can't be going for the spirit, can it?"

"I thought only humans could bond with spirits?" Oros's silence concerned Sam. He had fought and accidentally killed a fellow human in self-defense once before; he didn't like that of hunting and fighting one just to test his abilities. Anyone who made it to Level Four and survived was also probably too strong for him to fight without the hand cannon. It's inevitable. I'll have to fight another awakened sooner or later.

But I don't want to be the psycho who just attacks another person to test his strength or to hoard resources I can't and won't use. Much to Sam's relief, the humanoid entity Oros had detected wasn't another human. It was almost identical to the troglodyte he had killed on first arriving on the floor, except taller and more muscular. It too had pallid grey skin, no neck, and arms that almost reached the floor, ending in disproportionately large hands with long, clawed fingers.

The specimen stood more than a foot taller than Sam, and uneven bony armor ran from the back of its head down to its bare, ugly bottom. As with Oroboros, the spirit's presence seemed to strongly affect its environment, far more than he had witnessed on the floors above. It wasn't just the windows changing color, but almost every surface in the area. In fact, Sam could see the first floor's ceiling also flashing through all the colors of the rainbow through a hole in the wall.

The odd, twisted humanoid creature seemed to claw at the edge where the spirit's influence ceased.

"Is it trying to break into the domain? Like an Inhuman?"

"It looks like it," Oros answered.

"It's not succeeding, but it's certainly trying."

"Is that normal behavior?" Sam asked.

"No. But if it's infected with Corruption…"

"The thing could be trying to spread Corruption." Hypotheses flooded Sam's mind. Something in the area was infecting creatures with Corruption. Any specimens that brought back any traces to the nest were exiled to prevent the infection from spreading. It would explain Oros's hyperfocus on the creatures. The familiar followed the discussed battle plan, flanking the creature and making noise to get its attention.

Its attention darted to the stones, and it cautiously moved to the shattered window, palm-sized eyes scanning the ground. Sam used the opportunity to scale the building and enter through the hole on the first floor. Feather Step gave him the agility and silence to make the move without raising an alarm. The Fall of Trinity had taught Sam that things rarely went according to plan. In fact, he had come to expect things to always go wrong.

His primary concerns were an unexpected ruckus that alerted the creature to his presence, or a second that somehow concealed its presence and jumped him as he went for the first. Neither came to be. He got behind his target without making a peep, ready to strike it with a Terminus-charged Pulsing Palm. Then, just as Sam was ready to launch his preliminary attack, the sky exploded. A flash painted everything white, a deafening boom followed, and the world shook, forcing him and his target to their knees.

The Level-Four-dwelling monster snarled, eyes darting to Sam. Its superior senses detected Sam despite the chaos. The creature recovered first, then darted at him, teeth bared and claws ready.