Chapter 247 - Thirst for Divinity

Nate stared out over the bay and towards the horizon as his Grandmaster-tier Space Sigil hung in front of him. Keeping the bath of paint around him flowing while maintaining the separate colours, he activated Conceptual Insight and then pushed Divine Energy into the Skill. Thirty units of Divine Energy vanished instantly and the Space Sigil before him began to change. Even at the Grandmaster-tier the Sigil had pressed against Reality, constantly shifting gravity and time as it pulsed like a heart. Within its depths Nate had sensed wisps of other Subconcepts but nothing that he could readily recognise. 

That changed as the Sigil became Divine. Space began to extend, ballooning and shrinking as Nate’s vision of the cliffs and the world was distorted. Without direction, without rules, Space wanted to become Chaos. But Nate’s Intent bore down on the Sigil like a hammer. He was a Conceptual Spatial Artist. Space was a part of who he was and how he interacted with Reality. With his soaring Stats, courtesy of his Embodiment, the area around him calmed as the Sigil continued to shine, now under his control.

Slowly it faded from reality but the memory remained and Nate took that memory and activated Multi Conceptual Material Shaping. Pushing a single unit of Divine Energy into the Skill, he began to change his Unending Black Pearl. Space began to infuse the pearl and Nate felt his Divine Energy draining slowly to fuel the change. As he did so, he encountered his first problem. 

He had thought the second grand runic array that would seal the space within the pearl would be enough to restrain the Divine nature of what he was creating. While that might be true, the pearl itself would be Divine and though it was connected to the grand runic array, it would not be restrained. It was the hook, the anchor, that connected the inner world of the pearl to the true Reality. Immediately Nate shifted gears, adding two more Divine Sigils to the affinities he was imbuing into the Unending Black Pearl. Close and Barrier would seal the Unending Black Pearl’s Divinity in the same way that the grand runic array would seal the inner world. Two halves of a whole, connected together, binding True Reality and Fabricated Reality into a cohesive system. 

As the three Divine Sigils were bound together, Nate realised he didn’t want them to be perfectly balanced within the pearl’s structure. Space should lie within, hidden by an outer layer of Barrier and Close, with a fourth Divine Sigil added just for Nate. A pinprick hole through which Nate could Open the inner space and access his Divine artifact. The shifting nature and balance required to create what he envisioned took his entire focus and he drifted deeper and deeper into his creation, losing sight and awareness of the world around him as he worked.

*************

Kiri flashed above Nate, creating a web of mythic steel before activating Echo of the Soul Dancer. The bird that had been diving at Nate manipulated the wind to slow its fall slightly and let Kiri tumble out of the way before it sped back up. Kiri activated her Echo as the bird got within range and a shimmering version of her made of Soul Energies appeared right where she had been above Nate. The bird crashed into the memory of Kiri’s web of steel, tumbling to the side bleeding. Bleeding but not dead. Kiri used Soul Shift to leap at the bird but was instantly blasted away by a burst of concentrated wind as the bird launched itself into the air without a single flap of its wings.

Kiri tumbled across the ground, uninjured as her Soul Imbuement had her Endurance and Constitution at almost two thousand. She growled at the bird as it hovered in the sky, barely flapping its wings as it controlled the wind and clearly searched for a way to get at Nate. Kiri had felt the sliver of Divine Energy in that blast of wind and knew she faced a Lesser Divinity like herself. Unlike Nate she couldn’t check its level or class, but that didn’t matter. She was stronger. She knew it. The bird knew it. The question was, did it know it enough to give up the hunt or would it make another attempt?

She wasn’t sure, but if it decided to stay it was going to find out what happened when Kiri started using Divine Energy herself.

*************

Frick cackled in glee as he faced the pack. He had used Nate’s Conceptual Sight of The Runic Artist. His Boss had some amazing Skills. The pack were called Kikografs, and every single one had a Legendary Class and was over level two hundred. With ten of the green furred, dog-like beasts arrayed before him it was like the universe had given him the perfect opportunity to show Reality what Frick truly was. He was, of course, a Spirit. Then he was also a Familiar. Sometimes he was a Butler and, frequently, he was a fool. But most of all, he was a goblin.

Frick grinned, showing sharp-teeth as he activated My Will, My Way growing to the size of a three-storey house with muscles to match. A long time ago, he had explained to Nate why goblins were the best race in the universe, and his reasoning had not involved size. But, he’d been limited in using his Class Skills through being a projection. But this time he wasn’t a projection. He’d used the Familiar Contract to manifest fully within the Physical Realm. He was here, and only here. The risk of death tasted like ambrosia on his tongue. Finally, he could be the Frickest of Fricks.

“Let’s play, puppies!” he screamed in joy as he activated three Skills.

Feed on Chaos filled him with a thirst that could only be sated by the unexpected, but so long as chaos reigned he would be empowered, for goblins were the enemies of order. Goblin machinations shouldn’t work, yet they did, because Reality was flexible. It didn’t break, it bent.

Replenish the Horde was a secondary buff that, fueled by Feed on Chaos, would restore Frick in a similar way that Kiri restored herself with Soul Energy. But this one fed on Chaos, which Frick loosely interpreted as Demonic Energy.

Then, with a final laugh, Frick activated one of his two Mythic Skills. Skills that without Nate he doubted he would have ever been able to create. But his Boss was just sooo good at working with Concepts that Frick was bound to pick up on a few of them. Especially since this one was one that Nate could be said to specialise in. Kinda. Life was just so flexible, and even the Subconcept of Reproduction could be manipulated to suit Frick’s needs.

Frick could have activated the Skill silently, but where was the fun in that? Where was the chaos? No, he wanted Reality to know what he was.

“Goblin-Mode,” he yelled at the Kikograf pack.

His huge body began breaking apart as he deformed into a horde of metre tall goblins, all bearing some similarity to his blue form with slight variations; after all, even appearances could be chaotic. Then, the he that was the horde charged, screaming obscenities even as the pack showed signs of uncertainty in the face of a hundred blue goblins roaring towards them fearlessly.

*************

Nate’s focus was absolute. Nothing existed for him except the pool of paint, the runes around him, his barrier and, most of all, the Unending Black Pearl grasped within his hands. The drain on his Divine Energy was more than he had expected. Shifting an object into a true Divine item was expensive. In the back of his mind it made him realise just how valuable the Divine Artifacts the Calikex had once held really were. 

The pearl continued to drink his energies into its dark surface and Nate realised it was likely going to cost him around twenty units of Divine Energy just for the pearl. A pearl that was maybe a tenth the size of the Depths Walker’s Heart of the Sea. Given that the size of the material was a factor, that made him realise that the paint surrounding him would likely require ten times that amount. Two hundred units of Divine Energy was a mind boggling amount, but that was the price for creating a Divine Artifact as powerful as he intended. That realisation meant he was going to need to generate more Divine Energy. Thankfully, he had a way to do so, but it also meant that this process was going to take longer than expected.

The pearl drank the last drops needed and he felt the ripple on Reality as it coalesced into a true Divine Artifact. A miniature world, held within a pearl; Space created and maintained with a Barrier creating a path to the True Reality. The feeling was reminiscent of a Dungeon’s portal he realised, but his thought was interrupted as Divine Energy flowed back into him. Only ten units, half of what he had spent, but he smiled as it did so. 

His Embodiment was Conceptual Artist. He generated Divine Energy not just by learning more about Concepts, but by creating things with them. He had just created a Divine Artifact and Reality had recognised how he connected with who he was, and through it the greater Reality. It wasn’t enough to completely refund him for his work, but it certainly offset a portion of the cost.

With one-hundred-and-nine units of Divine Energy to work with, he activated Conceptual Insight again. Burning through sixty units of Divine Energy in an instant sent ripples across True Reality, and even Nate could see how that would call to those who could recognise what was happening. His Art and Paint Sigils hovered in front of him as they began to transform and Nate felt how the two called to each other. Reality changed in response, the paint beneath him shifting from islands of colours into paintings. His paintings, called forth from his memory, swirled and changed over and over again. His graffiti from Earth, paintings of Aisling and Kiri. Of Kiri’s family and the place between universes. Paintings that had lived only in Nate’s thoughts that he had never had time to create. Paintings of Valeria, Britt and Olithia.

Nate’s sense of the world around him retreated. Space had been his to command, but Art was who he was and into its depths he fell, drowning in the sense of becoming one with Reality.

*************

In Pinoreth, the Calikex cowered in fear and wonder. Above the cliffs that shielded their tranquil bay, a riot of colours decorated the sky, shifting constantly from one image to another. The beauty was self-evident, but so were the screams. Ascendants did battle above their city and they were not prepared. They hid in houses or beneath the wooden walkways in their boats and prayed that they would not be destroyed. 

Elders of the Temples gathered their people to prepare to do their duty and defend The People. Their eternal agreement for the resources they took to fuel the growth of their Disciples bound them, but even they quavered in fear at the amount of Divine Energy on display. They had experienced the Sacred Trials and knew a whisper of what an Ascendant was capable of, but even in those images and memories, they had not envisioned the way that an Ascendant could warp reality. Watching the multicoloured sky, they whispered in their hearts for someone, or something, to save them.

Within a house close to the cliffs, a Calikex gave birth. The black and red-skinned baby wailed as it opened its eyes and gazed upon a sky awash with colours and the child, barely able to see, smiled. A System message it could not yet understand flashed in response and then was gone.

Far from Pinoreth, a great yellow eye opened, glancing in the direction of the Calikex city, before it huffed out a breath.

“Fool or genius. What have you sent me this time, Kali’terra?”

*************

It felt like an age had passed before Nate managed to pull his thoughts back together. The paint surrounding him subsided as his focus returned, and the Divine Sigils for Art and Paint hung dutifully before him. The images burned themselves into his mind as they began to fade and Nate looked at his waning Divine Energy. He was down to forty-nine units. Not enough to raise his Mythic paint to Divine. Around him, the cliff top was utter chaos. Kiri was fighting in the sky against two birds. A third and fourth lay dead nearby, their heads obliterated. Beyond the cliff, down the incline that led to the forest, were hundreds of blue goblins screaming in glee as they fought against all manner of beasts. Snakes, some form of dog, a couple of Dark Ligan and a slowly growing army of ants swarmed out of the trees only to be met by a horde of goblins that seemed to have no sense of self preservation as they screamed and threw themselves into the meat grinder.

Another presence was climbing the cliffs, and Nate recognised some sort of Lesser Divine octopus. He watched as the Lesser Divine came under attack from the water as the Depths Walkers Elders and Disciples began an assault on the creature. Though he should have been retaining all his Divine Energy for what he had to do next, he spent a single unit to improve Conceptual Sight of the Runic Artist. Throwing his farsight sphere across the city of Pinoreth, he saw how the Temples of the Jungle Stalkers and Sky Wardens battled against the beasts of the forest to keep them from breaching the city.

Nate felt a moment of worry in his chest. What had he done? He could feel Reciprocity building slowly in his chest. His actions had created this. At the same time, he felt the same demands from Reciprocity ebb, as though he was also somehow repaying the Calikex. He didn’t understand it but he was already too far gone to stop now. With a sigh, he drew his attention back in. Raising the paint to a Divine artifact would be the last step. First, he needed to complete his two grand runic arrays.

Piece by piece he began slotting in Barrier, Close, Paint and Art into the outer grand runic array. The Sigils needed to be inserted one after another in a specific sequence that distributed them across the outer surface in such a way that the exterior structure remained balanced. Time passed quickly for Nate as his first grand runic array came together. Notifications were flashing in the corner of his vision but he ignored them as he worked and finally, like taking a deep breath, the outer layer was completed. Another notification appeared and was summarily ignored as Nate reviewed his work. He was over halfway done. The pearl was completed and now the outer grand runic array was finished. All that remained was the inner grand runic array, and the second Divine Artifact he would create to fill the space and become the medium of his clothing.

With his teeth grit and sweat pouring down his face from the focus and pressure, he moved to complete his work and make this sacrifice of energy, and potentially debt, worth it.