74. Have faith

I focused and started analysing my thoughts. Were they any different?

Was I mad?

Yes.

But that was nothing new.

Was I madder than usual? Now that was the question.

I went over my family’s moral compass. Did I have some new inclination toward the murder of the innocent or the twisting of people into abominations? Maybe a strange need to enlighten the next person I meet about our Lord and Saviour Azathoth, the Nuclear Chaos?

Not that I could tell.

Thankfully.

I reflected for a bit on my past kills, checking if anything had changed. I repeated the reasoning for each, but arrived at similar conclusions. No oddity there.

I wasn’t excited about easy fights with normal humans. The only pleasure I took in an easy kill was the fact that it brought me closer to any goal I had. That, and a bit of pleasure in getting rid of someone I didn’t like. But that was it. It wasn’t the kind of sickening euphoria that could become addictive.

Hmmmm.

What did that mean? I looked once again at the scroll.

Faith: 1.

A spiritual understanding of the incomprehensible. It was a contradiction, but one I didn’t know how, or if it in any way affected me. It was not something I wanted to leave for later. My mind was my most important tool.

So if nothing immediately showed itself, then there was one place to check.

At the source.

I sat down in a meditative position, ready to fall into myself. But instead of taking the plunge towards my soul, I started shifting in my spot. My movement range had changed, so sitting felt different. There was no tension, no matter how far I pushed my knees down towards the floor while sitting in a full lotus.

It was strange.

I gave myself some time to get used to it so that any shifting on my part wouldn’t disrupt my meditative state.

I then closed my eyes and allowed myself to fall through my consciousness. I felt as if time had stopped. I slipped beneath my mind into the space deep in the soul.

As always, I arrived at the barren field of gray. As always, there was the linen rope. And as always, there was the darkness, directly behind my back.

I turned around and looked at the wall of void. And I could immediately feel that something was wrong.

There was the familiar feeling of something trying to arouse a sensation of fear inside me, but just ended up as a dull pressure on the soul. But the sensations of wrongness grew. There was a change. There was beauty to it that I didn’t see before, a pattern, a rhythm, and in it was a gaze looking back at me, a gaze I wanted to–

I ripped myself out of the meditation.

I arrived back in my own body in the attic as a sharp headache assaulted me. For a second, I felt like a fish out of water, like I was in the wrong space and couldn’t breathe. Only after a few seconds did my lungs remember their role, and I took a few deep gulps of air.

Trying to meet the gaze of the Abyss. Was I suicidal?

I took a few seconds to calm my breathing and reviewed what had happened.

At no point did I lose control or reason. It didn’t feel like that.

So what was it?

I knew better than to gaze into the Abyss, especially with my current strength.

The answer was something different. I think it was fascination.

Like noticing something new in your favourite painting and hyper-fixating on it, that’s what I did. I hyper-fixated on the rhythm of the Abyss. I was always drawn in by it, but now there was more. There was an understanding, a part of me telling me I could see through the darkness if I just looked long enough.

Without any feelings of fear, that was a dangerous thing. I had nothing to warn me except my own reason, and it was not as quick as the primal sensations of terror.

The good news was that the change didn’t affect my personality or reasoning. But my relationship with eldritch magic was something I needed to work on.

I closed my eyes and went back into my mind, this time reminding myself over and over again not to look too long into the wall of nothingness. Once I felt in control once again, I started on the next step.

I then whispered the god’s name and invoked the magic at the lowest level I could.

It flew through me, the strange, squirming, and writhing force. I kept my eyes closed for now and just sensed it move, trying to get it under control. I immediately sensed the difference once again. The whispers that accompanied the magic were now much more inviting, softer on my ears. The strange, reverberating language of the Abyss seemed to have a flow to it, a rule buried deep within the many voices. And if I just listened closely long enough...

I ignored that suicidal idea and let the magic flow into my eyes before opening them.

The mysteries of the material world were laid bare as usual. Existence screamed as the eldritch magic wanted to tell me everything about it. But this time it was less threatening, once again more inviting. The knowledge wasn’t forbidden, but something that should be known.

The energy flow through my body actually felt pleasant. Unlike the sensation of a foreign being crawling inside me, now it was like a warm current, well, almost. A squirming current, but warm.

I ended the contract and let the energy flow out of me and dissipate around me. I could see eyeballs and tentacles form in the air like mirages in a desert, but with the minuscule amount I used, they quickly dissipated.

I had a lot of work to do.

First on the list was speaking without biting my tongues.

Next was getting used to my new way of looking at eldritch energy.

And then checking out what I could do with the rest of my attributes and learning some third-level magic.

I looked at the skin scroll once again.

***

Race: ? Bloodline: ?

Magic Circle: 3

Standard Spells per circle:

1st: 18 -> 27

2nd: 6 -> 9

3rd: 4

Attributes:

Body

Strength: 16 -> 19

Dexterity: 17 -> 23

Endurance: 16 -> 25

Constitution: 15 -> 17

Mind

Intelligence: 23 -> 26

Wisdom: 15 -> 16

Willpower: 25 -> 29

Mental Defense (non-fear): 24 -> 27

Spirit

Soul: 19 -> 20

Instinct: 0

Faith: 0 -> 1

Manifestation: 0

Social

Empathy: 2

Charisma: 4

Pressure: 21 -> 25

Passion: 8

Skills: Multilingual; Authority Over Mana (apprentice); Authority Over Mind; Eldritch Madness; Eldritch Tongue; Servant to the Abyss; Spell Casting; Ritual Casting; Curse Weaving; Full Astral Projection (apprentice); Golem Creation (novice); Darkvision; Accelerated healing

Secrets: Fire, Space, Death, Mind

Mysteries: Space, Death, Curse, Soul, Mind

Enigmas?: Eldritch

***

That was quite the increase. What was surprising were the physical attributes. Strength wasn’t that high for the second circle. But dexterity was quite unexpected. With speed like that, I could actually dodge a warrior without any spells.

However, the most surprising one was endurance, which suddenly skyrocketed. I didn’t pay that much attention to it before. It was essentially a measure of how much your body could endure, both in terms of exhaustion and physical damage.

I curiously looked at my finger. The wound from piercing it for the scroll was already closed. So it was this type of endurance.

I should have high survivability and healing, but not much had changed when it comes to the flesh’s toughness. I should be able to live through some nasty wounds, though, probably even survive something like a pierced heart.

That also meant I needed to change my body enhancement spell. I had agility covered without magic. Now, Toughness was the better choice.

“Neat,” I said, somehow without biting myself, while closing and opening my hand.

Accelerated healing was a nice addition. Always welcome to see. I would have to read up more about what it entailed and how it worked.

Darkvision was also good to have.

There were many more gains than I expected. Not sure all of them made me that happy, though. Some could use an explanation or a warning before they manifested, but they were here now, so no point dwelling on it.

I knew there was more to it. My lineage needed way more investigation.

I also need to check if I unlocked some bloodline magic. But if it were Eldritch type, then I’m not sure how I would even access it. Would it be by instinct, like a sorcerer? But my instinct was at a firm zero. Instead, my faith rose as if for a priest or a warlock.

Again, it was a scroll made by a relatively weak fortune teller. It's possible that more complex changes weren't detected.

A change to Ophelia’s curriculum was needed. I now had a pile of research and fixing shit about myself on my plate. I guess I would need to contact her Qi teacher sooner than planned.

She would start on physical training next.

Now, for the last part before I went back. I was curious how my new mental stats affected my magic, with willpower jumping by three and all the other attributes improving.

I picked Flames of Purgatory as my test subject. It was a dual-attribute spell that was one of the tougher ones to cast. It would make for a good benchmark.

I connected with my mana. It flowed and listened much better than before. Happy about the growth, I raised my head to start casting.

But I immediately ended the spell.

I was concentrating as I usually did. Maybe slightly more to sense any difference, but by no means was it the type of state where I forgot about everything around and focused on magic alone. Not the kind of state where the personification of my mana should show.

But there she stood.

Previously, whenever she showed, she would be somewhere in the distance. Sometimes in the corner, sometimes sitting on a bench in the background, or looking in through a window. But right now, when I connected to magic, she showed herself standing in front of me.

In full view.

Closer than ever.