I wasn’t dead, which was always great news. I also wasn’t being crushed by an esophagus and drowning in stomach acid. Instead I found myself in an eerie silence. There was also a faint blue light casting shadows in some kind of a cave or a corridor. I made a lingering flashlight cantrip to see better.

Okay, something was seriously weird. So I was definitely in a mouth. I could see the massive crocodile teeth leading up to the point of the snout. And I was standing on a gray tongue. But everything was still and quiet. Like time had stopped. The Leviathan was not moving or swallowing. There was also a sensation in the back of my mind that I recognized, but couldn’t name. Like I had been in a place like this before, which naturally made absolutely no sense.

On a whim, I walked up the edge of my strange prison and tried to brush against one of the teeth. 

I couldn’t.

An inch before I could touch the man-sized crocodile tooth, my hand just slipped into something. There was a membrane of energy that rippled when my hand pushed into it. I couldn’t see where my hand went, but outside this space, it was cold and wet. I retrieved my hand and understood.

This was just like it had been with Zamadi. Only, the Old Bones had enveloped me in a space of smoke and darkness. A space removed from the world where time was distorted.

I was in a spiritual domain!

Naturally, it was very scary. I was in the belly of a giant sea monster. It had swallowed me whole, and I doubted it had any intentions of letting me go voluntarily. 

But when a shiver ran down my spine, it was just pure excitement. I got to explore a spiritual realm with all of its strange magic? Sign me the hell up yesterday.

I looked around and cast a stronger flashlight cantrip. The mouth led down a slope deeper into the spiritual domain. I walked on top of the tongue, and the cavern widened unnaturally. The walls were fleshy, gray and blue and emanated a faint blue light that cast strange shadows. The first cavern that opened was full of shipwrecks, skeletons of sea beasts and men alike. Crushed bits of hull and rotting sails of all colors were strewn across the fleshy floor. 

“A little Bermuda’s Triangle of our own,” I chuckled to myself. 

I decided it was best to cast a really hefty Kinetic Barrier on myself. I also made sure my cultivation reserves were topped up, and spent some time even filling the refined mana pouch my father had given me on my third birthday. I couldn’t fill that simply by plucking mana from the air, but I had Purification, which did the job in minutes. There were maybe five-hundred particles of mana in there, which was a good emergency fund, if my cultivation ran out. 

The mana was pretty rich inside this domain, so I was pretty confident in my ability to spellcast here. 

On the island of Asaid, a space the size of a coconut would contain anywhere between twenty to thirty mana particles. Above fifty in the heart of the jungle, Mez’s temple not included, because it broke the rules.

Around Aligapa, it had been double that. Fifty in any normal space, seventy to eighty in the jungle. Way more in the cave with the mana vein.

The Silver Sea between tier 0 and tier 1 had eighty to a hundred particles in any given space, which I could definitely notice. Training any Skill was faster. Inside this spiritual domain, everything had almost two hundred particles floating around in an area the size of a coconut.

Of course, this was all throttled by my ability to see the mana particles with my Mana Sight, but I figure the ratios were important.

If this trajectory kept up, I couldn’t wait to see what kinds of mana concentrations Baros and beyond had.

No, I wasn’t scared and trying to calm myself down! How dare you ask!

Okay, I was a little scared. This spiritual domain was vast and there was an eerie sense of danger, and I hesitated to move into the cavern with the shipwrecks. But I had to go forward. I was a baby on a mission. Many things had been contained in that gentle little hi, that I had heard before the Leviathan swallowed me. Tiamat was here, and she was in pain and wanted this to end.

After my preparations, I moved forward and down the slope. Immediately the dim cavern became alit. It was as if a whale’s breathing hole had opened in the ceiling and a pale and sickly sun was shining in. Spirits poured out of that hole and they were not happy spirits. At least ten of them, large and small. They sent pulses of malice and wanton bloodlust. I steeled myself and used my Spirit Connection and Spiritual Presence the moment they noticed me. 

I immediately subjugated six of the smaller ones under the force of my will. The larger spirits resisted and surged into the bones of those swallowed by Leviathan and the remains started to animate.

Oh boy…

I quickly sent a pulse asking what the lesser spirits wanted. I sent a series of compassion and eagerness to help. They were rabid. Just pure balls of wrath of malice, that sought to hurt and destroy. Naturally they weren’t very communicative. But one of them had some sense left and relented and said they were trapped and it was painful and they wanted it to end. 

I didn’t have time to ask further questions. The spirits were forming abominations from the scattered bones and ship parts and possessing them. Two large bone colossi formed and rose to loom over me and started barreling towards me.

I pushed my will on the lesser spirits and they faded into nothingness. Their essence scattered and the most lucid of them sent a final pulse of thank you.

All this time I had been preparing a Water Jet. The bone colossi let out an unholy screech as they charged at me. One of them hobbled at me with three legs, made from hull parts. It had stitched together several ribcages and several heads, and the arms and legs had the bones of three men, making it almost spiderlike in its spindliness.

The second one was more ship than bone, but no less disturbing. It had a steering wheel for a head and from that, hundreds of bones hung limply, like tendrils. The whole creature hovered mid air, with its fifteen foot bone tendrils waving towards me. It gave me the impression of a jellyfish, but it moved fast for one.

Then I fired the Water Jet to throw both of the colossi back.

I am really happy I had the presence of mind to shoot the jellyfish-thing. It rocketed against the wall and clattered into a thousand pieces and started reassembling itself. I could sense the pulses of anger and indignation.

However, the spindly three-legged thing was not so simple. I aimed my spell at it, but it braced itself, and skittered behind a broken hull, before it leapt at me, one sharp bone leg extended at me like a harpoon.

I pushed myself back with a Kinetic Push and blasted a cultivation barrage of Water Bullets at it. Two hard ones. I tried aiming at the joint where the leg connected to the mess of rib cages. The creature twisted and I missed one, but two projectiles struck the creature, and the crunch of bone was very satisfying.

The spider-thing moved in a twitchy lunge, and tried to pierce me again, before leading into a wide horizontal swipe with another leg.

I launched myself into the air with a modified Kinetic Push and then unleashed a Water Jet to suppress it. I stabilized the Kinetic Push enough to counter the force of gravity before adding a lingering component to the formula.

[Mana Manipulation level 27!]

[+2 Mana Flow]

[+1 Magic Power]

During this time I prepared a quick Water Spear to finish the spider-thing.

But before I could finish the spell, the jellyfish creature was surging towards me in the air. The bony tentacles whipped and flared out, clearly looking to embrace me into a hug, I had no interest in participating.

I had to use the Water Spear to blast the jellyfish point blank. While the spell wasn’t finished, and the kinetic components weren’t refined to the point they would give the spell its maximum penetrative power, It still smashed in a satisfying way against the jellyfish, striking the steering wheel and cracking the bone.

I let the kinetic suspension effect dissipate and floated towards the ground as I prepared my next move.

Immediately I gathered as much mana from my cultivation as I could and blasted the suppressed spider-thing with a barrage of Water Bullets as I let go of the Water Jet.

All the bullets hit, now that the target was still, and they cracked off one of the legs at the joint, sending the bones flying and scattering around the cavern.

The spindly monstrosity tried to get up, but it struggled on only two legs. So it started dragging itself along the floor, screeching while doing it. Whatever it lost in speed, it more than made up with being a horrifying uncanny nightmare.

The jellyfish was coming at me, but it was wobbling in the air, and I fired another quick Water Spear against the steering wheel, which seemed to be where the spirits resided to animate this creature.

It mostly managed to dodge in a twitchy sideways move, but my spell scored a graze, which sent the jellyfish into a wide spin, flaring out the whipping tentacles.

I reached out with my Spirit Connection to the spirits inside the two-legged spindly thing, and found that the spirits were weakened. They had exerted themselves against me, and despite their anger, they couldn’t keep up this pace.

I sent another barrage of Water Bullets, and I felt something flinch and give in the spirit’s will.

Immediately I pushed my Spiritual Presence on them with all of its weight. They could not withstand it, and they gave in. There was no lucidity there, only rabid bloodlust. But in the final moments before the spirits dissipated, I could feel a sense of ease and release.

The bones and broken ship parts clattered on the floor and were lifeless again.

The jellyfish creature launched at me with one final attack, but it was too slow now. I used kinetic magic to slide out of the way of its charge, as it clattered and crashed into a rotting gunship. I used a powerful Kinetic Push to pin it against the hull, and then started pressing on it with my will.

The spirits struggled, but my will had been tempered by the Deep Lord Zamadi himself. I let the essence of who I was expand and press down on the spirits. They were but hungry ghosts gnawing at shadows of anger, and could not match me. Soon they succumbed and started to dissipate. There was that sense of release again, and this time, I could even sense a faint pulse of gratitude. 

[Spirit Connection Level 15!]

[+4 Spiritual Power]

The long tendrils lost their form and collapsed into a scattered pile of bones next to the hull.

I groaned and fell on my butt. Yeah, that wasn’t enough. I just straight up flopped on the floor. It was a bit gross, because the fleshiness jiggled under me.

I replenished my cultivation and put a basic lingering barrier on me, just in case, but then I just breathed out and tried to reset myself.

Angry spirits creating bone abominations. The shit I keep getting into…

While I was magically adept enough to deal with the bone abominations, exerting my spiritual pressure was difficult. If I didn’t have an epic Skill and all those extra levels and bonus Attributes, I wondered how well I could fare. After a bit of meditation to center myself and calm my mind, I got up and followed the cavern down.