I watched Tiamat uncurl from the tight ball her spirit had bundled up into in the middle of the spiritual mess I had untangled.

She perked up and flew to hover at my eye-level, and I got my first full look at her.

She vaguely resembled the giant sea-dragon-serpent thing in the ceiling. That creature up there was beginning to fade and crumble, as the whole spiritual domain was getting unstable.

Tiamat looked at me with bright azure eyes full of questions and anticipation. She was an eager little thing, and I felt that deep chord of connection somewhere within my soul. I had felt the same thing when I had first touched Leviathan.

“I think you and I are going to get along,” I said and smiled.

“Shiiii!” she let out an excited shrill sound.

She was really the cutest little sea noodle I had ever seen. Blue body, with a white underbelly. Little wings of blue, shining feathers and small white horns crowning her brow.

“I like the horns,” I said.

“Eep!”

She immediately ducked and flew to hover behind my head. She gently descended into the nape of my neck and curled around it. I tickled her tail, and she flinched initially, but then pressed back into it.

“It was you who I fought earlier, wasn’t it? I asked. “At least in the beginning. It turned into madness later, but I could sense how much fun you were having.”

The little noodle sent me an excited, affirmative pulse back.

“Yeah, I loved it too.”

She sent me a pulse saying that she knew. She could sense everything I was feeling easily.

“That is going to get some getting used to,” I said. “I’m a pretty weird guy, you know. Are you sure I shouldn’t sometimes shut you out?

“NO!”

That was fierce. She mellowed the next pulse.

“Let’s be weird together.”

I smiled. “Let’s do that.”

“I’m… going to bond now. Brace yourself.”

She untangled from my neck and flew to float in front of me. She was very serious and sent me a pulse of emotion. There was trepidation in her pulse. Like a part of her was scared and didn’t want to do this. I wondered what it was.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Come.” 

She sent a pulse of nodding and then she surged into my hand, and I felt the full vastness of the primordial spirit I was dealing with.

She wasn’t just the sea. The sea was large, but it had a bottom. No, she was the concept of a sea. She embodied something beyond the material world. I had known she was a god, and during the exchange a moment ago, I learned of her struggles. She had met many heroes and powerful people, but she had been too powerful for them. 

She kept mentioning containment, which I hadn’t understood. Now I did.

Her vastness was so overwhelming, that for a moment, I thought I would lose myself in it. And she was holding vastness back as well as she could. It wasn’t raw power. She was just a tiny sea noodle reborn. But the original sense of endlessness was woven into her spirit.

I immediately sat down into meditation. Quickly, I fell into a Magical Trance, and I held it together. Fortunately, directly after my birth, I had already learned to surrender to the emptiness, having nothing else to do than to meditate. I let go of myself. The fear of obliteration, the fear of losing form. The fear of death.

Gradually, she let more of her vastness invade my spirit, and I breathed it in. I endured it and tried to center myself. Then it got easier. I let go and fell deeper into a trance. It was rapturous, and I couldn’t tell how long I sat there. I felt completely empty. I hadn’t felt a meditation this deep for years.

 [Magical Trance level 28!]

[+2 Perception]

[+2 Focus]

She kept letting loose her divine presence within my spirit, and I kept taking it in. Finally, she understood she didn’t need to hold back. She threw herself at me, and in the end it was she who let herself go. She accepted the oblivion that was me with great bliss, and our spirits mingled and breathed in unison. Then I let go of that as well. She tried to hold on to me, but I had to continue further and expand. This was the only way I could contain her, and I wanted to do that for her.

So I kept breathing and falling deeper into my true nature.

Finally, only I remained. 

I sat there and breathed, and just… accepted her nature.

Something in her broke down at that moment. She stopped holding back and I could feel she burst into a cathartic sobbing.

That broke me out of the trance. I blinked and just kinda smiled dumbly. I had touched something divine there myself. Something beyond even Tiamat. What had that been? My true nature? It had been… incomprehensible.

Tiamat still wept openly and clutched to my spirit in pure happiness. I let her have her moment.

Then I looked at my System notifications. I had gotten something big judging from the way the System was insistently pinging me. But I had been too wrapped up with all this Tiamat business. I opened my System messages.

[World First Achievement Obtained: Primordial Integration!]

You are the first being to integrate a primordial spirit into your cultivation through a mutually accepted bond. Your cultivation has become a shared foundation for magical and spiritual advancement.

[Reward: +1 Skill Slot]

[Reward: Special Perk — Shared Ascension!]

Description: Your cultivation and the primordial spirit anchored within it may advance together. Progress in your cultivation expands your companion’s capacity to recover, grow and manifest her power through you. Your companion’s growth strengthens your cultivation’s capacity to accommodate and channel spiritual power. Shared practice and insights may further the advancement of both participants.

“A World’s First Achievement?” I muttered and just gaped at the notifications. I had done something nobody else had ever done in this world a second time now.

Tiamat sobered up. She was now calm and peaceful. She sighed contently and came out of my cultivated hand. Then she curled up around my neck again.

“You’re… cozy. You feel like home.”

I laughed. “What does that mean?”

“Mmm. I don’t know.”

I turned my attention back to the notifications.

Tiamat must have seen my Status, because she pinged a distinctly smug emotion my way, as if she was the queen of the world and deserved all treats and love and praise.

I gave her a headpat.

“SHIIII!”

She immediately untangled from my neck and dove into my cultivated hand wherein she vanished.

I could still feel her presence and how she was still trying to calm herself from the sudden headpat, but I couldn’t see anything. I looked at my hand with my Mana Sight and saw her curled up as a mini sea noodle no longer than my finger. She was about a foot long when she was in the material world, but by some magic-spirit-nonsense-logic she was way tinier in my hand. She had now calmed herself and snuggled up under my thumb and breathed in my purified mana.

“Comfy?” I asked, and she pinged back that she was, but would absolutely require a warning for future headpats.

“And there will be more headpats.”

I only laughed. “You got it.”

I took some time to learn to understand the implications of my new situation. I had bonded a primordial spirit. She was the primordial sea, sister to a god. Was she a god herself? 

“Duh! Obviously! You should call me Goddess Tiamat, The Great And Beautiful And Fierce, Lover of Headpats, Destroyer of Snacks!”

“I’ll get you some snacks later. But now I need to figure out how to get out of here. Looks like Leviathan is dying. Can I borrow your power.”

“Please. You don’t have to ask. Just take it.”

I flexed my cultivated hand. Tiamat was doing something with my mana that I couldn’t quite understand. Well, I understood she was mixing her spiritual energy with it.

“It can take so much because of how pure it is!” she pinged me happily. “Also. More!”

I chuckled and absorbed more mana, which I then transmuted and made as pristine as I could with Purification.

The resulting energy that now swirled in my cultivated hand was… premium.

That was the only word for it.

“What is this?” I whispered in wonder.

“Heh-hee! Enjoy.”

I didn’t flick a finger. I twitched it. Just a little bit. 

FWOMP!

A water Bullet ejected from my hand with devastating speed. Not only that, but Tiamat did something with the spiritual energy that was mingled with the spell.

“You can do that?!” I shouted in excitement. She gave me a ping-nod and I told her to do it!

The water bullet split in the air into ten different smaller projectiles. They all smashed into the dying body of the Leviathan and a large chunk of the fleshy wall exploded into goopy mist.

“Don’t tell me I can also…?”

Tiamat pinged me happily. “You can!”

I spread out both my hands and enveloped my body with thin layer of kinetic energy. I did a subtle movement of my hands, and immediately was lifted off my feet and I crashed into a pile of bones nearby. I had just hovered and slid above the ground by twenty feet in high speed.

“NO WAY!” I exclaimed with pure glee. 

“Your kinetic affinity is powerful,” Tiamat pinged. “But this is very mana intensive.”

“Do we have enough for…?”

“We do.”

I could sense there was a smug grin in that.

I slowly practiced drifting around with this new kinetic coat. I could move at stupid speeds with this, but it was indeed very mana intensive. I could only use my cultivation for this, and it needed to be mingled with Tiamat’s spiritual energy.

But this Supermana™ allowed me to do what I had done with that cannonball finishing move against the bone dragon. It was kinetic suspension and kinetic movement magic baked into one. In other words, I could telekinetically levitate myself in any direction!

Naturally, I played around with it like the little child that I was.

“Weeeeee!” I laughed with Tiamat as I soared through the air.

Before crashing into another fleshy wall. The speed was very hard to control. Tiamat laughed at me as I slid down the wall. Fortunately I could cast a barrier to prevent a tumble.

“Wait, could I use this in conjunction with the barrier?”

“You could, but…”

It was so strange getting the impression of what she was saying before she finished the sentence. She was right though.

The Self-Kinesis was so mana intensive, that while weaving it into a barrier was convenient and fun, it was absolutely not something I could attempt… Yet…

Naturally this thought led me to spread my arms and cackle like a supervillain. Tiamat joined in with me and she cackled like the meanest, nastiest sea-witch from any horror story. I swear, she added a lightning strike in the background of her ping just for flair.

“You’re insane,” I said and sent her spirit a gentle nudge as a ping.

“SHIIIII! That was worse than a headpat. Give me a warning next time!”

“Next time?”

“There must be a next time! That was fun. Also, what's a supervillain? Oh! That’s fun!”

We practiced using the Self-Kinesis for a while, until we completely ran out of juice, and I had to sit down in meditation and absorb some mana and purify it to fill up my cultivation tank again. She then wove spiritual energy into it to create Supermana.

“We should go,” she pinged. “My spiritual domain is waning, and the mortal realm is spreading in. That pirate of yours cannot hold the Leviathan’s body afloat any longer.”

I nodded. “Then let’s leave. But I want to do it with style. How about this…”

After explaining my cool entrance to her, we giggled together. Then I took one look at my Status screen before deciding I was done here.

Name: Luka

Attributes:
Perception: 124
Focus: 75
Mana Flow: 129
Magic Power: 137
Reflex: 4
Spiritual Power: 44

Skills:
Magical Trance (Rare): 28
Mana Sight (Mythic): 21
Mana Manipulation II (Uncommon*): 27
Spellcrafting (Rare): 20
Mana Absorption (Epic): 19
Mana Transmutation (Epic): 16
Heightened Senses (Uncommon): 4
Spirit Connection (Epic): 16

Total Level: 151
Skill Slots: 8/9

Cultivation:
Arcane Body Art — First Layer: 12%
Insight: Purified Mana
Integrated Spirit: Tiamat — Primordial Sea

Perks:
Sage, Contemplative, Unique, Magical Insight, Arcane Convergence (24%), Mana Weaving, Continuous Casting, Lingering Casting, Perfect Initiation (Mana Absorption), Mana Augmentation, Mana Resonance (12%), Multicasting, Apex Predator, Prodigy, Arcane Deconstruction, Purification, Keen Mind, Spiritual Presence, Passage Between Spirit and Magic, Shared Ascension

Special Achievements: Awakened Mind, A God’s Favor, Primordial Integration

Achievements: First Skill, Unique, Cultivation, Beastslayer I, Prodigy, Attribute Milestone I — Perception, First Evolution