Chapter 36 - The First Resurrection (Patreon)

Lukas had read somewhere that prolonged isolation is bad for one’s mental health. Chronically lonely people suffered from high blood pressure, body malfunctioning, restlessness and dementia. Knowing that little titbit did nothing to help him cope up with what he was going through as he floated across the seemingly endless Haze, jumping from one world to the next.

And to think he thought he had it bad in the Crypt of Fiendish Worms. The last month had taught him the hard way, just how lucky he was to have Inanna renting his brain all the while. Despite her tantrums and her bargains, and all the curve balls she threw her way, he was phenomenally lucky that she had been there with him, his source of human communication. Even the time spent at the yokai territory had gone a long way in keeping him from true isolation. And once he had met Tanya, his new normalcy had begun to set in.

Even when stranded in the borderland, he had Tanya with him.

But here? In this endless space and its equally indefinite number of borderlands, he was all alone. An infinite reservoir of Experience and Skills lay around him for his taking, but none of that took away his solitude. He’d choose a borderland, open a rift and get there, and explore around. The general monsters became his meals, their hide became his cloth and their skills, if unique enough, got added into his roster. Else, they fueled his Experience. At times, he’d come across a species that were capable of carrying out conversation without resorting to meaningless warfare, but they were so far alienated from the Empire and the yokai, that they might as well learn from him instead of the other way around.

Sometimes he’d explore the areas and choose his prey. Other times, he’d jump straight to the killing part. There was this one time when he messed things badly with a particularly vicious race of jotunn, and ended up massacring the entire colony.

Either way, by the end of the first month, the novelty was gone. From then on, Lukas was just going through the motions. Traveling for the sake of traveling. Fighting for the sake of fighting. Gathering experience, testing his skills and leveling up.

But his heart just wasn’t at it anymore.

Opening his eyes, Lukas sat up from the lush, thick grass beneath him. The borderland around him was rather beautiful as far as borderlands went, if a little too hot and humid. The forest around him smelled fresh and rich, the heat burning his skin through the shadow of the gargantuan trees looming all over. He wanted to bask in the glow of another fine morning, he really did, but he couldn’t get carried away from his original goal. There was finally light at the end of the tunnel, and it was shining brighter and brighter every day, for he was getting close to the climax of this multi-world trip.

He was getting closer and closer to understanding the true nature of Anomalous Energy.

Yes, he put it like it was something special, and to be honest, it was. Anomalous Energy was far more than the energy to empower attacks, or make constructs real. It was life, and that was about as accurate a  description one could ever get, and a power that only anomalies — or sleeping worlds if he was being poetic, could use.

But regardless, it was power, and too much power could corrupt even the purest of souls, and turn even the best of intentions into a screaming abyss hell-bent on tearing down everything in its wake. Lukas didn’t want to become a monster, nor did he wish for some world-dominating power. Ironically, the top two things on his list involved helping Tanya become an Anathema, despite Meynte’s concerns about potential apocalyptic endings; and resurrecting Inanna, while ensuring that Frost’s fears about a Taboo incursion into reality didn’t come to pass.

Yeah. Way out of my league.

Sometimes, he didn’t even want to believe that all of this was real. Maybe all of this wasn’t real and he was lying in some ward in some hospital, imagining all this. Sometimes he thought that maybe he was the true monster. Between Inanna and Tanya, he could unleash not one, but two Taboos into this world if he wasn’t careful. It was possible that between his choice to let Tanya live, and his desire to resurrect Inanna, he was in fact, fulfilling his part of the Yokai legend, and bringing about the End of the World. It was possible that whoever had rewritten Reality to cut out Inanna was a force of balance, ensuring the continuity of progress and the forward flow of potential.

But was that reason enough for him to stop?

“MEAAOOWWWW!!”

The sound of a massive air-horn, only imitating a cat, threatened to tear his eardrums apart. Lukas wasn’t sure, but it was somewhere in the territory of a hundred and thirty decibels. That was practically the sound of a small passenger jet taking off. The sound exerted pressure against all of his skin and hurt his ears. If not for the level-ups, he’d have been rolling on the floor, bleeding from his nose and ears by now.

Instead he looked up.

And up.

And up.

It was a reptilian monster prototype, there was no doubt about that much. But to call it merely a ‘monster’ seemed the equivalent of calling a ‘wolf’ a ‘puppy’ or a tiger a ‘kitten’. It was dark gray clothed in thick sheets of crimson and purple flesh, all crafted out of varying layers of aqāru. The massive two-legged lizard had a row of thick spines beginning at the neck, and running down the back until its hip region, extending all the way down to the end of its tail. Its teeth were the size of a crocodile, unevenly jutting out of its lip-less mouth, which could have swallowed him whole.

This was a giganotosaurus. One of the largest known dinosaurs to mankind. One of the largest and most destructive monster prototypes from Lostbelt Earth — finally available to him. It was as long as a city bus, and easily spanned thirty feet in height, and given how the earth sank with every step, weighed its value as well.

Huh. Lukas thought idly. Now I know where all that aqāru went to.

During one of his visits to the far-end of the Crypt of Fiendish Worms, Lukas had ventured back into the heart of the anomaly, where he had fought his aqāru doppelganger. Blob had rushed down into the pit, and begun to absorb the liquid metal reserves in the area, somehow fusing it all into itself. Lukas had taken to either letting it walk around in some monster form after him, or alter it into a weighted vest that he had to constantly apply Gravity Control upon, and even then, it would still weigh above three hundred and fifty pounds. If nothing else, it kept him constantly testing for physical endurance, and served as a sink to constantly expunge lifeforce from his body.

Plus, it also pushed the skill up to higher levels.

Blob the giganotosaurus lowered its massive maw, and let out another roar.

“MEOOOOW!”

For some reason, it never expanded past meowing in the vocal segment. Maybe it was a limitation in Blob’s system, or maybe it was just that quirky. Either way, it obeyed his thoughts so language wasn’t exactly a necessity.

Lukas instantly coordinated his senses with its dinosaur-brain, a task that was easier than it sounded, given the number of times he had synchronized with alien mindsets ever since coming to this world. He saw droves of felines approaching from all distances, each of them the size of a rhino. For all the beauty of this world, it was a little too full of creatures resembling the Cretaceous era on Earth. No wonder Blob had transformed into something similar.

Alright, he thought, as fire and motion erupted out of his fingertips, his eyes glowing a swirling green. Time to work for a living.Almost all his Omphalos functions stood at Level-3. Power-wise, he was bloated enough to fuel an entire war and have some remaining in his tank. Blob too, had gotten its metaphorically tummy-full of juice. It wasn’t unlimited by any means, but it would keep him from running out of gas in the upcoming fights. And his newest function Metaforge was an absolute boon, allowing him to craft solid objects out of pure anomalous energy.

He checked the Screen.

Nineteen days had passed in Tanya’s world, but for him, it had been a little over three months. It was finally time to return, but before that, he needed to see if his theories held any truth in them. From his discussion with Frost, his understanding of Divinity from Kvasir’s texts, and the chunks of knowledge he had gained from Inanna’s memories, he had finally gotten a way to execute his plan.

A god was, to the best of his knowledge, a spiritual entity. Not unlike a yokai. The soul reflected on the body, so the more esoteric components got added to the soul, the stranger and further from physicality it became. And a Truth was so far into the Abstract, that its wielder would sooner or later, cease their physical forms and assume a spiritual existence. And by the time they became gods, they ceased their physical forms altogether, since physicality and Faith didn’t go together. That didn’t stop divinities from crafting a physical shell to interact with the world around them, but it would be little more than a false construct conjured out of Ether, only far stronger.  They would be completely indistinguishable from mortals — eat, sleep, drink, breathe, have physiological functions, have memories, feel the senses, the entire kit. And yet, those bodies would be little more than puppets operated by the soul.

So no, it wasn’t the lack of a physical body that made any difference.

He considered the factors.

To construct Inanna, he needed four different tools —

First, a template to craft her identity from. Basically a blueprint.

Second, the materials to create it with. Her material composition.

Third, a forge, to help craft her in the first place.

Fourth. fuel, to facilitate the forging process.

Fifth, an identity to attach to the newly forged form.

And finally sixth and last, a location to anchor this spiritual entity.

The blueprint would come from Inanna’s own divinity that resided within Lukas’s own soul. The materials — physical and spiritual, could be created out of pure Anomalous Energy, thanks to Metaforge. The forging process would be performed by him, by virtue of being an anomaly. The fuel would be supplied from the endless reserves of the Haze. And finally, the identity would be through Lukas’s, or rather, the anomaly’s own comprehension of her existence.

And finally, the anchor, would be her own relic — the pendant that was currently hanging on his neck.

Using all six factors, he could likely be able to manifest a proper version of the goddess. That was the theory anyway.

“Alright, bud,” he said, standing up. “Time’s up. Let’s see what we really accomplished here.”

Blob instantly transformed back into the Stratim-form, as Lukas perched upon its back, ready to return to the boundless Haze and its maelstrom of anomalous energy.

“Not quite,” he said. “I need to perform the ritual in an isolated environment, and I can’t do that while inside the Haze. This will require more… precision.”

The first step, as always, was a circle. A layer of complete isolation from the rest of the world, where he could perform his craft without any disturbance. Olfric had taught him that almost all rituals required a circle, augmented through use of props that provided a physical as well as symbolic parameters to the circle. For Olfric, using the Eternal Light would be the ideal prop, using it to envision the pathway for energy influx, their manipulation and so on. Props also served as a mnemonic device — you attached a certain image to the prop, inside your head, and every single time you saw the prop, the image was packed along with it.

Simple.

Except that in Lukas’s case, the props wouldn’t work, for the simple reason that they were all part of the world, and what he was trying to summon was anything but.

No, he’d have wing the whole thing through pure imagination, concentration and arrogance.

Use the Abstract to summon the Abstract into the Real.

“Territory Creation. Set Boundary. Ten feet. Expansion. Set Isolation Matrix.”

A wave of pure anomalous energy erupted out of his body, expanding in a massive circle. The ‘isolation matrix’ was a circle of energy that would prevent anything from the outside to taint the interiors. An isolation chamber so to say, inside which he’d perform his forging. When Olfric had demonstrated it in person, he had used the structure of a pentagram, its five points representing five elements — fire, wind, water, earth and ether. The inner pentagon and the circumcircle acted as constraints that filtered the power of the kami, coming from within, and safely conduited into the host body.

A prison within a soul.

But that structure would not do it. Not for him. Not in this case. Instead he drew on a different structure, one that Inanna herself had shown him, back in the anomaly. Anomalous energy erupted further, moving in straight lines, only to change directions, and then move straight again, until he stood in the eye of a pentagon, the outer circle touching its vertices in perfect symmetry.

Inanna’s symbol of Order. Five points. Five sides. Five elements — air, fire, earth, water, ether — exactly in that order. The circle represented his hold on the spell crafted within, molding it to obey his orders.

Force within restraint.

“Whatever happens, protect me,” he told Blob. “And do not enter this circle.”

“Meow!”

“Open Rift channels along the periphery.”

Transferring Consciousness to Nexus

Opening Rift…

For a second, everything went completely silent.

Then, there was a dull disturbance in the air as a sinister crimson sheen began forming in the air around him. Lukas felt the circle’s power grow like a tidal wave as it met the crimson sheen, the periphery touching, vibrating, expanding, contracting, deepening —

And then a deluge of pure, violent, nauseating pain blanketed his world, as power, endless power from the Haze flowed through the rifts he had opened along the edges of the circle, into the spell. Lukas could barely stand, his muscles and ligaments feeling like they were being stretched for miles. His own heartbeat was tortuous. The mere act of breathing sent jolts of pain down his spine. His arms, his chest, his everything burned.

Finally after what felt like eternity, the Screen displayed a notification.

Forging Circle Complete

Power Levels holding steady

Initiate Metaforge?

“Yes.”

Metaforge Active

A wave of nostalgia hit him. It seemed like a lifetime ago when Inanna had first taught him about the four essential functions of an anomaly — Creation, Mutation, Assimilation and Rejuvenation. Prophylaxis, the function for Rejuvenation, was the first, followed by Soul Siphon for Assimilation. Alteration had been the third, allowing him to mutate things through anomalous energy. He had gotten it from accessing Blob’s functions. The last function to be added was Metaforge, for Creation. An irony, given that anomalies were creators above all things else.

Okay. Material and spiritual composition, forge and fuel were ready. Next, the blueprint.

“Copy Soul Composition. Filter. Access Divinity. Forge.”

Prime Host accessing DIVINITY

Breaking existing conventions

Safety Off!

An alien rage lit up his mind. Like a white fiery blade, it cut into his conscience, threatening to overpower reason and undo the tranquility within. He struggled to try and wrestle it back. But it was a living thing, this anger. The more he pulled, the more it fought back. It would not be extracted, it would not be twisted. It was something beyond his mortal soul.

DIVINITY ACCESSED

Balance Reality Foundation

Counterbalance

Maximize Sympathization Ratio

SCAN Initiated

ANALYZE initiated

METAFORGE initiated

The gates of his mind blew open, as primordial chaos was unleashed. The anomaly within him broiled under the strain, waves of power magnitudes more than it could deal with rushing through the body as Lukas writhed in tormented agony. He could feel it surging within, the rage saturating every inch of his body. It was all he could do to prevent it from leaking through.

What seemed like an eternity passed when it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. The volatile emotion gradually ceased. The pentagon around him writhed in power,  achieving a balance between the anomaly within and the Haze without.

A small smile floated along the edges of his lips.

The pendant on his neck began to glow, and with that, the fifth element was added into the mix.

“Now,” he whispered, and yet, his voice resonated across the entire terrain. “GIVE. HER. BACK. TO. ME.”

A dazzling bright light erupted out of the pentagon and rushed into the pendant, forming a human-sized silhouette around it, white, translucent and unmistakably female. The form shimmered, a haze of blurred imagery. The face was exactly how he remembered, yet there was no emotion in it. Blank, featureless, wiped clean by the neutrality that was death. Like the rest of her form, it was a transparent thing, and in the moments where the hazy energy solidified, it shone like quicksilver.

A single tear of blood trickled out of his right eye. Lukas felt his knees weaken. He funneled lifeforce to keep them steady.

This was the difficult part. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not now. It was the time for the last element to be added.

Identity.

Accessing Host Memory

He reached into the depths of his conscience. Flooded it with everything he knew of her. Her good parts and her bad parts. His mental image, his understanding of Inanna. One by one, the information flowed. Power coalesced. Not wrathful like it did before. Calmer. At peace. It surged through him like water through a broken dam.

The body began to turn corporeal.

Lukas knew he was breaking rules. Defying laws. The spiritual form had appeared, brought into existence through sheer will, spitting in the face of all accepted rules. The power was coming from the Haze, but it was creating something that did not exist before.

For potential never followed rules. Never followed laws. Instead, it merely shaped them to its will.

The omphalos within him laughed in approval at what he was doing. The borderland he was on, didn’t.

Dimly, Lukas was aware that things had not stayed idle. The creatures around him had chosen to attack, and the air with power and sound. Even the monsters knew what he was doing, what he was so close to achieving, and in desperation, they selected him as a target. They were failing because Blob the giganotosaurus was protecting him. Like his hearing, Lukas’s vision too had become a former mockery of what it once was, but he could still see. In flickering imagery burned into his mind he saw the monsters all around him, meeting their deaths as Blob tore them apart, passing on the Experience directly to him.

And then the unexpected happened, in the form of a notification in alarming red.

WARNING!

Identity corrupted!

Vessel rejected!

Initiating Metaforge Shutdown?

“WHAT?” Lukas yelled. “No. This will work. This has to work! I just need more time. The body’s forming, isn’t she? It has to be —”

The pentagon wavered, and blood trickled out of his eyes and nose and ears. His skull felt like it was going to be crushed like a tomato, neural suppression absolutely helpless before that power. But he would not stop it. He  would not give up. Not when he was so close. He had to hold on or risk everything.

WARNING!

Host Body suffering extreme spiritual damage

Initiate metaforge shutdown to initiate Recovery?

Lukas screamed and screamed as his entire body was engulfed by an unyielding tide of energy. Fires roared within him, seeping from his bloodied, grimy skin as drops of white-hot liquid fire. His eyes burned and shriveled in his sockets, only to heal almost instantly and be burned again, and his hair caught fire. His entire body was flailing about and an enormous pressure was pressed down on his body, crushing him down onto the hard ground below. For a split second, the little semblance of conscious thought that Lukas had left idly noted that Inanna was right. His greed would kill him.

Something cracked from within him and Lukas knew the true definition of the word agony.

His world, his entire existence, was drowned beneath a massive surge of something that ripped into his fragile psyche and implanted itself there. Pain itself lost all meaning as this enormous, mind-shattering sensation swept through every iota of his body. The very molecules that made him human shuddered and quaked as something otherworldly settled upon them, crafting a place within his body for itself. He didn’t know how long this went on for as he lost meaning of time, but it occurred to him at one point or another that this massively overwhelming presence that threatened to tear his mind and soul in half was very familiar.

In fact, it felt as if he had known it all his life.

PRIME HOST OVERRIDDEN

Metaforge Shutdown Initiated

Initiating Recovery Protocol

Safety On

Accessing Nexus. Opening Rift.

The last thing he remembered was the pendant glowing before his eyes as the familiar feeling of something thick and fluid cocooned him.

....

....

....

He had survived. The creatures hadn’t. Nothing new about it. It was practically what he had been doing day in and day out, almost on a mechanical basis. And the results were proof of that.

SOULSCAPE

Name - Lukas Aguilar

Type - Prime Host

Level - 25

Experience - 7117

Current Threshold - 25000

Utilized Soul Capacity - 869000 / ∞

ESSENCE

Maximum Lifeforce Output - 138110

Replenishment Rate - 6480 / hour

LEY LINE NETWORK

Maximum Mana Output - 139360

Synthesis Rate - 6590 / hour

He had gained four level-Ups since getting here, which meant an equivalent boost in his lifeforce and mana stats. And most importantly, the four Level-Ups had pushed his compatibility with Level-4 kinetomancy by leaps and bounds. He was finally able to use the kinetic trajectory perception ability through his eyes without giving him an aneurysm. Even this slight development meant the world to him, and it vastly elevated his elemental manipulation. Fire, Water, Earth and Ether, and even combinations like Corrosive flames and Lightning — his efficiency with them had climbed up new records. He couldn’t wait to show Tanya just what he could do with air manipulation, despite not having a single Wind-based skill.

And that wasn’t all.

OMPHALOS ATTRIBUTES

Energy Reservoir Capacity - ∞

Current Energy Level - 5,913,785,284  units

OMPHALOS FUNCTIONS

Scan - Level 3

Analyze - Level 3

Prophylaxis - Level 3

Soul Siphon - NA

Alpha Condition - Level 5 (Maxed through Prime Host status)

Evocation - Level 3

Living Anomaly - NA

Capacitance - NA

Territory Creation - Level 3

Alteration - Level 3

Metaforge - Level 1

Almost all his Omphalos functions stood at Level-3. Power-wise, he was bloated enough to fuel an entire war and have some remaining in his tank. Blob too, had gotten its metaphorically tummy-full of juice. It wasn’t unlimited by any means, but it would keep him from running out of gas in the upcoming fights. And his newest function Metaforge was an absolute boon, allowing him to craft solid objects out of pure anomalous energy.

He checked the Screen.

Nineteen days had passed in Tanya’s world, but for him, it had been a little over three months. It was finally time to return, but before that, he needed to see if his theories held any truth in them. From his discussion with Frost, his understanding of Divinity from Kvasir’s texts, and the chunks of knowledge he had gained from Inanna’s memories, he had finally gotten a way to execute his plan.

A god was, to the best of his knowledge, a spiritual entity. Not unlike a yokai. The soul reflected on the body, so the more esoteric components got added to the soul, the stranger and further from physicality it became. And a Truth was so far into the Abstract, that its wielder would sooner or later, cease their physical forms and assume a spiritual existence. And by the time they became gods, they ceased their physical forms altogether, since physicality and Faith didn’t go together. That didn’t stop divinities from crafting a physical shell to interact with the world around them, but it would be little more than a false construct conjured out of Ether, only far stronger.  They would be completely indistinguishable from mortals — eat, sleep, drink, breathe, have physiological functions, have memories, feel the senses, the entire kit. And yet, those bodies would be little more than puppets operated by the soul.

So no, it wasn’t the lack of a physical body that made any difference.

He considered the factors.

To construct Inanna, he needed four different tools —

First, a template to craft her identity from. Basically a blueprint.

Second, the materials to create it with. Her material composition.

Third, a forge, to help craft her in the first place.

Fourth. fuel, to facilitate the forging process.

Fifth, an identity to attach to the newly forged form.

And finally sixth and last, a location to anchor this spiritual entity.

The blueprint would come from Inanna’s own divinity that resided within Lukas’s own soul. The materials — physical and spiritual, could be created out of pure Anomalous Energy, thanks to Metaforge. The forging process would be performed by him, by virtue of being an anomaly. The fuel would be supplied from the endless reserves of the Haze. And finally, the identity would be through Lukas’s, or rather, the anomaly’s own comprehension of her existence.

And finally, the anchor, would be her own relic — the pendant that was currently hanging on his neck.

Using all six factors, he could likely be able to manifest a proper version of the goddess. That was the theory anyway.

“Alright, bud,” he said, standing up. “Time’s up. Let’s see what we really accomplished here.”

Blob instantly transformed back into the Stratim-form, as Lukas perched upon its back, ready to return to the boundless Haze and its maelstrom of anomalous energy.

“Not quite,” he said. “I need to perform the ritual in an isolated environment, and I can’t do that while inside the Haze. This will require more… precision.”

The first step, as always, was a circle. A layer of complete isolation from the rest of the world, where he could perform his craft without any disturbance. Olfric had taught him that almost all rituals required a circle, augmented through use of props that provided a physical as well as symbolic parameters to the circle. For Olfric, using the Eternal Light would be the ideal prop, using it to envision the pathway for energy influx, their manipulation and so on. Props also served as a mnemonic device — you attached a certain image to the prop, inside your head, and every single time you saw the prop, the image was packed along with it.

Simple.

Except that in Lukas’s case, the props wouldn’t work, for the simple reason that they were all part of the world, and what he was trying to summon was anything but.

No, he’d have wing the whole thing through pure imagination, concentration and arrogance.

Use the Abstract to summon the Abstract into the Real.

“Territory Creation. Set Boundary. Ten feet. Expansion. Set Isolation Matrix.”

A wave of pure anomalous energy erupted out of his body, expanding in a massive circle. The ‘isolation matrix’ was a circle of energy that would prevent anything from the outside to taint the interiors. An isolation chamber so to say, inside which he’d perform his forging. When Olfric had demonstrated it in person, he had used the structure of a pentagram, its five points representing five elements — fire, wind, water, earth and ether. The inner pentagon and the circumcircle acted as constraints that filtered the power of the kami, coming from within, and safely conduited into the host body.

A prison within a soul.

But that structure would not do it. Not for him. Not in this case. Instead he drew on a different structure, one that Inanna herself had shown him, back in the anomaly. Anomalous energy erupted further, moving in straight lines, only to change directions, and then move straight again, until he stood in the eye of a pentagon, the outer circle touching its vertices in perfect symmetry.

Inanna’s symbol of Order. Five points. Five sides. Five elements — air, fire, earth, water, ether — exactly in that order. The circle represented his hold on the spell crafted within, molding it to obey his orders.

Force within restraint.

“Whatever happens, protect me,” he told Blob. “And do not enter this circle.”

“Meow!”

“Open Rift channels along the periphery.”

Transferring Consciousness to Nexus

Opening Rift…

For a second, everything went completely silent.

Then, there was a dull disturbance in the air as a sinister crimson sheen began forming in the air around him. Lukas felt the circle’s power grow like a tidal wave as it met the crimson sheen, the periphery touching, vibrating, expanding, contracting, deepening —

And then a deluge of pure, violent, nauseating pain blanketed his world, as power, endless power from the Haze flowed through the rifts he had opened along the edges of the circle, into the spell. Lukas could barely stand, his muscles and ligaments feeling like they were being stretched for miles. His own heartbeat was tortuous. The mere act of breathing sent jolts of pain down his spine. His arms, his chest, his everything burned.

Finally after what felt like eternity, the Screen displayed a notification.

Forging Circle Complete

Power Levels holding steady

Initiate Metaforge?

“Yes.”

Metaforge Active

A wave of nostalgia hit him. It seemed like a lifetime ago when Inanna had first taught him about the four essential functions of an anomaly — Creation, Mutation, Assimilation and Rejuvenation. Prophylaxis, the function for Rejuvenation, was the first, followed by Soul Siphon for Assimilation. Alteration had been the third, allowing him to mutate things through anomalous energy. He had gotten it from accessing Blob’s functions. The last function to be added was Metaforge, for Creation. An irony, given that anomalies were creators above all things else.

Okay. Material and spiritual composition, forge and fuel were ready. Next, the blueprint.

“Copy Soul Composition. Filter. Access Divinity. Forge.”

Prime Host accessing DIVINITY

Breaking existing conventions

Safety Off!

An alien rage lit up his mind. Like a white fiery blade, it cut into his conscience, threatening to overpower reason and undo the tranquility within. He struggled to try and wrestle it back. But it was a living thing, this anger. The more he pulled, the more it fought back. It would not be extracted, it would not be twisted. It was something beyond his mortal soul.

DIVINITY ACCESSED

Balance Reality Foundation

Counterbalance

Maximize Sympathization Ratio

SCAN Initiated

ANALYZE initiated

METAFORGE initiated

The gates of his mind blew open, as primordial chaos was unleashed. The anomaly within him broiled under the strain, waves of power magnitudes more than it could deal with rushing through the body as Lukas writhed in tormented agony. He could feel it surging within, the rage saturating every inch of his body. It was all he could do to prevent it from leaking through.

What seemed like an eternity passed when it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. The volatile emotion gradually ceased. The pentagon around him writhed in power,  achieving a balance between the anomaly within and the Haze without.

A small smile floated along the edges of his lips.

The pendant on his neck began to glow, and with that, the fifth element was added into the mix.

“Now,” he whispered, and yet, his voice resonated across the entire terrain. “GIVE. HER. BACK. TO. ME.”

A dazzling bright light erupted out of the pentagon and rushed into the pendant, forming a human-sized silhouette around it, white, translucent and unmistakably female. The form shimmered, a haze of blurred imagery. The face was exactly how he remembered, yet there was no emotion in it. Blank, featureless, wiped clean by the neutrality that was death. Like the rest of her form, it was a transparent thing, and in the moments where the hazy energy solidified, it shone like quicksilver.

A single tear of blood trickled out of his right eye. Lukas felt his knees weaken. He funneled lifeforce to keep them steady.

This was the difficult part. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Not now. It was the time for the last element to be added.

Identity.

Accessing Host Memory

He reached into the depths of his conscience. Flooded it with everything he knew of her. Her good parts and her bad parts. His mental image, his understanding of Inanna. One by one, the information flowed. Power coalesced. Not wrathful like it did before. Calmer. At peace. It surged through him like water through a broken dam.

The body began to turn corporeal.

Lukas knew he was breaking rules. Defying laws. The spiritual form had appeared, brought into existence through sheer will, spitting in the face of all accepted rules. The power was coming from the Haze, but it was creating something that did not exist before.

For potential never followed rules. Never followed laws. Instead, it merely shaped them to its will.

The omphalos within him laughed in approval at what he was doing. The borderland he was on, didn’t.

Dimly, Lukas was aware that things had not stayed idle. The creatures around him had chosen to attack, and the air with power and sound. Even the monsters knew what he was doing, what he was so close to achieving, and in desperation, they selected him as a target. They were failing because Blob the giganotosaurus was protecting him. Like his hearing, Lukas’s vision too had become a former mockery of what it once was, but he could still see. In flickering imagery burned into his mind he saw the monsters all around him, meeting their deaths as Blob tore them apart, passing on the Experience directly to him.

And then the unexpected happened, in the form of a notification in alarming red.

WARNING!

Identity corrupted!

Vessel rejected!

Initiating Metaforge Shutdown?

“WHAT?” Lukas yelled. “No. This will work. This has to work! I just need more time. The body’s forming, isn’t she? It has to be —”

The pentagon wavered, and blood trickled out of his eyes and nose and ears. His skull felt like it was going to be crushed like a tomato, neural suppression absolutely helpless before that power. But he would not stop it. He  would not give up. Not when he was so close. He had to hold on or risk everything.

WARNING!

Host Body suffering extreme spiritual damage

Initiate Metaforge shutdown to initiate Recovery?

Lukas screamed and screamed as his entire body was engulfed by an unyielding tide of energy. Fires roared within him, seeping from his bloodied, grimy skin as drops of white-hot liquid fire. His eyes burned and shriveled in his sockets, only to heal almost instantly and be burned again, and his hair caught fire. His entire body was flailing about and an enormous pressure was pressed down on his body, crushing him down onto the hard ground below. For a split second, the little semblance of conscious thought that Lukas had left idly noted that Inanna was right. His greed would kill him.

Something cracked from within him and Lukas knew the true definition of the word agony.

His world, his entire existence, was drowned beneath a massive surge of something that ripped into his fragile psyche and implanted itself there. Pain itself lost all meaning as this enormous, mind-shattering sensation swept through every iota of his body. The very molecules that made him human shuddered and quaked as something otherworldly settled upon them, crafting a place within his body for itself. He didn’t know how long this went on for as he lost meaning of time, but it occurred to him at one point or another that this massively overwhelming presence that threatened to tear his mind and soul in half was very familiar.

In fact, it felt as if he had known it all his life.

PRIME HOST OVERRIDDEN

Metaforge Shutdown Initiated

Initiating Recovery Protocol

Safety On

Accessing Nexus. Opening Rift.

The last thing he remembered was the pendant glowing before his eyes as the familiar feeling of something thick and fluid cocooned him.