22 Etorhma, Eater of Worlds

"What kind of discomfort?"

Torix stood, "You see, I learned to become a lich by pulling my soul from my body. I then grafted it onto the body of someone else. This disconnects me with the senses and needs of my old body, besides for those I maintain. Your soul is in the precise, opposite state. Instead of being disconnected with your body, you have molded your soul to your flesh and bones and blood."

"With the arcane blood perk?"

"Partially, but also due to your armor. It’s a physical extension of an imprint of your soul. The corundum that Alfred created took the place of your own soul during the procedure that Baldag-Ruhl created. With the imprint of your soul he created with the mana pools energy, the corundum took the shape of your soul. It's not really your soul, but an extension of it."

I frowned, "Is that why it feels so natural for it to be on me?"

"Yes, and this is also why you can't remove it. For now. I will give you the task of making this extension yours, instead of the other way around. Normally, this would be impossible, but with your arcane blood, I have an idea."

"Uhm...What kind of idea?"

"A simple one. We unsplit the rift between the armor and you. Only then will the armor bend to your will like your limbs. I imagine you’re wondering what this requires. See, I didn't quite understand either, until I met Althea. Her eldritch energy is deeply ingrained within her. It is half her soul. When I asked her how it was done, she gave me an answer."

Torix glared at me as he continued, "She learned how to use eldritch energy in place of her mana. Only then could she accept her other half. Your armor is 99% eldritch energy with your soul as its imprint. You must learn to manipulate eldritch mana as well. We will flood your body with the energy of eldritch then you will mold it into your own. Either that, or be consumed by it."

I frowned, "That definitely sounds like something uncomfortable."

An evil laugh escaped Torix, "Imagine sharing your mind with an Old One. That is what it will feel like."

"An Old One?"

Torix dropped his evil necromancer act, "You don't know what the Old Ones are?"

"No."

He cupped his head in his bony fingers, "Alright...A lesson is in order."

After a minute or two of organizing notes and books, Torix cast a spell against a nearby colosseum wall. A layer of the stone fell from the wall, around an inch thick. Beneath it, a layer of polished marble lay underneath. Torix stuck out a finger, "Althea. Come over here. You must learn of this as well."

She reformed herself back to normal, walking over here with a surprising acceptance. An eagerness formed on her hard face, like she was hungry for this knowledge. I asked, "You seem awfully cheery. Why?"

"Not everyone gets to learn from a thousand-year-old master. You should be grateful he gives us his time."

Torix grinned before I turned to him. In all honesty, she was right. Torix giving us all this teaching, all this help, and all this time was surely a bother for him. Even if he was immortal, he had a ton of options for wasting the eternity he had left. With that in mind, I vowed to listen closer to what he said. Sure, a part of me squirmed at the sight of him, but I couldn’t deny that he was smart as fuck.

Once we settled down, a blue fire like the ones he had for eyes appeared on his finger tip. With an amazing deftness of his hand, he carved out notes as he spoke,

"The Old Ones are the beings that existed before Schema began assimilating our universe. They are often the sources of most unknown beings and are therefore viewed in a negative light. Humanity's existence is nigh meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe."

His finger moved like it was fast forwarded in a video as he spoke, "These old gods are chaotic embodiments of entropy. Beings older than the universe. They are undefinable things with the ability to warp this entire universe with nothing but a whim. They shift through time. They mold through space. You get the idea. Even Schema treats these beings with a wary touch.”

He tapped the marble, sending a ripple of green energy through it, "If these things could pose problems for Schema, then that speaks volumes of how overwhelming these beings are for us. I believe this doctor of Althea's used an Old One for creating the eldritch half of her soul. I can't imagine it happening any other way. This doctor of yours wasn't a person who respected his life or common sense."

Althea replied, "No. He did not."

Torix shrugged, "In fact, the closest being I can fathom to an Old One, besides Schema of course, are the remnants. Neither of you know of their existence. Even if you did go through the tutorial, Schema would never mention them. They are the sentient race that created Schema. They existed before Schema did, and many are still alive to this day."

I said, "I still don't understand how we are going to get my armor under control."

"I know a living remnant. He is...eccentric, but he will know how to mold your soul together. He will explain once he is here."

Althea frowned, "How long do we have?"

"Hmmmm...About four or five days. No too long, I imagine. I contacted him the moment I discovered these runes. He will find them very interesting."

I stood, "Alright then. He'll give me my next lesson on intergalactic shit I need to know, right?"

"A crude understanding, but correct. He will understand how to reuse this ritual for opening a portal to the eldritch. Your armor can only absorb but so much of the eldritch, and the rest will swell in your body. You will either learn to live with it, or be consumed by it. If you learn to exist with it, manipulating your armor should become normal."

Althea said, "You better live through it.”

I grinned, "Correct me if I’m wrong, but that almost sounds like you care about me."

"No. I want to make you suffer for what you’ve put me through. I can't do that to a floundering ball of meat, can I?"

I frowned, "That's very comforting. Thank you for all your support."

"No problem."

As you could tell, I was surrounded by a bunch of sarcastic assholes. Leaving said assholes, I took several books that Torix handed to me before I went back to study mode. It took several more hours before I grew tired. I hadn't slept in a few days, so the exhaustion was long overdue. I ate a few of the rations that Torix had before I fell sleep in an unlit corridor.

For the first time in a while, I dreamed. I was walking through a normal, wooden hallway. The corridor had no doors, and it stretched on forever. As I walked further into its depths, the walls warped and the wood contorted. The wood darkened, growing eerie and ominous. The air grew stale and old. I don't know how long I walked before I reached a stone wall with carvings on it.

I placed my hands onto the stone before they lit a dark purple. A voice, deep as the ocean and powerful as time, pierced into the depths of my mind,

"Embrace me, my child."

I woke up pouring sweat from under my armor. I heaved for air before glancing around. The same low-lit tunnel walls surrounded me. After a minute of composing myself, I stood up and walked over towards the colosseum. It was time for another long day of fighting and study, not time to dwell on nightmares.

Althea walked into the stadium, her harpoon cannon in hand and one of her hands deformed at her side. The skin turned a dark, reddish green. Numerous long and thick spikes protruded from the limb. She said, "I'm ready."

I nodded, "Then let's go."

She grabbed one of the spikes with her teeth before putting it into the harpoon gun’s ammo slot. She aimed it towards me and fired. I dived onto the ground before the spike impaled the wall behind me. The spike of ivory slipped into the stone without the earth shattering echoes of before. Unlike the previous metal, these new horns could slice through stone with ease. They would punch holes in my armor.

She didn't have the limitation of ammo anymore either. She kept pulling spears formed from her deformed arm, firing them one after the other. My dodging grew desperate before a spear impaled straight through the bicep of my right arm. There was no pulling me back like with the other spears. This time, my arm was perfectly fine before a gaping hole just appeared in the middle of it like magic.

I roared in pain before she shot another spike at me. It stabbed straight through my right palm. Even with my sky-high pain tolerance, the agony was visceral. Entire portions of bone disintegrated as the spears passed through me. Althea learned from what Torix said. She fixed her weaknesses and made them into strengths.

Glancing behind me, I sprinted away from her, towards the back wall. I sidestepped at random as I did, dodging several spears. One of them ricocheted off the floor and bounced off the back wall. It landed a hundred feet from the wall. I neared it before turning towards Althea. She laughed, "Who's running now?"

I grit my teeth as I grinned back. I shot sideways towards the spear as another of her bullets passed by. I picked up the ivory lance, turning in a circle before launching the white lance towards her. The projectile bolted through the room, the air squealing before it smashed through Althea's cannon.

The metal roared as it bent and broke. Pieces of the machine fell as she pulled out another spear. She must have thought I missed. I sprinted towards her, barreling like a boulder down a mountain. My feet clapped against the stone floor as she tried placing another spear into the reloading socket. The machine refused to fire.

She turned to it, finding the machine shattered. She bit into her lip until blood poured out of her mouth. I neared her before she threw the gun onto the ground. When I reached her, she sidestepped me just like I sidestepped her charge yesterday. With a whip of her hand and wrist, she pulled out a spear and thrust it towards my throat.

I was ready for the maneuver. Grabbing her arm with my left one, I stopped her stab. She had put her back to the colosseum wall. I would use this against her.

The force of my charge and strength of my grip lifted her off the ground as I stomped past her. She flailed in the air before I reached the wall. With all my strength, I pressed my heel into the stone beneath me. The sudden stop changed the momentum of my charge, forcing my torso towards the wall.

I used the shifting momentum as I pulled Althea straight into the stone wall with my one good arm. A catastrophic outbreak of noise rippled through the cavern as she collided. The bones in my arms creaked at the impact. The concussive force shattered the stone like a panel of glass as her body slapped into it. Bones shattered. Chips of rock bounced off the ground. A cloud of dust expanded from the strike.

Once the dust cleared, her mangled body was shown puncturing deep into the wall. Two feet into the stone, she grumbled in pain. After shaking bits of stone from me, I let my arm regenerate. With both my arms, I pulled her out of the wall before setting her down gently. I didn't toss her like I used too. No point in demoralizing her further.

At this point, I almost felt bad about having her be my sparring partner. She just didn't have a good sense for it. She got so caught up in the rush of power during our fights that she always let me gain the upper hand. It was like she'd never had control before coming here, and now she desperately clawed for it. That lust for dominance resulted in many lost spars.

I'd tell her about it after she woke back up. In all honesty, she had an advantage in most of our spars. She lacked the creativity to turn her advantages into concrete results though.

While she regenerated and regained her bearings, I continued my pursuits of new skills. I found that pushups were considered a skill. It didn't do anything but make pushups easier. While useless, it gave me skill points. I would train this, sit-ups, pullups, rock climbing, even jumping. I tried keeping the skills at least semi useful for the most part. Rock climbing and jumping could be used while fighting or traveling for instance.

I did all this while letting a BloodHollow Bat attack me. I'd brought one in from the cavern and use it for activating the combat bonus for gaining skills while I trained. Combine that with the doubled learning speeds from dexterity and I learned the first ten or so levels of a skill within an hour.

Althea didn’t come back for sparring that day, even after a few hours. She sulked in her cubby hole in the side of a wall. She'd carved it out with her claws, using it as a sort of private room. During the rare times I glanced over at her, she tinkered with her broken gun, inspecting the parts and mechanisms that composed it. She probably wanted to recreate it.

Of course, I couldn't let her gain an advantage over me. My biggest weakness versus her involved being at a distance. While she was by no means weak up close, I had the advantage due to my superior size. That meant I needed a way of closing the gap. I found a side cavern somewhat isolated from the others before spending the next few hours dashing straight into a stone wall.

Over time, my collision zone turned into a hole in the wall, then a small cavern of its own. I gained two skills from this act of unbelievable stupidity.

Skill Gain! [Blitz (lvl 1)]

Skill Gain! [Burrow (lvl 1)]

[Blitz (lvl 1) - You charge forwards with a burst of speed and power. +1% to charging attacks.]

[Burrow (lvl 1) - You dig through the ground with whatever means at your disposal. +1% to burrowing speed.]

Excellent. After another few hours of giving myself brain damage, I'd leveled these two skills quite a bit. It was a two for one since both skills were useful. Of course, the tedium reduced my leveling speed quite a bit, so I shifted gears by studying for the next hour or so. I alternated between these two tasks every hour from then on.

There was something fulfilling about doing something with such focus for so long. I can't quite describe it in words. Think of it like this. Thoughts, ideas, even sudden urges just pop into your head all the time. They act as distractions that keep you in this sort of haze. When I focused on studying or fighting or training, that haze died down and everything became crystal clear.

I understood exactly what I needed to do. I felt it deep in my bones that this was what I wanted. There was no wasted time or effort on questions or doubts. I did whatever I needed to in order to gain power. I was vulnerable as I was. I wouldn't be vulnerable for long, if I could help it. I wouldn't become the tormented again. It just so happened that this universe was full of powerful tormentors.

Never again, I had sworn to myself. I would rise and they would fall.

These thoughts kept my mind on edge as I went through volume after volume that Torix gave me. My efforts flooded into this constant stream of information. Disparate points came together as I formed a picture of what Schema's universe was like. What I discovered was that it was a vast and unknown place. There was no internet between worlds. Schema was the closest thing, and he filtered information heavily. This left many pieces of galactic history in the dark.

The remnants were the perfect example. What Schema did or what happened to them was an enormous question mark. What did they do? How did they do it? I didn't know. Very few people did. It left me starving for information on the subject. I was sure the remnant that Torix knew would answer some of my questions.

That afternoon and night flew by as I gained all this new knowledge. I even learned about the only known Old One, Etorhma, Eater of Worlds. In the mythos of the universe, he was considered a monstrous presence. Etorhma was one of the few sentient Old Ones. There were actual records of its speech. Of course, they were garbled gibberish for the most part.

But there was one line that chilled my blood and fueled further nightmares. It came up over and over, like a mantra of madness. All the scriptures and cults following Etorhma repeated the phrase, like a beckoning call for their master, like they wanted everything swallowed by this monstrosity.

The phrase read, ‘Embrace me, my child.’