Chapter 534: Ra'azel

Chapter 534: Ra'azel

BondsmithUpdated from n0velbIn.(c)o/m

Raazels soul was crying out, power was slipping from his grasp. Pieces of the power he had stolen, that he had grafted to himself were fading, as if they had never been there in the first place. The agony of it was too great.

The constructs made out of the Soul of another flickered out of existence, the power he had infused in them, vanishing. His mind was rocked, as if something was being torn from his very thoughts. He forgot where he got the power in the first place, then he forgot that he had ever even had it at all.

It was like a physical blow that he didnt expect nor see coming. He fell from the sky and struck the ground, unable to move, to even think.

Confusion wracked his thoughts, his memory of the battle turned obscured by a fog. Damage to the ground changed, like illusionary images rotating in and out of existence. The hole in the sky blinked out and the falling island was whole.

His failsafe triggered; memory captured on his mental constructs detected the deviation. It was one of the most powerful constructs he had ever made, one of the most important that he had perfected the design long ago. It was bound Time, carved out by Space and Void, a universe of its own. Inside was as separated from the reality he existed in as it possibly could be. And at its core was a copy of his mind, updated constantly.

Once the deviation was detected, it reached back out and overwrote his memories, injecting what he had forgotten.

Raazel remembered, and was awed and afraid in equal measure. Something had erased time itself, no, it was more than that. It had changed it in a way that left no traces, that altered reality itself as if this was what it had always been. It wasnt time, it was more than that.

I want that power. He thought to himself. Knowing what he could do with it. To reach out to the tapestry of the world and make changes. It would finally give him the tools he needed.

He tried to move, but his Soul and body ached, both from the effort of the fight and from what had happened. His Soul might not have ever experienced what had happened in the previous version of reality, but an echo remained, because his Soul was different. He was old.

He shook his head and raised his eyes to take the situation in. Immediately, he reacted, triggering a rune string that flickered to life powered by his Soul and the Air around him. It pulled on the Essence, compacted the Air and surrounded him in a shield.

Raazel groaned as he hit the ground, back on the floating island, he raised a hand to carve a rune but his opponent was faster and shattered his forearm in an instant, the world itself bent to the drakes will hitting him in ways that he couldnt protect himself against.

As the drake slammed him against a side of a cliff, cracking it and sending rocks falling down on top of them, Raazel couldnt help but be envious of the power these people were granted.

Raazel himself was no match for their sheer attributes. He had no Levels, no Cultivation Realms, no Skills. All he ever had was the body he was born with, that he had trained, that he had augmented himself. He was a pale shadow compared to them, his attributes could not match theirs.

His time in the Ethereal, becoming a shade, had helped some, but it wasnt enough. There were only two reasons why he was able to keep up. First was because he was augmenting his body with his Soul, burning it to make his attributes higher. And the other was because he had one attribute that was as great or higher than theirshis mind. The one part of his body that he had improved over a long life, and honed in the Ethereal Realm.

Raazel could think in fractions of time it took them. He could use his mind to activate constructs and react faster than his body could move. He could match them with already prepared constructs that bought him time to carve runes.

He had lost his advantage. The drake had him, whatever happened that had caused the world to get rewritten had made him lose a step, and the drake had exploited the moment.

He matched Raazels constructs with his own, and the gifts the chosen had from the Framework reduced Raazels options down to barely a handful.

Once, Raazel was a Bondsmith of an entire world. He had bound the Aspects and commanded them with barely a thought. His runes had augmented him and them, made reality itself obey. And then he was betrayed, reduced to a mere soul. His body destroyed, he turned into a Shade. A being of Ethereal existence. Time in the Ethereal Realm had given him power, it had made his Soul stronger, but he did not grow in the same way that other Shades did. He had no connection to the Framework other than his existence in it.

In that prison, he had spent countless ages plotting his escape. Countless ideas and designs. In the end, he got lucky, he escaped the prison with the help of a human chosen, and in him he planted one seed that would allow him to escape the Ethereal Realm too.

He had made many plans after his escape from the Felltower. Seeds that had turned unnecessary. But now, as his armor was being torn from his body, as the drake cracked his spatial anchors and prevented him from pulling more constructs, Raazel was left with the only weapon he had ever been able to truly rely on.

His Soul.