The Sixth School Ch. 058

Like a small drop in the ocean or a single flame in the middle of an inferno, Greg couldn't shake the feeling that if he wasn't careful, he would lose himself in the far larger soul that he was now exposed to. "Ta... Take it down a few notches," He struggled to keep his voice steady as he asked. With a nod of acknowledgment from the healer, the feeling faded gradually and Greg went from feeling like he was a hair's breadth away from being subsumed by something much bigger than himself to feeling like he was standing on the firmest possible ground. It felt as if no matter what came at him Greg would never be moved. With increasing confidence, Greg nodded to the healer to let her know that he was ready.

Extending her hand towards him, the earth-brown beast core from the obsidian earthmover appeared on the healer's open palm. Greg didn't know if it was the healer's soul boosting his willpower or something else, but despite the deep longing he still felt for the core, he didn't swipe it out of her hand the moment it appeared. Perhaps it was the fact that he knew she was freely giving it to him that helped. Who knows? Still, with a slightly shaking hand, Greg reached forward and took it from her. The beast core felt like a cool pebble to his hand and in a way that wasn't entirely physical, Greg felt like he was holding a small trove of secrets, secrets that would help him gain power if he could just reach them.

Greg was already conscious of the fact that he didn't know what he planned to do with the core. He was just as much in the dark about it as the healer who was watching him like a hawk was. As such, rather than try to overthink it, he just closed his eyes and let instinct take over. Greg was familiar with the feeling of mana flowing through his body. He had, after all, spent the last several months being pumped full of it by the healer. In that period, however, he had also been strictly forbidden from consciously manipulating his mana lest he affect the development of his mana pathways. As such, this was the first time Greg felt his mana moved through his channels out in the real world.

Before, the 'earth connection' was an ephemeral feeling that he could only detect when he focused on it. As soon as his mana started moving through his channels, however, the sensation ceased to linger in the background and leaped onto center stage. While before he and the earth below him were two separate entities, it suddenly felt like he was a pillar stretching up from it. The separation between himself and the ground below him suddenly felt like it had been an illusion all along. What had only a second before been little more than inert rock, suddenly felt very different.

Vast, stoic, immovable, unchanging... it took a few seconds for Greg to wrap his mind around the fact that he was 'feeling' the mountain which he was suddenly connected to in a way that he'd never been before. It wasn't that the mountain had suddenly come alive and communicated the feelings to him. Rather it was the reverse. He, a pillar with a mind had been connected to the mountain allowing him for a few fleeting moments to understand what it was like to be a mountain! Before Greg could lose himself in the sensation, however, he felt himself sink into oblivion.

When he came back to consciousness still inside a cave, Greg thought that he must have passed out. It took a few seconds for it to register in Greg's mind that this wasn't his teacher's cave. It might have been slightly larger than the healer's abode but this one was a lot less furnished. By which he meant that it was just an empty, dingy cave. Greg wanted to get up and look around in the hopes of figuring out what had happened and where he was. After a few seconds of wanting to move and not doing so, however, Greg started to panic as he realized that he wasn't in control of his own body. His first instinct was to call out to the healer. Even this, however, proved to be beyond his ability to do as he continued to quietly look around the large cave.

Greg's attention turned towards the mouth of the cave when he noticed the inside of the cave darken significantly. Things just seemed to be going from bad to worse as he found the reason. Darkening most of the mouth of the cave Greg was now trapped in, was the fearsome figure of the obsidian earthmover. Didn't the healer say that only a fragment of the creature's soul would be left behind? The beast he was looking at could be described by any number of terms, but a fragment was most certainly not one of them! It seemed that the fear of seeing the beast shocked his body out of its paralysis as he found himself rising to his feet.

Greg wasn't certain what he would do. Large as the cave was, the beast before him wasn't that small either. It wouldn't take a lot of maneuvering on the part of the obsidian earthmover before he was cornered like a mouse. Greg would have to employ every bit of cunning that he could to get out of this situation. First, he would have to draw the beast inside the cave. Sure, the closer it was, the more danger he would be in. Still, it was unavoidable. With the beast occupying almost ninety percent of the cave's entrance, there was no way he would be able to escape this cave with it there. And escape was exactly what Greg was thinking of doing right now. Not even for a second did he delude himself that he could take on the behemoth before him. The only way he made it out of this alive was by running as fast and as far as he could.

But while his mind was trying to come up with a viable plan of action, his body moved on its own... and it was charging directly towards the creature.

Greg couldn't help but feel like he was the subject of a cruel joke. Somebody somewhere had taken control of his body and was doing all they could to kill him. There wasn't even a plan behind his charge. He wasn't aiming for the small gap to the right of the creature in the hopes of getting out. He was running straight at the thing! The closer he got to the beast, the larger it loomed over him. Whether he was the one getting smaller or the beast getting bigger, Greg didn't know. However, by the time he was just five feet away from the creature, he noticed that he barely even came up to its knees.

This was the end.

Greg was sure that in the next moment, he would either be gored or stomped to death! Which was why it came as such a shock to him when the colossal beast did nothing and just allowed him to run into its leg. Covered in sharp obsidian armor, even just running into the thing's leg should have badly injured him. He, however, was perfectly fine with barely a scratch. It was the shock of this turn of events that finally broke Greg out of his panicked state of mind and allowed him to notice all the details that he'd so far failed to pick up on. The first was the small tusk sprouting from a snout a few inches away from his face. The second was the sound of stone grinding against stone every time he rubbed against the bigger beast's leg. The third, if the sensations coming from his body were to be trusted, was the fact that he was moving on all fours as opposed to the two legs he was used to. The most jarring of his discoveries, however, was the fact that, rather than panicking, he was actually happy to see the massive beast!

It didn't take a lot of thinking for Greg to work out what was going on. His initial guess that this cave was the arena for his fight with the fragment of the obsidian earthmover's soul had been off by a mile. Instead of fighting whatever was left of the obsidian earthmover, Greg had somehow been granted a window into the memories of the now-dead beast from a first-person point of view. No, whatever this was, it went even further than pure memories. He wasn't remembering how the floor of the cave felt under his feet, he was actually feeling it. He wasn't just remembering how his mother's leg felt as he rubbed against it. He wasn't just remembering how much he loved the huge beast looming above him. He actually loved it...

***

Alena remained alert even as she watched the calmly breathing boy. She'd noted the slight movement of his mana when she gave him the beast core, it, however, had settled down shortly after. Although a part of her was happy that it hadn't been significant enough to affect the development of his mana pathways, another part was frustrated that the flicker was too fast for her to track. One of the issues that she still had yet to make heads or tails of was the complete lack of a mana core in the boy. Roka had tried to reassure her by telling her not to worry. Given that this was a new method of awakening that they were employing, it was bound to differ from the closed-loop system in some ways. And while the words had reassured her somewhat, she still found it niggling at the back of her mind. She'd wanted to track the flow of mana inside him back to its source to try and figure out what replaced the mana core in her new system.

Once again, Alena found herself cursing her pride. If not for overexerting herself the day before, even that brief flicker would have been enough to give her a general idea of where to look. As things stood, however, she needed to take it easy lest she make her situation even worse. The potion from the boy had helped her deal with a lot of the physical symptoms. Her mana pathways, however, were still in a bad shape... or at least in a worse shape than they usually were. As such, despite her frustration, she didn't dig any deeper into where his mana flow originated from. Instead, she watched the boy like a hawk, ready to intervene at the first sign of trouble.

Her caution, however, proved unnecessary as a long while later, nothing had changed. The boy was just calmly seated in the same position, taking long breaths in and out, the core still held in his hands. Even through the formation that connected their souls, Alena couldn't pick up on any disturbance from his end. Everything seemed to be going perfectly fine just as the boy's instincts had predicted. This was why Alena was caught off-guard when a mote of light appeared from between the boy's brows and materialized into the form of a frowning Olivia.

"This is the wrong formation! You need to create a soul tether formation, right now!" the familiar spoke, the urgency in her voice clear to be heard.

Having been a healer for most of her life, Alena was familiar with emergencies. Her body was already on the move even before the words reached her mouth. "What's going on?" she asked.

"He's not fighting the soul fragment in the beast-core, he's reliving its life!" Olivia replied causing the color to drain from Alena's face.

Alena wasn't usually one to curse but a whole string of curses escaped her mouth even as she redoubled her speed of carving new runes into the floor around the boy. Of all the known types of soul injuries, soul corruption was without question the worst of them. Treating any kind of soul injury was no easy task. Soul corruption, however, was a beast all its own. Where one soul began and the corrupting influence ended, was almost impossible to tell. If the fragment within the beast-core was potent enough and Greg lost himself completely to the memories he was being made to live through, chances are his sense of self may be completely corrupted. In the worst case, he might even emerge from the ordeal fully believing that he was an obsidian earthmover...

***

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