Kael's consciousness returned with the slow and agonizing drip of water into a parched well. He lay sprawled on the cave floor where the cold stone pressed against his cheek with a familiarity he did not yet care to embrace. For a long minute his location remained a cipher. His mind was a blank entry recovering from a violent reorganization until the memory of the Phase Rune surged back.
The Phase Rune. He had successfully locked the geometry into place but the sheer atmospheric pressure of the new rune being inscribed into his mindscape had been more than his exhausted psyche could sustain. His body had collapsed into a necessary coma. It allowed the integration to finalize while his mind was safely adrift in the dark.
As he pushed himself upright his muscles groaned with the familiar ache of a vessel pushed past its limits. He surveyed his dwelling and his eyes traced the grime with a cold and objective disdain. The sanctuary he had carved out with such meticulous care was no longer pristine. Despite his previous efforts to clear the discarded remnants of his body's refinement the black and oily gunk of purged impurities remained. A cloying and organic stench lingered in the damp air. The cave was becoming a tomb of his own biological waste. It grew more pungent by the hour.
A familiar chime resonated within his thoughts as the Compendium asserted its presence.
[Requirement Detected: Array Maintenance. Resource needed: Stone aspected beast cores to replenish energy reserves and initiate Autonomous Sanitation protocols.]
Kael exhaled a sharp and dry sound in the silence. At least he would not be forced to scrub the floors himself.
He turned his focus inward and dove back into the silent expanse of his mindscape. The Phase Rune thrummed there. It was a towering construct of golden light that eclipsed his previous Spike spells by nearly three fold. It was a masterpiece of arcane architecture. The Compendium had not merely stitched the five prerequisite runes together. It had fused them into a singular and fluid entity with flexible joints that promised a terrifying versatility. He knew instinctively that if he transferred this geometry to the array tablet it would manifest with a brilliant yellow glow.
Testing was the next logical step. He channeled a thread of pure Arcane mana into the structure. The rune pulsed and its geometry hummed with an idle power but the world around him remained unchanged. It was a dormant engine awaiting the correct fuel.
He switched to Earth mana. The moment the heavy and grounded essence touched the rune the transition was so smooth it was unsettling. There was no resistance and no jarring impact. He simply sank into the solid stone of the floor. The movement was effortless. It was a perfect execution that far surpassed his previous and clumsy attempts at earth phasing.
Finally he gathered a thread of Soul mana.
The world did not shift. It detached.
A sickening sense of vertigo washed over him as his perspective lurched upward. He was floating as a weightless spark of consciousness drifting in the damp air of the cave. Soul mana was a volatile medium. He realized this with a jolt of ice in his chest. Without a pre calculated anchor it did not inhabit the body so much as it displaced the spirit from it.
He was staring at his own face.
His body sat cross legged below him but it was no longer the boy he recognized. His face was arched upward and his eyes were wide and burning with a vibrant and iridescent glow. It was the unmistakable signature of his Arcane Sight operating on a purely biological level.
As he watched a second horror manifested. Patches of dark and chitinous scales erupted across his skin. This was a mirroring of the Queen Bee's essence. Without the stabilizing presence of his soul to enforce the human blueprint the symbiote was expanding. It was instinctively claiming the vacant territory of his flesh.
Kael did not wait for the metamorphosis to complete. He dove and slammed his soul back into the empty space of his chest. The reconnection was jarring. It was a violent collision of spirit and matter that felt like being crushed back into a leaden suit of armor. Yet as his senses realigned the interior of his own ribs felt like the only comfortable place in existence.
The transformation halted instantly. The scales receded and sank back beneath the surface of his skin. Within his soul space he felt the Queen Bee's confusion. To her it had been a sudden and glorious expansion of space. It was a cage suddenly opened only to be slammed shut again by his return.
Kael projected a command and cast it into the depths of his mind like an iron shroud.
"Expansion without authorization is forbidden."
A faint ripple of acquiescence drifted back from the sleeping entity. It was a reluctant acknowledgment of the command he had just issued. He was back in control but the image of his own iridescent eyes staring back at him remained burned into his mind. It was a reminder that his humanity was a choice he had to actively enforce.
The experiment with the Phase Rune had left a lingering question in the cold periphery of Kael's mind. While Earth mana had provided a seamless transition the Arcane mana had remained inert.
"Compendium," he projected. His thoughts were sharp and demanding. "Identify the failure. Why did the Phase Rune remain unresponsive to pure Arcane mana?"
The interface flickered into his vision with its customary and emotionless precision.
[Analysis: Arcane mana is a raw medium of potential. Unlike elemental mana which carries inherent physical properties Arcane mana is governed by the user's Will. To activate Phase Rune with Arcane mana Intention must be integrated into the channel.]
Kael's eyes narrowed as the revelation took hold. It was a shift from passive channeling to active manifestation. He focused on the golden rune again but this time he did not just flood it with power. He visualized a specific outcome where his right hand passed through the solid matter of the cave wall.
He pushed the mana.
His hand shimmered and its physical outline blurred into a translucent and spectral gold. He pressed his palm against the stone. There was resistance. It was a viscous and heavy friction that Earth mana had bypassed but his hand sank into the rock nonetheless. It was a more taxing method that demanded a constant tether of focus but it was far more versatile. Elemental mana was bound by its nature while Arcane mana was bound only by his mind.
In the claustrophobic darkness of the cave this was the edge he needed. He was done with this stone tomb. The air was thick with the rot of his own biological shedding. It was a stagnant stench that even his disciplined mind was beginning to find intolerable.
Fortunately the ten days of isolation had served their purpose. Within his soul space the energy harvested from the Vampiric Bat and the Rakshar had finally been fully processed. These were beings of Magus tier strength. The Devourer aspect was no longer a dormant tool. It was pulsing violently as a predatory heartbeat that resonated through his entire nervous system.
Kael settled into a meditation posture and his spine was a rigid line of steel. He began to release the stored energy not in a flood but in a calculated stream.
In the past his body would have buckled under the strain of such raw power. Now his refined physique accepted the influx with a terrifying efficiency. The energy coursed through him like liquid fire yet he did not shudder. He felt the sheer weight of the Magus tier souls which were dense and ancient and volatile.
Then the theft began.
Without his direction nearly seventy percent of the soul energy was violently diverted. It surged toward the center of his soul space and disappeared into the pulsating cocoon of the Queen Bee.
Kael watched with detached interest as the cracks on the cocoon's surface widened. The rhythmic thrumming of the symbiote accelerated. The chitinous shell splintered under the pressure of the sudden feast. It would hatch in minutes.
He did not fight the diversion. He simply worked with what remained. Taking the final thirty percent of the energy he drove it downward. He targeted the mana gates in his legs and specifically the calcified nodes in his knees. The soul energy hit the blockages like a hammer against glass. The impurities that had clogged his pathways for a lifetime did not just move. They evaporated.
The gates opened with a sickening and internal crack. A jolt of pure power surged through his lower extremities. The sudden influx of environmental mana nearly lifted him off the floor. His connection to the world's energy expanded. The straw sized draw of his previous state became a steady and rushing stream.
[Compendium Alert: Runic pathways stabilized. 8/13 Mana Gates currently open.]
Kael could feel that the mana volume traveling through his body had increased. If Kael had used the full energy he might have opened more mana gates but most of the energy was consumed by the Queen Bee. Now Kael had to hunt more in order to get more soul energy. He felt a rare flicker of impatience. The safety of the cave had made him a little bit complacent. He needed to get out and start hunting or he would be stuck in this dungeon forever.
Kael sat to stabilize his new mana gates. It took him two hours. He was just getting ready to leave the dwelling when he heard a crack. The sound did not come from the dwelling but from inside his very soul. When Kael focused inside him he could see the cocoon holding the queen was cracked fully. The shell made of soul energy dissipated and soothed his injured soul. Kael could see the entity he was harboring in his very soul itself.
Kael could feel the bee trying to push out of his soul and he did not stop it. The bee manifested in front of him. It was no longer the size of a large dog. The bee was now the same size as Kael himself. When Kael looked at the creature an uneasy feeling rose in him.
The bee had an exact replica of Kael's face. It had chitin for skin and pincers for teeth. The changes did not stop there. Kael could see that the bee had humanoid hands instead of pincers now. The wings were almost translucent while a shimmering powder was being released from them.
Kael looked into those iridescent eyes and recognized the reflection of his own ambition. He would name her Echo. She was a mirror of his own growth and a reminder of the darkness he carried within his very center.
Kael could feel the feelings and thoughts of his familiar. He could feel that she was a sentient being but her instincts were so overwhelming that she followed them without distinction.
Echo looked at the meat. Kael could feel that she did not want that. Kael was confused about what food she wanted until images of the core from the Vampiric Bat came to his mind. Kael's face tightened. He had earned that core. He did not know if using the core here would be of any benefit for him but the hunger from the bond was a physical ache.
Kael reluctantly took out the beast core from his spatial broach and tossed it. Echo snapped the core from the air with her hands. This reminded Kael that she was not some ordinary beast and should not be treated as such. The bee swallowed the core and Kael could hear the crunching as if the core was breaking inside her mouth.
After some time the crunching sounds were gone. Kael opened his mana sight to see Echo but he could not penetrate her body's innate defense to peer through. Echo came near him and cocked her head. Kael did not know what to do so he touched her head. She let him. Her carapace was hard and slippery to his touch.
Kael could feel that Echo was near the top-level initiate tier after consuming the core fully. He could not wait to see how she would assist him in the dungeon. He stood up and focused his will on the Phase Rune.
He phased directly through the solid stone of the dwelling wall. The transition was a silent victory of will over matter. He was as ready as he could be and for the first time, he was going on a hunt intentionally. The prey of the dungeon would soon learn the cost of his evolution.