The moment the tentacles of vitality from the swirling red cloud above entered through the mysterious gaps between Elias's intertwined fingers, his consciousness was brought to a new place inside his body.
It was a barren desert filled with bone-white sands as if he was on a beach, but there was no water anywhere for as far as his eyes could see, and when he looked above, there was just a faint blue sky with no clouds, stars, moons, or a sun, but there was a faint light radiating all through this desert.
Before Elias could understand what this place was, he felt his consciousness being squeezed together, a rather unpleasant sensation, but the pressure did not last for long before it vanished, and Elias gasped in shock when he noticed that his consciousness had changed
It had taken the appearance of a tri-colored wisp, like a multicolored flame.
This wisp resembled a small rotating tongue of fire, but its colors were faint as if it were about to disperse. Elias noted that the wisp was burning with a red glow on the left side, blue on the right, and that a pale white line demarcated it in two.
Even with his consciousness in this strange form, Elias still noted that a part of him was still performing the Vitality Absorption technique, and his mind went a bit calm.
Elias began to regret not peering at his Status Screen before he began absorbing the vitality above. At that time, he had been following instincts, and he was afraid of being distracted by whatever changes that may have arisen on his Status Screen, but he had not heard or read of any Wisp experiencing this event when they absorbed vitality for the first time.
Perhaps, this place must be linked to being an Angel, and becoming a Wisp inside a Fragment of Divinity. The Commander had warned him not to unlock his Status Screen outside this Fragment, and so it stands to reason that all of these changes were linked to this Fragment.
Elias had always wondered why the first level of a Siphon was called a Wisp, and he had always thought that perhaps it was related to their weak Lumina power and control, apparently he was wrong, as a part of his consciousness had become a Wisp.
All of his teachings about the growth of a Siphon had never mentioned this transformation, and he knew that this must be the unique path of an Angel, and must be related to the reason they could live for so long or become more powerful than the average Siphon… they were closer to Divinity.
All of these thoughts briefly flashed through Elias's mind before he felt a premonition that something was about to change, and the sky above shrieked as it shattered, and a massive tentacle of red Lumina descended like a tornado.
Elias watched in shock and awe as the white sand below was whipped into a frenzy, creating a storm of white that the descending tentacle tore through as if it were nothing.
However, the sands were limitless and they began to push against the descent of the red tornado, and for a moment, it seemed there was a stalemate beginning to form as more sands rose from the ground to hold back the tornado, but then a massive groaning sound emerged from the sky, and the Wisp could hear the voice of his body like the voice of a god.
This entire desert seemed to freeze, and three more red tornadoes of vitality shattered the skies and descended, and the stalemate was broken. More sands rose up into the skies to block the tornadoes now numbering four, but they were grounded to nothing, and then another three more tentacles of vitality tore through the skies, and the fight was over.
All of the sands were eradicated for as far as his eyes could see, and Elias saw there was something beneath the sands, and if he had eyes, they would be widening in shock because he thought he understood what he was looking at.
Below the sands were a hundred craters; they were not particularly deep, since they were just twenty feet deep. They were perfectly circular, as if they had been built, and covering each crater was a gleaming web of oily darkness.
In the theory of Vitality Absorption that he had studied, Elias knew that in the body of every Siphon was a hundred pools of Lumina, and for a Siphon to "level up," they had to fill up that pool with Lumina.
A Siphon, however, could not physically see these pools with its eyes, and its Status Screen was the way it saw them and understood their growth.
The Pools of Lumina were seen as the foundation of every Siphon because of one important characteristic. When a Siphon fills up ten pools of Lumina, they were given two points of Miracles or Damnation. These were the points that could be added to the attributes of the body, like Strength, Agility, Durability, Perception, or Will of the Siphon.
A Wisp who had filled up ten pools of Lumina and obtained two points of Miracle or Damnation could assign these points to their bodies and push to the next level of power. So a Wisp at first level can become a second level wisp by just filling up ten pools of Lumina.
Most ordinary Siphons took this path because filling up ten pools of Lumina was already difficult enough, let alone filling up a hundred pools, even though the benefits of doing this would mean twenty points of Miracle or Damnation instead of two.
He knew that Siphons in higher classes of society filled up more Pools of Lumina before they leveled up, but this was a privilege only a few could enjoy.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
With the dispersion of the white sands, the tornadoes of vitality had nothing holding them back, and they fell into the empty Pools of Lumina below. The seven tornadoes of vitality tore through the webs covering the Pools and tore through them with barely any obstruction.
Elias's consciousness shuddered, his Wisp form flickering as if it was about to go out before it steadied. In a short moment, the seven pools of Lumina were filled to the brim with a scarlet liquid that gleamed like embers, and, as if they were sentient, the seven tornadoes of vitality pounded on the three remaining Pools, tore through their barriers, and filled them quickly.
At this moment, a massive shockwave erupted from the ten Pools of Lumina that had been filled, and they began to rotate, as a deep grinding sound emerged from deep inside the ground.
Elias watched in fascination as the ten pools grew wider and deeper, and in the blink of an eye, they were empty, but they had grown twice as big and three times deeper than the remaining ninety pools of Lumina.
When this process was complete, two shining purple orbs appeared above the pool, like stars.