“Oh we don’t have time for the mushy stuff, get going”

“Right”

So, I kept going. Traveling across the entire complex would be inefficient, so I went to the nearest stairs to try to get a better vantage point. The stairs led me into a nice, tall tower. This should give me a good vantage point, if it wasn’t for the fact that each floor was populated by armed almoravids. I generally tried to run by before they could actually grab their swords and attack me, using shadowfoot, as well as illusions to stealth my way by. I began to walk more carefully, moving from wall to wall, shadow to shadow.

“Unlocked sneak level 1, sneak and shadowfoot have been catalyze by elementalism into illusory stealth”

I immediately activated illusory stealth, and sneaking around instantly became easier. I automatically blended myself into the background, as a stopped to consider a very important question. Which feat should I take now.

As I’ve discussed, psychometabolism seems to have more potential, but it requires a high will, while ki cultivation gives a more general bonus depending on my level of “cultivation”. I didn’t have much of either will or cultivation, but I felt I could use the more general bonus, not to mention that it seems to increase will for when I finally get psychometabolism. That and… well, I could always try and boost my will after I get ki cultivation, and the instant power boost would allow me to-

“Get ki cultivation”

But what if I go against something where I need the extra stats?

“A +6 won’t make much difference when 60 isn’t enough. Ki cultivation, on the other hand, gets stronger the longer you use it. If I had enough consciousness and your life didn’t depend on using magical healthcare to fight off the goop infection, I would have recommended ki cultivation back then as well”

“That’s a good point, the longer you cultivate something, the further it grows…”

and so I picked the ki cultivation feat. It didn’t do anything immediately, but then once I started looking around I received the notification

“The meditation skill has evolved into the cultivation skill. Besides increasing affinities, the skill now extremely slowly increases all stats by its use, as well as increase resource regeneration”

It changed my meditation skill. I immediately sat down and began to cultivate. I felt my ki go through every part of my body, following a set path. As it approached each other resource, it began to pull them along, dragging them into the stream. Now my body was being strengthened and attuned to my various resources, and if I focused hard enough I could feel traces of aether traveling along with the energy. There was only one problem…

“I have to use this constantly for it to actually cultivate…”

If I had to sit down and cultivate all day I was never going to see the goblins again, let alone get out of this place.

“Now now, remember, you have an advantage nobody else knows about”

And what would that be?

“Me”

I was confused for a moment, since I didn’t believe he could actually help me with this.

“Focus on the path the energy takes, through every muscle, every nerve, every blood vein, cycling through your whole body. Engrave that path into your body, until your body recognizes it as just another system of circulation. Focus, imagine it as a river that flows through you and”

“Dammit now I really need to pee”

“FOCUS DAMNIT! Yes, let it flow from your core, to the tips of your extremities, and back along your bones, that’s right, let it wash over your skin and sink into you, empowering you, this may not be quick, it may not be easy, but… never mind, that was faster than I expected… congratulations, the cultivation skill has evolved into the cultivator skill”

I felt the energy flow passively, along with a nice little boost to the skills level. With that, I didn’t need to worry about taking out my time to actually boost my stats and affinities, letting them raise by themselves. It didn’t matter how long it took, I would eventually become strong enough to conquer this dungeon

“ROOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR!!!”

Though that day is not today.

So I just kept climbing the tower oh so stealthily, until I reached the top floor. To be honest, I was not expecting to see a little girl chained to the wall.

“Q-quién está ahí?”

I was still using my illusory stealth, so it was surprising that the girl could sense me, especially as she seemed so malnourished, with her wrists bruised by the manacles that were chained to the walls.

“Solo un simple viajero, porque estás aquí?”

“L-los a-almorávides querían s-someter a mí c-como la esposa del c-cuélebre”.

So the dragon is a paedophile, of course…

I immediately looked at the manacles on her wrists, trying to find the keyhole. I sensed that they were filled with magic far more complicated than anything I’ve seen so far. It would be almost impossible to actually remove them…

“Esas c-cadenas están encantadas por el cuélebre, sería c-casi imposible romperlas”

Huh, there she only stuttered half as much, she seems to be warming up to me. Of course, the chains may be unbreakable. The wall on the other hand…

Soon enough, the chain was removed for the wall, freeing the little girl.

“Gracias, me rescataste, ahora seré tu esposa y tendré tus hi-”

“OH LOOK WHAT A CONVENIENTLY PLACED EXIT”

“Aether, that’s a tenth story window, not an exit… Aether no”

“AETHER YEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS”

Weird, I distinctly remember jumping out the window, why am I still on the floor of the tenth story of the tower… who’s giggling at my expense!

“Es bueno saber que no tenías deseos impuros al rescatarme”

It was the little girl. She walked right up to me and kissed me on the back of my head.

“Achieved kissed by the faerie princess, achieved basic spirit affinity”

“Gracias, y que hiciste”

“I gave you a bit of a buff to make the spirits more affectionate to you, you did save me after all”

And now she speaks English…

“When did you learn to speak English?”

“I didn’t, you just hear me in whatever language you happen to think in”

Oh, that’s neat.

I felt a new power go into my cultivation circuit. Apparently this one was called spirit affection, and I used it to get the spirits to do what I wanted. Speaking of which, I assume that must be what all of those wisps are…

“Anyway, I believe we need to get out of here”

“Indeed, you breaking the chains out the the wall may have alerted the guards…”

oh, and there was the sound of the armored boots on the stairs… at least we have that convenient exit…

“The window was an illusion”

Ok, that’s it. Maybe I should try this new spirit affection thing.

I immediately spent all of my SA to get the spirits of all of my elements to act together to blow the wall away. Strangely enough, I felt as if the world was strangely hostile to me now…

“Elementalism leveled up x8”

Nice, I feel elementalism is getting closer to something, though I’m still not sure what. Next I picked up the girl and activated illusory stealth just before the guards arrived. They arrived, say the giant hole in the wall, the lack of a captive, and put 2 and 2 together.

Just as planned…

and while they rushed down the stairs, I followed in hot pursuit, though I almost tripped, instinctively using ki boost to correct myself… eventually we reached the bottom of the stairs, me having seen the outside after blowing the hole out, and went on our merry way. The girl seemed a lot more relaxed now, open to small talk.

“I’ve never seen someone with such low attraction have so many spirits around them…”

“I have a skill that lets me manipulate the elements, I assume the spirits were mostly elementals?”

“Good guess”

As expected, a fantasy has to have elementals

“But there’s something that doesn’t explain…”

Oh?

“And what would that be?”

“Opposing elementals were just hanging around you perfectly calmly, even though they should be annihilating each other”

Huh, Prognosticator?

“It’s because of your aether affinity, it would be like a bunch of squabbling children suddenly behaving because their parent entered the room”

Thanks

“It’s because of my aether affinity”

The girl froze up

“You have aether affinity? How? It’s nearly impossible to get since the elements start immediately opposing each other. Unless you both get the affinities to all the elements in a really short time frame, and have an incredible understanding of the truth of each element, then… did you gain all the elements in this dungeon?”

“Yeah?”

“You are ridiculous”

“Good to know”

In other news, almost as soon as I regenerated a point of SA, the world didn’t feel nearly so hostile anymore.

“So how does the whole spirit thing work?”

“The spirits are everywhere, little bits of reality given sentience and ethereal form. Using spirit affection, you can request the spirits to do as you wish”

Hmm…

a while later we reached a nice little defensible room, where I decided to carry out an experiment. I summoned up the power of elementalism, and infused it with my resources, psionics to give it mind, blood to give it life, ki to give it energy, magic to grant it effect, and spirit affection to bind it all together. Then, I gave it a simple program, to compare and compile what I program other spirits and golems with in order to form a “library” of different programs that I can whip up on the fly.

“Reality programmer achieved, unlocked chaos magic 1, chaos magic evolved into ruler of chaos, beginner aether affinity achieved, average aether affinity achieved, medium aether affinity achieved, beginner spirit affinity achieved, average spirit affinity achieved, average magic affinity achieved, average ki affinity achieved, average psionic affinity achieved, cultivator leveled up x10…

Thank you, and holy shit”

Um… what happened?

“You just created a soul, and not just any soul, a soul that allows you to create more souls. That is like getting pregnant by jacking off as a guy, and then having a solid gold baby rise out of the ground like a cabbage. This allows me to do a lot, and I mean A LOT of things. Now I can create servitors to help me out by running in the background, allowing me to be free to do a lot of more interesting things, like investigating that pluripotent cell stat”

That’s, a weird analogy, with the cabbage patch thing… on the bright side, it gave a serious boost to my abilities.

“What the fuck did you just do”

Oh yeah, the girl was here…

“Just learned how to create a soul”

“DONT SAY SHIT LIKE THAT SO CASUALLY”

“So why are you asking?”

“Because all of the spirits are screaming that a new one was born from out of nowhere! One does not simply create souls!!!”

Ignoring the little princess outburst, I began to look around, searching for any evidence of the goblins. Soon enough, I found a courtyard area, with a patrol of mounted soldiers passing through. Stealthing past them using my illusory stealth skill, I found they had a little outpost from the almoravides. Here there were some more documents I couldn't read.

“You know, come to think of it, I don't know your name princess”

“My name is Xana, yours?”

“Aether Cael”

She began to read about the various documents, deciding to peruse them while we have small talk.

“So why are you exploring this dungeon anyway Aether?”

“Found some friends here, a tribe of goblins. Got separated from them, so now i'm trying to find them again”

Xana froze, looking at the paper in her hands…

“Looks like they got captured”

“What?”

“The almoravids found the goblins in the courtyard, now they're taking them to the cuelebre”

Well, looks like today is in fact, that day.