LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 280: Ryun
Memory
“That is the only one?”
Ryun raised his eyes from the small glass container and met Selia’s eyes, then answered her question.
“Yes,” he said. He was sitting with her and Erdania in the common room area of their apartment. He had accepted Ender’s offer and had taken the fruit that was supposed to hold the memory of an Eternal Realm Cultivator. Granted, she was supposedly insane, but it was something that he couldn’t pass up on.
“You are sure that it can’t be shared?” Erdania asked.
Ryun shook his head. “Ender said that it needs to be consumed in its entirety for it to work.”
“Do you know anything about how it is supposed to work?” Selia asked.
Ryun grimaced. “The tree produced three of these fruits. One, they had given to the Emperor, Ender said that it is still in his vault, the second is this one, and the third… They gave it to one of their Cultivators, someone who was trying to help the Empire learn more about cultivating. He was Heavenly Realm when he took it, it drove him mad.”
“Well, there are always risks,” Erdania said slowly.
Ryun wasn’t quite sure about that, but he did agree that it was valuable—to the right people.
“Hm…” Ryun was going to eat it; he had no doubt about that. What he was debating was whether to do it now or wait. One hand there was the risk that he could damage himself, on the other there was a chance that he would glimpse something that would grant him strength.
“I am not afraid of madness,” Ryun said, he knew what that looked like. “What I am afraid is it putting me out of commission for this mission. I gave my word that I would come.”
“If you don’t want to take it, I am willing to take the risk,” Erdania said, but he could tell that it was in jest. He didn’t think that they would try and take it from him, despite it being useful for them too.
“It is your choice to make,” Selia said immediately after.
Ryun nodded his head, agreeing. Ultimately this was what he craved the most, to see a story of someone who had reached far. His ideal, his reason for being. It was… hard for him to walk it, not because he didn’t understand it, but because he was unsure how to even approach it. How do you walk up to someone and ask to hear their life story? He wasn’t adept at conversations, he was uncomfortable with strangers, didn’t know how to bridge that gap. Others were the ones that had always done the bridging, who had reached him, not the other way around. He could almost feel like his ideal was… static? Somehow, he was sure that it wouldn’t progress unless he walked further down that path.
“I’ll take it now,” Ryun said. In the end, he had never shied away from danger, or from taking risks.
The two of them exchanged looks but didn’t comment. They watched with apt attention as he opened the glass container and took the fruit out. To his eyes it was a bundle of too many different Essences to identify them all, it was plum sized and round. In one move he put it in his mouth and bit down. The taste was hard to describe, but if he had to, he would say that it tasted of.. ash and bone. He swallowed and felt the fruit travel down his throat and then, everything changed.
Ryun was somewhere else, and once again he could see. He was sitting on a ledge with his feet dangling over a deep crevice that was filled with only shadows. Color like how he had once seen it was back, and he almost missed the fact that there were other things wrong with what he was seeing. The dangling feet weren’t his, and this wasn’t his body. It was a demasi female body, the tail was dangling over the edge too. He was naked, and looking down at his body, what drew his attention were slits in the skin, appearing almost everywhere on the body. He couldn’t feel anything, not the body itself nor the air hitting his skin. He didn’t hear anything or—
*It had been three days since she reached the Eternal Realm, since she had Forged her Body and Soul together into one form—Eternal and enduring. She had found another dungeon, it called to her, their bones sang to her. She would take them, add them to her collection. But before, she pulled up a window, the last thing that she had gained, and wondered what she should do.
Craft Your Bloodline:
Add as many of your Body related Perks as you want to your Bloodline. All the added perks will be consumed, and a new, improved Perk will be created. The result depends on the quality and compatibility of chosen perks.
The Bloodline Perk will be passed on to any of your offspring, they will be born with it. If the other parent possesses a Bloodline Perk as well, the result will be either one or the other perk, or a combination of the two.
It was… not something that she needed. She would never have children. But… it seemed like it the new perk would be an improvement. And that part she did crave. More power, so that she would have more freedom. Freedom was all that mattered. So that she could reach the heavens.*
Ryun could think again. He could tell that the memories were… damaged. For a moment he was her, the Cultivator, and now he was himself again, just looking out of her eyes. Only this time he could feel and sense everything else.
He, or rather she, was in the darkness, but was able to sense everything around herself. It took Ryun a moment to realize that she wasn’t using a skill or anything else like that. She was… sensing the Essence directly inside of them. She raised her hands and Ryun felt her using techniques, then shooting… bone? Something impaled the monsters in the shadows, ripping them apart. She controlled a thousand fragments of Qi that she threw out and impaled the monsters all around her. She reached for something around her, not with her Qi though Ryun felt her core respond. The Essence of… stone? It shattered beneath a monster’s feet, throwing it in the air, and then a bone Qi spike shoot from her back, killing it. Again, he felt the same strange sensation and then air around another monster twisted and threw it back. Ryun was shocked, that… that was the third Aspect she had controlled. That… that shouldn’t have been possible.
And then, she did it again, the shadows around her trembled and suffocated another monster. That was… the fourth, but it wasn’t right. He didn’t feel her Qi move from her core, it was just the—
*The bones of the monsters were bad, bad, bad. They weren’t right. Their Essence weak, too weak. It lacked something, something that she remembered seeing once before, or more? Or—She formed a technique and unleashed it. The bones of every monster in a hundred league range around her shattered, killing those still living and destroying the dead corpses. It wasn’t right!
She needed something better, something that was… She needed to build it, a monument to freedom and bone. Every moment that it stood unfinished it meant that nothing was right. The world was suffocating her. It had to be right, it had to be right. It was wrong, wrong—*
—It was wrong! So wrong! He had to make it right, to show everyone that they couldn’t… Ryun stopped himself, the feeling of rage, of impotence, of need, still churned inside of him. The emotions were so… deep, and so heavy, that he could barely think. The memory of them… He realized that he was somewhere else again. On a plain, sitting on grass. In front of his eyes was a window, and perks filled the open slots. He realized that this was the moment she created her bloodline and he tried to focus on the perks, trying to read them—
*She was beautiful, a mastery of bone. She looked at her hands, seeing the bone sheathing her like armor, covering her hideous skin. She felt relief, she was on the path, it would work. She would build the tower of bones and reach the heavens. She would be free of everything—*
—He was going to be free! The heavens looked down on them and laughed. They were there, behind the sky, behind the… Ryun shook the memory off again. He didn’t know what it was that she knew, but the feeling behind it… It was anger, and hate, and so much more. It was pain and sadness. He had never felt as deeply.
And her body had changed. Now, it looked as if she had an exoskeleton made out of dark bone. It grew out of her skin, grotesquely but also somehow grand. The way that she felt, she believed that she was powerful, unbeatable. He wondered if she had created her bloodline, if that was it.
Ryun realized that he—she—was somewhere else now. A dark room a table and… A being sitting across from her—
*“I did it! I built it, give me a way through to the heavens!” She screamed at the Dealmaker.
“The afterlives are—”
“—No!” She boomed. “Not another cage! I want FreEDOOOM!”
“No one will ever see behind the curtain,” the Dealmaker said.
“I will, I just… I just,” she slowed, started to whisper. “I need better material, I know, I know… It lacked true souls, didn’t it?”
The Dealmaker’s attention hit her with full force. “Do not follow down her path.”
She frowned. “Whose path? I don’t—”*
—Ryun was back again, feeling… disturbed. At the end there, the Dealmaker’s attention was… It couldn’t have been, he dismissed it. Had he talked to… him? Ryun? It was impossible. This was a memory.
He realized that she was somewhere else again, looking up at a… Monstrosity made out of bones. It was a tower, touching the sky, so tall that her eyes couldn’t even see the end.
“It is all about souls,” she whispered to herself. “About the connection.”
Ryun wondered what she was talking about, but then he felt himself being pulled again.
*They fought her. Attacks hit her bones and broke on them. Arrows and spears, bolts of fire and light, lighting strikes. Nothing could stop her. They wanted to kill her, but they were nothing. She needed their souls, and their bones, and she was going to have them.
They ran around her, thousands of them, she reached to the earth Essence beneath her feet, commanded it, she couldn’t touch the Essence that was theirs, but unbound Essence was the legacy of every Cultivator. She called, and it obeyed.
The ground shook and sent many of them to the ground. She prepared a technique, her Qi reaching for the bones inside of their bodies and—A man was suddenly in front of her, green eyes and blood red hair, shrouded in blue fire. He yelled and fire consumed her.
She screamed in agony as the fire scorched her bones. Something hit her, trying to keep her in place as fire burned. She switched to her second aspect, the Qi of a concept. Freedom filled her as she used a technique and their attempts at holding her shattered. She was free, her bones cracking and growing, her Qi ripping the bones out of the dead around her and creating a wall between her and the fire. She jumped back, away from them.
She landed and the ground cracked under her weight. She roared and grew, her Evolved Form taking shape, her Ascended State restoring her. A behemoth of bone, with a dozen legs and six arms stood in front of them. She opened her mouth and screamed.
“Die, die, die, I am:
SHE WHO CRAFTS UNRESTRAINED.”
—Beauty of Bone—
*
SHE SPOKE, GAVE THEM HER TRUE NAME. THE WORLD TREMBLED AS IT RECOGNIZED A TRUE BEING. ALL WAS AS SHE WISHED. HER ART WAS ABSOLUTE. SHE—HE WAS GOING TO SHAPE THEIR BONES, TO REACH THE HEAVENS. He—Ryun barely managed to push away the memories. The rage, the feeling of need was overwhelming. It nearly swallowed him whole. She was in combat. Fighting against thousands. He saw an army against her, gold and red colors. Groups running carrying large plates that he recognized as arrays. They were placing them on the ground around her.
In front of her was a man that looked familiar, though Ryun had never met him. His hair was red and eyes green, next to him was a woman and her he did recognize. It was one of Nayra’s sisters, the one that had spoken to him at the gathering.
The Cultivator was towering over the field, sending massive attacks at everyone around her. She was killing dozens with every attack, but they didn’t stop.
He saw sculptures of bone rising out of corpses, cracking and shifting. It was eerie and bloody, but it was her… Ideal. The battle turned, and she was winning. The arrays triggered, light wall came down to hold her, but she just pulsed a technique and was free. Ryun couldn’t feel what she was doing now, couldn’t hear only see, but he understood. Her second aspect was that of a concept—Freedom—she was never going to be held by anything.
So many things were happening that he couldn’t even understand. It was chaos. The Ornn family attacked, and she did the same. She was slaughtering them—
*She was winning, there was nothing that they could do to stop her. Soon, she would take what they had brought her, and go beyond. She could feel them in the distance, little beings of bone and soul. They would help her build her tower, better, higher. She would reach the heavens.
The monsters around her attacked again, fire burned one of her legs to ash and she told the stone to rise. Spikes of stone impaled a dozen of them. She took a step, prepared a technique and—
—Garden of the Wild—
Roots exploded out of the ground, they tangled her up, but she ripped them apart with her strength alone. But then there was more of them, plants grew all around her in an instant. A forest surrounded her and separated her from everyone else. It couldn’t hold her, she stepped through the roots, toppled trees that had grown to the same size as she was. Spikes tried to stab her but she was ignored them. Vines grew over her, around her, through her bones, and she roared.
She raised her hands and called all the bones of everyone and everything around her. It shot through the forest, destroying tree trunks in a shower of brown and gray.
Her body and soul were one, and she—
—Red Dawn—
It came from above. A red ball of fire, it came down and it—*
—IT BURNED, IT BURNED HER. IT BURNED HIM. HIS SOUL WAS ON FIRE, HIS BODY TURNING TO ASH. HE WAS GOING TO DIE—
The memory ended and Ryun screamed. He felt something holding him down. His eyes couldn’t see, everything was murky, mists moving around him. His sense was back but he couldn’t feel any bone, not like how he could before. Everything was wrong, the world was gone, the heavens were waiting, and he had to reach them
He felt someone shake him, sound assaulting his ears.
“-yun! Ryun!” A voice shouted, familiar.
He turned his head and saw a sculpture of sandy grains. It shouted at him, but his mind was… slowly clearing.
He stilled.
“Ryun?” Erdania asked. “Are you okay?”
He cleared his throat. “What happened?”
Selia walked over, then knelt next to him. She put a hand on his and looked him in the eyes. “For a while you were unresponsive, as if asleep. And then, it looked like you went mad, there at the end.”
Ryun grimaced. “The last part of the memory… it was her death. It… it hurt.”
They exchanged their looks, and finally Erdania leaned off from him, letting him move. He straightened in his seat and closed his eyes. He tried to think about what he had seen, committing it to memory. There was… a lot of things to absorb. Something about her, the way that she felt was different than any other Cultivator he had encountered. There was a secret there that he just knew would help him with advancement, if only he could figure it out.
But for now… For now, just remembering the madness was enough. He had always charged ahead, tried to become stronger. But that… he did not want to have that happen to him.
“Was it worth it?” Selia asked.
Ryun met her eyes. “Yes, I think that it was.”