Beastforged Bond

I lost.

It wasn’t even close. Orieath battered me and examined my injuries a little afterward. The wounds weren’t all that bad, and both a Spiritcaller and one of the Caldera used their searing heat to heal me. The wounds were itchy, and I felt the urge to scratch them back open more than once, but I resisted.

The heat pressing against my skin and seeping into me was uncomfortable. It was hot and almost too much to bear, which made it hurt all the more. After all, that kind of heat wouldn’t have affected me in the past. Now, without Volix’s heat resistance and Nox’s Elemental Resistance to rely on, the heat distracted me.

Despite all that, I felt quite good. If one ignored the heat or the fact that I’d used a lot more ether than I should have, that is. Checking on the weave and linked Gates, I noticed a stark difference. The Gates were down by one-tenth from my fight with Orieath alone. Adding that to the loss accumulated from the constant leakage of the last few days and the ether lost while I lay comatose in bed for a few months, I was looking at Gates that had lost about one-third of their accumulated ether.

I’d gone through worse before, but during those times my World hadn’t been in shambles. Without the World and its core, I’d struggle to replenish the Gates.

I could use etherstones and crystals, I reminded myself, though that made me wonder how it would work if I couldn’t even use the core to annex an etherstone’s pure ether. It did work, but the how of it made me curious.

Maybe I can replenish ether differently without involving the core. The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became. Absorbing ambient ether wouldn’t be difficult, yet annexing it through the weave or the Gates sounded like a challenge. One worth exploring. Later.

One way or another, I had needed that fight against Orieath.

So had the Fire Blessed Caldera. Losing to me, even though I’d gained access to ether much later than him, must have been a sore spot for him. Hence, beating me brought a vibrant smile to his lips. A smile that cracked ever so slightly when his friends began teasing him for being so cocky.

“Congrats, you won against the Pyaera. He cannot even use his full strength, but congratulations nonetheless.” One of them mocked Orieath, and he was just one of many. Orieath took the friendly teasing in stride.

“You should recover fast, Pyaera. Focus more on your physical strength and Weapon Arts. I feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, and that’s a disgrace.” The blessed Caldera said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I was never much of a weapon master,” I grumbled quietly to myself, but I promised to train hard. With the Aspects and traits I’d acquired, I no longer needed close combat as much as before. Even when I had to fight in melee range, I had Nullblade, Predator, and a plethora of traits to give me an advantage. That… was a bad excuse though. It was nothing more, was it?

“I will train harder.” As long as I had enough time, I would focus more on weapon training. Until then, I could always improve my physique.

We were approached by a Mikoniv scout, but the Caldera dismissed him with a deadly glare. Reluctantly, he left, but not before his slitted eyes met mine. My World, or the myriad of fragments that ought to form it, stirred in response.

Confused, I endured the painful surge following the World’s response and stared at the Mikoniv scout, who hurriedly returned to watch another spar.

A bit unsettled, nothing the Spiritcaller and Caldera said reached my ears until it was time to exchange contacts. That we did in the form of small-range communication stones. They were made of a cheap material that nearly cracked in my hands, but they did what they had to do. A mixture of ether circuits and runes intertwined all across the slabs, connecting each of them with its counterpart. Interestingly enough, the only reason they worked was Dracos’ high ether density and the city-state network, which wasn’t all that different from the Bastions’ Nexus.

Saying our goodbyes, we went our separate ways. The Spiritcallers returned to the market, while I headed back home on another beast taxi.

Only part of the brilliant sun could be seen when I arrived back home. The rest had already disappeared beyond the horizon, telling me that I’d spent a lot more time outside than initially planned.

Just let me eat and shower. Taking a deep breath, I could hardly suppress the grimace. I really needed that shower. And a lot of sleep to prepare for tomorrow.

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Entering our quaint but comfortable home, the smell of home-cooked dishes hit me square in the nose. Hungry, with my stomach growling like it hadn’t gotten any sustenance for weeks, I forgot about the shower and headed to the kitchen. But before I could take more than four steps, Mom and Dad came rushing out of it.

They stopped in unison, and Dad patted Mom on the back. “See, I told you he would be fine,” he said, though his eyes scanned me from head to toe with deadly precision.

Mom sighed with relief. She tried hard not to look at my half-burned clothes or the pink spots of raw, recently healed skin showing beneath them.

“Why do you look like that?” Dad blurted out, motioning at me.

Mom, in the meantime, pulled me into a quick hug. “We were worried about you.”

“Why would you worry? There’s nothing to worry about,” I said lightly. After all that had happened, it felt like my parents had gotten worse. They treated me with kid gloves and never mentioned my Soulkins, or my World, or… anything really. It was irritating how considerate they were trying to be, all the while acting overprotective.

In a way, it felt like they were scared of hurting me further, thinking they knew how much I was hurting.

“I am fine, really. I managed to put some of Kazriel’s collection up for the upcoming weekly and bi-annual auction, and I managed to purchase a high-quality World Mending Elixir as well. There’s no need to worry about me.” I was old enough to take care of myself. As long as I didn’t have to fight a Ruler or other powerhouses strong enough to shatter my World or put me into a coma, that is. And even in that case, my parents were likely the last people who could help me.

That, however, didn’t diminish their efforts. They tried their utmost to help me, and I appreciated them for that.

“Please don’t act so careful around me. I really don’t like that. It makes me feel weak and belittled,” I said quietly. “Or do you pity me because you think I will become a cripple again?”

Neither Mom nor Dad said anything right away. It took them a good moment to digest what I’d just said, and even then they did not respond immediately.

“We were just worried about you,” Mom muttered, tears streaking down her face.

“We know you’re strong, but… you know, we feel useless.” Dad let out a deep, heavy sigh, one that seemed to carry the weight of the world. “We couldn’t do anything. Not in the Bastions when you were forced to grow strong enough to deal with the Ruler of Fire, and not before that either. We knew you were worried about the Rulers finding out about the Elemental Phoenix, yet all we could do was stand there and pray that you would be fine. And now… now, nothing has changed.”

Mom and Dad were not combatants who could earn coins as Hunters. However, they were not merchants either. Their assets had been too insignificant to rent a single room in Dracos for a month. Without the Zerogs, they would have never survived in Dracos, let alone taken care of their comatose son. And even now, when their son needed Essence or expensive Elixirs, they had nothing to offer, for their Worlds were too small to extract Essence from. Even if they spent months refining their Worlds, it wouldn’t be enough. After all, their Worlds had stagnated a long time ago.

I knew they had tried hard to refine their Worlds and prepare Essence for me, but I couldn’t rely on them. By the time their Worlds were large enough to survive the extraction of Essence, mine would have long since fallen apart. I knew that, and so did my parents.

Not only did they feel unable to help, they also felt like baggage. I knew that feeling. I remembered it well from my childhood, from years spent struggling to even breathe. My condition improved over the years, but not through my own effort alone. My effort may have been part of the reason, yet it was my parents’ sacrifice that helped me survive. It filled me with the strength needed to keep going, to refine my World, and to struggle for more than a decade when even the doctors told me to accept my condition. But my parents did all they could despite being unBlessed. They worked several jobs and nearly starved themselves whenever the medical bills became too expensive, yet their smiles never died.

Dad nearly died when he left the Bastion’s protection to bring a mutant beast egg to me. He – they – were the sole reason I was still alive. They changed my life, changed it for the better, and I hated seeing them like that.

“You should never feel useless,” I told my parents. “If not for you, I’d be nothing. You could have given up on me, told me to stop dreaming about becoming a Blessed. Or to join the Camp.” Dad let out a light chuckle at that. “But you never did. Mom, Dad, you supported me with all you could. You sacrificed your Worlds’ growth and your own dreams of becoming Blessed so that I could have a normal life. Sure, it didn’t end up being all that normal, but nobody with my condition lived as long as I did. And look… I am still alive and well.” Mom’s lips curled into a gentle smile. “And I love being alive. I love everything about it, even the bad parts. They’re part of life, and I want to embrace life with my whole being.”

I felt like I was drifting away, but that was fine. There were things that had to be said, and I wanted to make sure my parents heard them.

“Do not feel like you owe me anything, because it’s the other way around. You sacrificed everything for me, so it is I who owes you,” I said, dismissing the mist gathering in my eyes. “I love you, Mom, Dad. You are the best, and I couldn’t be happier to be your son.”

There was a lot more I could have said, yet I didn’t. Neither did my mother as tears rolled down her cheeks, nor Dad as he pulled me into a tight hug.

“I’m proud of you, kiddo.” He spoke with a heavy weight seeming to come off his shoulders as he added quietly, the words directed only at me, “Thank you. We couldn’t have wished for a better son.”

“We love you too. Always have. Always will.”