Libriohexer ~ 31!

Sam took a position near his Core with straight legs, bringing his hands together. His right hand curled into a fist that rested against his left palm. Bill took a position directly across from him and mirrored the pose. They looked like two martial artists squaring off before a bout. Though Bill was normally flippant and easy going, he looked serious as a heart attack right now, with worry lines etched into his face.

Bill knew what was at stake here and knew what would happen if things went sideways. Sam wouldn’t be the only one to suffer the consequences. One misstep and Bill’s Core could shatter beyond repair—and since Bill didn’t have a physical body, shattering his Core would mean utter destruction.

The real form of Bill the book breathed in deeply, bowed his head, then began to move. Sam followed suit, dropping into a deep horse stance with his arms waving, and his hands dancing through a flurry of complicated motions. Although the gestures looked odd, they felt like second-nature since he had completed them a thousand times before. These were the same motions he used for Coptic-Binding—his primary technique for binding loose page leaves into a book. This was bigger, but in many ways the same: he was taking many small things and making them into one unified whole.

Sam let energy build in his Core, and the dollop of quicksilver in front of him began to glow. As power built in his chest, Sam uttered the ancient words of the old Wolfman tongue passed down by the Bakkuo.

They meant nothing to Sam.

After all this time, he spoke the modern Wolfman dialect with almost perfect fluency, but their old tongue was still a mystery. But that didn’t matter, not so long as he recited the words correctly and imbued them with the right intention. Sam overlaid all four Cores in his mind’s eye, imagining them swelling and shrinking until they became one. His hands continued to bob and weave as he envisioned using a golden thread of mana to sew the four Cores together.

Sam circled left while Bill circled right, both chanting the odd words in unison. Power continued to build in the air, slowly at first, like a static charge as you ran your feet across a carpeted floor. But soon the buzz had transformed into a deep and steady thrum; blue-white lightning arced wildly from Sam’s Core and his immaculate hair stood on end. Still, Sam didn’t stop: he moved faster. Twirling and dipping, jumping and diving, executing sharp pivots and quick kicks, all while maintaining the incessant chant and the familiar hand gestures.

Stitching. Sewing. Binding.

Mana swelled with every pass around the Core and the arcs of lightning increased in both frequency and intensity until Sam’s Soul Chamber looked like a fourth of July display in rural America. Starbursts of power exploded overhead, and threads of gold and silver meandered about while the air thickened to the consistency of molasses. Sam took those strands and used them like twine, stitching them back into his Core with a needled of raw will. Every movement became a thousand times more difficult and before long Sam’s limbs seemed to weigh a thousand pounds apiece.

The Bakkuo had warned them this would happen, but hearing about it and experiencing it in real time were two very different things.

Sweat broke out across Sam’s chest and shoulders, while more perspiration dotted his brow and dripped down into his eyes. Every breath felt like he was sucking wind through wet cheesecloth and keeping up the rhythmic chant was the next best thing to impossible. His muscles shook from the strain, but he caught Bill’s eye. The Bravi looked to be struggling just as much as Sam, but he wasn’t quitting. They were way too far to turn back; interrupting a spell this complex would unleash all that pent-up mana without a direction or purpose.

It would explode right in their faces.

Bill couldn’t stop chanting any more than Sam could, but he offered Sam a quick nod. “You got this. We got this! Almost there, don’t give up on me now.”

Sam steeled his resolve and pushed through the resistance, fighting to complete another circuit around his Core; which now pulsed frantically in time with his heartbeat. Sam tried to take another step, and it was like slamming into a brick wall. There wasn’t an ounce of give. Still, he pressed against the indomitable wall of energy, throwing not just his physical strength against the barrier but the entirety of his will. After a moment, something shifted. A thin crack of opal light snaked along the invisible barrier barring his path. He pushed harder, and the crack spread and grew, turning into a fissure.

Finally, Sam heard an audible *crack*, and then the world exploded in a tsunami of light and heat and pain. The breath left his lungs and for a time he was weightless, floating in a sea of nothingness; tumbling through an endless universe of white walls and floors and ceilings.

Then he hit the ground like a sack of bricks, and his chest erupted in agony. Bill was on the floor writhing in pain right next to him. Above them hung Sam’s Core, except it wasn’t just Sam’s Core. It was fragments of four different Cores. Shards of golden and silver eggshell, glittering pieces of Bill’s gray-green Core, and splatters of liquid mercury hanging like suspended rain droplets.

They were loosely connected by a thousand hair-fine strands of mana. The fragments slowly circled each other, dancing in their own way, just as Bill and Sam had moments before. It would have been stunning if not for the terrible implications: the spell had worked, and they’d just shattered all four connecting Cores.

Now came the final piece of the spell. Happily, terrifyingly, this part was out of their hands.

They’d already done the leg work, and either they would survive, or they would die within a matter of seconds. Stealing a ragged breath, Sam tore his gaze from the spinning kaleidoscope of Core fragments and to the pieces of paper lining every inch of the Soul Chamber. The papers started to rustle and shake, a sound like a whirlwind filling the room. This was it. The moment of truth.

The first sheet of parchment ripped itself free from the walls and shot toward the Core fragments like an arrow. More pages tore themselves loose, first in a trickle, then in a flood, then a ragging hurricane of paper. The sheets of spelled parchment glommed together into an enormous piñata—all of the Core fragments gathered at the center like the treats waiting to spill out. The ball of paper began to spin, and slowly the pain lessened and faded.

A handful of thin cracks appeared along the surface of the paper globe. Sam grit his teeth and pushed himself onto his hands, never taking his eyes off the slowly spinning orb. The white light leaking out grew in intensity until the ball of paper no longer resembled a piñata, but some distant sun sharing its brilliance with the universe.

When the light finally dimed, the paper was gone and something new remained. A Core the size of a basketball that looked like a work of stained-glass art. Not a new, unified Core as Sam had expected, but a hodgepodge of pieces—glittering green here, opalescent eggshell there, silvery metal in other places—all grafted together by thin lines of glowing golden thread. It also wasn’t spherical, but rather resembled a doughnut; circular with a fist-sized hole directly in the center.

Sam wanted nothing more than to shut his eyes, curl into the fetal position and sleep for the next fourteen hours, but there was still one final task to complete. With a groan, he gained his feet and stumbled toward his Core on unsteady legs. Bill was passed out on the ground, eyes closed, though his chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Sam wished that the Bravi were here to walk him through the last step in the process, but it looked like he was on his own.

Sam curled his hand into a fist and thrust it into the circular hole at the center of his remade Core. He could see clean through the hole, but his fist encountered an invisible pocket of resistance. It wasn’t solid like a brick wall, but spongy and somehow damp. Almost like a membrane that could be punctured without much effort. After all he’d done to get here, the idea of low effort was wildly appealing. Sam applied gentle pressure, and the membrane popped.

A rush of air enveloped him, swirling around in a vortex that pulled Sam inward. He screamed, but the vortex stole the sound—not even a peep came out. Sam had experienced this once before; while in a faulty spot in the annex.

This was a gravity well.

It felt like a giant was crushing him in the palm of an enormous hand, but the pressure passed almost as quickly as it had begun. He blinked, and found he was no longer in his Soul Chamber at all. He was in a featureless cube, not much bigger than a large walk-in closet. Sam spun in a slow circle and saw a hole hanging in the center of one of the walls. On the other side was Bill’s slumbering form. He’d done it! Sam threw back his head and howled in victory. He’d done it!

He’d just created an Interspatial Library.

As though to confirm it, a notification dinged in his ear and a flurry of pop-ups appeared:

Alert! You have embarked on the Path of the Tattered Soul and have fundamentally altered your Core, incorporating not just one Beast Core but three! By Soul Forging a new Core, you have immediately upgraded the Title Soul-Bound Level 2 to Soul-Bound Level 4! Effect: Receive a one-time character bonus as a result of absorbing the entirety of the Bibliomancer’s Sacred Tome’s Characteristic Points. +1 Strength, +3 Dexterity, +1 Constitution, +5 Intelligence, +4 Wisdom, +2 Charisma, +2 Perception, -5 Karmic Luck (Artificially Artifact bonus).

Notice! You have unlocked the maximum rank for Soul Bound; the title Soul Bound Level 4 has been changed to Tattered-Soul Level 1 (Upgradable).  Bind more Beast Core Fragments to you’re already tattered Core to gain additional bonuses and upgrade this title to a maximum of Tattered-Soul Level 5, unlocking additional bonuses with each successive level. Until the maximum rank, this title cannot be combined with any other title nor removed for any reason. Warning! Level equalization. By permanently bonding your Core with the Bibliomancer’s Sacred Tome’s, the Prime Brood Matriarch (Floof), and the Lesser Brood Matriarch (Blaze), your levels will be aggregated and readjusted.

Calculating… Inflationary Discrepancy… Calculating… Core Stabilization Discrepancy… Calculating… You have fundamentally changed your entire being. You are now more, and less, than you were. Your characteristics are no longer as they were, and a portion of the characteristics from each bonded individual have been reassigned to another.

New aggregate level assessment: Level 10. Characteristic points have been updated. Current buffs will remain in effect.

Warning! Whenever you upgrade the Title Tattered Soul by bonding additional Beast Core Fragments, your aggregate Core and character level will be readjusted accordingly. Proceed with caution.

Name: Sam_K ‘Merchant Ambassador’

Class: Libriohexer

Profession 1: Bookbinder

Profession 2: Chicken Keeper

Level: 10 Exp: 55,000 Exp; to next level: 11,000

Hit Points: 130/130

Mana: 667/667

Mana regen: 34.03/sec

Stamina: 176.5/176.5

Characteristic: Raw score

Strength: 22 -> 25

Dexterity: 42 -> 40

Constitution: 21 -> 18

Intelligence: 65 -> 60

Wisdom: 62 -> 69

Charisma: 25 -> 30

Perception: 26 -> 45

Luck: 14 -> 10

Karmic Luck: -4

Profession increase: Bookbinder (10/10). Celestial feces, you somehow managed to bind your Core with not one, but three other Cores, all using a relatively obscure book binding technique. That’s… not how that skill is supposed to work. You know what? I’m not even mad, that’s amazing. In one fell swoop, you’ve become a Master Bookbinder. You know the deep mysteries of Coptic binding, Ethiopian binding, long-stitch binding, and a thousand other methods besides. You can tell the difference between Vellum and Parchment at a thousand paces and are as familiar with various paper forms as they are with the backside of their own hand.

No damaged book stands a chance against you. As a Master Bookbinder you have unlocked skills far surpassing those of even the most sought-after craftsmen, for you now understand how creation itself is bound together. After all, what is reality if not a series of smaller pieces bound through energy into something greater than the sum of its parts? Understanding this fundamental truth allows you not only to bind the pages of a book, but to bind things of a separate nature together. Use your unconventional skills as a Master Bookbinder to bind a spell to a sword or two small rocks together into a bigger rock.

Profession benefits at Master Level: Increases the speed of reading and writing by 90%. You barely need to flip through a book to know the secrets contained within. Reduce the cost and production time for paper, ink, and book bindings by 75%. Sew spells to objects (enchanting) using mana thread—all creation costs and Core costs remained the same as traditionally enchantments. Sew elements of a similar nature together to form something greater than the sum of their parts.

Quest update! A Librohexer Walks into an Interspatial Library…

Hot dog! You’ve done it, you crazy son of a gun! Despite the odds stacked against you—and trust me, rea~a~aly stacked against you—you’ve discovered the secrets of the Wolfmen Totems, managed to turn yourself into a Beast Core Cultivator, and carved out a little extra-dimensional space to call your own. I mean, it's small and bleak, but it is technically a functional Interspatial Library. Honestly, a place that size in New York would probably run you three thousand a month, so I suppose it could be worse.

Reward, Class Change: Libriohexer!

You’ve also gained 2,000 Experience Points for your trouble. Huzzah!

You have unlocked the following Spells:

Mummify (Beginner I)…

Origami Costume (Beginner I)…

Origami Structure (Beginner I)…

Origami Guardian - Small (Beginner I)…

Alert! You have learned a sub-variant of Orbital Tome of Casting, Summoned Shelf of Casting! Summoned Shelf of Casting can be used in lieu of Orbital Tome of Casting as a spell casting mechanism and has the same rank as the primary skill, Orbital Tome of Casting.

Summoned Shelf of Casting (Beginner I)…

Sam’s eyes glazed over as he glanced at all the notifications. He was so exhausted the words were all a jumbled mess in his brain; so he skipped reading the final notices beyond just their names.

He had one big take away though: he’d done it.  He’d managed to successfully turn himself into a Beast Core Cultivator—one who followed the path of the Tattered Soul, no less. It was a huge achievement, and yet it hadn’t come cheap or easy. A knot formed in the pit of his stomach when he looked at his character sheet and saw his total experience. A paltry fifty-five thousand. Plus the two thousand from completing the quest. After a little quick mental math, he realized this shift had cost him thirty-six thousand, three hundred and ten experience points; dropping him three hard-earned levels.

Power carried a steep price tag. Sam knew it would be worth it in the long run. Humanity was going to be in for a rude awakening once he figured out how to fully utilize his new abilities. He suppressed an enormous yawn with his fist, and his legs trembled, threatening to rebel against him if he didn’t take a load off. The world would get a rude awakening… but it would have to wait for him to catch a solid eight to ten hours of well-deserved shuteye.