Chapter 568 - A sigil master's path.

Eric could barely contain his excitement as the made their way back to the deep water rig, the gentlest touch of his gifts easing Zim’s whimpers and assuring he lost not a drop more blood than he already had. And even that subtle touch earned him both tears of gratitude and Tang’s measuring gaze.

Tang gave him an approving nod while the men on the platform above secured the junk and the others climbed right up the scaffolding, save for those bringing supplies.

“You’re a lad of many talents, aren’t you?”

“You’d better believe it,” Eric said, effortlessly securing Zim and leaping to the skies to fly him topside without jostling the now unconscious man at all.

Osirion’s eyes widened with dismay, the moment he caught sight of Zim’s form. “He lives? Basic healing talismans in place? Good.” His gruff demeanor didn’t quite hide the concern in his voice as he gazed down at the pain-filled countenance of what Eric only belatedly realized was perhaps the youngest of the wild cultivators, underneath his tattoos, paint, and untamed mane of hair and beard. “Alright, Tang, carry the boy and come with me.”

Without another word, they left the rest of the men staring desultorily at the already prepared ritual circle that sizzled with green eldritch light as the far more human storm washed over them all with sheets of rain that phased neither them, nor the crackling green lines, in the slightest.

Master Liang scowled. “What did he say?”

Eric blinked, realizing that the man was talking to him. “He was relieved to see the healing talismans where they needed to be, I guess, then had Tang carry him as they headed below.”

Liang gave a slow nod. “Good. If he wasn’t roaring or spitting lightning at me, that means we got back here in time.”

Eric blinked at this. “Were we worried about bloodloss?”

For some reason his words earned bemused chuckles.

“Bloodloss, he says.”

“Neophyte, only taking his first steps.”

Eric suppressed a scowl, electing for calm composure.

Liang snorted. “Osirion will be back soon enough. Then you will learn a mystery.”

All the men nodded solemnly at that. Eric found himself feeling both elated and apprehensive, having noticed enough, stealing glimpses of the men fighting so furiously for their lives, to understand that they were far stronger and deadlier than any low-level Bronze had any right to be.

Yet sometimes, under the light of brooding clouds, even earthly ones like the storm washing over them now... he stole a glance at a man that seemed to undulate like a living wave when the overcast gloom had strangled the afternoon sun… before snapping back into clear focus, had always been in clear focus, when Eric, quite calmly, stared right at him.

Before allowing his eyes to wander to meet orbs glowing eldritch hues.

Recalling the fuzzy memory of shadowy mouths, blinking eyestalks, and serpentine tendrils of viney flesh that most certainly were not there. Yet if one caught just the right glimpse in the green-tinted light...

The entire coven of wild cultivators were now peering back at him with perfect, eerie stillness.

Eric felt the hairs prickling in the back of his neck as he silently lifted his countenance to meet their own.

And when they smiled…

So did he.

Reveling in the strange.

The air filled with hisses, snarls, and surprised chuckles as the leader of their little expedition stared pointedly at him.

“What the hell happened to your mouth, kid?”

Eric’s manic grin turned to a very human smirk. “I don’t know, Liang. Why don’t you try asking that multidimensional eyestalk of yours that we can all pretend is just a trick of the fading light? I’m sure it’s seen all sorts of fascinating horrors.”

Liang blanched and glared. The entire crew stiffened, as if Eric had crossed some unforgivable line.

The air rang with an amused chuckle. “He’s got you there, Liang,” said none other than Osirian, striding up the stairwell with Tang by his side. “You all know there’s a price to the power we seek, and none of you shirked in paying it. Clearly, neither did he.”

Tang nodded. “You all saw him hunt. He didn’t hide his fangs while we all reveled in the sea’s gifts. You were just too focused on navigating to notice, boss. Which is a good thing, seeing as I like actually arriving home after sailing aliens waters.”

One of the crewmates nodded. “Saw him bite the head clean off one fucker. When he wasn’t flailing that deadly blade of his around.”

Another man snorted. “Hardly flailing. His sword forms were so fluid, slicing through thick scales and blubber so damned cleanly, that I almost had a breakthrough. Me! After forsaking an orthodox soldier’s path, years ago!”

“Then you’d be a fool not to meditate on your old masteries, just as soon as the ritual is complete,” Osirian counseled. “Consolidate your gains. Always! Fearlessly ascend the steps of cultivation, upon our path or any other. Orthodox or wild, it doesn’t matter. So long as we always strive to ascend!”

The burly cultivator winced and bowed his head, fist to temple. “It will be as you say, honored Osirian.”

“Damn right it will.” Osirian then glared Eric’s way. “Newblood, come. You’re to help me set up the ritual. No talking. I direct, and you follow my directions. Understood?”

Eric quickly nodded, doing his best to hold in his excitement, this being exactly what I wanted!

“Good. Now watch me scribe these sigils.”

Eric dutifully watched, going slack-jawed as the man so casually revealed a treasured gift, a brush covered in silvery ink gracefully caressing the steel floor panels between the twin pentagrams and circle covering so much of the central rig platform. Eric stared so hard his eyes watered, noting every whorl and swirl as the ink radiating such powerful Spiritual Energy took on a profound meaning that Eric struggled to grasp with each sigil completed.

His heart began to race as his sense of something he had no words for began to coalesce with deeper currents of meaning as one silvery sigil joined another and another.

He took a shuddering breath, sensing meaning and intention and profound currents of power coalesce into being. It was almost as if brilliant light was caressing closed eyes that had known only darkness.

At first, there was only a sense of warm potential. Brilliant silvery light he had never even known existed.

Then he opened eyes that had been closed all his life… and there, on the storm-swept rig of a band of outlawed wild cultivators, he finally began to see.

Runic Lore skillcheck: Critical Success!

You have successfully learned sigils within a new runic alphabet!

Highland Sigil Scribing has been successfully learned at Rank 1!

You have learned multiple Sigils that may be used in rituals and formations! (Additional applications may reveal themselves to you with training or time!)

You have learned the Sigils for: Strength / Endurance / Sea / Extraplanar / Vastness / Consumption.

Note! Nodal power and Rank 35 in related skill has given you a Major Affinity for mastering this art!

Eric was so overwhelmed by the flood of insights roaring through his skull that he didn’t even notice Osirian smacking him, until the wujen’s glare finally shook Eric free of his daze. “You back? Good. Can you mimic those basic shapes?”

Eric swallowed the sense of wonder he felt, quickly dipping his head. “Yes, sensei.” His declaration earned a snort. “Yes, I can copy those basic sigils.”

Osirian chuckled coldly. “Well let’s just see if you can actually process a years worth of lessons and well-deserved beatings after a single demonstration, boy.”

He then gestured to a handful of brushes that might have been of far less quality than the exquisite spiritual treasure that Osirian himself held, but Eric could sense the craftsmanship and care that had been put in the carefully carved and lovingly oiled wooden brushes, as well as appreciate the elementally aligned potency inherent in each bristle that he could already tell had been harvested from fearsome spirit beasts.

“You see these brushes?”

Eric dutifully nodded.

“Good. Now use them to imitate the first sigil I showed you right there. And here’s a copy, in case you forgot already.” The wujen revealed a handful of what looked like well-loved and well-worn placards, each with a copy of the image Eric had seen the wujen scribe upon the bulkhead. Yet they utterly lacked the Spiritual Energy that had infused each and every one of Osirian’s own sigils. Instead, Eric noted what looked to be lines of latitude and longitude. For just a second, the carving seemed to pop out at odd angles and dimensions and somehow Eric knew that learning to scribe, let alone mastering those runes would be an ardurous journey of many weeks and beatings and hungry nights and desperately stroved-for mastery until exhaustion and the fierce desire to slip free of misery pushed a new aspirant to actually open his eyes and SEE the reality all around him.

To understand that yes, those silvery loops and whirls DID cross dimensions, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was finally scribing his master’s sigils upon the metal hull, just as scribed, so he could finally get out of the cramped cell that had been his home for so many months before he at last had the courage to stretch his mind and break free of mortal perceptions and limitations and Eric could sense it all so clearly. Both the sigil he was to scribe as well as Osirian’s own memories, all of it so thick in the ether that even his Dense Neurons couldn’t help but drink it all in.

And then it was done.

Congratulations! You have learned the spiritual imprint of 6 Sigils!

Highland Skill Scribing is now Rank 2.

Highland Skill Scribing is now Rank 3!

Lightning flashed as Eric took a shuddering breath, looking up from the sigils he had scribed within the pentagram. Not with the help of the placards, but by using what mattered so much more. The blazing memory of Osirian’s own carefully scribed sigils, where it didn’t matter how they looped and swirled and folded. All that mattered was that he copy the designs perfectly, which Eric had. And just like solving a mathematical equation, the complexity resolved itself into serene clarity, the completed sigils having snapped back into 3-D solidity upon completion… which of course, as far as Eric was concerned, they always had been.

Tang whistled. “Hell, Osirian. It looks like the newblood copied your design perfectly!”

Osirian ignored the placards just as Eric had, coolly stepping past each of the sigils Eric had scribed, placed precisely as he had seen the wujen himself place them on the far side of the pentagrams.

The man’s lips pressed tightly together, hooded gaze like granite, boring into Eric’s own.

“I told you to scribe one sigil. Why did you scribe over a dozen?”

Eric blinked in confusion. “I’m sorry, wasn’t that what you wanted? For me to copy the entire formation?”

The wujen scowled. “The formation, you say. As if you had any idea…”

“Forgiveness, honored sensei. But with the way all the sigils flow into one another, forming higher meanings when read as a whole… that is what you wanted me to transcribe, right?”

Eric frowned thoughtfully at the interconnected flows of Spiritual Energy he could sense swirling about in gentle harmony. “It’s a formation that let’s us claim the potency from the spirit beasts we harvested, right?” Which made perfect sense to Eric, no matter the looks of surprise this feat had earned him.

“He figured it out, that damned fast? Kid’s a natural!” Tang chortled.

Liang shared a bemused smile with his wujen. “Utterly unnatural, isn’t it? If he wasn’t so clearly a faerie using arts I’ve never seen before, I’d think he was a highland mole trying to burrow within our ranks.”

That declaration earned angry scowls from nearly all the men.

“But we sure as hell know he isn’t that. You all saw the wildness in his eyes,” Tang happily declared, smacking Eric’s back. “If he had been from above, he would have blanched and fled for all he was worth, once he saw our true natures.”

Eric grinned in sudden understanding, even as his mind rang with fresh insights and his interface’s cheerful commendation.

Congratulations! You have learned a Beast Core Spiritual Energy Gathering Array (Space / Sea / Vastness affinities.)

“You were showing your natures deliberately!” Eric chuckled softly. “I wasn’t sure if you were trying to intimidate me or challenge me, but I wondered why we had gone from friendly hunting together to… something else.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, kid. We were testing you. To be honest, what most highlanders not dedicated to starting over, not here out of sheer desperation would have done was flee in terror and not even know why. And that’s how we’ve rooted out every spy or mole that ever tried to infiltrate us.”

Eric nodded. “I get it. No doubt you would have eaten me, then. Okay, what’s next?”

He turned to a scowling Osirian as the men either winced at his declaration or roared with approving laughter.

“The boy gets it!”

“Damn right, he does. He’s one of us, now.”

Osirian’s granite scowl softened into a bemused smirk. “Ready for your next lesson already?” He gave a thoughtful nod. “Alright. Clean and put away your brushes. I have a fresh set for the next element of your lesson.”

Eric swallowed, humbled to realize that these brushes were a gift, and an exceedingly precious one at that. With great care, he cleaned them with pristine spring water and cloth just as he was instructed, before carefully putting the treasured brushes and ink back in the folding white oak case that was now his own.

“Thank you, sensei.”

You’re welcome. Now store your brushes away in your dimensional pocket space, apprentice, and I’ll show you how to use the next set,” he said, his voice far warmer than it had been before Eric had scribed his first sigil.

Eric solemnly bowed and carefully put the treasure in his ES Space, earning nothing but an approving grunt.

Though that quickly changed when it came to the next layer of sigils the wujen scribed within the circle.

Eric’s eyes widened with awe as the blood roared in his ears. His mind screamed with joy as so many things clicked and fell into place, his eyes at last opening to arts and affinities that had always been his own with every twitch of his eye and inhalation of life-giving air.

For these crimson sigils painted nothing less than the exquisitely complex and wondrous magic of blood and life itself.

Eric’s mind roared with glorious epiphanies than rang through his skull as each swirl of brush, each twisting loop denoting yet another mystery, revealed their secrets to him as utterly and completely as the blood that flowed through every vessel of his body with every beat of his heart.

Tears of crimson happiness streamed down his cheeks as he choked back a joyful sob. For every sigil Osirian scribed revealed another aspect of perhaps his greatest arcane skill, and together they unlocked yet another path to power even as his skull throbbed with a revelation, a message, he hadn’t expected to hear for years… if not decades or a lifetime.

Runic Lore Skill check modified by Blood Mastery Rank: Critical Success!

You have learned a new symbolic alphabet directly tied to the Crimson Path!

Crimson Sigil Scribing skill rank is now Rank 1. NOTE! Rank 35 in Runic Lore = rapid skill ascension boon! Rank 38 Blood Mastery grants Extreme Affinity Boon!

Crimson Sigils taps into both Spiritual Energy & Soul Reserves!

Your Crimson Sigil Scribing skill rank enjoys an additional modifier = 1/3 your Blood Mastery skill rank for all skill and potency checks!

A skill check allows you to AUTOMATICALLY deduce the nature of any Crimson Sigil you see scribed or linked to other sigils!

You have learned The Crimson Sigils: Blood, Strength, Vitality, Healing, Consumption, Heart Enhancement, Liver Enhancement, Spleen Enhancement, Bile Enhancement, Lung Enhancement, Bone Enhancement, Organ Saturation, Flesh Saturation, Blood Purification, Bile Purification!

Crimson Sigil Scribing is is now Rank 2!

Crimson Sigil Scribing is now Rank 5!

Crimson Sigil Scribing is now Rank 10! You have achieved Journeyman Status in Crimson Sigils! How do you .wish to evolve this path?

NOTE! You have limited references and experience along this path! You are on an overlapping plane of reality that is NOT conducive to System enhancement... save through Contenders like you!

You may choose from the following Basic Skill Perks—You have chosen PRISTINE TRANSFER!

NOTE! This path is not—

Warning! You’re attempting to warp reality to bend to your will...

Essence of Dominion is now in play!

Synergisms in effect!

You pay no mind to the distant screams all around you as reality warps and—Congratulations!

You have successfully FORGED your skill perk based upon Contender Status, fanatically focused intent, and 5 Ranks of Essence of Dominion!

You intuitively understand Crimson Sigil Scribing to be an extension of Runic Lore. A different alphabet, with a path to power even MORE intimately tied to your soul than your nodal power!

Crimson Sigil Scribing is now TIED to your Nodal Power!

You will now learn to associate already mastered Runic Lore perks into your Crimson Sigil lexicon at an accelerated 1 Perk per 5 levels achieved in Crimson Sigil Scribing until Unification Achieved!

First of 2 Perks chosen: Essence Infusion: Your Crimson Sigils now incorporate the higher order concepts you would dare to put into play! Infuse your blood with the essence of FIRE or Dominion!

Second of 2 Perks chosen: Soul Infusion – Reduced Soul Reserve Cost with essence infusion!

Congratulations! You have achieved Rank 75 as a Master Necromancer! (Bet you didn’t see that one coming!)

Only when the messages had stopped ringing inside his head as he lifted his finger up from the final rune blazing with transcendent essence did Eric snap out of his fugue with a gasp, more than slightly alarmed from some of the messages the too cheerful interface had let slip. Even as another part of him was so very eager immerse himself once more within glistening sigils holding so many wonderful secrets that he would soon claim as intimately as the blood pounding through his own veins as he shivered with transcendent insights. So too, he was awed to find an unexpected class evolving and was now eager, so very eager to see just how deeply he could incorporate so many fresh blood sigils into his underlying Runic arts. Connections he understood so intuitively and deeply. So much better than his Highland Sigil Scribing which itself would no doubt benefit from proper study.

He only belatedly noticed absolutely everyone gazing at him in disbelief.

“Did that boy just forge that formation out of his own blood?”

“His blood moved by it’s own will. He’s not even using the brushes!”

“It glows such a pretty red hue.”

“Brilliant and glistening like liquid rubies!”

Eric tuned out the words as Osirian stared intently at the sigils, before turning to Master Liang, who folded his arms. “Well?”

Osirian stared intently at Eric for long moments. “It’s perfect.”

Liang scowled. “What the hell do you mean by, ‘It’s perfect?’”

The wujen snorted, glaring down at the glowing sigils with a rueful chuckle. “I mean that this boy did more than scribe my sigils flawlessly. He infused within them such an order of authority that our beast core harvest will saturate every man to the breaking point. With the authority these sigils are radiating, they literally won’t have any choice but to take it all in!”

Liang’s granite features hardened. “That could be dangerous.”

“True. But then again, so’s every day we’re breathing. So what? None of us would be here if we weren’t eager for all the power hidden within the wildest seas and darkest secrets of our world.” His awed countenance became an angry scowl. “Of course that means it’s a lopsided ritual boundary now, and that needs to be addressed.”

Maser Liang chuckled coolly. “So you’re saying that you’re going to need to redo all the boy’s work.”

The wujen smirked. “Nope. That would be a complete waste. I’m saying he’s going to copy over mine.” Osirian glared Eric’s way. “Well, boy? Can you infuse my sigils with your own—” He stopped cold when he saw Eric gently press his finger against each formation sigil on the wujen’s side, all of them shifting from flat crimson design with the tiniest trace of Qi-infused enhancements to bright red jewel-like artifacts absolutely glistening with power.

It was an act that drained just a small portion of Eric’s Temporary Soul Reserves as well as his Qi Pool… yet the payoff in both whistles and awed commendation as men roared in approval and clapped a bemused Eric’s back, was a truly sweet balm.

Almost as sweet as earning an additional skill level.

Congratulations! Crimson Sigil Scribing is now Rank 11!