11 The Seed of Madness (1/2)

Jav'ilg's voice rekindled the excitement which Boros had the first moment he was told that the body is for him. How exactly a body was made from energy, Boros still couldn't comprehend. When the time comes, Jav'ilg will surely teach him.

'Alright! Ehhh, how do I do that?'

~just go through the body and align yourself to be in the center of the chest. After that, I will deal with the rest.~

Boros listened to what Jav'ilg said and placed himself inside of the body.

Boros found the feeling he got by phasing through the would-be flesh weird, especially since the body was made just from mist-like energy.

Seeing Boros did as he was told, Jav'ilg started speaking some kind of a chant. But it was like nothing Boros has ever heard. The words began reverberating inside of the void. Jav'ilg's voices stopped sounding like those of humans, a deep gurgly abysmal noise replacing them.

While the chanting noise was dominating the void, a dozen of ink-black tendrils began forming around the body. They would be invisible withing the void, had it not been for the lighting provided by Boroses soul half-submerged inside of the body.

The tendrils rocked from side to side as if dancing to the nightmare provoking chant. This kept on until the tune of the chant changed.

From an abysmal deep gurgling voice it shifted into a noise sounding like the incarnation of chaotic madness itself.

Boros's soul could just barely endure the chant from a moment ago but now, it was shuddering, being under a threat of dissipating.

Once the tendrils heard the new tune of chaos, they quickly lashed out at the body, wrapping themselves around every single part of it. Not even a trace of the body could be seen anymore, only a black cacoon made of dozens of black tendrils was left. Even the light Boros's soul emitted was no longer seen, returning the void to its natural darkness.

Boros waited, trying to endure through Jav'ilg's chant. Getting bound by the tendrils made the chant slightly harder to hear, which Boros counted as a blessing, not knowing that the horror was yet to begin.

After a couple more minutes, the chant stopped.

Boros heaved a sigh of relief, thanking Jav'ilg in his mind for finally stopping.

~Kid, now that the preparations are set we can begin. This body, even though it looks strong, is going to be weak at the beginning. It will be your task to make it stronger. The energy used to create it is the weakest energy I could muster, but eldritch energy is nothing to scoff at. Even by using the weakest form of energy and by having a bit of my essence inside you, you have just around 20% of successfully fusing with it. The body by itself was made to perfectly isolate the eldritch energy from radiating outside, but no such feature exists to protect the soul inside of the body. Well, I will give you a proper instructions manual if you don't disperse into the void. ~

The moment Jav'ilg finished his speech, Boros was about to protest against doing something that has such a low success rate, but the tendrils were faster to react.

All of the tendrils started squeezing the body, making it want to escape through the gaps between the tendrils. It would have looked like clay being squeezed by a hand, but there were no gaps through which the body's ”clay” could slip through.

'ARGHHHHHHHHH!'

Boros screamed from the depth of his soul. The body wasn't the only thing being squeezed, Boros himself was also being affected by the squeezing force of these powerful black tendrils. Boros's soul strangely, felt like it was being spread out inside of the body, while the body itself was beginning to lose size.

Boros couldn't realize this as he had no point of reference but that body was roughly a hundred meters tall at the beginning of the process.

But as minutes passed, and the pressure kept getting greater and greater. The body turned from being only half solid to finally becoming a fully solid body made of flesh and blood.

Boros screamed through the whole process. Feeling his soul repeatedly stretched out to fully encompass the body, and then getting crushed along with the body, to make the body and the soul inside it completely fuse into a single entity.

A few moments after the tendrils stopped with their mission, Boros felt a sense of relief. Currently, his soul was shaped to be a picture-perfect copy of the body, but when the tendrils withdrew, dissipating back into the void, Jav'ilg spoke.

~don't move, if you move even the tiniest bit I will have to repeat the whole process. ~

Hearing that, Boros felt a chill run down his spine. He froze in place, trying his best not to tremble from the leftover pain pulsating in his soul.

While Boros floated in the void motionlessly an appearance of an object made Boros almost flinch.

A giant eye, radiating a violet color appeared out of nowhere, just opening in the fabric of the void.

~I didn't think you would actually pull through that, there was like a 97% chance of failing.~

97%?!

Didn't he say it was a 20% success rate?

Boros didn't dare move his mouth to say anything, afraid of going through the tendril hell again. But instead, he stared disapprovingly into the eye.

~Hey, don't look at me like that, I was just about to tell you that I have a gift for you.~

A gift?

Boros's gaze quickly changed from the one of disapproval to the one of expectancy.

Jav'ilg looked at Boros, his eye looking with amusement.

A terrorizing laugh could be heard for a single moment before it stopped and only an echo remained.

Once the silence returned to the void, Jav'ilg began talking.

~What I am about to do will open a whole new dimension of possibilities for you. The bit of essence I planted into you surprisingly fused with little to no effort. It seems that your soul is naturally receptive to eldritch powers.~

Boros listened on, feeling a little proud of his own awesomeness.

~My gift to you is a choice. You can choose to keep your mana core. It is what allows the magic-related creatures to use mana to perform magic. The core itself looks just like a crystal rock, but what it does is to allow the formation of a mana pool within the soul. The mana pool is essential for casting magic.~

Upon mentioning the mana core, a tendril appeared next to Jav'ilg's eye. A prismatic colored crystal-like sphere floating above the tendril.

~Or... I can destroy your mana core, and in its place put a Seed of Madness. Like how mana core works with mana, the seed of madness works with eldritch energy. Don't get it wrong, both options have their pros and cons. But with the seed of madness, you will begin walking the path of becoming an eldritch entity, just like myself and my kin. I won't tell you more than that, there is a lot to be said about both options, but how they are used is the most important factor, and that would depend on yourself.~

When the seed of madness was mentioned, another tendril appeared on the opposite side of Jav'ilg's eye. Above it floated a ball of black mass. The mass shifted, occasionally tendrils, eyes, mouths and other appendages could be seen forming on the edges of the sphere-like mass.~

Boros looked first at the mana core and then at the seed of madness. Out of nowhere, Boros was put into a position where he must make a choice that would dictate the rest of his life.

Jav'ilg once more interrupted Boros, adding more warning. The importance of this decision could clearly be seen by all of Jav'ilg's warnings. The pressure on Boros just became greater. Even though he was just a moment ago literally squeezed to the core, this new pressure gave him a headache not much worse than the earlier torture.

~Before you choose, I must warn you. The amount of use you get from either of these two depends completely on how much you develop them. There is no such thing as becoming the strongest overnight. If one does try to create power out of nothing, he will just pay a price with something else.~

Boros kept thinking...

If I choose a mana core I will be able to do magic that I have seen in all those role-playing games. But if I choose the seed of madness, no matter how ominous it sounds, I will be able to do things that I have never even though possible.