Chapter 109: Water Visions, Magic Of Water, Reactions (1/2)
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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[The chapter is edited by my Editor: Alan_Loo/AlanL]
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Quinn opened his eyes and, once again, he was in the water. That didn't surprise him. It was the last thing that would surprise him.
He looked to his side and saw that he was lying on a white marbled floor.
'What's the deal here?' asked Quinn to himself and tried to get up, but then things changed.
The second Quinn tried to get up, the entirety of water around him glowed artic-blue, and Quinn's eyes widened because of an emotion he couldn't describe.
All thoughts of getting up from the floor disappeared, and Quinn laid back, not moving a single muscle in his body.
'... What is this?'
A warm and comfortable feeling enveloped Quinn, and it was like nothing he had ever experienced. Quinn felt like he had been living in unrelenting conditions, struggling with the harsh realities of the world, and now he was at the end of the road, finally able to rest in peace.
His taut muscles all over his body relaxed as the magic in the water made him relax.
Without Quinn knowing, the injuries he had healed to completion somehow healed some more and then went even further.
Quinn didn't realize it, but his body was going through a process of healing so thorough and miraculous that it wasn't something he had ever experienced. Things that Quinn's own body didn't realize needed healing were healing.
Every single part of the body was going through healing.
Every system in the eleven organ systems, including the integumentary, skeletal, muscular, lymphatic, respiratory, digestive, nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, urinary, and reproductive systems was covered.
Not a single cell in Quinn's body was left behind. Every cell in his body was being filled with a never seen before vitality.
While all this happened, Quinn was busy feeling his magic.
For someone like him, who used all his magic every day, it was needed to know how much magic he had to plan for consumption. Quinn had an excellent awareness of how much magic was there in his body.
Right now, Quinn was feeling something mysterious and enchanting.
'My magic is being regenerated, but at this speed...'
Every magical human had a magical core that held all their magic, and one could increase the capacity of said cores by using more magic. Quinn did that every day by using all his magic and was absolutely confident in declaring that he had the best magic growth in the entire world.
When someone used magic, they also regenerated it back, and everybody had their own magic regeneration speed.
It depended on a few factors:
The size of the magical core: as the capacity increased, so did the recovery speed.
A person's health: if a person was facing injury, was sick because an injury, or facing some kind of affliction, their rate of recovery would be on a down low.
A person's lifestyle: if one lived a healthy lifestyle, the recovery speed would be higher than a person with an unhealthy lifestyle.
Rest: the recovery speed increased when a person was resting. Activities like relaxing or sleeping would exponentially increase the rate of recovery.
And currently, Quinn was feeling his magic recover at a rate that he hadn't ever experienced before. It was even faster than when Quinn was asleep at his best health.
'At this rate, I could recover from zero to hundred within three hours, no, maybe even faster.'
Quinn closed his eyes and immersed in the fabulous feeling. Quinn felt that he could stay in here for his entire life and wouldn't regret a single second of it.
He was feeling so absolutely fantastic that it was borderline euphoric.
Then Quinn felt a very gentle nudge of mental magic against his occlumency shields. It wasn't trying to break into his mind; its intention was different. The mental magic was asking for permission to enter.
Quinn thought for a moment before deciding to send a legilimency probe towards mental magic poking against his shields. He wanted to see if he could find something out before allowing it entry, and the response Quinn got was that it was some kind of memory.
'A memory, how surprising!' thought Quinn, feeling very intrigued.
He had no idea who had constructed the Ivy vault or the Sin vault because of the lack of any kind of trace indicating their creator's identity, so to see a memory made Quinn think he would be able to find who created this vault.
Quinn rescinded the legilimency probe and opened his occlumency shield to let the mental magic carrying a memory come in.
Inside Quinn's mindscape, a mental representation of him looked up to see a glowing water orb followed by various shades of blue manifest, from the lightest of baby blues to the darkest of the midnight blues.
And with that, the memory was revealed with a bright flash of blue.
Outside, Quinn's eyes snapped wide open, and his eyes —both his irises and the sclera— turned a solid glowing arctic blue. His chest raised up as the water surrounding him lifted Quinn up from the white floor, and as he lifted up, his body glowed in different shades of blue.
The incoming memory engulfed his entire being.
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The memory started with a vision of extremely hot bubbling water. To match that, the water surrounding Quinn heated up, not to the point in the vision, but enough for Quinn to feel the heat.
There was nothing at first, but slowly things started to change as microscopically small organisms emerged and developed in the extremely scorching water. Then the vision seemed to fast forward at an incredible speed as the water started to cool down, and with time which seemed to be eons, different mysterious creatures roamed those waters.
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The vision switched, and now Quinn saw a gigantic huge Tsunami wave coming right towards him, and within seconds, it crashed against him. The water outside turned turbulent to match the memory and rode all over him.
Rain and storm accompanied the Tsunami waves, creating a tandem whose sole aim was to cause destruction.
The enormity of the Tsunami waves was more terrifying than whatever Quinn had ever seen, and it caused his heart to race in fear. Against the titanic waves, Quinn felt they could erase him like an insignificant bug.
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The vision shifted, and Quinn found himself among a myriad of fishes swimming underwater. There were all kinds of aquatic creatures that swarmed around and past him; he saw both magical and non-magical creatures gliding around. He looked down to see beautiful coral reefs below him.
He felt a shadow cast upon him and the reefs, and when he looked over, he saw a large blue whale swimming over him. But then what Quinn recognized as a Leviathan appeared above the whale, and the gigantic serpentine dragon dwarfed the whale and cast an even deeper shadow over both him and the blue whale.
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The image dissolved, and Quinn was suddenly in the air overseeing a forest full of lush and vibrant trees. Then, Quinn heard a rush of water; he turned and saw a horrifying flood trampling towards the woods. Within seconds, the angry flood crashed against the lush tree forest, and he could hear the shaking crunch of trees breaking through the roaring waves of water.
Suddenly, the vision made Quinn descend into the forest, and there he saw the sickening sight of animals that lived within the forest struggling against the flood. Quinn heard the screams and witnessed the death of a beautiful ecosphere rich with flora and fauna, something that would take the area years to recover from.
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The scene once again disappeared like sand in the air to show a drastic change in the scenery.
Quinn stood at the bank of a river stream, and on the opposite side of the stream was a herd of deer drinking water, and it was not just the deers but all kinds of animals near it that relied on the river.
He looked into the clear water and watched fishes swimming by. Quinn followed a fish with his eyes, and suddenly a heron bird, who was standing by the bank, swooped in with its beak, picked a fish out of the river, and flew away.
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The vision again went through a change, and now he stood near a pond of steaming water. Quinn stood still for ten seconds staring at the steaming water before, without warning, the water started to bubble, followed by an eruption as a water geyser emerged from the pond.
The water from the geyser came down, steamy mist filled with the area, obstructing Quinn's vision. In the foggy mist, the atmosphere changed from humid wetness to a chilly cold.
And when it cleared, Quinn stood on an icecap over the vast, cold, unforgiving ocean. He was facing a spanning glacier that stretched across the horizon.
Unlike the violent and noisy geyser, the glacier and ice caps were silent, reserved, and deadly.
The icecap beneath Quinn's feet abruptly cracked and, just as abruptly he had appeared, he sank down into the bone-chilling water.
Quinn splashed around in the water; he tried to move and was unexpectedly successful. He raised his body and Quinn found himself coming up a stream of running water.
At the end of the stream, Quinn heard a roaring noise, and when he reached the end of the stream, his eyes popped out because he was flung down from an edge of what seemed to be a gigantic waterfall.
Quinn fell into the blasting water at the base of the waterfall, and suddenly there was no wild water. It became calm, and the model of serenity surrounded him.
He felt his back touch and settle against a surface, and when Quinn opened his eyes, he was back in the Aquatic Vault, his back against the water marble, while staring at the light streaming through the water.
Quinn didn't say anything and silently lay against the white marble floor. His mind was going through the scenes he had seen in the memory and contemplated what he had seen.
His initial hope of seeing the creator of the Aquatic Vault had been dashed, and what he was shown had left a deep impression on his life.
Quinn closed his eyes and let the feelings he was experiencing sink in.
It was an indefinite time after which Quinn opened up his eyes, and they showed tranquility, unagitation, and peace.
The teleportation insignia on Quinn's arm flashed with a blue light and whisked him away from the place, leaving behind a ripple.
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- (Scene Break) -
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The Kraken watched one of its tentacles as it swished back and forth and was about to add another tentacle to create a double swish when its yellow eye caught the special human coming out of the dangerous place.
Kraken's eyes sparkled when it saw the special human, because it had decided today that it was going to push the tiny human a whole seven times before letting him go.
But then the Kraken noticed something odd with the special human. Through its mighty eyes, the Kraken could see a noble blue aura around the special human, something that hadn't been around the tiny human before.
It had seen the same aura once before.
It was a time before the Kraken had come to rest in this place and lived in the oceans. During those times, no creature of water dared to go against its mighty self; all of them bowed their heads to it and feared him.
But one day, a traveler came to its territory, simply passing by, as if he was looking for a place to rest. The traveler had the same appearance as the fish-people (merpeople) that lived along with him now.
But unlike the weak fish-people, the traveler was strong.
The traveler had the same blue aura around him, and the water seemed to talk to him. The water seemed to enjoy moving along the traveler's will, enjoyed his touch, and seemed more lively when the traveler was around.
The Kraken didn't know what the blue aura meant, but it knew that the blue aura was special.
And now it was seeing it for the second time on the special human.
In Kraken's mind, the special human just became more special. More special than almost any human it had ever seen.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Quinn stood on the lakebed in the center of the lake with his eyes closed.
Water was one of the mysterious gifts of nature that supported and held life on earth. Many indigenous communities had known the value of water for a long time. On the surface, water could be seen as food, a means of transport, an element for cleansing, purification, and initiation in cultural ceremonies.
But deep down, water was something much more important, and while everybody knew it, Quinn became aware of it on a deeper level.
'Yet, it's the source,' thought Quinn back to the sentence in the riddle. 'Friar was right; it was the source.'
'Water is The Cradle of Life.'
If the sacred gift of the earth was life. Water was the custodian of life.
Water was sacred because it held life on earth. A seed in the soil does not germinate until it receives water. No life on earth could live without water.