Die. Respawn. Repeat.

Chapter 111: Book 2: Thank You For Using Whispersink

"Uh... Ethan?"

Ahkelios is talking to me, I think. I'm not sure. I haven't looked away from the stone yet. I can feel the Void Inspiration calling out to it—not just the Void, actually. The Accelerator is stirring, too. The Void's 'sister', or so it claimed.

There's almost a resonant factor between the two. I can feel something that isn't quite Firmament growing and bubbling between my Inspirations and the stone. A faint but distinct pop in my ears almost disorients me, and I shake my head, trying to focus. There's something here. Something lying in the space between Inspiration and Firmament, pulling at my senses, demanding all of my attention.

The stone is beautiful. There's a speckled glow in it that looks almost like stardust. Every time the lighting shifts or changes, a new nebula spawns in the abyssal black of the stone.

I can feel what it's trying to do. It's trying to appeal to my Hunger.

The only problem with that plan is that there's at least one thing inside me that's far hungrier than I am.

"I'm okay," I tell Ahkelios, though I don't take my eyes off the stone. Even if the majority of the stone's influence is being shunted off to my Void Inspiration, there's something I'm sensing here that's very real. Whatever it is, that space between—my intuition tells me I need to understand it, that there's some fundamental secret about Firmament I can discern if I listen to its whispers.

Or maybe that's just the Hunger Firmament speaking to me, and I'm not as unaffected as I think.

"I'm probably okay," I amend. "Keep an eye on me. I don't want to lose myself to this thing."

Ahkelios gives me a suspicious sort of look, folding his arms across his chest, but I ignore him. That warning should be good enough. In the absolute worst case scenario, he can kill me before the stone's Firmament has a chance to take me over—no need to worry about losing multiple loops to it then.

I am distantly aware that being even more cavalier about my deaths are most likely not a positive development.

But I can't silence the part of my brain that insists that there's something here. I reach out with my senses, trying to understand what's happening between my Inspirations and the stone. I can feel the Void Inspiration trying to reach out, trying to take—and I can feel the Hunger Firmament doing exactly the same thing. The Accelerator hovers around, semi-active but not interfering with this process.

I go over what I understand about Inspirations.

They're some sort of modification performed directly on me by an Integrator. Gheraa's made this clear with his overly dramatic installations of the various Inspirations I've earned, from shoving an eye in place of my actual eye for the All-Seeing Eye to the Aspect of Regrowth Inspiration tearing its way into my body. They aren't as physical as he makes it seem, but there is something about my core that's fundamentally altered by these changes, and whatever these alterations are, they allow me to do things that seem almost... orthogonal to what normal Firmament is capable of.

They're modifiers. When I activate them, they change the way Firmament is processed, causing a skill to emerge with new effects or allowing me to do new things with my skills. The All-Seeing Eye allows me to see the intricacies of them and merge them, for example—

I almost smack myself in exasperation when I realize what I'm missing.

If I'm trying to understand an invisible phenomenon created by the interaction between Inspiration and Firmament, then the All-Seeing Eye is perfect for it. Especially in combination with Firmament Sight.

Firmament Sight alone might not be able to do it, but...

All-Seeing Eye. Firmament Sight.

Darkness bubbles into existence in front of me.

Hunger Firmament isn't black, exactly. It's closer to a gray-brown nothing, the kind of color you might paint on something you'd rather forget. There's an intensity to it, though, likely from the sheer grade of this imbuement stone—this Hunger Firmament is powerful. It pulls at everything around it, like it wants nothing more than to become something meaningful.

Maybe that's what Hunger Firmament is.

The Void Inspiration, meanwhile, reaches out with something that isn't quite Firmament. I don't have a good word for it. It's pulling on the Hunger Firmament with the idea of need and want, like a conceptual force capable of affecting the very nature of Firmament. I suppose that's how it modifies my skills and makes them devour Firmament—it makes them eager to consume other forms of Firmament.

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Or, when it's attacking Whisper's Firmament, it's... making the Firmament consume itself?

I'm not sure how to feel about that one.

It's different with the Hunger Firmament, though. Maybe it's because the Void Inspiration senses a kindred spirit, or maybe Hunger is just too similar already to what the Void Inspiration can do. Either way, the Inspiration's attempt to change or consume the Hunger Firmament just doesn't stick.

And instead, something grows between them. It's like an unexpected runaway chemical reaction. Between the two is a force that's neither Firmament nor Concept—like the clash of the two has stripped away the outer shell of what these powers pretend to be and unveiled something underneath.

It feels like... direction. Like intent.

Perhaps more alarming, it feels like someone else's intent.

The moment I grasp that—the moment I recognize that—it recognizes me, too. I feel an immense weight pressing down on me. It happens for just a fraction of a second, but in that fraction of a second it feels like I'm being made to hold up a mountain. If the power difference between myself and the Hestian Trialgoers is a chasm, then what I've caught a glimpse of here is... it's an abyss. An ocean's worth of water wouldn't be enough to define the sheer gulf between me and whoever or whatever this is.

"Ethan? Ethan!" Ahkelios is calling out to me, panicked. I slowly come to the realization that I'm on my hands and knees on the floor, hyperventilating, sweat pouring down my skin and my fingernails bloody from digging into the ground. It takes me a moment to shake off the fugue—I'm not sure what happened, but there's a pervading sense of nausea and an ache present in my body that wasn't there before.

"I think... I think I just looked at something I shouldn't have." I grimace, pushing myself back into a sitting position on the ground; when I go to wipe the sweat off my nose, my hand comes away bloody.

"That happened because you looked at something?!" Ahkelios demanded.

"I think so." I frown. The memory of what I was able to see is already slipping away—my mind can't seem to hold on to it. More specifically, the more I try to remember it, the more my memory of it seems to fade... so I quickly shove whatever happened to the back of my mind.

It might be important later, which means for now, I need to very carefully not think about it.

"I can't talk about it," I say, before Ahkelios or any of the others present can question me. "But I think I can perform the imbuement now."

I grasp the stone. The Void Inspiration and Accelerator both are quiet—whatever I just did seems to have silenced them, at least for now. The Void in particular feels almost like it's trying to hide within my soul; I can feel it shaking, like it's afraid of whatever it is I just saw.

That's worrying in and of itself. That thing usually has only one emotion, and it's hunger.

The stone and its Hunger Firmament, on the other hand, seem fortunately entirely unaffected, maybe because neither of them are connected to me the way my Inspirations are. I call on Hueshift, feeling its Firmament flowing through me and into the stone as I begin the imbuement process—

[ New feature unlocked! Thanks to your dedication to understanding the process of imbuement, you may now perform imbuement using the Interface. To use it, open the imbuement window, then select an input skill and target item. Please note that once the imbuement process begins, it cannot be interrupted. Attempting to halt or alter the process may result in personal injury. ]

I frown again.

My first instinct isn't interest—it's suspicion. The warning isn't what bothers me about it; interrupting any kind of imbuement feels like a recipe for a bad time, especially considering the amount of Firmament that's presumably used for it at higher levels of the skill. What concerns me, however, is the timing.

I've been working on understanding imbuement for a while now. If what the Interface says is true and this unlock only happened because I achieved some requisite level of understanding, then it should have triggered in tandem with whatever discovery allowed me to cross that threshold.

Instead, it's happening now. At the exact same time I feel like I've discovered something significant about the nature of Firmament and Inspirations. The timing of it feels far too convenient—almost like it's trying to distract me.

At the same time, I can't deny that it's a useful unlock. And I do need to not think about what I've just discovered.

Who knows. Maybe Gheraa's interfering to help me again. It wouldn't be the first time he's done it.

There's a third possibility here—the possibility that this feature exists so that we Trialgoers don't dive any deeper into the secrets of imbuement. Maybe there's something there that the Integrators don't want us to know. I make the promise to myself that I'm not going to abandon manual imbuement. For one thing, Virin's still going to need my help, and for another, I don't trust the Interface enough to trust that this isn't a feature that will hamper my progress in the long run.

For now, though?

It is useful. And it lets me work around having to interact directly with this Hunger-based Firmament.

"Hey, Ahkelios," I say out loud. "Did you ever unlock an imbuement feature in your Interface?"

Ahkelios gives me a strange look. "That's a thing?" he asks.

"Apparently." I shrug. I'm not about to complain. I tap mentally on the Interface, bringing up the imbuement window and selecting both Hueshift and the Abyssal Hunger stone.

[ Please confirm the imbuement of (Hueshift, Rank B) into (Abyssal Hunger Imbuement Stone, Rank S). ]

Confirmed.

[ Commencing imbuement. ]

Firmament begins to gather and surge. I grin to myself, just a little bit self-satisfied, and then activate Firmament Sight.

I'm not sure if the Integrators want to hamper my ability to learn imbuement.

But if that's their goal, then maybe they shouldn't have provided me with a tool that will let me learn exactly how they do it.