Chapter 61: Tethers of the Void (Part 1)
Kayn spent the rest of the daylight apologizing to Est and Horace for worrying them while also thanking them for once again taking care of him. He also used this time to play with Lara, making her giggle.
Lara seemed to really enjoy being with Kayn more than anyone else in the house. This slightly surprised Est as she kind of thought Lara would like her more by now after being fed by her for so long. In the end she smiled though as blood ties were always strong between loving family members.
Est said goodnight before carrying Lara back to their room since her crib was still in there while little Titus was waddling behind her like a duck while walking. He was just a couple months over his first birthday now and had started trying to walk around a bit over a month ago.
Kayn was also about to return to his room to spend the night examining everything that had happened, but he felt Horace's hand on his shoulder from behind. Turning around Horace had a solemn expression written over his face.
"Kid, I know I'm only a little over twice your age, but being a normal person has still given me a certain perspective. While I know you are smarter than me, let me give you a piece of advice. Life isn't there for you just to survive, it's for living. Doing the things you love and cherishing the time spent with the people you love. Don't forget where your true focus should lie."
Horace spoke as he glanced down the hall where his wife and son had just entered into their room before he took his hand off of Kayn's shoulder and walked past him heading toward the same place.
"Life isn't for surviving, it's for living huh? I truly wish I could feel that way." Kayn could only sigh as he couldn't help but feel that with everything that had happened and what he had heard, he was far off from being able to live his life like that.
…
Throughout the night, Kayn spent time studying his condition and learned a few things.
First, he wasn't absorbing mana with every breath as he originally thought. Mana would only be absorbed when he was focused on his new Demonic Dragon Heart while deeply breathing, much as if he was meditating.
Second, his body didn't start feeling overwhelmed even when it was overflowing with mana after keeping his breathing steady to absorb mana. Once his tissues were fully saturated, the mana just sort of dispersed from his body.
Third, his mana control had increased by several fold. Rather than the few milliseconds it normally took for him to focus mana from his core down to his fingertip to spark a small flame into existence, a mere thought was enough to ignite a flame now.
Kayn played around with this aspect for a while as he found it extremely amusing to cause flames to pop up from any point of his body with just a thought. He even got distracted enough he was shooting flames from his ears pretending he had just eaten something incredible spicy.
Kayn realized at this point that with mana saturating his tissues, the mana had essentially forced out anything blocking its path to outside of his body. That must have been the reason for all of the gunk that Est described.
He had noticed that each time his core evolved, his mana flow always seemed smoother and now he was to this point, it all finally started to make perfect sense. He wondered if this happened with everyone, but dismissed the thought as neither Lydia nor his parents were aware of such a thing.
Kayn realized at this point that he was just touching the tip of the iceberg for the changes that had occurred within him, but he first wanted to try out Analyze on something special to see if he had truly made progress.
There was only one item in his possession that he knew of that could be experimented with. Reaching into his bag, his hand bumped into a small bag, no bigger than his coin pouch that he hadn't noticed before. Though he normally wasn't digging through the bag like this, he had casually tossed it to the side of his room one day so things got a bit mixed up.
While he was curious about the bag, he decided to worry about it later as he couldn't hold back his curiosity towards his original goal for opening his bag.
Setting the bag off to the side for later, he pulled out an ornate box and opened the lid. He immediately activated Analyze on the two items and a huge smile emerged on his face.
[Tethers of the Void (Unable to Grade): A mysterious pair of bracelets that cannot be fully understood at this time.]
While the description was anything but helpful, it was certainly progress compared to what he saw before, and now he even had a name for these bracelets. He then turned his gaze to the book to see if its information had changed too.
[Manual of Instruction (Ancient): A book containing information pertaining to the instruction and use of an item.]
Kayn sighed, "Whelp, just as unhelpful as before I guess, not to mention I have no clue how to judge the grades of them both. At least I know it's the informational booklet that normally comes with your purchase though haha." Kayn laughed as he made a joke to himself.
He removed the bracelets from their holding devices before slipping them over his wrists once again to see if there was any change. However, Kayn still felt nothing and looking down at the scars that still marred his arms only served to bring his mood down.
Kayn pushed mana into the scars trying to heal them once again, only for it to be his efforts to be fruitless once more. All of the sudden, he felt burning a sensation on the skin of both wrists where the bracelets were.
He quickly reached his left hand to his right wrist trying to remove the bracelet, but it wouldn't budge. Kayn started to panic as the burning sensation was getting worse and he couldn't get it move even slightly from his arm.
Without being able to stand the extreme pain he was going through, Kayn bent forward with his arms tucked into his stomach as one normally would when they were feeling sick. Then after a less than a minute, the pain vanished as if it wasn't there in the first place.
"What just happened?" Kayn questioned out loud as he glanced down at his wrists before once again being thrown into panic mode. "Where are they?!"
The Tethers of the Void that were previously on his wrists were no longer there. He looked on the floor, in the box, everywhere he could think of, but they had just vanished! He couldn't find them anywhere!
He once again looked at his wrists, and that's when he noticed it. His scars! They were no longer the color of normal scars that would mar a person's skin. Instead, in their place were dark black lines. "Rather than scars, now it looks like I have a weird taste in tattoos…" Kyan lamented as he examined his arms from shoulder to hand.
He tried to Analyze his arm to see if the item information would show up, but what did he expect? Nothing appeared in his vision as it wasn't possible to examine living things.
Nothing made sense to Kayn. His mother had specifically told him that what she gave him was an artifact which was passed down through the years within the Obsidian Void Dragon Clan. She even mentioned her father, Kayn's grandfather, used them once upon a time. This meant that they had to be able to be removed.
Kayn spent the next few hours in panic mode trying to remove them from his body. He tried healing magic, he tried supersaturating his arm tissues with mana, he even went a little crazy and tried carving the lines out of his arm, but it only ever healed back the same. The black lines were just the same as his scars were originally, no matter what he tried they always came back.
Kayn even tried things like shouting "Unequip!" and so on, but as the sun started to peak through the curtains of his window, he gave up. With his mind being so hectic, he decided there was nothing better for him than to take a run and work through his martial forms in order to clear his head, so he immediately set off on his run.
Running worked surprisingly well to calm him down. As he started moving through the martial forms his mother taught to him, he felt something was off. He opened his eyes and could see thin black strings coming from his finger tips, but as soon as he noticed the oddity and stopped the martial forms they disappeared.
Kayn immediately started again, but kept his eyes open this time as he could clearly see the phenomenon occurring before his eyes. The strings were flowing along with his movements.
"What is this?"