Enigma of Sin

Finally, after hundreds of thousands of years, Yvaris Earthborn finally felt his mana pass the bottleneck to start his ascension to the Celestial World. He had been dreaming of this day for years.

He had to spend centuries asleep just to gather a minute amount of mana, but after the treatment ended, he felt the mana rushing into his body like it was starved of it.

He instinctively started to turn back into his original dragon form, but quickly caught himself and stopped the transformation. Yvaris then proceeded to stare at Kayn reverently, and it was starting to make Kayn feel uncomfortable.

"Kid, I don't know how you did that or even thought of it, but thank you." Yvaris Earthborn gave Kayn a deep bow by bending his waist 90 degrees.

"I won't be able to stay in this realm for more than a couple of days as I've surpassed the limits for core strength. I will begin preparations for my part of the deal now."

Before Kayn knew it, the ring he wore on his finger was snatched off and Yvaris disappeared somewhere else inside of the house. Kayn was a bit dazed with how quickly things had just happened, but in the end, there was nothing he could do.

Kayn had fulfilled his part of the deal and even managed to exceed Yvaris Earthborn's expectations, so now he just had to wait for his ring to be prepared for him.

Shrugging his shoulders, he went to go play with his sister and spend however long it took until Yvaris was finished just spending some quality time with Lara.

This whole process was quite the exhausting month for him, so some rest time was much needed. What better way to recharge than to spend time with his little sister.

…

A little over a day later, Kayn heard a knock on the door to his room where he was spending his time with Lara. Upon opening the door, a ring was tossed Kayn's way.

"Just insert your own mana into the ring and the array I inscribed will absorb it and activate. Your weight problems should be solved with that. Follow me please, we only have a few hours to get this process over with."

Without even looking back, Yvaris started to walk away. Kayn was a bit stumped for a minute at what process he was talking about, but he decided to follow him anyway.

Picking up Lara, he followed Yvaris as he entered secluded hallways and staircases. They eventually arrived at a dead end where Yvaris stopped.

"Watch closely, I'll give you the information you need of course, but watching is the best way to understand it." After speaking, he moved his hand between several points on the wall while pressing in with mana imbued on his fingers.

"The key points are attuned to my mana currently, hence I'm the only one who can enter the code in order to gain entry into the master room," Yvaris spoke as he continued pressing in different spots.

Overall, he must have hit over a hundred different points on the wall in a specific order before he stopped moving his hand and a mechanism could be heard behind the wall.

Soon, the wall that was just there slowly dissipated to reveal the room behind it. The room was only three square meters and in the middle of the room was a pitch-black sphere sitting on top of a pedestal. Yvaris moved into the room with Kayn following before he asked Kayn to wait for a moment.

"Give me a moment to remove my imprint." Yvaris Earthborn said as he placed a drop of his blood onto the black orb that was on the pedestal in the middle of the room.

Shortly after, he appeared to be pressing buttons in the air but Kayn couldn't see anything in front of the old dragon, only empty air. Not much later, Yvaris spoke once again, "It's done, please come here and place a drop of your blood onto the control orb."

Kayn began walking forward as he questioned exactly what he was looking at, "Control orb? What exactly is this room Elder Earthborn?"

"As the name implies, this room is where you can access the master controls for this artifact. The orb is actually the rune stone from a peak 6th stage space attributed rune beast. And before you ask, space is a deviant form of the fusion of dark and light elements. Very few can actually use space as an attribute as not very many species have light and dark as innate affinities.

"Continuing on, this orb will allow you to change the settings of the cottage, house, mansion, whatever you would like to call it. As it can also change outward appearance to your will.

"Therefore, if you so desire it can be as massive as a mountain, or as small as a one room cottage, viewed from the outside anyway. The inner areas are mostly set, and it is quite complex to actually change things around inside the house itself, so I would recommend leaving things as is unless you really hate the layout."

Kayn only nodded his head in acknowledgement as he made a small cut on his finger before letting it drop onto the orb. However, almost as if it was desperate for Kayn's blood, a suction force appeared and began pulling the blood from the cut on Kayn's finger at an astonishing rate.

Kayn looked at Yvaris Earthborn with worry etched on his face as he wasn't sure if this is how it was supposed to go since he wasn't told. But upon seeing Yvaris's astonished and bewildered look, he could only speak up "Umm, Elder, is this supposed to happen? When will it stop?"

Yvaris Earthborn snapped out of his daze as he also turned his head to look at Kayn's face, "Just what are you kid?"

"…I don't know what more you want me to tell you, but if this thing doesn't stop I'll be drained of blood before I can figure it out."

"Ah! My apologies, it should stop before you're completely drained, if not we can just halt the process until you regenerate the lost blood and continue. The creator of this artifact stated that it can evolve, but he didn't know the process or what would even trigger it, but he speculated that it could evolve into what is known as a Noumenon Artifact. Essentially, it's an item that will become attached to its user's soul, you can honestly simply call it a soul artifact but I digress.

"I've been trying to evolve this place for hundreds of thousands of years now with no luck. I've fed the control orb thousands of extremely rare resources, but it's done nothing but absorb them as if it is a bottomless pit inside. It sucking the blood out of you is the first reaction I've ever seen it make in my time owning it." Yvaris shook his head as he finished his sentence.

Hearing this Kayn couldn't help but think that he definitely shouldn't be receiving this ridiculous of an item for what he considered a small operation as it truly wasn't as difficult as he was expecting.

"Are you sure you want to gift this place to me Elder? Isn't it a priceless treasure and very useful for you still? Not to mention the number of resources you've put into it."

Yvaris couldn't help but laugh at Kayn's humble attitude, "Haha kid, with what you've done for me, this artifact alone isn't nearly enough in my mind. That's why I'm leaving most of the treasury that won't be useful to me as well as the library in its full glory.

"Not to mention, technically this treasure wasn't supposed to belong to me in the first place. I won it in a bet, just as you have earned it fair and square from me."

The control orb continued absorbing Kayn's blood at an astonishing rate. In fact, it was starting to absorb his blood so fast that Kayn was starting to feel dizzy from the blood loss as his regeneration couldn't keep up.

Kayn quickly came the conclusion that he would run out of blood before this orb in front of him was satiated, so he acted on reflex and pulled his hand away. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the orb from continuing to take his blood.

Seeing this, Yvaris Earthborn quickly cast a sealing array with his earth magic, essentially blocking the orb from continuing its attempt to suck Kayn dry of blood.

"I'll maintain this seal until you feel you are ready to continue. It appears that I've greatly underestimated the amount of blood it wants from you, we may have to just pause and start on a cycle until it finishes. Seeing how it took most of your blood in only a couple of minutes, I expect us to be done within half a day at most."

Kayn's happiness at obtaining such a priceless treasure was quickly smothered by the thought of having to constantly replenish his blood for hours, but he only nodded and proceeded to sit down and concentrate his mana in order to hasten the blood formation process in his bone marrow.

His blood began replenishing at very quick rate, but he quickly decided that stopping and restarting the process would only lengthen his suffering.

Coming to this conclusion, he decided to replenish the fluids in his body and continue with hastening the blood formation process at the same time as he was losing it.

Once his complexion returned to normal and he had formulated how to do it all at once with his mana, he made a cut across one arm and nodded to Yvaris, who released the array. The orb quickly returned to consuming Kayn's blood at the same quick rate it had been before. This time Kayn was ready and remained in the sitting position to focus on his spells.