Chapter 25: Pathfinder, Master, Venerable, Righteous
"If you do not want to submit to the cathedrals, such as the Cathedral of the Red Moon in your city, you must conceal yourself well from them."
Lumine sighed and said, "Alright."
Lord Richard continued his speech, without returning to the point of the Eras, which stirred some resentment in Lumine, "In general, there are 8 stations for every path, but some paths are shorter. These are the paths that have not been fully discovered, either because the potions were not discovered, or because the potion was not passed down, or because there is no subsequent station."
"The stations begin in a descending order, from Station 8 to Station 7 and Station 6, until you reach Station 1. You can consume the potions immediately after the ritual, but the longer you delay, the more you will suffer from hearing voices and hallucinations from individuals at higher stations, and you might hear voices from individuals who have lost control. Even if you do not hear anything, you will feel something watching you constantly, and in the end, you will lose your mind."
'As a Linker, can I not sever the bond between myself and the voice?' Lumine wondered about the hallucinations, but he did not attempt to interrupt Lord Richard's speech; instead, he gave him more space to explain.
"In the world of Pathfinders, once you consume the Station 8 potion and execute its ritual, you are no longer classified under the human species; rather, you belong to a different species that we broadly call 'Pathfinders.' This species has different divisions within it: those at Stations 8 and 7 are not addressed by any special title, they are simply Pathfinders. But those at Stations 6 and 5, we call Masters; those at Stations 4 and 3, Venerables; and at Stations 2 and 1, Righteous Ones."
"By consuming the potion, you gain a foundational capability from the root of the world that evolves with every station you advance to. As a start in the Linker path, you will gain the capability to link yourself with three things simultaneously. The number of things that can be linked varies from person to person based on their soul and their affinity with the potion, but the majority link three things. To give another example, in the Watcher path, you can control your shadow and move it, but the limit to which you can control the shadow depends on spirituality and the amount it releases..."
"As humans, there are individuals who excel in studying, and there are individuals who excel in sports. This same concept applies to Pathfinders; there are Pathfinders who are better in a path like the Linker, and there are individuals who are better in a path like the Watcher."
"Outwardly, a Pathfinder might not differ from humans except by possessing capabilities; your spirituality will increase, but you remain weak against guns, poisons, swords, and you might even become weaker against poisons or swords compared to humans."
"At Station 6, you will become a Master. Things that affect humans, like guns and swords, will carry no physical impact on you except when supported by the strength of Pathfinders. The same applies at Station 4; you will become a Venerable and will be distinguished by other things... Outwardly, Pathfinders are individuals blessed with capabilities and are stronger than their peers among humanity, and you might find no logical reason for them to be classified as another species."
"But in essence, if a human dies, they become a lifeless corpse; you can burn, bury, or sever it. But if a Pathfinder dies, they shrink, and within a few hours, they become a small ball of flesh and blood, resembling a small crimson gemstone. We call it Ether..."
"This gemstone can be used to fuse with objects. Fuse Ether with a sword, and you will obtain a sword that possesses the properties of the Pathfinder along with some negative effects. For instance, your Linker's stick, although it carries no negative effect, is an item fused with Ether."
The Castle Man noticed the expression of shock on Lumine's face. He remained silent for a while until Lumine asked him, "This means that the Linker's stick is an extension of a real person's corpse?"
Lord Richard sighed and answered, "Yes. Ether will fuse with anything it connects with for a duration of two days. Since the Ether fused with the stick and they became one, you are theoretically holding a corpse in your hand."
Lumine pulled the Linker's stick out of his coat pocket and looked at it for approximately three minutes. Lord Richard knew that the truth would be difficult for some to accept for a long period of time.
He intended to leave and let Lumine think and ponder the value of the Linker's stick in his hand, but before he stood on his feet, he heard Lumine's voice addressing him, "Is this why the cathedrals take the corpses of official Pathfinders? They exploit them after their death so that they become tools?"
The Castle Man nodded without saying anything. Lumine's lips trembled for a moment before he tightened his grip on the stick and followed up, "My teacher, is there a way to avoid the hallucinations?"
The Castle Man nodded in agreement and said, "Of course, there are many ways that enable you to avoid the voices and hallucinations."
"First, do not advance to a higher station. Remain at your station and never attempt to advance; then, the hallucinations will never come. If you wish to become stronger, you can compensate for some of your weaknesses with Pathfinders' tools."
"Second, try not to ascend through the stations unless a period of no less than four years has passed. You will likely die before becoming a Master, but you will survive and limit the hallucinations by a large percentage."
"Third, you can reach the sixth station and sever the link between yourself and your sense of hearing. You will lose your hearing, but you will survive the hallucinations in the end. At the sixth station, you can sever the link even with things you were born with."
"Fourth, be talented in your path, and increase your immersion in your station and your pleasure. Do not look at capabilities as an additional weapon for you; rather, immerse yourself in them and make them one part of you, and open new horizons within them. Know their points of strength and their points of weakness until they become a part of you like your limbs and your fist. This solution is the best, but it depends on your affinity with the capability—meaning the talent you are born with. Furthermore, this solution is unstable and has no expected time limit. There are some individuals who thought they had fully immersed themselves with their potions, but in the end... they failed. You must remember that you are walking in a world fraught with dangers."
'Walking in a world fraught with troubles... just like Lord Ra said...' Lumine remembered the sentence of the Venerable Ra when he saved him, exactly like the sentence Lord Richard told him now.
Lord Richard completed and initiated a question after ensuring Lumine's good condition despite his new knowledge about Ether, and asked while staring sharply at Lumine's face, "A moment ago, you tried transporting via the Linker's stick, correct?"
Lumine nodded his head and answered, "Yes. I wanted to ask you about attraction and transportation, but I found no trace of you for consecutive days, so I had no choice but to try them alone without asking you about the potential dangers. I conducted several experiments on the attraction capability and succeeded, and then I went outside to try the transportation capability..."
"But strange things happened to me. The colors blended together and I felt dry hands grasping me. I lost consciousness because of the pain, and when I woke up, I found myself here in the Red Mist," Lumine stated what happened to him, but he concealed the fact of his meeting with the Venerable Ra.
The Castle Man stared intently at Lumine then answered, "This means your transportation was successful. There is another world blended with our world, called the World of Omens, and it can be called the World of the Spirit. The colors in the World of Omens are different from the colors in the real world. The blending of colors you saw was due to your entry into the World of Omens..."
"Distance in the World of Omens is different from distance in the real world. Traveling from Valensia to the capital city of Trakis will take you a whole week via the Vagin train, whereas you can cover this distance in less than a day through the World of Omens simply by walking. And if you know the coordinates, you can do it in an instant... I will explain the full details next time. I intend to teach you everything about Pathfinders, but I cannot explain everything in one night."
"...In the World of Omens, things that have no explanation happen. In certain places, your shadow will try to escape from you, and if it succeeds in escaping, you can forget about returning to the real world. those hands and creatures that touched you are the lowest creatures of the World of Omens."
"We call them Shadow Snatchers—individuals who lost their shadow and died while searching for shadows. After their death, they embody as spirits targeting every person who enters the World of Omens whose spirituality is weak or minuscule. Why is this? To steal their shadow... and you were on the verge of becoming the victim."
"In the World of Omens, there is no clear and stable concept of directions. You might intend to walk forward, but you will see your body moving upward. No one can move in the World of Omens except Pathfinders whose paths assist them in transportation, such as the Pathfinders of the Tourist path."
Lumine drew expressions of wonder on his face, interrupted Lord Richard's speech, and asked, "Then how does transportation work in the Linker's stick? Isn't the stick derived from the essence of a person from the Linker path?"
Lord Richard sighed before snapping his thumb with his middle finger and bringing out a red-colored thread from thin air. He extended the thread with both his hands and began explaining, "As a Pathfinder from the Linker path, if you snap your thumb and middle finger, you will be able to see a small red thread like this coming out of every object."
Lord Richard went silent and snapped his thumb with his middle finger once more... This time, the thread in his hand changed into a short shotgun. "Try snapping your fingers."
Snap. Lumine snapped his thumb and middle finger, and in an instant, the Castle Man noticed a blue aura glowing over Lumine's eyes.
Lumine's vision became blurry and bluish. He noticed a small red thread coming out of the shotgun and heading toward the Castle Man's chest, and he noticed a small red thread coming out of the table's surface and floating in the air, a small red thread from the doorknob floating in the air, and small red threads coming out of every wall and every item in the room.
While he was looking at the entire room to inspect the threads, he heard Lord Richard's voice telling him, "Try to grab this shotgun thread and extend it to your chest."
Lumine noticed that the shotgun's thread was no longer connected to the Castle Man's chest; instead, it became a small thread floating around the shotgun. He leaned forward and extended his hand to grab the small thread... a thread that did not exceed the length of his fist.
He grabbed it and noticed that the texture of the thread did not differ at all from the texture of a real thread, and meanwhile, he heard Lord Richard's voice speaking, "This thread, no one can see or touch it except people in the Linker path. Try pulling it to your chest, specifically to the place of your heart."
Lumine tried pulling the thread and noticed it coming out and becoming longer with complete ease, as if there were no limit to its length and the range it could be pulled.
When Lumine approached his chest, he noticed the thread trying to escape from his hand and gravitated toward his chest, which prompted him to release the thread from his hand.
The thread fused into his chest, and he felt a strange link between himself and the small shotgun in Lord Richard's hand.
Lord Richard threw the shotgun from his hand to the ground and said, "Imagine yourself firing the shotgun."
Lumine shaped his hand into the form of a gun, closed his three fingers while extending his thumb upward and his index finger forward, and deliberately, in a childish manner, issued the sound of gunfire with his mouth, "Puff."
At the exact same moment Lumine issued the sound of gunfire, the shotgun fired. Lumine was astonished by this wondrous capability, but he also had some disappointment alongside the astonishment, for he was expecting that he would be able to fire bullets from his hand.
Lord Richard took the shotgun from the ground and placed it on the table before continuing, "In answer to your question, this thread between you and the shotgun is the cause of transportation. In advanced stations, the thread can pull you through the World of Omens to the shotgun in a single moment."
"If your spirituality is high, you will succeed in going and returning without dangers, but if your spirituality is low... you will remain in the World of Omens until the spirituality regenerates. In your case, it happened that there were Shadow Snatchers beside you, but under peaceful circumstances, you will remain in the World of Omens until your spirituality regenerates before you return to the real world."
Lumine asked with the aim of obtaining answers, "Is there no limit to the length of the thread? And how can I know the amount of my spirituality?"
"No, there is no limit to the length of the thread. You can place the shotgun in the Western Continent and go to the furthest point of the Eastern Continent with complete fluidity. As for your spirituality? With time, you will be able to notice the simple details in your spirituality and whether it is high or not. But from what I see, you are talented and possess high spirituality. Under normal circumstances, you cannot attempt attraction at the eighth station, yet you conducted several experiments..."
Lord Richard continued without giving Lumine the space for astonishment, "The method of grabbing the thread is the second method to establish a bond. In the future, you can place your spirituality upon the object, and the bond will form between you and it. This method is faster, and you can cast a part of your spirituality to the object instead of touching it... Imagine a large gray carriage; instead of fatiguing yourself by searching for the thread, just place your spirituality upon it, and you will succeed in establishing the bond."
"With your advancement, you can control your spirituality and cast it... I will explain the full details to you later."
"There is a method that enables you to see spirituality without directly entering the Omen world. Disable the Linker's vision so I can teach you the method."
Lumine snapped his thumb with his middle finger. His vision returned to normal; the glowing blue aura vanished from his eyes, and the shotgun's thread vanished from before him without the link he felt in his chest vanishing.
Lumine snapped his thumb with his middle finger, and for a moment, the colors blended and transparent auras appeared.
Lord Richard completed his speech immediately after hearing the snapping sound, "You can snap your thumb with your middle finger; your vision will become blurry as well, and in simple seconds, you will see the spirituality of people and things in different colors."
"The yellow and green colors, you do not see them except in natural things, such as trees and water, mountains and woods. Meanwhile, the black and red colors symbolize corruption, rot, and disease, and they do not exit the boundaries of the body."
"Whereas the blue color and its derivatives point to the density of spirituality... or let us call it the aura, and it exits the body and surrounds it."
"The closer the blue aura is to whiteness rather than blackness, the denser the aura is. Conversely, the closer it approaches blackness, the closer that means the person is to losing control."
Lord Richard sighed before continuing, "Under normal cases, the color of the aura is pure blue, and the color of the aura does not change to become lighter unless the Pathfinder gathers it and compresses it."
"When I met you for the first time, your aura was closer to blackness than whiteness, but at the current time, your aura is stable... there is no fear for you of losing control."
Lumine spoke and said, "This is because of your assistance to me, my teacher."
Lord Richard nodded and continued, "Every person can spread their aura in the size and density they want, but they must first master controlling spirituality. Have you ever felt a killing intent from someone?"
Lumine stared into Lord Richard's eyes and answered, "Yes... in many cases during hunting..."
* "The foundation of killing intent comes from spirituality. You must control your aura and focus it on a specific person. Imagine with me a gas spread throughout the entire room, but you came and focused the gas into a small space of the room. How would a person feel if they were in the middle of the gas?"
Lumine stared at the room and said, "With pressure during movement... so that's how it is, I understand the matter..."
Lord Richard interrupted Lumine's speech and said, "This applies to killing intent, but you can also control the aura to a greater extent. You can control the density and the spread. Conceal your aura, and your enemy will think you have lowered your defense; we can exploit this... and you can spread your aura in the room to know people's movements and their aura."
"And in certain paths, you can create things through the aura... Generally, spirituality is the foundation for many matters, and the Red Mist might be among them..."
* "The Red Mist?!"
* "Yes and no... I think that the Red Mist is the aura of something. Within this aura, creatures adapt and become wild, and nature changes and blends with spirituality; strange phenomena and new creatures appear. But there are things I cannot link to auras... let us leave this conversation for when you become a Venerable... Do you have other questions?"
Lumine felt let down, for the Castle Man had avoided speaking about many matters and only explained the outlines. However, he contained himself and asked before the Castle Man departed, "My teacher, if I link myself with something from the Red Mist, such as those carriages, will it transport with me?"
Lord Richard went silent for a bit before saying, "As a high Pathfinder, this matter is impossible for me, but theoretically, you as a novice Pathfinder might be able to do it. Your aura is weak, it does not draw the attention of the Red Mist, nor does it clash with its laws violently like my aura. You might be able to create a bond to transport some to the real world."
"Do not try to think about the matter and analyze the reason. Do not forget that you are walking in a world fraught with dangers... I will simplify the matter for you."
"The matter remains possible theoretically. Search for something you like here, and link it with you, and when you return to the real world, think of it with the Linker's stick. The matter might succeed, and the stick will transform into those carriages... By the way, I searched a little and learned that the carriages here are called 'cars'... If the item you want is small, you can sleep with the item beside you; it will transport with you like the Linker's stick and your clothes. But if it is like the car, try the method I told you."
Lumine went silent for a bit before saying, "I will try then, and I will search for a smaller item... My teacher, are we on an island that still carries remnants of an old era? Or is this another world that fell into the Red Mist?"
Lord Richard sighed and said, "Heh, as I told you previously, sleeping is a ritual that connected you with this Red Mist. Do not try to think more than this, otherwise you will regret it deeply."
'Can you not say a sentence that is not devoid of ambiguity? I am not an interpreter of words.' Lumine went silent while sighing to himself before asking, "Then can I change the transportation ritual? By coincidence, I noticed something... if I sleep while exhausted, I can sleep again and return to the real world, and I will be completely healed from the exhaustion. If the transportation ritual becomes easier, like transporting by thought..."
Lord Richard stared intently before standing on his feet and saying, "I understand... you want to exploit this in battles and journeys to become at your full readiness at all times. You can do this, but you must become at Station 6—a Master..."
The Castle Man grabbed the shotgun and brought it close to Lumine while continuing, "Take it, use it as you wish. You do not have to fear running out of ammunition; I linked the ammunition magazine with myself beforehand."
"Regarding exiting the house to the outside... you can leave the house between six in the evening until six in the morning. Other than this time, it will be an extreme danger to you. Pay attention to when you exit and when you return, and do not go out much. Take some time and rest, for you are now not sleeping; this will cause fatigue and strain to your mind."
Immediately after he spoke, the Castle Man snapped his thumb with his middle finger, producing a snapping sound, "Snap," and Lord Richard disappeared from the guest room.
Lumine picked up the Castle Man's card from the table and placed it in his front breast pocket. He wanted to ask the Castle Man about many things to compensate for the time he vanished, but he fled before Lumine could satisfy his curiosity.
Lumine picked up the shotgun from the table and held it in his left hand, then thought of the Linker's stick in his right hand, 'Shotgun.'
Immediately, the Linker's stick transformed into the shotgun. Lumine smiled at this and went upstairs, for he wanted to sleep to return to the real world and go with Deco to meet Fiona before the afternoon arrived.