In a field of grass and rolling hills, somewhere in the North of England, the universe bore witness to the birth of Wovan, The Hivemind Construct. The monster's core had become an egg of sorts, swelling to the size of a large bathtub before shrinking into the proportions of a small beach ball. The red light it had been emitting for the last few minutes finally grew dim before winking out entirely.

  Arthur could sense a nascent conscience forming within the egg, pitifully weak in power and intelligence but terrifying in the potential it contained. He turned and looked to the left at a copse of trees from where he could sense a powerful presence. A second later, he saw her, the half-giant who had watched over his ritual.

  The woman smiled at him and inclined her head. Arthur couldn't be certain, but he was sure the powerful mage had helped him complete the ritual. Her mere presence stabilised the ether around her and made the energy more malleable for craft-related manipulation; a passive domain of sorts, Arthur assumed. He'd have to find a way to thank her in the future. Grinning, he turned back to the egg floating in front of him.

  The monster core had become hollow and the formerly crystalline structure now possessed a leather-like texture, similar to the shells you'd find on snake eggs. The leather membrane was incredibly thin and slightly see-through in certain places. The shadows of small creatures could be seen moving within it. Arthur had created this creature and even he felt a little queasy when he remembered the moving shadows in the egg were tiny spiders. Some fears were wired into a person, they didn't change no matter how strong you grew.

  Arthur's hands were thankfully no longer anchored to the basement floor. It had somehow survived the gale-force winds the ritual released perfectly intact. The same couldn't be said for the ritual itself though; entire parts of it had been erased and burned out in certain places. Thankfully, the damage had been caused after the ritual had run its course. Now that his hands were free, Arthur could touch Wovan's core. It was warm on his skin, almost scalding and just as soft as he'd expected.

  The ritual was done. Any moment now Wovan would leave her shell. It was time to take the final step, to take the already terrifying potential contained within the monster core and break the scale altogether. A quick check-up on Alyssia showed she wasn't doing too well. Her stamina was failing her and she was once again riddled with injuries. Her plight was about to get worse.

  Arthur took back half of the Draconic Vitality enhancement he'd given her. The alverin stumbled a step at the sudden loss in power, taking a nasty blow on her arm before adjusting to her new normal. He felt terrible but he had warned Alyssia that the power would suddenly disappear. Arthur took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth. Would his idea bear fruit?

  Focusing on the nascent conscience within the egg, Arthur selected it as the new target for enhancement.

  The error messages continued for a while but Arthur could sense the situation resolving. While the soul splinter was technically a part of his soul it also wasn't. Wovan was her own entity. The spider in question was minutes away from waking up, Arthur could feel her mind growing stronger by the second. He continued to apply the buff, getting the same error messages again and again. A few of the error messages, however, stopped showing up as Wovan grew closer to her rebirth. Finally, a minute later, Arthur received a different message. It was a warning.

  It didn't take Arthur long to make his decision. He'd decided long ago that Wovan would receive this enhancement. Forever losing half of the buff would sting but he still had ten percent that he could divvy out in future battles. Ten percent would remain a significant boon as he rose in level and continued to invest in Draconic Vitality.

  Still, it was with no small trepidation that Arthur went ahead with the enhancement. So far, his ritual had been a resounding success; the aura coming from Wovan's egg was easily on par with an apocalypse beasts. And here he was, about to give that spider wings. Now that's a horrifying thought. Imagine if Wovan could fly.

  Arthur pushed the enhancement into the egg and felt his connection with the Soul Splinter grow even deeper. Nothing happened at first and Arthur wondered if that was it, a disappointing conclusion to what should have been the crowning moment of the hivemind's rebirth. That's when he felt it. A fluctuation in aura, not coming from the core or even the bounty hunters trying to capture him, but someone far more powerful. What had changed? Had he finally gone a step too far?

  His head whipped around and he stared at the observing half-giant. That was where the fluctuating aura had come from. The copse of trees she'd been using for cover was no more, crushed out of existence and the woodland soil beneath her had become a wasteland of green glass, the results of half a second suffering under her unrestrained might.

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  Had Arthur angered her? No, that wasn't it. If she'd been okay with his ritual from the get-go, there was no reason for her to become enraged at his latest addition to it. The half-giant's face was twisted in an expression Arthur didn't recognise at first. Not because it was something foreign and alien, but because he'd never expected to see it on someone so powerful.

  The half-giant was afraid.

  Arthur turned back to look at Wovan's core and swallowed dryly. His perception wasn't as refined as the half-giants, so it took him a while longer to sense what the woman had instantly. The world itself, Mother Earth was crying out, rejecting the presence of something so foul and abominable. Wovan, in life, had already been too much for a tier-1 planet to sustain. What Arthur had just created was multiple orders of magnitude beyond that, beyond anything he'd ever encountered.

  The warning was useless in that it told him things he already knew. The next System message that appeared before him, however, was far more interesting, and judging by the startled cries of surprise around him, he wasn't the only one to have received it.

  An ender on the move? That was the first time Arthur had heard the word. Going by the message and the reactions of those around him, Enders were a big deal. Arthur grimaced as he felt the changes taking place in Wovan's egg. It seemed his latest stint had raised the mother of all red flags and Arthur just knew trouble was waiting for him as soon as things settled down.

  Alyssia, meanwhile, had finally run out of luck. With her stamina on its last legs, she made a mistake. A fatal one. She dodged a bolt of ice by sidestepping to the left, right into a speeding blade of wind that sliced off her legs at the hips. She toppled to the floor, an agonised cry coming from her lips as she bled out on the ground. It happened so fast that by the time Arthur realised she was in danger, it was already too late.

  Arthur's heart froze, even as he saw a second wind blade coming to decapitate her. She was too far away. He was too slow. That was when Alyssia's severed legs flashed a dark green, her soulbound item, The Greaves of Achilles manifesting over them. The glowing light covered the entirety of her prone form, both halves of her, before flashing again. When the light show faded, Alyssia's body disappeared, the wind blade that should have killed her instead leaving a deep gash across the earth. A second later, her dying form appeared right beside Arthur.

  The green energy now held her legs and torso together, preventing the alverin from bleeding out, but it didn't do anything to heal her. The energy was also fading alarmingly fast, already considerably dimmer in the second it took him to place his hands on her stomach. Arthur didn't question what that last bit of magic Alyssia had cast was, though he was almost certain her soulbound greaves had just saved her life. She'd told him when they'd received the Locus rewards that their soulbound items would evolve very differently and it was evidently clear that she'd been right.

  Arthur poured healing energy into her, focusing first on reconnecting any severed arteries to prevent her from bleeding out. By that point, the first of the bounty hunter's attacks had already reached him, a caustic whip of poisonous green flame and an ice bolt the size of his head.

  The attacks were aimed at Alyssia, and so Arthur was forced to shield her, taking the blows with his back. The ice shattered almost harmlessly, leaving superficial wounds that hardly bled. The fire, however, was a different story, insidiously targeting broken skin and searing the flesh beneath. Arthur groaned in pain, even as he continued to heal Alyssia. She was out of the danger zone now at least, but it would take time for him to heal her properly. Time that he did not have.

  Wovan's egg chose that moment to finally crack. It sounded like crystal shattering, which didn't make sense considering how its texture had changed so much. A single hairline fracture now marred the core's perfect surface. Even as he watched, the crack spread rapidly, covering the entire core's surface. The bounty hunters had stopped in their tracks, staring at the core in suspicion and fear. It was like the world itself was holding its breath. Going by what Kazi Alukai had told him, it probably was.

  And then Wovan was born.

  Immediately, Arthur was bombarded by System notifications, as he felt momentous changes taking place in his soul. He ignored them for now and got his first good look at Wovan, his first Soul Splinter. The core she had been born from hadn't been the biggest thing in the world, and neither was she. Crawling on his basement floor—what was left of it, at least—were ten small spiders, each of them around the size of an adolescent tarantula. They were pitch black, an absence of colour, except for the tips of their eight legs which were ruby red.

  They were quite frankly the most terrifying thing he had ever seen and exerted an aura about thrice as potent as the Shadow Panther's that had set him down this path all those months ago.

  Arthur stood and cracked his neck. With Augmented Recovery in its final minute of life, Arthur's health was almost full, the damage done by the ritual and the bounty hunters rapidly fading away. They had him surrounded. Twenty-three greedy bastards who'd tried to kill him when he was at his most vulnerable. Twenty-three fools who had almost killed his friend. Alyssia had protected him.

  Now it was time to return the favour. With Interest.

  Etherious: Originator

  Etherious: The Locus of Power has gone live. As a self published author doing everything myself, my novels success lies entirely on my shoulders. As such, the first day of a books launch is by far the most important time that determines how well my book will do.

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