Behemoth [Primordial Titan Cultivation/LitRPG]

An eternity seemed to pass as Epiphany's head collapsed upon itself. Though the word 'collapse' hardly seemed to encompass the esoteric pathways its destruction followed. His vision blurred and rippled as he attempted to understand the hyper-dimensions folding in upon themselves.

His morbid fascination was so intense that the time dilation boon was dragging the moment out forever.

Before the sight could fully blind him, he finally stirred himself to action. Less than a second had passed in reality--just long enough for Cyril to cough up a mouthful of blood from the arcane backlash of Epiphany's wound.

A desperate voice in the back of his head attempted to figure out what exactly had happened. Had just discussing the matter forced the entity to self-destruct? Spirits linked with Knowledge were known to answer questions to the best of their ability. Such a backlash would only happen if it had deliberately lied, or the very information it shared was taboo beyond measure.

Suddenly, he felt very stupid for having asked about the affairs of heaven.

But he had to take responsibility for this. Surely there was something he could do?

Cyril wracked his mind for a solution. As best as he could tell, Behemoth had lended him its assistance by having him cast nearly his entire repertoire of abilities. There must have been a purpose behind that. The various manifestations of scrolls, earthen forms, the purification mist, all tinged the world with the personal flavor of his soul--his domain, imposing its fledgling natural laws into the world.

Though his ability to affect reality was still new and unrefined, it contained primordial truths. His qi was Behemoth's qi, and Behemoth's qi was a world onto itself.

Cyril continued to pour energy into the surroundings. This time, he put his intent behind the techniques. His soul was one of resilience, of sanctuary, a bulwark and a battering ram. And while he was little more than a young prince of some local desert power, his entire life a speck of dust compared to Behemoth's, he had created and destroyed, learned and forgotten. His own truths mingled and swirled within the Titan's, a complementary contrast.

Spirits were all but impossible to truly destroy. If Epiphany was to be believed, they were already the phantoms of higher beings. Despite its immortality, the destruction of its head still meant something--a crippling of its nature. Reversing the damage was far beyond Cyril's current capabilities. Instead, he would have to preserve as much as possible.

He stood amongst stalactites of earth and metal, fluttering parchments, overgrown plants, and half-formed sculptures. Hands clasped in a simple mudra, he began to mutter an incantation under his breath. As he spoke, his lips felt strangely slow due to the time lapse between his thoughts and physical reality.

"Nine lotus perennial rebirth, the abundant roots hold firm."

The words resonated with his soul; their vibrations rippled through the air. Sweat and blood dripped from his face to the ground. Where the droplets landed, tiny sprouts sprang to life. The surroundings were suffused with his qi, his purpose.

Though his core rapidly refilled, throwing up the makeshift domain was a tremendous strain on his willpower. Witnessing Epiphany's higher-level form had already taxed his mind to the point of breaking.

Fortunately, the Library itself seemed to come to his aid, stabilizing the surroundings and permitting him to impose his domain within its premises. He had an innate connection with Knowledge, after all, and he was attempting to aid its incarnation.

It was through this external stabilization that he discovered the source of Epiphany's wound.

A thin beam cut through the room, perfectly straight and uniform, like a wire made from oblivion. It appeared at a random spot near the ceiling and traveled at an angle to skewer Epiphany's head. It terminated slightly behind its target, vanishing once more into nothingness.

Where the beam existed, nothing remained. It registered to his senses more as an absence than anything. No ambient qi, no air--it erased everything in its wake.

He had considered earlier that Epiphany had either been punished for lying or revealing forbidden knowledge. The answer to that was of secondary importance. The more important consideration was what, exactly, had served as the executioner for Epiphany's crime.

Because, as far as Cyril could see, this was a targeted attack. Some conceptual technique that utilized an abstract form of destruction--oblivion, or void, or some other Dominion even further beyond his comprehension. It was almost casual, a vengeful smite from the heavens in response to blasphemy uttered.

A cowardly thought struck him for a moment: I shouldn't do anything to invite this calamity on myself.

Despite his hesitation, he continued to mutter the mantra to himself as fast as his body would allow. His throat was raw, and blood continued to leak from his eyes and nose, splattering into tiny herbs.

He knew what he needed to do next. Without his breakthrough and the vision of Beloved, the idea may not have occurred to him.

As Epiphany's head continued to unravel, it spewed out complex runes and strings of intricate words in a flood. Very little of it made sense to him, even Translated, but he didn't need to know their meaning. Desperate, he copied as many as he could onto the Mind Scrolls populating the room. As Epiphany's thoughts were lost into the void, he attempted to replicate them to the best of his ability.

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It was like trying to hold a waterfall in a cupped hand. So much was lost. But without any better options, he continued to transcribe the contents of Epiphany's character as quickly as he could think the symbols into existence.

Then, gritting his teeth, he began to divide his attention enough to pull the scattered Mind Scrolls together. They weren't exactly physical objects, but he instinctively threw out strands of Gravity qi to help them bind together. Since his qi control with the element was mostly reliant on exerting force--pushing instead of pulling--he was forced to shove them from the opposite direction into one central point.

It was sloppy work, but it at least gathered them together into a giant wad.

Next came the inspiration from Beloved. The cultivator had created golems in remembrance of those he knew, linking his Death and Knowledge Dominions together. While he lacked Beloved's innate talent, the time in the vision hadn't been completely wasted. It had planted a seed in his mind.

Relying on his amateur sculpting, he materialized a figure out of darksteel. It was an imperfect replica of Librarian Djinn-Three, scaled down to around the size of a small child. Terrible proportions, awkward, but he didn't plan on submitting the golem into any competitions.

Recreating Epiphany's true head was far beyond his means, but he attempted to add in a few spirals and loops in as a poor mimicry of the eldritch geometry. To his surprise, his creation held a few traces of blurry lines he had grown to recognize as space qi. It was even tinged with a strange, prismatic hue he couldn't begin to identify.

For the final part, he had to bring it all together. The problem was that he had no idea how he was supposed to do so.

The Library once more lent its grateful assistance.

Feeble blue-green qi flickered throughout the room, mixing with the mist of purification. Epiphany began to move for the first time in the thirty seconds that had passed since it had been assassinated. Its body twitched and jerked like a puppet controlled by an enthusiastic child. Spastic movement carried it toward the darksteel replica and the wad of Mind Scrolls hovering beside it. All the while, its mind continued to bleed out.

The runes inscribed onto the Mind Scrolls flared with Knowledge qi. One final lurch carried Epiphany next to the golem. It laid a hand upon the construct.

Once more, the world flared with blinding light. Cyril stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over the foliage that had grown in his wake. Disoriented and exhausted, he forced himself to repeat his mantra over and over.

When his vision returned, only the golem remained. He sensed that the fusion of the crippled spirit and its new shell was successful. At least, it had occurred, though the efficiency of the transplantation was most likely abysmal.

He dared to relax for a moment.

Cracks began to spread throughout the golem. More of Epiphany leaked through the ruptured vessel, at only a slightly reduced rate compared to before.

Cyril shoved aside his sudden hopelessness and focused on the problem as analytically as possible. He started from the bottom of golemancy, learned from his unbidding tutor. Urgency had necessitated he skip several steps. As he reviewed them, the obvious culprit became apparent: he had not forged a proper core.

The true heart of a golem was its core. The rest of its body was no more than a shell. Beloved had labored on this part more than any other, mentally etching the primary designs onto the keystone organ. Cyril had assumed that the mass of Mind Scrolls would function as such, housing what few runes had been able to save as an anchor for the spirit to latch onto. The golem had absorbed them, but they hadn't been enough to form a proper core.

Resisting a swell of nausea, he focused all of his remaining will into the palm of his hand. Red-tinged darkness blurred the corners of his vision--burst blood vessels that his constitution couldn't regenerate. He closed his eyes, attempting to minimize all unnecessary stimuli. Reality was far too distracting.

With Behemoth's full attention, his core burgeoned with power. He used his qi fast as it came, determined to succeed where he had failed before.

Though it was on his list of Transmute options, he hadn't been able to replicate his feat of creating Behemoth's divine stone. As far as he could tell, he had acquired the material when Manifesting Behemoth's hand to crush the legion of Cerulean Guard during their battle against the Cult of Leviathan.

The miracle had been impossible to reproduce--not to mention the enormous cost of Behemoth losing the limb.

Will you give a little more? he asked himself.

The motif of sacrifice across many of his breakthrough visions hadn't been lost on him. He had spent many sleepless nights reflecting on the message that reality seemed determined to impose on him. When thinking about his own abilities and theorizing various potential avenues to explore, this one had always haunted him. Creation, resilience, overwhelming force--all of them had their own appeal. But who wanted to sacrifice themselves?

I do, I suppose.

After he accepted the truth, something clicked in his mind. Behemoth stirred. And though an equivalent fraction of the Titan also vanished, a tiny pebble of divine stone materialized in the palm of his hand.

A sudden rush of weakness finally forced Cyril to his knees. A disturbing number of bloodsprouts carpeted the floor beneath him. His chin drooped slightly, and his eyelids fluttered. With one last wisp of willpower, he forced his head up and crawled toward the golem.

As he drew near, the torrents of Epiphany's leaking mind swept over him. Baptized him in higher Knowledge. It was agonizing, scouring to the touch, but it was only one more source of pain among many others. A distant part of his mind noted that his body began to absorb the energy, as if it was feeding his constitution.

Darkness crept deeper into his mind, welcoming him into the sweet embrace of sleep. Not yet.

Three paces. Two paces. Then he was there, next to the crumbling, fractured mess of the golem. Deep within its carved bookhead, he sensed the wadded brain of Mind Scrolls, shrunken down to scale. With the last dregs of qi in his core, he pulled his thoughts together and cast Enlightenment upon the pebble of divine stone.

The impression was one of desperate need: hoping to save Epiphany as much as possible, to save his people, his sister, his world, himself. Whatever needed to be done, he would do it, even if he had to carve pieces out of himself.

He toppled forward. Shouting in wordless defiance, he flailed his arm out. Managed to touch the pebble to the darksteel construct.

My first golem, he thought with pride, before the darkness swallowed him.