Behemoth [Primordial Titan Cultivation/LitRPG]

Sensing that his son was falling into a dark mood once more, Anand remained silent for most of their brief trip to the Library. Still, his presence radiated warmth and comfort, helping to dispel some of Cyril's building gloominess.

And so, as they glided over the rooftops of Beljeza on the back of a glyph-inscribed metal platform, Cyril tried to let go and enjoy the moment as much as possible. He had always loved riding on the back of his father's flying platform as a child, skimming over the dunes and parting the sands beneath them with the speed of their passage.

Simpler times.

From their vantage, he could see the full length of the cavern and the half-constructed city below. And what a change from the first time he had discovered the ruins--bioluminescent moss limning the world with its eerie glow; the infestation of wyrms and even stranger monsters; the forlorn atmosphere of a lost civilization, like a stain on the world.

Now, hands in his pockets, he looked down upon a city in the midst of a transformation. Mystical light and fire studded the entire landscape. People gathered around campfires on the open streets, sharing food and wine and laughter. Cultivators meditated on the rooftops, created light shows with their pyromancy, patrolled the outskirts even though every danger, from monsters to toxic plants, had been scoured from the region. Nothing went to waste, of course, repurposed into food, hides, alchemical ingredients, and the like.

Children--and not a few adults--pointed up as the flying platform passed overhead, grinning and clapping. Cyril's Magmatic Heart pounded at the sight, spreading warmth throughout his body, an unwitting grin spreading across his lips. These were his people, his family.

The memory of a wire of oblivion flashed in his mind. His smile died.

Shaking his head, he summoned an elixir from his spatial ring and downed it in a few gulps. The Draught of Infinite Regard kicked in immediately, sharpening his thoughts, banishing emotion in favor of a more analytical, almost manic speed. Undoubtedly effective, despite the pretentious name.

Anand glanced back at him in concern. "Son. What did I tell you about chemically altering your mindstate to get over a bad mood?"

Cyril shrugged and deposited the empty flask back into his spatial ring. "'If you're going to do it, be productive?' We have some work to do, after all. Anyways, you have casks of this elixir yourself."

Anand swatted back at him, trying to keep a smirk off his face.

Their brief flight ended quite quickly, even at the casual speed Anand had set. They dipped down into the square containing the Library. Scattering to a respectful distance, the crowd muttered amongst themselves at the sight of the reclusive academic and now perhaps the second-most-famous scion of the tribe, behind Elys.

Cyril stepped off and glanced back at the platform. A sudden thought occurred to him--an inspiration. He needed to gain better control over his use of the Dominion of Gravity. Though he could create bursts of cataclysmic force, his qi manipulation was sorely lacking. Creating his own flying device, powered by a continuous application of gravity along a particular vector, would be excellent training. After aeons of wandering across the earth, perhaps Behemoth would even enjoy the novelty of flying through the clouds with the aid of its affinities. The thought of the colossus soaring through the atmosphere like an apocalyptic meteor was terrifyingly amusing.

Granting himself flight wouldn't be an easy task. He still had barely progressed beyond being able to shoot out bursts of force, even if he could sweep entire buildings away with a basic Pressure. Actually pulling towards him, which should have been nothing more than a reversal of pushing, was frustratingly difficult to grasp.

Perhaps advancing to the Fourth Sphere would correct that, but it was often considered a waste of a boon to acquire a skill one could easily teach themselves through effort. Forgivable in the lower Spheres, but eventually, every cultivator reached a bottleneck. Suboptimal boons were one of many factors that could cause a promising talent to stagnate until their natural lifespan ran out.

Serving as the Vessel of Behemoth all but eliminated that possibility for Cyril until much further along, but he couldn't afford to become reliant on such an advantage.

Even among other Peak Foundation Stage cultivators, there existed plenty of world-shattering talents that would dance circles around him. No doubt there was some random child bonded to an imp that could make him look like a fool through talent alone.

Hells, his own tribe likely possessed a few cultivators around his level capable of besting him in a friendly spar, including his own siblings, though no one would dare prove it in light of their current circumstances. Of course, he could overwhelm those around his level with pure energy output and resilience in a real battle, but under the points system in a Foundation Stage tournament among his people, he doubted he would even be considered the favorite. A humbling thought. The entity that had been capable of creating that wire of oblivion, of so casually executing a higher-dimensional deity like Epiphany, could not be overcome through a Foundation Stage cultivator relying on brute force and near-endless qi reserves. He needed to be better. He needed to be perfect.

"A copper for your thoughts, son?" said Anand.

Cyril was silent for a moment, trying to piece the right words together. "I am so incredibly small. And, yes, Behemoth is a Titan. But the cosmos are so much larger. The sheer scale of existence is…" He shook his head. "Our world has unfathomable depths that I plan to delve down into. Then, there is the endless void between celestial objects. And even farther beyond our grasp, even grander, there are higher dimensions that make it all look like a grain of sand in the desert."

Or, at least, there were higher dimensions, he thought. But he chose to keep the revelations he had acquired from Epiphany to himself for now. He was in no position to attract the executioner's attention.

"Existential dread, is it?" Anand wrapped an arm around Cyril's shoulder and drew him close. It was a bit awkward--Cyril had grown to nearly seven feet, and his father's arm could barely reach across his broad back--but he let himself be drawn into the embrace. "You don't seem so small to me."

Cyril couldn't help but laugh.

Anand didn't. "I'm serious. What's the point of comparing yourself to the scale of the higher dimensions? Are the higher dimensions your enemy, that you have to be personally larger than all of existence to triumph over them?"

"Not exactly."

"When I was younger, I used to gaze up at the night sky often. I have an inkling of how you feel, Cyril. You can get lost staring at the void. The distances are unfathomable. We are small. There is so much beyond us. As far as I've found out, there are no recorded instances of anyone returning to our world after they depart for the distant heavens. So, yes, we all have to confront who we are. How insignificant we are. That there's always someone faster, stronger, smarter, better looking, more talented. Eh, who gives a shit?"

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Cyril, who had been nodding along with a distant look in his eyes, snapped back to reality at the final declaration. "What?"

Anand smacked his other hand onto Cyril's chest. "What are you saying 'what' for? You think you have to ascend to become the ultimate being within our universe? If not, your life is a pitiful failure? You have to be grander than the void? Well, the void is just emptiness. Vast swathes of nothing, with no purpose beyond separating the celestial objects lest they crash together. But you have a heart, a soul. You have family. Friends. What kind of nonsense comparison are you making, boy? You know what I think?"

The strange speech, as absurd as it was, lightened the burden on Cyril's shoulders with every word. The weight of a universe.

"Tell me," he muttered, his voice soft.

"I think the void, the heavens, the depths of our world...when we look at them, they look back at us. And they feel dread, and envy, and the desire to be like us pathetic little mortals. I'd rather be a mundane, backwoods farmer over some distant, lonesome star burning by itself, no matter how majestic it is. Existing just to exist. Behemoth chose to bond with you, because you have something that it didn't have by itself.

"You're enough, Cyril. Even if Leviathan becomes some tyrant over our world, even if everything is destroyed from it ascending to godhood, it's not your fault. You were simply born. If anything, your mother and I are to blame. You didn't ask to be here, let alone to have the cruel responsibility to reach the pinnacle. All you have to do is live a proud and righteous life. I mean, hells, you don't have to do that either, but try to, at least. Velia would probably be quite ornery if I didn't mention that part. Spare an old man her misguided wrath."

Cyril sighed, though he had to admit, his mood had improved quite a bit. Even the flow of qi through his channels felt energized, as if his worry had turned his spirit sluggish. "I'm the Vessel of Behemoth. Elys needs me. Our people need me."

"Stubborn boy. You're arguing just for the sake of arguing. After such a rousing speech too. Well, if you want to accept that responsibility, that's a bit of a different story." Anand backed away, contemplating his son. "But just remember: you aren't alone."

They fully embraced one another for several moments. The familiar smell of sweat, leather, tobacco, herbs, and metal...damn, he loved his father. Anand patted him on the back after they broke away.

And so, as the ascended the steps to the Library, Cyril had a grin plastered across his face. A lion-headed guardian djinn nodded at them, and the door swung open.

The usually bustling Library had been reduced to a few cultivators lingering among the shelves, none of them below the Nascent Soul Stage. Public access had wisely been blocked off in light of the crippled higher-dimensional entity bound to a sculpted golem within. Though no one seemed to grasp the magnitude of what had actually occurred, they were wise enough to see the fluctuations in reality and tumultuous energies from the event. Clearly, more had happened than Cyril creating a flawed Spirit Sculpture. Even a sudden transcendent breakthrough in the art wouldn't have caused a fraction of the amount of such chaos.

Knowledge qi still flowed throughout the Library, empowering most of the basic functions and allowing a skeleton crew of spirits to protect it. Epiphany's manifestation hadn't completely drained the system, though given that the Beljezan Library had survived ages without visitors prior to his arrival, it was quite resilient.

Barnabas the imp popped into existence, hovering in front of Cyril's face. He was forced to a halt, his radiant smile dimming noticeably.

"Lord Behe---"

Cyril puffed out his cheeks and blew with all of his might, infusing a minor Pressure behind it. The hand-sized imp blasted away, spinning head over tail, breaking through multiple bookshelves before becoming embedded in the wall.

"Oh," Cyril remarked casually, as if he hadn't seen the imp.

Dazed and unsteady, Barnabas extricated himself from the wall and, after a moment of hesitation, floated back over. Cyril inhaled as deep as possible, attempting to infuse Gravity qi behind his intent to pull the imp back toward him, but the damned ability remained outside of his reach.

This time, Barnabas wisely maintained some distance between them. "Er, as I was saying, Lord Behemoth. Prince Cyril. Pleasure to have you back, of course, ignoring such disruptions as last time, which of course was no real inconvenience of any sort."

Cyril puffed his cheeks back up.

Barnabas waved its hands frantically, three-pronged tail going rigid as a blade. "Right, right. On to business. That, uh, Spirit Sculpture in the Crystal Chamber has been wailing this whole time. Gibbering nonsense. Tried to drag a soul into it? Attempted spontaneous spirit creation? None of my business, that. But perhaps I may be of assistance?"

Cyril let his cheeks deflate. "How so?"

"I am quite the sculptor myself, believe it or not--"

"I don't."

"--but I wouldn't presume to be of much help personally. Instead, I have compiled all of our texts on advanced golemancy, sculpting, spirit creation. Anything that may be helpful in, uh, preventing that Sculpture from continuing to constantly scream. Had to seal it behind quite a few arrays and formations, we did."

Anand cut in. "You dabble in sculpting, imp? Here."

He stuck a hand into one of his pockets, then his entire elbow, going deeper than should have been spatially possible. After a minute, he retrieved a chunk of D-grade rose quartz and lobbed it toward Barnabas.

The imp snatched it out of the air, though it was almost its equal in size. "And you are?"

"Anand Taraz. Cyril's father. Now, sculpt that into something. Impress us or get out of our way."

Barnabas looked like he wanted to curse at the man and thought better of it. Instead, he regarded the chunk of quartz for a moment before floating over to a nearby table and setting the material down. He drifted in a circle around the quartz, regarding it like it was an enemy duelist within the ring. The blue-green core within his navel began to churn at an impressive speed.

Anand rubbed his chin, eyes narrowing. "No ordinary imp, this one."

Cyril crossed his arms, but didn't disagree. As obnoxious as Barnabas could be, the Library must have chosen him for a reason. The imp had been the only remaining spirit tending to the building over the ages until Cyril stumbled across it. Though it was hardly the most prestigious location to be stationed at, out of the myriad imps that must have been at the Library's disposal, it had selected this one for the honor.

On top of that, Cyril had infused his own qi into the imp, allowing it to evolve. At least at the time, Cyril's Knowledge qi hadn't been potent enough to transform Barnabas into a low-rank djinn, but the spirit must have been at the peak of imphood.

And so, Barnabas held out his hand, and an appropriately tiny chisel manifested. To Cyril's shock, it looked to be made out of a material extremely similar to Behemoth's divine stone, but a scan from his spiritual senses revealed it was nowhere near that level. Still, he hadn't expected such a thing. And besides…wasn't that his technique? Had infusing Knowledge qi into the imp granted it an Earth affinity?

That certainly warranted further investigation. He added it to his ever-growing list of pursuits.

Cyril found his eyes widening even more as Barnabas went to work on the quartz. The chisel pounded away in a flurry. A series of clinks filled the room like a mad song. Shards of quartz flew everywhere. Barnabas flew around in a blur. Much quicker than Cyril expected, though his eyes were able to follow the minute, precise movements.

And he found himself learning from the absurd little imp. Sublime technique, far beyond his awkward efforts. Flicks of its wrist, precise thrusts of the chisel. Instead of focusing on one section at a time, the imp worked to refine the entire bit of material at once. Angles and curves appeared along the chunk of rose quartz. Cyril couldn't quite make out what Barnabas was sculpting.

Ten seconds passed. Twenty.

Tiny protrusions curved off the top of the quartz. Whole sections had been carved away, leaving only five spindly lengths emerging from the whole. Finally understanding what Barnabas was going for, Cyril couldn't help but bury his face into one of his palms.

A minute later, an exact rose-quartz replica of the imp, chisel included, stood opposite from Barnabas. The damned imp had created its own likeness, though it was around half-size from the necessary loss of material during the sculpting process. And Cyril had to admit it was---

"Quite impressive," Anand muttered. "Come with us."

Unwilling to say anything, Cyril offered a small nod of agreement. Then he turned to the staircase at the end of the first floor, leading up to the Crystal Chamber. Up there, Epiphany was suffering, mind shattered, forced into a grossly imperfect form.

Cyril vowed to fix things. And then, he had a few questions that needed answers.