Chapter 4


    [You have opted to keep Blessing of the Crow, Tier 1, as a permanent ability.]


    *BOOM*


    The shock wave that radiated throughout his body was like a thunderstrike to his soul, and he fell to the ground gasping for air with iprehension while his innards felt like they were violently rearranging themselves. His eyes went wide and bloodshot as green, ck, and crimson lights illuminated across his skin in strange patterns before shimmering away to present elsewhere—causing burning sensations wherever they went.


    His eyes rolled back into his head, and everything went ck as his body spasmed, but from somewhere deep inside him…his consciousness began to emerge again.Only it wasn’t…it wasn’t aware of his surroundings. Rather, it was aware of who he was as a person…of his desires and the reasons for having them. It was almost as if he was in a meditative state, and all the pain from his body rapidly disappeared as his senses dulled to make way for this new wave of inner sensation.


    Then, from somewhere within the jumbled thoughts and chaotic disorder of the rampaging energies running through his body…a glowing sensation of warmth began to emerge.


    He saw them now—the green, crimson, and ck lights. They were digging through his thoughts, tearing at them only to piece the thoughts back together one by one until the lights sensed this core.


    It was the core of his soul.


    The lights began swimming through the jumbled chaos to get to it. He watched as they surged forward, clinging to one another and then umting their energy into one mix and match of a swirling vortex as it came face-to-face with the inner ball of energy Riven’s body contained.


    </a>Gently, ever so gently, the vortex reached out…and touched the essence of who and what Riven was as a being.


    Instantly the connection became solid as tendrils of that bright orb stitched themselves to the vortex of darker power until it was able to stabilize the vortex—calming it into a slower-moving pool of light that exchanged energies with the core over time.


    [You are now permanently oriented toward the Unholy Pir. You may not bind to any other Foundation Pir, but you may now specialize in subpirs rted to the Unholy Foundation Pir.]


    [System Message: Congrattions on your acquisition of a Foundation Pir and the first step on the path toward greatness. As a newly acquainted citizen to Elysium’s multiverse, it is pressing that you understand the basics. There are six Foundation Pirs of power with which you may choose to align yourself in striving for the top, each with their own major subpirs. In turn, each of these major subpirs has its own innumerable expansions that lead down pathways to power through insight to the Dao. The foundational pirs and their major subpirs are as follows:


    <span ss="bno">? The Unholy Foundation Pir, with the major subpirs of Blood, Shadow, Death, Infernal, Depravity, and Chaos.


    <span ss="bno">? The Holy Foundation Pir, with the major subpirs of Light, Heaven, Grace, Moon, Sun, and Judgment.


    <span ss="bno">? The Fae Foundation Pir, with the major subpirs of Volcano, Storm, Ocean, cial, Swamp, and Forest.


    <span ss="bno">? The Archaic Foundation Pir, with the major subpirs of Arcane, Void, Metal, Illusion, Alteration, and Time.


    <span ss="bno">? The Harmony Foundation Pir, with the major subpirs of Body, Mind, Primal, Chi, Karma, and Zodiac.


    <span ss="bno">? The Machine Foundation Pir, with the major subpirs of Hacking, Armaments, Integration, Mecha, Interweb, and Sci-Tech.


    Your soul has been altered to properly utilize Unholy magics, miracles, and martial arts. You merely need to learn how to acquire such powers now. However, you will be forever barred from any of the Holy, Fae, Archaic, Harmony, or Machine Foundational Pir categories and their subpirs regardless ofplete understanding or not—due to the changes your soul has undergone. Please note that although some abilities youe across will have only the Unholy </a>Pir requirement, their major subpirs and further specialized pirs may require a deeper understanding of their own attributes prior to utilizing the specialty types.]


    [Dao advancement is partially locked until the pretutorial trials and the tutorial trials have beenpleted.]


    The vision ended as abruptly as it’de, and Riven found himself gasping when his senses returned.


    Scrambling to his knees, he looked around—still struggling to breathe properly as his heart went wild at the sudden and impulsive rage that’d taken ce within his body and mind. But it was done now…and he seemed to be all right, without any bad side effects.


    Riven nodded with a small grin on his face, pleased with the oue and having gone back on a gut instinct to find this statue. He felt like he’d downed three energy drinks simultaneously—and his body even flickered slightly with small yet noticeable currents of red electricity that asionally erupted from his pores.


    “Thanks, crowdy. I owe you one.”


    Riven gave the statue an awkward thumbs-up before heading down the hallway straight ahead like he’d originally intended to do. He began to jog, feeling the energy lighting up across his skin and spurring him on—and then he began to sprint. He went fast, then faster—sparks of red lightning surging in abundance across his skin the more he exerted himself. Despite how much he ran, Riven found that he wasn’t even beginning to break a sweat. To his amazement, he was also running way, <span ss="italic">way faster than he’d ever originally been able to run. It was about twice the speed of his old all-out sprint. It would have been more than enough to very easily outsprint many of the collegiate sprinters he used to watch on TV.


    Fuck, yes. This was more like it!


    His body failed to tire as the blessing’s power coursed through him. It brought about the question of what a “tier” was. But for now, he was too involved in the moment to care about it much. Of all the questions on his mind, this was one of the ones that least concerned him given his current situation.


    For a short time, as the stone walls and mounted torches rushed past at high speed and the cool air brushed past him as he traversed thebyrinth, he forgot about all the other bullshit that’d clouded his recent events. The disappearance of his parents years ago, the introduction of the new world, the confusing trials he was part of—it all faded away as he was caught up in the thrill of his newfound power.


    Until he tripped and fell t on his face halfway through a turn that was just a little too tight for his own good.


    *WHAM*


    </a>Cursing and wiping his bloodied nose, he groaned a bit and stood up—only to realize he was at yet another crossroads. This time, however, as he examined the passages in detail, he got no reward for doing so. Nor was there any sign to clue him in which way to traverse. But…as he chose the rightmost passage that led upward through a flight of stairs and then dropped back down through a hole in the floor into yet another hallway—he found himself staring at a door.


    It was old, carved out of marble, and very out of ce given the colors of the rest of thebyrinth thus far. A single, smooth door handle of a medieval make sat at chest level, and with a shrug, he pulled it open. He hadn’t seen any reason why not to.


    That, he found out, was a mistake. At least ording to his nostrils.


    A current of foul wind, heavy with the stench of the dead, pulled him in—sucking him inside like the hand of an angry god hade to grab him—only to m the door behind as he fell into a pit of dried-up, indistinguishable corpses and innumerable statues…


    There <span ss="italic">were two familiar statues, actually. There, on the floor in front of him in the flickering light of the torches…were two people he recognized from the group who’d made it to the top of the pyramid. An old man and a slightly younger woman—both turned to stone. Both missing their eyes and tongues…both having wed bloody handprints into the back of the door immediately behind him. Some of their fingers were missing, and many of their toes were gone as well. Their faces were set into a silent scream, and it was probably one of the most horrifying things he’d everid eyes on.


    “Don’t be so dramatic with your gawking…” A deep and feminine hiss echoed out from behind him and farther into the room. “They just didn’t have what it takes… You may not share their fate if you y my game properly… Maybe…”


    Riven found that his jaw had been opened without him realizing it, and he shut it before slowly turning his head to look farther in—past the piles of dried corpses—past the two stone ones—and toward a…a medusa?


    He cocked an eyebrow, curiously inspecting the scaled half snake, half woman figure that sat coiled upon an elevated stone tform in the center of a rectangr room. The torches here were far brighter, warmer, and even her smile seemed inviting. She was what he would consider beautiful, with the exception ofcking legs, but she was not hard to look at. The snakes that made up her hair were a bright green, her eyes glinted gold, and she wore no clothes as she sat coiled around her serpentine lower half with a sly smile.


    Despite the eyeballs and tongues lying there on a te in front of her while she tapped her wed fingers on a ss table with a…with a chessboard?


    “Sit…” she invited, motioning to a spot across from her on the opposite side of the table with two of her slender fingers. Immediately, a shoddy wooden chair materialized out of thin air to descend from a foot above the ground, gently touching down.


    </a>He kept his eyebrows raised, slowlying to his feet and hesitantly walking over to the table while eyeing the chessboard. Then he nced down to the chair, and then to her again where she remained smiling with wicked white fangs bared his way under beautiful golden eyes—eyes that he specifically avoided meeting. “You want me to y you in a game of chess?”


    She didn’t reply, merely waiting for him to sit as the snakes of her hair aggressively hissed and snapped at him. The way she looked at him gave him the feeling that he shouldn’t trust her—screamed at him not to trust her—and his base instinct was to run… Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go. The way out had been sealed already, and he saw no other door beyond the piled, withered corpses of victims long dead.


    Other than the chessboard, next to the te with the eyeballs and tongues was a long, slender knife made from silver that was coated in blood down to the handle. The te also had an odd, out-of-ce set of words along the white ceramic rim, and the center of the te acted as a mirror in the middle.


    “Chess…is truly a game of wit…” the medusa hissed, her long green snakes shifting in unison as they looked him over with the asional baring of fangs. Her slender fingers came down to the board, putting the tip of one finger on one of the splendidly carved wooden rooks and then gesturing to the other pieces. “White or ck?”


    His eyes narrowed. It’d been a long time since he’d yed chess, but his father had made it a habit when he’d still been around. “White.”