One With The Abyss

"The otherworlder title is supposed to arrive after the otherworlder spends three weeks in another world."

[You are the dark lord who will bring ruin upon the world as it is known: <+Dark Lord Title>]

[Dark Lord]

[Proof you are the dark lord. Increases affinity with (sapient) non-humans. Induces fear in humans - amount of fear grows with personal infamy]

Abby really loved dropping bombs of knowledge on me.

I didn't really know how to feel about this. 

Should I be sad that I might grow old and die before I see real sunlight again?

Should I feel happy that I have so much more time to train than the people I want revenge on?

In reality I didn't care. My world has changed since coming here... Literally.

I don't view myself as a failure, I can do almost anything I want now with how much power I have. Even my desire for revenge isn't something that encompasses my entire being anymore. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to make those pieces of shit suffer, but that isn't my whole thing anymore, y'know.

I've got other stuff going on too.

Like maybe I'll learn to play an instrument. I always liked listening to my sister when she played the violin. Of course I was always hidden when doing so in order not to get beaten for 'distracting' her, but still.

That brings up a question though...

Now that I can use sound magic, does that mean my soul weapon can absorb instruments since they could technically be used as a weapon, not that I ever really would. Wind magic really isn't my favourite of the bunch and I still needed to deviate light and dark.

"Do you really not care about this!?" Abby yelled, shocking me out of my inane stupor.

"Well... No." I said, checking deep within myself, "It just doesn't seem like a big deal."

Abby just sighed, she seemed to think that this place was weird. Weirder than it should be and it seemed to put her on edge.

"Just calm down and go with the flow, little lady." I said, "Like they say in France: Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"

"No, I do not want to sleep with you." She said, giggling slightly.

"Shit... Is that what that means?" I had said that a lot of people, I really was not good at French, "Fuck."

"Well fine, I'll drop the whole conspiracy thing about the dungeon." Abby said, changing the subject while still giggling.

"Cool, I'm gonna look into my talents a bit before heading deeper into the dungeon." I said, turning primarily to [Dark Lord].

It seemed to me that the talent had quite good synergy with another of my abilities: [Royal Authority].

As such, I think it is time to finally make it useful.

And that I did:

[King of Ruin]

[You were the prophesied lord of darkness, but you are so much more than that. You have vowed to bring all that is to ruin and so you shall, making you the first Monarch of Destruction and none shall stand in your way as you herald this world's end. Exponentially amplifies all growth. Increases affinity with (sapient) non-humans. Your power increases as your number of subordinates increases. Allows users to initiate <Bestowal Ceremony>. Forcibly upgrades <Dark Lord> title]

[Dark Lord] → [King of Ruin]

[Proof that you are the king of Ruin. Increases affinity and respect with (sapient) non-humans. Induces fear in humans - amount of fear grows with personal infamy]

"They really want me to make an army huh." I mutter, though it is looking like that'll be my best option for revenge. The talent did have more words than most though, felt a bit weird about that.

It likely had something to do with the massive piece of exposition at the start.

While having my power increase in relation to the number of my subordinates was interesting, I was more intrigued by the [Bestowal Ceremony], not really understanding what it was. And unfortunately, the talent wouldn't elaborate. 

Even in the sense of getting a general feel of the ability I had no concept of what the ability did. 

I felt that if I wanted to, I could do the ceremony, but I didn't know what it did.

"Any ideas?" I asked Abby.

"Nope, this is a you thing." Abby responded, "But I do feel traces of the abyss within the talent... Well more than usual that is."

(A/N: All talents have traces of abyss due to abyssal system)

I nodded, that seemed... Good?

The abyss was on my side and it made me stronger, so surely being connected to the abyss was a good thing... Maybe.

"Well, I suppose I should make my way down further into the dungeon." I said, finally getting up from the floor.

"Aren't you going to practise more with your skills, I can tell you probably could." Abby said, seemingly a little shocked.

She was kind of right though, I had a general idea of how I could upgrade [Shapeshifting] and turn it into [Formless]; but I wouldn't, at least not yet.

"That'd be pretty boring I think." I said, stretching, "Besides I want to test out my new aura, and my time abilities in combat."

Abby decided that getting used to my new abilities was a good thing and so we continued onto the next floor. The boss was... Gross.

[Eldritch Beholder]

[He sees all, but any who look upon him shall fall in fear and anguish. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you]

"Abyss?" I muttered.

"Not actually." Abby chimed in, "It's just a turn of phrase."

Well it's fine, just gotta kill it like normal; this time I have more abilities at my disposal to do so; though it still doesn't change the fact that this monster is beyond ugly.

From what I can tell, its main body is the giant eye right in the centre; around that are maybe hundreds of smaller eyes that vary in size, while still locking onto me, before I even enter the room.

Following that are pitch black tentacles that extend from its body and writhe around like dying squid; they ooze what seems to be an acidic gel substance all around, that's gonna be a pain.

And where there should be suckers along the tentacles are more eyes.

"Gross." I say as I step into the arena, immediately getting a vision and dodging to the side as a ray of black energy passes me by, "Keep future sight on. Duly noted."

I get ready to start fighting and am instead overwhelmed with a sense of unease; likely another of its abilities.

It has eye-related abilities; like the evil eyes from fantasy and stuff, I reassure myself.

I pretty much understood what this thing was capable of and began my counter attack.

I created a replicated sword using my soul weapon and charged forwards, cutting through tentacles and avoiding the acid that was sprayed at me along with the rays of energy that literally every single eye could shoot.

As the distance between us dwindled the monster became much more devious, tentacles began coiling together in an effort to prevent me from cutting; but this did not stop me for even a moment. 

Energy rose from within me and eclipsed the entirety of my blade, it appeared like black fire that gave off no heat, raging around the weapon from my lack of control, but still much more dangerous than it was before. It was a magnificent sight, appearing in earnest like a torrent of pitch black fire, surrounding the sword, but around the fire flickers of purple electricity shot up and down, running around it like dancers in a parade.

As my aura made contact with the creature, it shrieked in pain with it being cut through.

I would need to refine my aura for sure, but for now it was good enough to get the job done. After it was clear my aura would suffice I tried mixing things up, attempting to increase the flow of time around one of the tentacles, only for it to remain practically unchanged and smash me into a wall and burn my stomach with its toxic ooze.

"What the hell was that!? Why didn't it age?" I called out, coughing up blood.

"Obviously it didn't, it'll have resisted the effect." Abby said, as though this was obvious, "What did you expect?"

"Well clearly I didn't expect it to resist." I shouted back, angry she didn't tell me about this.

"Oh, I just figured you knew."

"Fine, I'll explain. It's the soul again."

"I thought that was just matter manipulation?" I said, jumping out of the way of a ray attack; future vision was beyond helpful.

"Not really, but kind of." She said, "Look you already know that you can tell ages from souls as it is very hard to alter a soul, well the same can be said with time magic."

"You can't easily age someone to death as their soul, which is tethered to their body, doesn't age with them. Time magic doesn't affect the soul."

"As such it's like a spring, the body kind of jumps back into place after you age it."

"So, I can't just age people to death?" I ask, feeling slightly disappointed. I had images in my head of being an imposing figure who silently watched as my enemies aged into dust in front of me.

How badass would that have been!?

"Very badass, and you still can do that!" Abby exclaimed, making me once again excited.

"Like I said, the best analogy is spring. Pull spring and it'll reset back into place; but pull it hard enough and it'll permanently change."

The logic was... Simple enough. From what I gathered, the soul didn't grant immunity to artificial ageing, but it did all for resistance against it.

I jumped around another ray, using wind magic to lighten myself and hop along the tentacles desperately trying to kill me.

"Anything else I missed about my talents?" I ask, mostly sarcastically.

"Well, you've probably already unlocked sun and moon magic." She said, causing me to lose balance and fall to the ground. I just barely dodged another ray straight at my face.

"Dammit. Explain!" I'm starting to become really tired of being left out of the loop.

"Oh come on this one's easy, you should've figured it out on your own. Sun and moon? Really?" She mocked.

I didn't understand what she was referring to.

"The sun is a big ball of fire and gases that just so happens to emit light. And the moon is a giant rock that reflect light; nothing to do with darkness." She said in a condescending tone, "They barely have anything to do with the elements they are derived from. Sun and moon magic are named weirdly and make more sense to be called day and night magic, but whatever."

I sigh as what she said does make sense and I was struggling on how to make my magics 'sun' and 'moon' related.

"So, what actually are they then?" I ask, cutting through another tentacle.

(A/N: Sorry if you wanted a real fight here, but come on. With the abilities she has how could she be pressed to be a big eye-ball)

"They're just brighter and darker than the originals." She said simply.

Oh my god! I ran my mind back and realised that my magics had just changed slightly. The black of dark magic became deeper and more physical and light magic could more easily be used as a lazer!

"They did change!" I yelled, ramming my sword through a set of tentacles coiled into a drill that had tried to run through my chest.

"I need some goddamn book to tell me this shit." I mutter as my aura slices through the tentacle drill and I transform my flesh hand into pure metal in order to grasp on the the writhing mass of tentacles by its now cut off stump, protecting myself from the acid and gaining yet another talent.

Once done I push myself away to take a gander at the spoils.

[He of Many eyes]

[Grants massively improved eye-sight, allows for instantaneous growth of more eyes to see in any direction]

"Pretty useless, considering my abilities." Maybe the monster understands what happened as the attacks become much more dangerous, but thankfully I've been using this time to practise my time manipulation.

Not only was I burning mana to speed up my reactions, but I was also utilising future sight and probability control in order to ensure I would never be hit; it was working a treat, if a little draining.

"Though, it may have some use." I said, looking over to my sensory ability [Soul Sense].

In reality [Soul Sense] had tons of other sensory abilities within it, [Seismic Sense] from one of the cave-like floors, [Life Sense] which was just an inferior [Soul Sense]; I'm pretty sure it included a [Heat Sense] function should I need it. Point being, [Soul Sense] seemed to be the peak of sensory abilities, so what would happen with the inclusion of [He of Many Eyes]? 

The answer was simple:

[All-Sight]

[See all, detect all. There is nothing that cannot be witnessed by you, nor shall there ever be]

The change was... Amazing.

I could completely alter how I 'saw' things. I could look all around the room, my eyes basically served no purpose, and yet I could still see with them at the same time as looking directly behind me.

Obviously there was a range that I could not go further than, but such was a trifling thing when I could get a clear birds-eye-view of an entire battlefield.

Though getting used to it at first was hard, resulting in a few hits from the ray attacks blasting holes in my body. Nothing [Healing Factor] couldn't fix of course and there was no better teacher than life threatening combat.

"Time to put an end to this I suppose..." I mutter, I had gotten everything I wanted from this fight.

I was able to practise making use of my time abilities, I got to check out my aura and finally a new and vastly improved talent coming from an enemy in the dungeon. I was quite glad for [King of Ruin]] obviously as it clearly assisted in my learning speed, definitely improving how quickly I adapted to [All-Sight].

I quickly spread threads along the dungeon floor, imbuing them with energy to stop them being shot to pieces and ran along the nearly invisible wires to get to the boss. 

Like I was levitating as I stood upon the wire, and flying as I propelled myself forward on them; [All-Sight] showed yet another great aspect of its abilities as it allowed me to 'zoom' and see all the thread clearly regardless of the fact that I had made it so thin it was invisible.

I had a lot of fun jumping around and watching the beholder cut itself to bits on the wire it couldn't even see.

"Pretty pathetic for something with so many eyes." I laughed, Abby laughed along and the beholder became enraged, clearly more intelligent than I gave it credit for, "Time for the coup de grace!"

I yell and jump backwards, flipping over the barrage of tentacles and rays. My body covering itself in black fire and purple sparks, falling down under the assault of an enraged creature until I pierced straight through its eye like a loose thread straight through the eye of the smallest needle; perfection.

And so, the beast was slain and I gathered its drops as I had learnt to love.

Other than the mana stone and a green, tentacly key there was one other item, seemingly someone listening in on me as I fought:

[Encyclopedic Record of Magic and its Principles]

[A verified and unbiased exploration into the complexities of magic, including the primary elements, their deviations and many composite elements]

Literally just what I wanted as it taught me many of the composite and deviated elements.

I had everything but as I opened the chest it seemed as though the dungeon was now reading my mind as I pulled out the only item inside:

[Mélodie surnaturelle]

[A violin created by a man driven mad by incomprehensible, yet his final work remains a perfect creation]

"I was considering an instrument, but not yet..." I muttered.

Well, whatever. It does give me an opportunity to see if my hunch was right; and it was.

My soul weapon happily devoured both the violin and bow together, now I could freely pull it out whenever I wanted.

"Onwards and downwards." I cheered.

I was ready to head deeper, all while refining my abilities and creating a clear mental image of how to activate [Formless], soon enough a third gate would be open; maybe even more than that…