Mage And Wolf
Chapter 244

Chapter 244: Chapter 244

After breakfast we retire to a room to simply meditate and refresh our minds for the upcoming day. It still feels like we’ve been apart forever, despite having spent the entire day together, and just relaxing in Karl’s arms and mediating is the best thing I can think of right now.

The room is perfect for it. It can go from completely dark to fully daytime lit, with a wide variety of mood lighting colors available. Besides the bed there are recliners, a divan and even soft cushions that rival our mighty beanbag chair for comfort.

That’s where we decide to spend the next few hours. At our level of cultivation, there isn’t as much need to sleep or meditate, a few hours every other day is enough, but I’m just feeling mentally drained for some reason. Like the integration of the Domain into my spirit ocean has sucked up all the excess energy I had.

It’s not a physical thing, as far as I can tell, only a sense of afterlife or cold eternity, but it fits the shrine perfectly. This is the first chance I’ve had to really explore it in a while, so I let my mind wander, acclimatizing itself to the conditions here and letting them sink into my very being.

The copy of the relic is on a pulpit at the front of the shrine, where one might expect a preacher to stand, giving me glimpses of the Death God’s majesty as I approach. Sights of mighty abilities, ending and creating entire worlds, sending the dead back to live again in the world made just for them. The true nature of a divinity that rules death. Not just killing, but every aspect of Death.

As I watch, I see a man begging for time to avenge the wrongs done to him. See his impending death stop as his body is granted Immortality, then watch it warp into a half life filled with blood lust as his darker instincts take over and he worships not the death God, but the Demon gods. The creation of the first vampire.

Then a sure and certain knowledge seeps into my bones. I can do that, it is within my abilities and my rights. To preserve the life of the dying until their death can be sorted on their own terms, even if they turn away from the Goddess and become something they never could have imagined.

These new revelations are changing something inside of me, and I can feel my Domain and Cultivating Core slowly beginning to merge with the indistinct Nascent Soul that was birthed with my ascent to Immortality. The combination of the two empowers it, turning it from a vague feeling into a ghostly apparition within the shrine, the very beginnings of the Origin Soul that becomes a Deity’s Divine Body once it is fully formed and empowered enough to become corporeal.

That’s a bit out of order from what I’ve been told. The core should merge first, then the domain. But it’s absolutely right in my case, I can’t sense any other correct way forward. Perhaps because of the Soul Shrine, every bit of me is already attuned to one single goal and purpose, so there is no need to first empower and fully form the Nascent Soul into an Immortal Soul with my Cultivation Core before giving it purpose and direction with the Domain.

Not much of the Domain is merging, but by core is slowly slipping away, being replaced by the Nascent Soul that is absorbing it and settling in to my Dantian to take its place.

I’ve lost all sense of time, but this isn’t a process that should be disturbed with worldly concerns, I can’t even feel the world outside my body anymore, but I don’t sense any danger or panic through the mental link with Karl, so things must be alright.

As my core slowly dissipates and merges back into me, I can feel the Mate Bond change. It is part of me, of my mortal soul and my body itself, and as the Nascent Soul completely forms and takes over from the Mortal functions of my cultivation, the mate bond is integrated into it as well.

I should have asked Beta John about this effect, what it does to the bond and what it might do to Karl, as we share so much through the link. Power, knowledge, emotion, it’s all part of the bond.

As the newly formed Immortal Soul gains power within me, the relic in the soul shrine also gains power, showing me even more of the intricacies of the barrier that is Death. It’s not just a place for dead souls, though the underworld is a place, but also a change in their state of being. That’s why calling the dead back into their bodies doesn’t usually work to revive those whose souls have moved on, their nature has changed, so you get undead instead.

But that change isn’t permanent. With some knowledge of life, knowledge that the relic contains, you can create new bodies for the souls. Bodies that can be inhabited if you just know how to revert the souls back to their previous state. Reincarnation in the true sense of the word.

By the time I awaken from my mediation, my entire Core had been absorbed into my Immortal Soul, now fully formed and no longer properly called a Nascent Soul. Only a hint of my Domain has merged with it though, enough to tint it permanently with the feeling of the afterlife, but far from enough to change it into the level of an Origin Soul that will solidify into a Divine Body.

Karl is smiling at me when I open my eyes, clearly having felt the wonder and changes I was feeling, even if the link wasn’t open wide enough to let him see what I learned. I was too engrossed in my cultivation to even think of it, plus it might have disrupted a revelation of his own. Even mate Bonded, some things are still a personal journey.