Depthless Hunger

Chapter 4: Spiritual Sight

A small number of candidates gathered within the shrine while the central pool began to glow with mana. There were several warriors, all veteran hunters, who Kai guessed were there to keep order or rescue the injured. One of them gave healing potions in return for monster cores, and he judged that it was worth paying one of his small cores to heal all the injuries he'd received.

Kai sat down against a wall to rest while the potion did its work. The pain was gradually replaced by a strange tightness in his muscles, as if the potion was gripping his flesh from within. It wasn't pleasant, but it wouldn't get in the way of fighting like the open wounds.

The shrine was just a marble dome above a mana pool, with gates in all four directions and a circular barrier to keep out monsters. It looked like most of the architecture in Monskon City, but he'd never seen a shrine exactly like this. Neither had most of the others who arrived while the pool warmed up, judging from how they gawked at everything.

"Alright, shut up!" The scarred leader bellowed over the chatter until he got their attention. "Everything is ready, so the rest is up to you. If you've endured enough to awaken your mana, all you need to do is dip your face into the bowl. Come on, form a line."

Kai had been ready to jump into the pit of hot blue mana if necessary, but it seemed like it would be easier than that. The warriors began to dip large silver bowls into the pool and set them down on pedestals. Kai watched at first, noting how the candidates stepped up and lowered their face into the bowls. Then he realized that the lines were getting longer and scrambled to get a place.

The ritual was surprisingly not flashy: the mana sparked a little when a person touched it, and their eyes glowed when they rose, but that was it. No columns of mana, no peals of thunder. Actually, the most obvious result was that some of the candidates began looking around wildly, or stumbling a bit and grabbing their eyes. The warriors kept them from falling into the pool but otherwise didn't interfere with their confusion.

As he got closer, Kai shifted his weight repeatedly and tried to swallow, since his mouth had become incredibly dry. There was almost no chance that something would go wrong, but there were a few people who were mana blind. If he failed here...

All too soon, it was his turn. Kai had to wait a little longer as they dipped a new bowl of mana, and suddenly he wished that he had less time. No, he couldn't hesitate. As soon as he could, he bent down over the bowl and forced his head into the watery mana.

The power burned into his eyes and instantly shot through his head, searing paths into his mind. Kai pulled back with a gasp, nearly inhaling a lungful of the mana. He had been determined that he wouldn't stumble around like the others, but he still found himself reeling as the world came alive with new lights and colors.

At first it was overwhelming: so many strange symbols burned into his mind that he couldn't keep up. Based on the stories of hunters, he had expected to see words floating in the air. This was far more of a sensation, an awareness that was a little like vision except in another sense not at all. The language he had simply wasn't up to the task of describing it. Apparently the hunters hadn't been lying when they said you had to experience it for yourself.

When he tried to read the sensations, all he got was strange impressions of capacities that he didn't fully understand:

Name: Kai Granfian

Physique: Mortal

Soul: Mortal

Supremacy: None

Talent Capacity: Unawakened

Elemental Capacity: Unawakened

Essence Capacity: Unawakened

Cultivation Capacity: Unawakened

>

As Kai focused on his training, those symbols faded to embers. Yet even then, his vision flared up with more symbols every time he looked at a person. He avoided staggering around, yet his mind spun.

Kai carefully walked to one of the walls of the shrine, trying not to look at anything. Gunjin had given him suggestions for how to adapt as quickly as possible, so he began working through those. Eyes closed, first. Then carefully look down at himself. He wondered why looking at his own eyelids didn't count, and immediately realized that his intentions mattered.

If he wasn't trying to look for mana, his new spiritual vision wouldn't overwhelm him. It was just like any other sense, except his eyes needed to focus in a way they'd never done before. He managed to make the swarm of symbols go away first, then stared down at his hands, took a deep breath, and tried to read the chaos...

Name: Kai Granfian

Total Power: 6

Unknown Class: ???

Physique Level: G-2

Soul Level: 1

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>

The symbols dissolved into wisps of light, yet he retained a stronger memory of them than he would have with a mere glimpse at a sign. Had he done it right? Kai repeated the process, reading more thoughtfully. He had known that there would be something about an unknown Class, since he had yet to awaken. The "levels" were less familiar to him, and he wasn't certain why there were two. That must be one of the things that Gunjin and the other veterans said he needed more training to understand.

What he hadn't expected at all was a rating for "Total Power." Warriors said that power was an objective part of reality... apparently it really was. But the numbers didn't add up. How much was each piece of his strength worth? If his unknown Class was counted, shouldn't the number be known by process of elimination?

Once he came to grips with the new sense, Kai began looking around at everyone. He started with one of the adult hunters who was running the shrine, and though the sensation was a bit more intense, he was able to comprehend all the symbols on the second try:

Name: ???

Total Power: 79

Warrior Class: 28

Physique Level: F-1

Soul Level: 3

>

Despite himself, Kai grinned. Being able to see mana this way felt good, in a way he hadn't anticipated. But he immediately threw himself into the task of figuring out what any of it actually meant.

The veteran warrior's Soul Level was only a little higher than Kai's, which surprised him. His Physique Level had an entirely higher grade, which Kai already knew about: that was why he could punch the hunters training him for days and never harm them. His highest number, and likely the biggest contributor to his total power, was his Class.

That made sense to Kai: no amount of exercise in the training yards would let someone kick through walls or throw fireballs. But Gunjin had told him that some hunters focused too much on Class, and it could lead to their bodies being weak. If the numbers weren't tricking him in some way, this fighter was ahead of him in every way, but not that far ahead.

That was an experienced warrior. Kai instead looked at the nearest candidate, a young man he didn't know.

Name: ???

Total Power: 2

Unknown Novice Class: ???

Physique Level: G-0

Soul Level: 0

>

That made Kai feel a little better: he might not be able to fight a veteran hunter, but his training showed up even in his spiritual vision. He began looking around at everyone in the room, just soaking in the new sensations. Most likely he looked like an idiot, swinging his head in every direction, but the thrill from using his new sight hadn't faded yet.

His first two samples hadn't been anomalies. The candidates who looked physically out of shape had a "Physique Level" of G-0 and those with an athletic build were several steps higher. Virtually all of the veteran hunters were in the F grade, but he was surprised how many were at F-0 or F-1. If that was the first plateau, some of what he'd heard from veterans made more sense.

"Soul Level" was harder to interpret, other than the veterans universally having higher numbers. He didn't need magical vision to tell him that, unless there was something more to it. What did become clear was that the numbers never quite added up. Could something be wrong with his awakened vision?

Kai looked around for the warrior with all the scars, and what he saw didn't help:

???

>

Nothing. Not symbols for unknown values, like he saw for everyone's new Class, just a chaotic tumble of impossible color. The bottom dropped out of Kai's stomach and he wondered if there was something wrong with him. Was it possible for an awakening to break somehow? Since the visions weren't overwhelming him anymore, Kai hurried over to the oldest veteran.

"Excuse me, sir... I can't seem to see anything about you." Kai tried one more time up close, with no luck. "Should I be able to?"

"Wouldn't expect it." The veteran turned to him and folded his arms. "Your spiritual sight has just been awakened, so it isn't perfect. You may get confused at first, especially if someone is too much stronger than you, or they're from another nation."

"Then... does that mean it's possible to deceive yourself? Could I just... get someone's strength wrong?"

"Heh, like an optical illusion? No, not usually. Maybe with crazy foreign magic, but not the way you mean." The veteran poked him in the temple, a bit too hard. "You're seeing power that's really there, not imagining things. It may not be all as nice and neat as a merchant's ledger, but you're seeing reality."

Kai absorbed that slowly and tried again, but without any better luck. Since the veteran was willing to talk to him, he decided that he might as well try to put his other questions to rest. "Why don't the numbers add up? I've been looking at everyone, and there's always a discrepancy."

"You're already seeing several numbers, eh? That's pretty fast."

"Should I not be?"

"Usually people start with vague impressions, then slowly make out a single number. In a day or two, most of the kids here will be able to make out a person's Class, and there's a lot more after that. It's odd that you can see so much already."

"Well, Gunjin tried to prepare me for the spiritual sight."

"One of Gunjin's brats, huh? Maybe you can train before awakening after all." The veteran shrugged, making his scars ripple over his muscles. "Eventually you'll learn how to compare each trait exactly, if you work at it. Some go up slowly, but each stage is worth a lot. You'll want to focus on your Class first, because it rises quickly. So don't worry too much about all the symbols. Let your head get used to it first."

That was a bit of a relief, but even with the explanation, Kai couldn't squeeze better numbers out of his new vision. "Do I need to stay here until I figure that out?"

"You can leave whenever you want."

"But should I?"

The veteran chuckled and finally unfolded his arms to shoot a thumb over his shoulder at the other candidates. "I'd say you can go as soon as you're not staggering like a drunk. Just be careful with monsters: they don't use mana like we do, so you probably won't have any idea about their strength for a while. What you think is a wimpy alpha rank might actually be a beta. But you can already see enough to make your way to the center."

Someone else walked up with another question and the veteran turned to talk to her, so Kai decided he'd heard enough. There would be time to perfect his spiritual vision when he wasn't engaged in a trial that could decide the rest of his life.

Abruptly he realized that the veteran might have given him a hint: apparently his new spiritual vision could help him find the center in some way. That didn't immediately make sense, so he went out to test it. The barrier around the shrine looked different, symbols throwing themselves at his head along with the normal glow, but he couldn't make much out from them. Instead he examined the skyline while straining his new vision.

Not much back the way he came. A few wisps of symbols that might be monsters or stragglers. But when he looked eastward, toward the theoretical center, he saw... well, he wasn't sure what he saw. It was like a swarm of numbers so tangled up that he couldn't read them. He guessed it was pretty likely that the concentration of power probably meant the center, or at least a point of interest.

So he had his new eyesight and a path to the center. The sun was burning overhead, barely past its noon peak. Not bad.

It was hard to judge the exact distance, but if he hurried he might be able to make it to the center before nightfall. That would mean he'd been fully awakened before the first of the three days was complete. Kai couldn't help but grin. For the first time in his life, things were going his way.

Nothing could stop him now.

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