"What the hell?"
Lumian froze, his breath catching in his throat as the warmth rippled through his spine.
Considering the fact he currently had his pants down, he embarrassingly pulled it up before running to the living room.
"Why now?" he muttered, voice uneven. "Why did the Seer potion finish digesting all of a sudden?"
"Did something I did in the past month trigger something that had to do with my actions of a Seer?
Lumian pondered in thought as he raised his hand to touch his chin while focusing on the floor.
. . .
"The cat??? No, that doesn't have to do with anything...."
"The blacksmith?? That can't be it either, considering the fact I already helped him...."
"The woman with the baby??? Possibly.... but I felt the potion digest already after I helped her....."
Suddenly Lumian's mind focused on the man with the burly beard who had accused him of being a scammer a month ago.
"What is it him??? Did he finally go to the doctor????"
The thought lingered for a moment before he dismissed it with a snort.
"Nah, he reminds me of my friend's ex-father. The guy wouldn't listen to you even if you took a mallet and swung it on his head."
He exhaled as he leaned his head towards the ceiling. His thoughts chased themselves in circles.
Lumian thought about a few other subjects from the past month but couldn't accurately determine which one could have led to such a profound digestion.
Finally, he gave a half-hearted shrug.
"Eh, who cares. My Seer potion fully digested so I don't have to worry about that right now."
Despite the confusion, a grin broke across his face.
He glanced around the room, then whispered to himself:
"Alright shall I do this again?"
. . .
In truth, over the past month, Lumian had been more reckless than even he admitted aloud.
He'd returned to the mysterious realm above the grey fog, Sefirah Castle, more times than he could count. Each time, hoping for a revelation.
Every time, thought, he would come up with nothing but empty space and grey fog.
Weirdly... no matter how far he wandered, no matter which path he took, the potions that were the only objects present there..... always hovered in the direction he took.
Of course, Lumian never drank the other potions in caution. He'd never dared to touch it. Not really. The idea of mixing pathways made his skin crawl. After all, he might become an eldritch horror if he attempted to drink another potion before his previous one was even complete.
Still...
"Why didn't anyone ever try using that? I mean..." Lumian muttered as he began preparing for the ritual. "Technically, if you fed the wrong potion to someone else, it could mess up their sequence, right? Maybe even kill or... disrupt a higher-level Beyonder."
He paused, shaking his head.
"No. That's stupid. That's how you get a city eaten by an abomination with too many mouths."
. . .
With that thought in mind Lumian turned his attention towards doing the ritual,
Then, taking four slow steps counter-clockwise, he murmured the invocation in his mind:
The Immortal Lord of Heaven and Earth... for blessings...
His voice was low and reverent as he finished the chant and completed the final step.
The air twisted. The world bent.
And in a blink, Lumian found himself standing in a different realm.
. . .
Sefirah Castle was just as he remembered.
An endless expanse of nothingness, silent and still. And there, floating in the void, were the two potions. Exactly where he had seen them the last time.
Lumian stepped forward, eyes scanning his surroundings out of habit, searching for even the subtlest changes. None. Just the same oppressive quiet and the eerie stillness of this space.
He came to a stop before the two potions, gaze flickering between them as he began to ponder.
"Now… let's see… Which one should I consume?"
The beaker on the left which was pink in appearance and contained a black, viscous bubbling concoctions that resembled traditional herbs.
The beaker on the right which was a dark, deep blue. which bubbled a bit less than the other one.
".... Marauder... or ... Apprentice...."
To be honest, in any other situation, he would've chosen Apprentice. Who wouldn't want to pass through walls like Obito?
But right now, his body was pathetically weak, despite the month of training he had forced himself through. He was still just a late eight-year-old boy after all. Sure, he had chakra, but that didn't mean he could dropkick a Shinobi anytime soon.
So, Lumian was left with the choice of consuming the left potion.
Maurader.
With that final thought, Lumian took a deep breath to brace himself.
Then, with a sharp motion, he seized the left potion and downed it like a shot of harsh liquor.
Gulp.
Quickly, the contents of the potion soon disappeared through Lumian's mouth and into his stomach.
The flask he was also holding, vanished as well.
Lumian held his breath in anticipation of something happening.
After a few moments, he let out a sigh of relief.
" ..... Sigh..... That's a relief.... I knew I wouldn't have any visio-"
Lumian blacked out.
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He found himself in a small basement.
Books lined the shelves that clung to the walls, filled with strange objects.
Weird mechanisms, odd stones, and things that seemed to move when not directly observed.
In the center of the room stood two figures.
An old man dressed in black scholarly robes, the kind a librarian or academic might wear.
The other, younger, perhaps in his teens, wore a buttoned white shirt and black trousers.
"Grandpa! I brought the ingredients you told me to get!"
The elder smiled warmly.
"Good job, Jimmy. Come here."
He turned and walked toward the corner of the room, where a large iron cauldron sat beneath a burner.
Nearby, a table held various laboratory tools: test tubes, pipettes, scales, even a centrifuge.
The elder flipped a switch, and a low *whoosh* echoed through the basement as the fire ignited under the cauldron.
Then he turned his attention towards the young man.
"First, pour in the 100 milliliters of blood you collected."
Jimmy nodded and pulled a capped vial from his pocket, uncorking it and carefully tipping the contents into the cauldron. The blood began to boil immediately, bubbling like it was alive.
"Good. Now, the nail fragments."
"One… two… three…" Jimmy counted softly, dropping them in one at a time. The blood hissed each time.
"Now the sapphire."
From another pocket, Jimmy retrieved a perfectly round blue gem. He dropped it in, and the moment it hit the liquid, the mixture sizzled violently. The surface turned reflective and rippled as though made of mercury.
"Ten grams of verbena powder."
Jimmy uncapped a small bottle and sprinkled in the fine green dust. The potion thickened slightly as the remaining solids fully dissolved.
The elder clasped his hands behind his back.
"Now comes the most important part. Add the body of a blood-specked black mosquito."
Jimmy reached into another another pocket and withdrew a tiny case. Inside was a dry, shriveled mosquito with crimson markings on its thorax. He dropped it in.
The potion immediately began to shift color, morphing from red to a deep, unsettling pink.
"And lastly," the elder said, his voice grave, "the core of a Candle Devourer."
Jimmy reached into his other other other pocket and produced a deformed lump, an organ of sorts, pulsating faintly even in death. He dropped it in, and the potion roared. It turned pitch-black, the cauldron rattling slightly under the force of the reaction.
The elder swiftly retrieved a crystal bottle and siphoned the liquid from the cauldron into it. Once sealed, the black fluid gave off a soft, pulsing light.
The old man turned, offering the bottle.
"Your potion is complete. Drink this..... and you'll enter the world of Beyonders."
Eyes wide with anticipation, Jimmy took the bottle and drank it in one motion, like a child gulping down juice.
Crash!
The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the floor.
"G–Grandpa! I can feel it! So this… this is the power of a Marauder!"
He burst into laughter, spinning, hopping. "I can feel everything moving!"
Jimmy laughed in joy as he jumped on his feet.
The elder nodded with satisfaction.
"Congratulations, Jimmy."
Then, without warning, he reached into his coat and pulled out an object.
A crystal monocle.
He placed it over his eye and smiled silently.
Jimmy froze, confused.
"...Grandpa…?"
But his expression soon melted into the same warm smile.
Then, slowly, he reached into his own pocket... and drew out a crystal monocle identical to the old man's.
He placed it over his right eye.
That was all Lumian saw before the vision ended.
. . .
. . .
. . .
However… even though Lumian had left the vision…
…it didn't end.
The image lingered.
The basement remained, quiet and dimly lit by the flickering burner under the cauldron.
Jimmy and his grandfather stood still for a moment, their smiles frozen.
Then... slowly, unnaturally.... they turned their heads.
Their eyes locked onto the corner of the room.
The exact spot where Lumian had been watching from.
They silently stared for a moment.
And smiled in knowing.
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*Gasp*
Lumian woke up with a gasp as he sat up from where he was laying.
Before he could think about anything, he felt profound changes in his body.
The abilities of the Marauder potion.
. . .
. . .
. . .
(Author's note:
The abilities of a Marauder are the following:
Agile Hands: Marauders possess extremely dexterous hands, which are even more improved than the general enhancements given to the rest of their body. With these hands they have very flexible fingers and wrists with extremely good strength in gripping.
Superior Observation: Upon advancement, Marauders have an intuition of and are able to directly see where valuable items are within a 10 meter range. They can also sense if something inside, for example, a drawer, is valuable or not.
Physical Enhancement: After advancing, Marauders possess a powerful body, granting them an enhanced agility, dexterity, and strength. With these enhancement, Marauders have powerful coordination and near-perfect acrobatic skills and talent in throwing objects.
The skills of an acrobat can allow them to easily scale buildings and perform multiple backflips, front flips, side flips, you name it.
Theft (Stealing): All the other previous abilities, whether it be Superior Observation or their Physical Enhancement, serve to make the Marauder's core skill of Stealing more potent. This means that they can easily Steal items from a target's pockets without being detected.
Combat Proficiency: They are good at using short weapons, such as daggers and short swords... or even Shuriken's and Kunai's.
. . .
. . .
. . .
The abilities of the Marauder potion made themselves known in Lumian's mind.
He sighed, allowing the knowledge to sink in, then blinked slowly as his body responded to the change. The fatigue from earlier was gone.
With a grin, Lumian jumped up from the ground.... and immediately launched into a sequence of fluid, acrobatic flips. Forward, backward, sideways and ended in a triple somersault that would've made an Olympic gymnast weep in jealousy.
"Damn! I feel great! No more cracking back and stressed limbs!"
Lumian laughed in joy as he continued running around the place doing acts that would certainly give up a gold medal in the olympics.
"Damn! I feel great! No more cracking joints and noodle limbs!"
He laughed as he ran laps around the space, springing off the floor and cartwheeling through the air, completely liberated from his earlier stiffness.
Eventually, he collapsed to the ground, panting with exhaustion but still smiling like a lunatic.
. . .
…Until that smile faltered.
A rogue thought crept into his head, uninvited.
"Come to think of it… why the hell am I getting visions in the first place?"
He sat up slowly, brow furrowed.
"I got visions of Klein after consuming the Seer potion... and visions of some guy named Jimmy after consuming the Marauder potion...
No wait, not Jimmy... Amon....."
The name came unbidden. It should have alarmed him.
But it didn't.
Weirdly, Lumian didn't feel any horror at the realization.
It was replaced by the feeling of being elated from drinking the Marauder potion instead.
"No matter how you look at it, this situation is definitely weird..."
He paused, thinking hard, sifting through memory fragments and logic threads, trying to tug at the inconsistency.
…...Then dismissed it with a shrug.
"Eh, probably something to do with why I'm not feeling any corruption. What did those Chinese cultivation novels call it again back on Earth? My golden finger?"
He chuckled to himself and stood up, brushing imaginary dust from his clothes.
"Guy's going to be real surprised when he sees me tomorrow morning."
He cast one final glance at the last floating potion in the endless void: the Apprentice potion.
Then Lumian reached out to a thread of connection deep within himself, and vanished from the grey world in a ripple of distorted space.
Behind him, the Apprentice potion remained.
Quietly bubbling as it waited..... for him to return....
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(Author's note:
Marauder is a go baby!!!!!!
As always make sure to leave a review on the book..... and give me all your power stones!!!
I mean (Wink) .... wouldn't it be great (Wink) .... if (Wink) ... you know (Wink) .... I make it..... (Wink),,,,,, onto the top rankings....?
Thank you! )