Congratulations! Ancestral Visions has improved to Beginner 4!

  Weeks had gone by.

  Roland had spent much of that time studying the Pattern that was attached to him like a balloon on a string. More hours went into using Ancestral Visions to gain more information about the Pattern in question. Until he inscribed it, his Cultivation was still on hold.

  He could have tried to reconstruct his original Monstrous Pattern, but nobody in Alamut or Petra had a copy of it and doing it from memory was unlikely to produce a Pristine Configuration. Roland didn’t want to half-ass this. He was going to get everything he had lost, and more.

  So he studied, went into trances, and lived other people’s lives.

  About half of the visions had nothing to do with the Pattern. Raven had warned him that would happen.

  He had watched an orphan in New Amsterdam turn into a dark force of vengeance in an America where magic had been used by colonizers and natives. Seen through the eyes of a woman from a tribe in the steppes who walked into a blizzard and emerged as a Bringer of Death. Roland followed the lives of three different Danse Macabre assassins in three different worlds and times.

  Sometimes, the visions had covered a few hours or even minutes of those lives. Others lasted days, weeks, and even months. He’d seen origin stories and final deaths. Roland had learned something from all of them, but not what he was seeking.

  Out of two dozen Bloodline bearers, nine had been Cultivators. Six of them didn’t use the bizarre five-Dantian Pattern. They either never knew they had it or the Bloodline hadn’t seen fit to gift it to them.

  Three visions dealt with Cultivators with the Pattern. He had even learned its name: the Soul Brand of the Reaper.

  The first one had been an ancient or medieval warrior from a time or place Roland couldn’t identify. By the time the vision began, the man already had the Pattern. The vision had showed the cultivator defeating a full army of Bronze, Steel and Silver adepts, an army that used group formations to make it the match of a peak Gold. The man had slaughtered them all, then flew to their city of origin and caused the death of every firstborn son within its walls.

  It had been disturbing. Roland thought he had gained enough insights to perhaps gain a Technique or two; some of them let the man vanish and teleport around. But other than letting him see the Pattern in action, the vision hadn’t given him any information on how to go about inscribing it.

  Seeing the Pattern wasn’t enough. During the Chapel’s entrance exam, the Dungeon had provided the information needed to get the process right. Even something as simple as where you should begin inscribing the mystic network could make a crucial difference in the results.

  The Imperial Pattern, for example, began at the Middle Dantian and then up to the Head, bypassing the Heart on the first set of lines before doubling back. Do it another way and the ‘circuits’ risked crossing or misaligning.

  And then there was the pattern of the fifth Dantian, which kept appearing and disappearing every few seconds.

  Raven told him of a Cultivator he had known, one with the Death Bringer Bloodline and the Pattern in question. The man had been a Punjabi who had learned his arts in Tibet, in some weird twentieth century alternate history where magic and cultivation had largely replaced technology.

  “He said that the Fifth Dantian existed in the Fourth Dimension, outside the standard three spatial dimensions. Outside spacetime, he would say. In his world, the fifth Dantian was known as the Svarga Dantian. The term means ‘heavenly,’ or ‘otherworldly.’ It exists in a place that touches our reality but is mostly outside of it, which is why it keeps appearing and disappearing as it moves back and forth.”

  “I have no idea how I’m going to write a Pattern around something like that.”

  “One of your visions will have the key.”

  “It woulda been nice if you had guided me to that Pattern in the first place, you know.”

  “Good one, grasshopper,” Raven said with a croaking laugh. “Do you think the Chapel or any of the Sponsors had access to a Pattern that belongs to the Reaper itself?”

  “Is that who created it?”

  “Who knows? My friend believed so. He was the only person I knew who had it. And I met him only after he had gained it.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “I led you to the best Pattern available in the Chapel. And I didn’t know you had access to the other one. It is very well hidden. It took the destruction of your Dantian to reveal it. I think it was hidden in the fourth dimension until the attack revealed it.”

  “Are you saying Ninja girl did me a favor?”

  “No. It was blind luck or the work of a greater power than mine. She could have destroyed your cultivation without uncovering the Dantian, and we would be here, trying to figure out how to rebuild your original Pattern.”

  “Good, because I’m not feeling the least bit grateful. To her. Or to Yang.”

  “Keep watching the Pattern. Even if you can’t use Techniques yet, you still have the Third Eye Dao. Use it. And tomorrow, another vision. Maybe it will be the one.”

  The vision he needed didn’t happen the next day, or the day after. It took another week.

  * * *

  “I have to go there,” Roland said when he sat up from the vision that he had been hoping for.

  “Go where?” Raven asked. “You’ve been under for almost a full day. Want some breakfast?”

  “No. I have to go to the fourth dimension. Or maybe the fifth dimension, because the fourth one is time. Whatever, let’s call it Svarga. That’s what I saw in the vision.”

  “Finally,” the bird said.

  “No kidding. This woman was in a place like the Chapel, or maybe a Shaolin Temple. Her teachers sent her to a weird dimension to form her Pattern. It’s the only way to see the whole thing. And you have to inscribe it while you are there.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “I’ll find someone to help you travel to Svarga while you have your breakfast.”

  It took a bit longer than breakfast. Many mystics in Petra knew about Svarga, but only two of them knew of a means to travel there. Fortunately, one happened to be one of Rashid’s guests, a traveling wise man who had temporarily settled in New Alamut.

  Eight days later, Roland sat in the center of a ritual circle. Around it were Raven, Rashid and a skinny Sufi Fakir who simply called himself the Path Wanderer.

  “You will spend a week calming your mind, young man,” the Fakir had told Roland. “Svarga is a strange place, in ways few can comprehend.”

  Roland agreed, hating the wait. Raven had warned him that staying in the Dread Lands for much longer would start having negative side effects. He was still a living being, after all.

  “If this doesn’t work, you have maybe a month before Death begins to infect your body and spirit,” Raven told him. “This will be the first and last attempt at awakening the hidden Pattern.”

  Roland was sick and tired of being there, so knowing things would end soon made him feel a little better.

  If this didn’t work, he would rewrite the old Pattern and settle for that. Even with a less than Pristine configuration, his advancement would no longer be impeded. Better to go with a less than perfect solution than risk losing everything. He hated the idea, but he had already spent more time there than in the Chapel, and he wanted to go home.

  Raven had assured him that very little time had passed on Earth or even the Dungeon since he’d left, but he still felt a sense of urgency.

  He’d started having nightmares of him returning and finding his Party dead and the world in the middle of Integration. Of Mandy dying. Everybody he knew and cared about, gone.

  It was make it or break it time.

  * * *

  “Let us begin,” Rashid said.

  The former Hashashin wasn’t a specialist in dimensional magic, but his experience in rituals was second to none. He had taken the Fakir’s instructions and used the best resources and skills available to form a perfect platform for Roland’s two-way trip into the Realm of Svarga. As the chanting began and thousands of Mana points poured into the circle, he caught his first glimpses of the fifth dimension.

  At first, nothing made sense. Roland’s superhuman Intelligence and Perception tried to interpret the bizarre inputs and kept failing. Objects shifted forms and positions seemingly at random. Things he couldn’t identify appeared to be right next to him one second and vanish into dots the next.

  Slowly, the environment began to come into focus, but even then it felt like being inside an Escher drawing – angles and directions didn’t make sense to his 3D mind.

  The first recognizable things he saw were clearly from his reality. Fellow visitors or terrified castaways. Most were just random objects, everything from lost socks to an old-timey record player. A cat, sitting serenely on a pillow. A guy in a suit walking back and forth and shaking his head.

  There was a blue Porta-Potty that Roland somehow knew was bigger on the inside. It flew past him, making a weird whooshing sound. Its latch had an ‘Occupied’ sign on it.

  A nude woman with Asian features and short knobby horns on her head held hands with a gigantic three-eyed monster. They performed a slow circle around Roland. The woman was giggling. The alien said something about Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. No idea why. They vanished in a burst of multicolored lights.

  A guy in a lab coat with a wild mane of white hair walked out of a door that appeared out of thin air, gave Roland the finger, and leaped into a trapdoor that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  Got to focus, Roland told himself.

  Reality or illusions, none of the things he saw mattered. If distance meant nothing in Svarga, then what he needed was right next to him, if he wanted it to.

  He visualized the hidden Pattern, and after a while it came into view, complete with the Svarga Dantian, which was now firmly fixed in place, about five inches above his head, wrapped within his aura. All the lines came into perfect focus. It was the moment he had been waiting for.

  Acting as if he had all the time in the world – in Svarga, that was probably true – he began the work. He laid down the lines with precise, calculated motions.

  There was pain, but he effortlessly removed it from his perceptions; in this place, he was literally above such things.

  Once he completed the linework around the floating Dantian, the Pattern began to form by itself, cascading toward the other four Dantians. The process became less a matter of inscribing than of gently guiding the lines into their proper, perfect, pristine destination. No, better than pristine. Angelic.

  In Svarga, Roland’s senses could see in microscopic detail. He set down the Pattern with exquisite care. He discovered that he could add some of himself to the energy lines, giving them their own flourishes. The Pattern became a true work of art, and expression of himself rather than a copy of somebody’s work.

  When he was done and returned to the three-dimensional world, he collapsed in a heap, exhausted and covered with expelled impurities.

  Roland’s smile didn’t waver even after losing consciousness, however.

  He had done it.

  * * *

  You have Inscribed:

  * Soul Brand of the Reaper (Five-Dantian) Cultivation Pattern (Celestial)

  You are a Scion of the Reaper of Lives, of the Death Bringer Bloodline. This is your Cultivation Pattern.

  System Notes:

  * You must be within the System’s area of influence for all bonuses and changes to be properly implemented.

  * The Pattern inscription costs no Essence to form. It is an Heirloom of your Bloodline.

  * Additional information about your Scion Status will not be unlocked until reaching Peak D-Grade and Iron Rank.

  * A new Title has been unlocked but all information and effects will be locked until reaching D-Grade and Iron Rank.

  *As a Dual-Path Ascendant, your Bloodline and Scion Status have upgraded your Class to Reaper Lord (Legendary), effective with subsequent levels.

  * All Pattern and Class bonuses will apply to new levels and stages (beginning at Reaper Lord level 3 and Tin stage 3). All previous modifiers and bonuses will be retained. All Skills, Daos and Techniques will be retained. Return to a System World or local System Pylon before advancing your Class or Cultivation Stage for proper implementation.

  New Class Skill choices will be available at level 5 and 10 at F-Grade, and every 5 levels after reaching E-Grade (additional levels gained during F-Grade will not count toward new Skill gains).

  * This Pattern grants you access to Svarga, the Outer Dimension, which exists outside physical spacetime and even beyond the fabric of other Realms. New Feats and Skills related to the Outer Dimension will be made available as you advance. You may develop a Svarga Affinity after acquiring enough Skills or Feats related to this Concept.

  Bonuses and Gains: At Tin Rank, the Branded Soul of the Reaper grants the following Dantian bonuses:

  Middle Dantian: +3 to every Attribute, +5 free Attribute points, and +25 to Health, Mana and Endurance per stage.

  Heart Dantian: Your Class Core is improved; add +1 to every Attribute per Class level in addition to its normal benefits.

  Head Dantian: +3 to every Attribute and +10 to Health, Mana and Endurance per stage.

  Monster Dantian: +2 to every Attribute, +3 free Attribute points and +10 to Health, Mana and Endurance per stage.

  Svarga Dantian: +4 to Intelligence, Perception and Willpower, and +20 Mana per stage.

  Congratulations! You have forged an Angelic Configuration! You gain 10 Free Attribute points per Stage. All Energy Pool gains from Cultivation Stages are doubled. All Technique effects are increased by 25%.

  Bonuses per Tin Stage (includes Configuration bonuses): +12 to Intelligence, Perception and Willpower, +8 to all other Attributes, +18 free Attribute points, +90 to Health, +120 to Mana, +90 to Endurance.

  TOTAL Bonuses (Includes Titles): +14 to Willpower, +12 to Intelligence and Perception, +10 to Strength, +9 to Constitution, +8 to Dexterity and Charisma, +23 free Attribute points, +100 to Health, +120 to Mana, +90 to Endurance.

  Liabilities: None. Monstrous Dantian liabilities have been smoothed out by the next Pattern.

  Once it is Forged, advancing your Pattern requires 700 Unbound Essence per new Stage (next available stage is Tin 3), which must be woven into the proper shapes through meditation. Once it is forged, you must cycle Mana through it regularly until the Meridians are fully formed.

  “Pretty good,” Raven said in an uncanny Larry David impersonation. “Pretty, pretty, pretty good.”