Chapter 33: Reforming the Body and Planning a Dungeon Dive
{Before this chapter starts I would like you all to know that I am neither a doctor nor a biologist, so please don't take my fantastical take of the body rituals too seriously :D}
When Yuri was about to exit from the same door he entered backstage from, Savos called for him.
"Yuri, can we discuss something?"
"There's no need to ask, master. What do you need?" Savos has been getting increasingly respectful to what was supposed to be his apprentice. Perhaps he was watching the demonstration, or this attitude might be a bit longer in the making.
"Do you remember when we discussed the dive to Labyrinthian?"
"Ah! I do! Are you perhaps ready to settle old scores?" Savos wasn't the only one looking forward to the dive.
"I am, provided you are. You've certainly grown strong enough." Yuri's mana was growing every day, and his knowledge and mastery were growing at the same freakish pace. Hence the respect.
"Can you give me until about 4 days from now? I need the next three days to be spent in absolute seclusion if you can help me with that." Yuri asked.
"Of course! I'll lock off your dais, not that anyone would use it anyway. Come back to me when you are ready, and we can set off."
Yuri gave a nod and TP'd to his room. He walked slowly to his bed before TP'ing back out and stealing a table, purifying it with Light magic, and bringing it to his room in front of his bed. Now he was ready.
This Ritual was almost completely chantless, the intricacy lay in the fact that Yuri would be enchanting his muscle fascicles. Every single one of them. In over 600 muscles there were at least 61 and at most 101 fascicles that held the muscle fibers and their other inner parts. He would be enchanting between 36 to 60 thousand strands. It was the worst repetition punishment in history.
The payoff? His muscles would be able to follow his motions between ethereal and spiritual planes, wouldn't tear under spatial turbulence, would fuse with any element and a number of laws seamlessly, and would be capable of continuous enhancement through training until reaching a limit that is nothing short of divine. He would have to train and fuse life force like a Saiyan for possible millennia, but damn would it be worth it.
His first act was preparation. This ritual is extremely surgical, and he had the perfect weapon to make a sanitary environment.
"Enlightened Isolation"
Casting a spell from Merlin's book, a wave of gold lined with glittery dust expanded in a perfect sphere until it went past his room and his vision turned yellowish. Nothing even related to Shadow like disease or corruption would survive for a moment in here. Yuri even surmised that an early-stage cancer patient might make a full recovery in here within a week.
"Aegis" Yuri used his own codeword to activate his own set of numerous wards ranging from impact dispersal and invasion denial to counterattacking and hostile suppression. It was a literal forcefield chock-full of highly aggressive security measures.
His second act was stripping. He got naked, then he lay on his bed perfectly flat, his arms lying out at an angle beside him with his palms facing up like he was an acupuncture diagram. Yuri took deep breaths. Some part of his mind that still remembered where he came from told him he was absolutely fucking crazy for doing this. Others said it was unnecessary and risky. He cast them aside and let his mind become silent. He made his decision, he wanted to be badass and nobody could stop him. Not even himself. He then cast the following spells in succession.
"Painless" "Vital Suspension" "Bodily Containment" "Inner Strength" "Delay Mental Fatigue" "Outer Focus" "Eye of Arathmoor"
Spells designed to keep him still, stable, and strong while the ritual was ongoing took the first four slots, the last was a spell of a different book. The eye would float beside him and provide an identical vision feed from any angle from which he made the eye float. This would allow him to see the enchantment up close even while his body lies still without any muscles.
His real eyes closed involuntarily and let the remote one stare at his body from above, then he mentally cast the first spell.
What he saw horrified him, and he was grateful for the painless spell. His skin bloomed like the goddess of a bloody spring had unraveled him, he was made witness to every single fiber underneath it like a mesh of red wiring outlining every single curve in his body. Vital Suspension kept him from bleeding out at all save for the inside of his skin, which he now saw laying off the edges of his bed. He saw his eyeballs again since he no longer had a face, though they weren't actually working.
'Wait my blood is purple with blue specks. The mana is continually assimilating since there are blue specks, but not done since the shade is still purple'
Next, the specific muscle groups he had chosen decided to vacate his body like they were rising in concert. One by one, muscle groups divided themselves into fascicles and lifted themselves out of his body like strings before setting themselves on the table in rows. Yuri would be starting with his legs first.
Feet up to his hips, almost ten thousand strands laid themselves on the table in a thick single layer. Yuri used ESP to suspend the ritual book for reference, even though he had read it a hundred times, and began.
He wasn't using etching tools for his enchantment since it wasn't nearly small enough to write that delicately. He was using yet another spell, controlling it through ESP. Ironically enough, Yuri found a method to enchant with extremely tiny lettering in a book about better muscles.
Yuri picked up a 10mm strand and it started glowing in very slight yellow and purple tints from top to bottom. This happened for over 10 minutes before he moved onto the next strand, and the next one. Yuri very quickly calculated that if he took 10 minutes for every strand it could take over a month to complete this.
8 minutes. 7. 5. 3 minutes. 1 minute. 45 Seconds. With each strand he completed, very carefully even, he was speeding up. All the strands he completed would go in his inventory for later rebuilding under slots marked with the exact muscle group they were from. He didn't put them in his inventory in the first place because the unfinished ones might get confusing and he wouldn't know how close he was to completion, no harm done anyway.
Soon he was getting them done in 10 seconds and shaving off more time was extremely difficult. He didn't want to sacrifice quality for speed, so he might just have to delay Savy for one more day.
In 16 hours, he was done with his legs and they were in his inventory while the rest of his legs were a flat puddle with bones and veins in it. He moved on.
Arms, 14 hours, Chest, 10 hours, Abdominal, 8 hours, Back, 16 hours, Cock, 4 hours... He was very careful there, Ass, 2 hours, Scalp, another 2 hours, Neck, another 2 hours. He was done with all the largest ones but still had dozens of smaller groups in between to take care of and he was already past three days. He wasn't physically or even mentally tired, but he was exhausted from this repetition. Luckily, some specific groups demanded a different enchantment, like the muscles around his skull gaining more attention to physical resistance and impact dispersal to protect what was behind it or the leg muscles gaining increased springiness for movement techniques. These were the basics that garnered the least attention alongside spatial and spiritual runes he hardly understood. It excited him to be able to use the works of countless greats across the Omniverse with his Record's authentication.
After another 12 hours of working the smaller groups one by one, Yuri had finished the enchanting on the muscle fascicles but they remained fascicles and had lost the organization of their groups. The last stage came into play.
Yuri let out all his work and floated it into the air with ESP, forming it into the basic shape of a human body before bringing his own body up and hanging it vertically across from the strands. His veins, nervous system, eyeballs, organs, brain, blood, and open skin all looked at the worm-like amalgamation across from it while the Eye of Arathmoor watched from the sidelines.
'Unwound below heaven, bound above all things, take shape and twist, know strength and grip, in beastly and celestial image rearrange. With these feet, thou walk a path untold, with these hands thou carve a path unknown. With these arms, thou lift the weight of all thy struggle with pride unmeasurable. With these legs, thou bear the cost of defying the natural order with wrath unbearable. Those who seek to consume us, let them choke. Those who seek to demean us, let them be brought to heel. For the eternity that our race remained suppressed, let the beasts who hunted us and the Genesis who belittled us never forget the terror of Man. Hail, a new Devourer is born'
When Yuri first read this song of hatred when it was introduced as the necessary binding spell, it was hard not to be emotional. The man who invented this ritual obviously faced a struggle for humanity the likes of which he hasn't seen against foes who sound like they came straight out of a myth.
Yuri didn't relate to, understand, or even much care for the backstory. But the least he could do was spread his ritual among as many humans as he deemed worthy in the future and fucking annihilate anyone who looked down on humanity in the future. Even in text form, it was pretty charismatic...
The one thing he noticed about his muscle groups when they were done forming in his body once again was that his abdominal muscles had gained more yet smaller abs that were shaped more like scales and overlapped each other repeatedly like a salmon ladder. The middle abs he had gone from 6 to 8 while he gained a row of more overlapping scale bundles on each side of his ribs all the way down to his hips. His back gained super-defined and symmetrical beefery; with curved muscle packs sprouting from his neck down to his menacing shoulder blades in an artful but still human shape. It looked like he would sprout wings at any moment.
'Wow, look at my cake'
*Cough*
The shape of his arms and legs largely stayed the same, albeit more twisted together into a weave he didn't understand yet. His entire form grew a bit more streamlined, he was already kind of on the thinner side but now he was compact and not taking up as much space.
That was all Yuri could notice before he let his skin rejoin the rest of him and he healed himself of any residual cuts.
'Haha, I am a Greek god'
Not an imperfection to be found. He looked like a sculpture made by a woman who fell in love with a fallen angel and immediately went to find a block of vanilla-colored marble. How gratifying.
Yuri watched him set himself back down onto the bed gently, then dispelled the eye and passed out immediately.
14 hours later, a long time for an Arch Human, he was awake. It had been a bit over four days since he began the ritual.
He breathed in the fresh air, his wards were still there but the light spell had died less than an hour after he fell asleep. He felt good. Real good. Like he could throw himself out of bed with a lazy flick of his calves.
'Status'
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Status: Yuri Nightingale
Titles: Champion of Akasha
Race: Arch Human
Power: 95
Speed: 95
Perception: 40
Mana: 420
Stamina: 400
Record Points: 8,100
Skills: Mana Construct, Basic Ice Manipulation, Basic Fire Manipulation, Basic Wind Manipulation, Basic Earth Manipulation, Basic Lightning Manipulation, Basic Mana Manipulation, Basic Light Manipulation, Shroud of the Hunter
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'And no wonder. Stamina nearly doubled, Speed and Power did double. I can probably fight a weak dragon here with my bare hands. Labyrinthian is going to get all !@#$% inches of my cock.'
{I've been told to 'show don't tell' when it comes to writing, lmaooo. Insert your own size, kings. NO NOT IN THE COMMENTS}
Yuri had no idea how long he had been asleep. He dispersed his wards and got dressed, only for a perturbed Savos to barge open the door almost immediately afterward when Yuri barely had his pants on.
They stared at each other for a minute, Yuri contemplated murder for a split second. Savos turned around and left without a word. Yuri then heard a voice in his head.
'You are over a day late. Thought I would find a mangled corpse in there... carry on.'
'Should I take comfort in your concern or anger in the fact that you didn't just do this instead of trying to find my body first' Yuri shot back telepathically.
'Hnggghrrnnggg. We will head out tomorrow since you don't seem ready yet and its a bit late. Come to my office when you rise then.'
Savos cut the connection before Yuri could ask why he cleared his throat in a mental conversation.
'Tomorrow it is'
After testing the magical capabilities of his new muscles, Yuri was overjoyed to find that as long as he had a spell active on his skin, he really could fuse elements in his very appendages. His veins supplied the mana and went straight to the outer layer of musculature before letting it burst into flames. Yuri watched his arm turn into an orange blaze before reverting it completely back to normal. He also noticed that it was much safer to just perform a deeper mode of the Armament Skin spell and heat it up to a much higher temperature than he could before. He really could tear armor apart barehanded now.
Yuri was going to try going completely CQC tomorrow. Time to let loose.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
-- Power
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