Osamaru

I've been helping a friend with a project today so.... Half Chapter hahahahaha! The second half will be out tomorrow or Friday.

This is the last time we'll be seeing Jonah for a while too. Now that He's on his path and knows what he needs to do, Its time we take a look at the wider world, and see what the some of the other characters we've seen are up to. These won't be intermissions or side stories like the first time they were introduced, but rather longer and more detailed arcs that will allow us to better understand these characters and paint a fuller picture of who they are and what they stand for. 

The first one on our list? Mr. Bobo the Clown!

One Month Later

Pulsing "strings" of mana swirled around Jonah as both he and the creature in front of him stood still as statues. The dim blue light of mana illuminated the area, driving away the darkness, even if only for a few feet. Slowly, the strings began to spin faster and faster, as they drew closer to each other. Soon, they drew so close that they seemed to intertwine and form a string of their own, no thicker than a strand of twine.

The end of the glowing twine began to twist and flail widely about like living things, searching for something. Jonah focused his mind on this string and used his mana to "force" it on the right path. The Mana Twine moved along its directed path and buried itself deep into the creature's head as it stood in a trance.

It wiggled there for a moment, before the whole construct suddenly pulled tight, stretching from the creature's forehead to the middle of Jonah's chest. The string began to glow brighter and brighter to the point Jonah had to close his eyes in pain. When he opened them again, the twine was gone, and the Titanspawn in front of him slumped to the ground in a daze.
A new window then popped into existence.

Body heavy from a sudden wave of exhaustion, Johan gave a mental nod.

Jonah gave a deep sigh and took a look at his status screen; a little over 80% mana to Attune a level 5 creature. He didn't know how this whole thing scaled, but if it kept up at this rate, he shuddered to think how much mana it would take to attune anything stronger than level 9 or 10.

He looked down at his new "minion" with some disgust. The strange half lizard-half dog-like creature was covered in thin, but cracked, flawed and in some places, rotting bone plates. It almost looked like someone had tried to make an armor suit for a dog out of Ivory, but forgot about it for a few dozen years. Coupled with its mangy 'fur' and dull, pale scales around its head, it looked anything but 'healthy'. So much so that Jonah wasn't sure he wouldn't catch anything if he touched it (despite living in a giant snake's stomach for almost a year now).

Despite his reservations, however, he could "feel", even if he couldn't see, his connection to it; that strange, invisible strand of mana linking his very soul with the strange "core" in the creature's head. He instinctively understood that he could issue the creature simple commands, and it would follow them to the best of its limited intelligence. Even more, if he pushed the "connection", he could even take direct control of the creature, seeing and feeling through it as if it was his own body.

Not that he'd ever want to do so, of course.

Still, he focused on that connection, and a new window appeared.

Almost 4 months of trial and error had finally borne fruit. When he'd first started his experiments, Jonah didn't understand what he was doing wrong. Even when he felt "right", the attunement never worked. It felt almost like something was missing, and he had no way of knowing what.

Despite his frustration, however, He pressed on. All of his future plans relied on making this work. It wasn't until recently that he finally made a break-through. The Titanspawn they were pushing out had steadily been getting both stronger and more "complete" with time. Jonah doubted the Titan itself had anything to do with it; as far as he was aware, it was still very much knocked out.

Rather, he theorized that whatever damage had been caused by his attacks, or their loss of control, had been slowly recovering over the past few months. As of right now, anything from level 4 to 8 was spawning more regularly. It was then that his first "attunement" finally succeeded.

The Level 7 that had spawned had almost killed him, despite his cage. When the strange creature, so very unlike the others, had spawned, Jonah had nearly lost his head to a long, bladed tail, when he approached. Glancing up, he could even now see the form of the strange furry Bat-Crocodile like creature hanging from the "ceiling" like a gecko.

A thin, fleshy "wing" membrane stretched from ankle to wrist, and it used it to cover up most of its body in a camouflaging dome like structure. Every now and again, an extremely stretchy and viciously edged tail would shoot from one side of the wing dome and impale a newly spawned Titanspawn, trapped in the cage below it.

He had named the strange creature "Alpha". Maybe not very original, but he felt it fit. More importantly, his connection to Alpha had given him inspiration on what he was missing. Even now, he could feel it, the pulsing wave of mana that was constantly traveling from him to his minion. Remembering his earlier attempts at attuning, Jonah realized he'd felt this same transfer of energy.

However, where Alpha had greedily absorbed this mana pulse, it had felt like his attempts before had "crushed" them. Or maybe "overloaded" was a better term. It was then that he had a Theory. It was all about strength. It wasn't that he was doing something "wrong". Not really. Rather, his mana was simply too "powerful" for the lower level Titanspawn.

It was like trying to shake hands with a mouse; if you weren't careful, you'd just end up hurting them. Unlike in stories, where if you weren't strong enough, you couldn't contract stronger summons, the reverse seemed to apply here. If he was TOO strong, his "attuning" could hurt or even kill the intended target.

Jonah theorized that the opposite might even be possible; that if he tried to contract something much stronger than himself (the Titan for example), that their much more powerful mana might overwhelm and kill him. In the best-case scenario, maybe HE would be the one ending up as the familiar. It was something to be wary of going on.
Still, it had given him information to work with.

Osamaru

Bit of Soilerish World-Building ahead!

This will be explained in story later, but I thought this might help explain a bit about WHAT these new "Friends" are.

Spoiler

So there are 3 main types of "Worlds" in this story; "Planets", "Realms" and "Planes".

- Planets are physical, Celestial bodies (of different forms and makeup) in Physical "real" space. Like it is in our world.

- Realms are Pock or extra-dimensional space that exist outside the Physical "real" space. They can be tiny (dungeons for example) or Massive on the scale of galaxies. The separation here is that they do not take up "real" space and can only be entered through special means or locations. Entire star spanning empires and civilizations can originate and prosper in larger Realms.

- Planes are more "Magical" dimensions of primal and elemental power. Similar to the Elemental Planes that I think most people are familiar with, Planes are less physical and more spirital or mental than Realms and Planets. They are the source of mana and other more "exotic" energies, and are also the homes of elementals and many forms of Summons. The "Sea of Time" that Jonah visited is an example of a Plane, and Planes are a major source of both Prosperity and Calamity for the majority of the 100,000 Galaxies (and the Universe as a whole). 

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