Bonded Summoner

The large door closed behind her, Fhesiah exhaling as she settled her warring mind. From here, there was no turning back. She was on her own as she entered the tower, but this was normal for a cultivator. Your Path was your own, a cultivator’s pursuit of the truth never-ending.

She would either create her core, or die trying.

Of course, she’d be revived…but… it’d be a huge pain in the ass!

Firming her resolve, she stepped onto the waiting platform. Lights filled the glyphs of the circular platform, and she was teleported to a new room–she imagined at the top of the tower.

The heavenly energy within the spherical room was shocking. Never before had she felt so close to the heavens, every breath she took stirring her very soul. Her body yearned to be closer, the pores in her skin opening to draw in every bit of it.

Glyphs along the walls of the room began to light up, and a crystalline pedestal for her core formation materials opened up.

Opening her sack, it was with great pride she placed her three prepared materials onto the pedestal.

The Vial of Celestial Flames, the reward from the Dungeon Raid. This contained flames of primordial origin, fire from a dying star. This would match and fuel her draconic flames–the heavenly flames of Yang.

The Refined Mythril Dragon’s Core – holding the powers of her draconic claws, but infused with the powers of alchemy. Using her internal furnace, over the last few weeks she refined several materials within, making it embody something much closer to her Dao, her path.

Her blood, the energy from the dragon souls, and several alchemical materials were infused to refine this treasure, and it now resembled her closed dragon’s claw–a pill furnace made of her very body.

The Moonfire Emberstone. A small dark stone, it emanated a soft, silver-blue glow of the earthly flame core contained within. Steeped in powerful moonlight Qi, this artifact contained yin energies of the earthly realm.

Amazing second Tier materials all, they contained an echo of an even higher energy within. Using this, she would paint them all with her path, and they would form the cornerstone of her Core.

When Elder Wang and the many other cultivators she helped created their cores, she had needed to draw formations on the walls of the room to guide and transform the energy. This aided them with painting their core with their path, matching the energy they required and making it easier to transform and merge it.

One look at this room, and she could both feel and see it: the energy within was already as perfect as she could perceive, no matter what core she would create.

The scaffolding shown around her spiritual temple matched the glyphs in the room, and it was as if all energies from all paths were contained. A codification of the dao itself, void of any bias. Only something as powerful and complete as the Framework could create such a perfect environment.

Fhesiah imagined that when she began painting the core with her path, her daos, only those that matched her path would light up and assist her, powering the process.

Sitting on the platform, she entered a meditative state. Closing her eyes, her mind drifted until she stood within her spiritual temple.

She swallowed several pills in succession–cultivators were quite the drug addicts, weren’t they? One containing Source energy, which would help her with transforming and enhancing her path to the next level as she formed her core.

Another, was like liquified enlightenment. Her thoughts would be clearer, her mind able to operate faster. The last two, were elite core formation pills. Ones meant to be absorbed to fuel the process with internal energy.

The many inscriptions within her temple grew in brightness, and the energy that suffused her entire body was immense. The lake outside her temple was vast, and the sun and moon were reflected inside her room, the Celestial Mirror of Bastet allowing for both energies to be present.

She took a steadying breath. Her triplicate path would combine the heavenly flames of yang, with the earthly flames of yin. Combining the two energies led to releasing chaos itself, even if her alchemy attuned them to be merged into something more, a small amount of flame that contained it all.

Fhesiah was still missing something: the void. It brought order to the chaos somehow, and it was the glue that held everything together. She had to hope that this strange scaffolding somehow made up for this because she did not have a void material. It was not even a part of her path, so how would that work, anyway?

She didn’t even have a cultivation technique to paint her core with her path, it was a path never walked as a cultivator, as far as she knew. Growing up as a dragon, she had one for her dragon half, and she had on an off chance learned one for her kitsune half. But she certainly didn’t have anything like that for alchemy, let alone all three at once.

It was only thanks to the heaven and earth formation that she could make up for this, that made this all possible in the first place.

While dying wouldn’t be the end, failure would definitely harm her dao heart, her conviction in her path. No matter what, any new path she found would feel lesser somehow, and she would be weaker in the end for it.

But Fate itself seemed to be telling her to go for it. The Divine had likely nudged events, giving her the perfect opposition and enlightenment to temper herself and find her path. The formation and alchemy master, the dragon with a core that would be perfect for her, an enemy which her alchemy and superior flames were necessary for victory.

Even that kitsune painting felt too good to be a random, lucky find. Just like her meeting with the Dusky Sky Sect and the various materials needed for her bloodline, someone was likely skewing events in her favor. Events she was happy to take advantage of.

So it was with conviction in her found path, her family and the divine they all shared, that she triggered Core formation. Filling her three dantians with energy, the process began.

The three materials on the pedestal were infused with energy and they became liquid, and she drew them to surround her middle dantian–the one which held her spiritual temple.

In the sky, she could see the materials wrapping around, like a multicolored cloud. Grunting at the effort, she waved her hand as she guided and began drawing out the formation of heaven and earth using the liquified materials.

She drew the demonic runes that matched her path out of the clouds, creating the formation of energies that mirrored each other. A cultivator normally would be utilizing their cultivation technique, a method of breathing and directing their energies through the meridians in their body.

This would create what might be considered a natural formation, shaping their core to automatically accomplish this with what one might consider matched nature itself.

In a way, drawing her formations could be considered a much more scientific method of accomplishing this.

The transformation of the incoming heavenly energy would restrict and enhance one another, regulate and harmonize as her heavenly energy reactor created something more out of the heavenly energy she drew in from the world as she cultivated and fought.

The process took hours as she drew out her formation. As she was nearing completion, the energies were beginning to build up. The heavenly energy was transformed as it passed through the formations, transforming it to match her path.

Her spiritual temple began to shake as it was bathed in the greater energies contained within the special materials, as well as the massive amounts of energy from her pills. Continuing her task, eventually, the hearth blazed in intensity, drawing in an ungodly amount of energy.

This continued before the surrounding tremors became more intense, and the hearth ripped itself from the wall, alarming her. It rose into the air as if drawn to the central formation, and she felt like she knew what she must do.

Floating it to the center of the heaven and earth formation, she guided it to its proper resetting place in the sky. This mimicked the pill furnace she created, which held a special array that infused all the energy into a spark for a flame–that Sati would consume.

She drew the liquid energy from the dragon core and wrapped it around the hearth, creating a claw around it.

The clawed hearth sat on the edge of her core, and the two energies from her drawn formation began to mix inside. Yin and Yang started to find a sort of equilibrium, and the liquid began to become just a little more solid as the heavenly energy within the nexus chamber was drawn in to fuel the formation of her core.

She was repeating what she created with her Pill Furnace, and lungs. The two formations drew the transformed energies into a central point or array, where they were merged using her daos.

Her Core, the sky, currently looked like a tiny world with two halves, one perpetually noon, and the other nighttime. The eerie glow of the moon cast down on the purple clouds of the liquified Moonfire Emberstone, half of the sky bathed in a blackish-purple light. The bright sun cast a reddish orange haze to the other half of the sky, the clouds reflecting the sun’s light.

It was then that both sides of the already strange sky darkened, an arrival of golden clouds rolling in from above. Finally it appeared, the tribulation of the Framework.

Lightning struck several places at once, lightly targeting her formation. In her enlightened state, she watched as the transformation of energy toward her path had shifted.

And she thought she understood what it was. She needed to compensate for the energies of her family, the multicolored flames of the Hearth. Of course, she spent a ton of time with Jake and his Hearth enchantments. How could she not know the paths of her sister-wives?

She altered and shifted the glyphs in the sections presented, to better match the paths of her family. Ophelia’s vajrafire, Blood and Berri’s holy light and dark, Jake’s flames of Hestia, and Tanda’s deathly flames of the hunt.

The hearth was beyond her understanding, but she thought this element was a little strange. A cultivator’s core was meant to mirror her path, but her family was not a part of this–normally. Not only that, but she hadn’t included core formation materials for these elements.

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As if her thoughts were a trigger, lightning began slamming into her dragon claw, which was now her hearth. The heavenly lightning almost seemed to power it, the flames brightening inside.

The lightning eventually struck inside at the flame itself, and a kernel of something shot out at great speed at Fhesiah’s spiritual temple. It split into two, and crashed into her murals–the images of herself, along with Hestia’s mysterious godly runes.

Her temple began to shake once more, the two walls made of her bloodline energies lifting into the air. They flew up into the sky, finding an open area of her formations. When they struck the hardening wall that was her core, a pulse of golden energy flew out of the walls, drawing those same runes across the sky.

What surprised her was that the kitsune mural had gone to the heavens, Yang, section, and the dragon mural arrived in the earthly yin section. The mirror flew into the lake, and she realized that this fit the formation perfectly.

Not only that, but in both Yin and Yang normally held a bit of the opposite element. Her world now matched this, and it was almost as if they formed a much more natural formation, transforming the energy in a more mysterious way compared to hers based on the more scientific method she used.

The moon brightened in the black and purple section, and the sun did the same in the red sky. Her entire temple seemed to shake as more energy entered into the core, and it was like her world grew. The lake enlarged, and the earth beneath it expanded, her temple becoming even more like a miniature world.

Somehow, it was like the celestial mirror and the lake had merged, and the image of her form was reflected within.

The lightning struck incessantly as the changes were brought about, and she did her best to try to follow and merge the strange kernels further with her core. She also worked to replace the walls of her spiritual temple, rebuilding the room out of bricks of heavenly energy.

The strain on her mind was significant, but she eventually completed the work, the lightning slowing down. The hearth began to brighten as the energies merged being contained by her alchemy.

However, the flame within the hearth started to become unstable. Flickers of different color flames shot out of the hearth as lightning struck further, and this was where Fhesiah started to become worried.

The scaffolding didn’t really appear to include any void energy, from what she could tell-and really, it needed to come from herself. The hearth was the exception, and as far as she knew, it didn’t have void energy within.

Her spiritual temple shook as the energy became more chaotic, and her alarm increased even further. Cracks began to form in the sky, the speed of the energies as they flowed through the formation started becoming chaotic as well.

That was when a calm spread within her mind, as Jake’s love filled her with warmth over their bond. The shaky flames of the hearth began to calm, a stillness being emanated from Fhesiah herself.

Fhesiah knew this feeling–it was Jake’s dao, his void of family. The cracks healed rapidly, and the flames in the hearth brightened, releasing a brilliant golden light as a star was ignited. Her world was now bathed in a beautiful golden radiance, the sun and moon taking on a special quality as the skies began to revolve around her miniature world rapidly.

Both the sun and moon now felt closer to Bastet, and the sky slowly shifted to a solid blue as the Framework’s golden clouds receded.

Her two forms of her body appeared like constellations visible in the day or night sky. The sun and moon now floated in opposite hemispheres of her core, matching their sky. The clouds remained the same color as her bloodline flames, containing the vast energies of her core formation materials mixed in.

The core was completed, and her aura within her body surged. Information entered her mind, the granted cultivation technique to match her path–her reward for the various challenges on Highlands.

Smirking, she realized that it was quite open. There were many ways for her to enjoy her cultivation, or sit around in a cave gathering energy all day. She’d have to thank the goddesses later.

Her hearthian core was completed, and her murals of her bodies shifted, as Hestia’s modifications to her race commenced. Her kitsune mural gained 2 tails, her kitsune bloodline evolving to the next stage. The form of her mature, sexy body hardly changed, though she could tell her foxy fur would be even thicker and more lustrous.

The dragon mural shifted to show her scales becoming more golden, her body and horns becoming more magnificent. She grew into a veritable amazoness that would be just a bit taller than Jake, and she thought the change would be fun for the variety. Her wings could now disappear entirely if she willed it, the magical appendages not really necessary for flight.

In either form, a yin and yang symbol, made of red and blackish purple flames sat in the center of her chest above her breasts, just like her sister-wives. In the center of the symbol was a flicker of golden flame, a unique flame which matched her core.

The connection to Jake was enhanced, but now, hopped up on enlightenment drugs, she knew.

Fhesiah always had a piece of Jake with her. And through Jake, a piece of all his wives. The hearth bond, they hadn’t fully understood what it was.

Or the cost.

A piece of Jake’s very soul was given to each of them in order to form this bond. They each gave him a piece of their soul back, but each wife, each hearth bond, would leave Jake with a little less of himself. If they kept adding wives with hearth bonds, they would take and take from Jake until nothing was left.

Now, she felt a little bad for her mindset, of wanting more wives for her wonderful husband.

But only a little.

After all, they didn’t have to form hearth bonds with every wife! That was simple. Then, there was another detail–the piece of the soul was just a tiny thing. He didn’t make his first hearth bond until the first Tier, and by then his soul had already grown in both size and power, two divine sparks enhancing him and making him more. And who knows how different his soul was, having his void bloodline?

At the second Tier, the size and power of his soul grew even further with many of these sparks. He had a lot of soul, and love, to give!

Still, this explained the why of things were happening this way. Tanda had long-since sensed that the hearth bond was drawing all the girls together, their desires and personalities finding a greater harmony. From the very beginning, Jake’s void and boundless love was the glue that held them all together.

Her Core completed, she received some notifications.

[Core Ascension completed. You have seven days remaining to absorb the remaining energy in the chamber.]

Oh! She wouldn’t mind if she did. Stirring her core to move along her new cultivation technique, the heavens and earth themselves shifted in her miniature world, drawing energy into her hearth rapidly.

Sun and moon shone over the different parts of her world as the heavens shifted, as if rapidly going through a day and night cycle. Swirls in the clouds and the stars followed her mystical formations, drawing the energy into her hearth.

The golden light from the brilliant flame produced bathed her world in splendor, increasing the pure heavenly energy contained within. Her mystical temple and floating island grew in both size and strength, areas of her inner world becoming larger.

It was then that she noticed: this miniature world was not only filled with Qi. There were mana currents throughout the waters of the lake and some areas of the clouded formations, and auril permeated the air. It was now not only the mana held within the hearth that she had access to, but a decent reservoir of flames and mana that could be utilized.

Nowhere near the cores of her sister-wives and husband, it was still more than enough for a few spells. Before, it was only what was contained within her hearth, a very small storage for mana. Now, it had increased to be much more respectable.

The energy within the core formation chamber was fantastic, and the heavenly energy was drawn in quickly and made her own. Her cultivation technique filled the star mosaics and temple with heavenly energy, bringing her closer to the heavens themselves.

Over several days she absorbed the energy within the chamber, happy to gain all the lead she could. When the War Trial started, she would be the slowest to gain levels over her sister wives and Jake, just like before.

[Draconic Fire Plunder Level 5 -> Alchemical Plunder Level 1]

[Can absorb nearly any energy, provided enough understanding. Excels at absorbing draconic breath, but can be used to absorb a singular magical attack to be used as fuel, up to the limit of user’s strength.]

Fhesiah grinned at her new ability. She could now absorb nearly any one spell of her choosing, but it would take her some time to transform it into fuel for herself. This would increase her longevity in battles, able to use the enemy’s power for herself.

[Technique: Dance of the Sun and Moon -> Claws of Celestial Fusion]

[Using flames of various origin, claw attacks can be merged with different flames for powerful attacks.]

A truly varied ability, thanks to the diversity of her family and herself. She could mix her Yin Kitsune Flames with any of Jake’s wives with Yang energy, or do the opposite with her Yang Draconic Flames. She had many paths to utilize these claws, and could even shift her formations if she wanted.

[Race: Celestial Hearthian Demoness (Dragon/Kitsune): Tier 3]

[With the aid of Bastet and Hestia’s Origin and bloodline tempering, both bloodlines have evolved beyond this one’s birth. The two forms and bloodlines are in complete synchrony, carrying energy above the demoness’s Tier. With a Hearthian Core, this cultivator can manage a vast array of spells and abilities utilizing mana, auril, and heavenly energy.]

Reading the prompt, she understood to some extent that becoming Hearthians, all of them had a bit of Hestia in them. The odd kernels stored in her hearth were likely Bastet and Hestia’s, preparing her for this special moment. She reviewed her status sheets.

[Fhesiah Status Level 29]

[Strength: 224]

[Dexterity: 202]

[Constitution: 180]

[Intelligence: 213]

[Wisdom: 216]

[Charisma: 215]

[Fhesiah’s Level 29 Combat Skill Sheet]

[Draconic Might: 1]

[Alchemical Plunder: 1]

[Technique: Claw of Celestial Fusion: 1]

[Expert Energy Control: 1]

[Expert Runic Magic: 1]

[Divine Energy Manipulation: 3]

[Auril Enhancement, Healing, Manifestation: 5]

[Champion Spells: Curse of the Sun and Moon, Summon Fire Elemental, Call Divine]

[Fhesiah’s Level 29 Non-Combat Skill Sheet]

[Expert Flesh Shaping: 1]

[Yin and Yang Hearthian Core: 1]

[Expert Alchemy: 1]

[Alchemy Subskills: Analyze, Synthesis, Reproduction, Extraction, Infusion, Transmutation]

[Misc Skills: Draconic Flight, Alchemical Breath, Energy Vacuum, Auto-Loot, Bloodline Transformation, Expert Purifying Flames, Hearthian Bond, Hearthian Presence]

Her draconic empowerment had evolved to draconic might, and she understood that this increased the effect of both strengthening and enlarging herself using her draconic flames. Her Bloodline Transformation was now mastered, becoming a skill with no level. It now only took two full seconds to switch races thanks to her special core and her flesh shaping skill reaching expert.

Fhesiah was filled with vindication. Her chosen path had worked, and she could feel Jake’s bond stronger than ever. Despite being shifted and distorted by time mismatch and crossing into a distant sector, his thoughts and feelings were coming through much more frequently now, and she was sure the reverse was true for him.

The connection was not perfect, but she felt with a powerful push from them both by Jake entering her state, or perhaps help from Ira, they might not even need the Temporal Chamber to make the connection for aid.

Now she couldn’t wait to get home to show Jake and her family her changes, and her new friends. In truth, Fhesiah would be playing the long game with Ruby and Sati. Despite evolving to the second Tier, neither were quite at the level of… worldliness or form to be…waifus just yet.

She could just imagine the conversation. Instead of long walks on the beach, stories from growing up with family and friends or a list of hobbies, the only thing Ruby could offer is a list of fights and a food list. That Ruby loved to fight and consume the blood and flesh of her enemies, and what types tasted best–a riveting conversation for Jake, she was sure, but not one that would likely result in him ever seeing Ruby as a romantic interest.

No, Fhesiah would have to spend some time with each of the girls, teaching them about the multiverse and finding their passions in…something else beyond blood and fire, for Ruby and Sati.

But they would be a work in progress. The companions to lovers was definitely a viable path, and Fhesiah wanted them to have their best shot at it. If it didn’t work out with them, it didn’t work out. Then, Aria’s niece might take a couple of years to arrive, due to how they were looking to migrate the entire clan of Celestial Nekomatas to Sector 87.

Highlands wasn’t the perfect destination for them because it lacked Heavenly Energy, so they would look to join one of the cultivator worlds within the sector. With any luck, Hearthtribe or its allies would lay claim to it, and set them up for success. Even the Radiant Flame and Blizzardblade Clan would be on their way, and the Great Wind Sect was strongly considering it.

She just had a few days left, and she would be back home with plenty of gifts. The Refuge and Highlands were sorely missed, and she couldn’t wait to be home at last.