Shin fell into a deep slumber. Opening his eyes, he found himself again in a familiar place.
But unlike all the times he had visited before, this time was different. His mind was now clear, not hazy.
The usual mirror shard fragments that typically orbited the empty mirror frame now surrounded him, orbiting him instead. Then, the voices that used to echo inexplicably in his head now clearly emanated from these very shards.
"He's here."
"Is this the current Incarnation?"
"Indeed."
"Strange, he has no color."
"Yeah, just like glass."
"Don't underestimate him too much, he resisted the Craftiest system after all."
"Heh, not bad."
"Hoh~"
If he remembered correctly, there were only four last time. But now, eight shards orbited him, varying in colors. The usual gold, blue, green, and silver were present, their reflections clear and sharp. But the others were only faint: a Red one, a Purple, a White, and a Black.
"Everyone, silence," the golden shard resonated, its voice firm and commanding.
"Are you sure about this, Gold?" the silver shard questioned, its tone laced with apprehension.
"Yes, Blue and I have been checking possibilities these past days," Gold replied.
"Though this will affect the potential of the current incarnation, he will need to choose one of us."
"Affirmative," another voice confirmed, presumably Blue.
"After running checks and lack of a bounded tool to the current incarnation's soul, the current incarnation can now house a complete form of a single Primordial Tool. He will need to choose one of us, but in return, the others will need to return to stasis once more until the next cycle."
"Hoh, so does this mean we can take over the current?" a faint, almost hungry voice from one of the new shards inquired.
"The possibility is low for others due to low synchronization, but based on the current incarnation, Gold is the one with the highest possibility to synchronize," Blue explained.
"What about the current incarnation?" another voice asked.
"The current incarnation will still have his will, but due to assimilation, it may cause loss of memories and merging of personalities of the past and current until the memories stabilize."
Shin floated there, glaring at the shards. Primordial Tool? Assimilation? Memories? He felt deeply uncomfortable with what he was hearing. They were discussing his fate as if he wasn't even present.
"What are you?" Shin demanded, his voice echoing in the ethereal space.
"Chatting here and there without an explanation, deciding my fate." His eyes, now sharp and fully aware, narrowed.
"Who the hell are you guys?"
"Hoh~ he can hear us," a voice from one of the shards noted. "That's new."
"Well, this makes things easier."
"Well, Gold, since you are the very first incarnation, why won't you explain things to this newcomer?"
"I intend to do so now; everyone, be silent," the golden shard commanded.
The other seven shards stopped orbiting Shin. The largest, golden one, with a clear reflection of a golden knife within its fragment, hovered directly in front of him.
The Gold One then began to explain. These shards, it revealed, weren't just fragments; they were pieces of Shin's past lives. Each contained memories from a previous incarnation, encased in its current mirror shard form due to Shin's utterly unique soul and its interaction with Primordial Tools.
Instead of these powerful tools being redistributed in the normal cycle of karmic reincarnation, Shin's soul, across his numerous incarnations, had managed to store those tools in its deepest, most inaccessible part.
They had taken the form of these mirror shard fragments, existing outside the grasp of karmic reset or what the shards referred to as soul cleansing. What's more, some of the memories from those past lives were also embedded within these fragments, meaning each shard literally held the essence and experiences of what Shin's soul had been in its previous existences.
"In all of our incarnations," the Gold One continued, its ancient voice deepening,
"Our soul will always manage to attract divine or primordial constructs, binding them to itself. Primordial Tools, being artifacts of immense power, are both useful and equally harmful."
It paused, allowing the gravity of its words to sink in. "Through our many incarnations, our soul has managed to store eight Primordial Tools and countless divine constructs, but it seems the divine constructs don't last as long; they're often periodically caught in the karmic reincarnation cycle. But a soul containing eight Primordial Tools... that caught the eyes of the Outer Gods."
A faint shimmer passed through the space as the Gold One spoke of the Outer Gods.
"These Outer Gods then began tracking our soul, interacting with you during many of our incarnations. Their constructs—usually called 'systems'—were sent regularly to our soul if they found you, disguised to guide or make you stronger. But these 'systems' had another, true purpose: to make our soul fully accept them and create a pathway to extract the Primordial Tools out of our soul."
The golden shard continued, its tone grave.
"But some problems occurred. Most of the systems' job was to prolong the current incarnation's life to extend its time to extract before the next reset. The system's progress is also erased in every reset, that's why it prolongs the current incarnation's lives."
"The soul," it said, now addressing Shin directly, "began to feel the burden of a long, immortal life. Without a proper cyclic reset, our soul feels burdened by it. This, in turn, awoke some of the fragments that contain Primordial Tools and began making the job of the system difficult."
"Every time the system failed," Gold explained, "The Outer Gods sent a smarter or better one. Until 'that system' came. It was like other systems until it began to gain sentience and abandoned its job to extract, turning instead to coveting the tools itself. Unlike the earlier systems, it managed to stick to our soul for many incarnations. This caused a flood of corrupted fragments into our soul, and it only stopped when you, the current incarnation, managed to resist 'that system's temptation.'"
Shin, though the details were vague, could remember a certain dream: a man, who looked older than him when he was a kid, standing in a broken mirror and promising glory and power. But he remembered clearly that he had broken that mirror.
Shin began internalizing what this shard had just explained. His world had just been irrevocably expanded, tainted by cosmic beings and ancient battles he was unknowingly part of. He was more than just Shin; he was an unbroken chain, a vessel, and a target.
But did this matter to him right now? Not at all. It said that the system attached to him was no longer there, and it seemed like the so-called Outer Gods still did not know his current location.
"What are you talking about, assimilation?" Shin cut in, redirecting the conversation to the immediate problem.
The Gold fragment continued to explain. Due to Shin's unique situation, the supposed mirror that reflects his current self was just a frame—mirrorless, with no reflection. His own shard was transparent and had no color.
These factors indicated that Shin might have the possibility to fully house a single Primordial Tool by assimilating one of the current fragments present to him. But the severe side effect was that Shin might forfeit some of his existing memories to make space for the fragment's memories, causing a merging of personalities and experiences.
This news made Shin frown, clearly not liking what he heard.
"Don't even think about it," he muttered to himself, almost an automatic response to the thought of sacrificing his identity.
But the other shards countered him, their voices intertwining. "With your current situation, you might not survive," one urged.
"And you certainly won't return to your friends," another added, hitting a raw nerve.
"Tch," Shin just clicked his tongue, a deep furrow in his brow. Though he desperately wanted to refute their claims, what they were saying resonated with a bitter truth. His chances of survival in this abyss, let alone finding his way back, were slim to none without some drastic change.
Shin, weighing the pros and cons and the potentially irreversible consequences of this choice, stayed silent, deep in thought.
*****
If their claims were true, then Shin would be able to escape this place. And if his suspicion about that god Ehit was true, he'd at least have the power to protect his friends. Prioritizing them above his own self, Shin decided to undergo the assimilation.
With that, Shin nodded in affirmation. Promptly, he and the shards began to hover near the empty mirror frame. The blue shard instructed Shin in a mechanical voice to put his hand into the mirror while thinking of the shard he wanted to assimilate.
Shin promptly did as he was told, wanting to end this charade earlier.
As he acted, the golden light radiated from Shin, the shard, and the mirror frame as the assimilation started abruptly. Shin and the gold shard resonated, and Shin glimpsed a crucial difference.
The primordial tool, a golden knife adorned with intricate runes, the one he'd seen in his other dreams, came out from the reflection.
Beside it was a glowing golden light, seemingly containing the memories associated with the golden shard.
It seemed the memories and tools were separate, merely sharing the shard fragment. With a glint in his eyes, Shin mused, "As expected, I can't lose my current self."
Shin probed the assimilation and discovered he could take the tool without assimilating the memories of the past.
With his will, he rejected the assimilated memories, like a filter removing them and only allowing the tool to be assimilated.
He found out that this lessened the burden of the assimilation, allowing him to house most of the others too if he filtered out the memories.
Then, something unexpected happened.
The usual assimilation changed its nature.
Instead of assimilating one, the mirror started to predate all eight fragments.
Instead of just the chosen shard, the other seven were violently dragged into orbit.
Some of them didn't know what was happening, but Shin closed his eyes, a singular thought burning in his mind: Why not take all of it?
"Stop!" the fragments screamed, their voices mingling into a cacophony of alarm.
"Cease! Housing more than one Primordial Tool is impossible! It will burden our soul! It will break you!"
"You need us to use them, don't be hasty!"
"Gold, do something!"
The gold shard, once bright, now dimmed. It seemed it could no longer hold its existence now that the Primordial Tool was extracted from it.
"Kid, stop this now!" the silver shard cried. "Even if you can house all of them, you will not be able to sustain their complete and pure form, and the nature of each weapon is too different to coexist in a single soul!"
But Shin didn't listen. He didn't care about compatibility. If it didn't align with him, he would make it. Instead of a tool dictating him, he would dictate the tool.
"Your voices irritate me and for the last time," Shin stated, his voice resonating with unyielding authority that seemed to shake the very ethereal space, "you are people of the past, even you are once me. All of you are already dead, and dead people should stay dead and not mingle with the living ones."
With his will completely overpowering the process, his soul responded, and so did the Primordial Tools themselves.
Then, an unbelievable thing happened.
The tools housed within each fragment began to emerge.
If each fragment contained both memories and a tool, Shin realized, he just needed the tools, not the memories.
He didn't care if those memories were important or contained information on how to use the tools effectively.
He could learn it in time, Shin thought with fierce determination.
One by one, the tools emerged, discarding the fragments like empty husks: aside from the earlier golden knife adorned with intricate runes, the other tools are a blue covered book with seemingly infinite pages adorned in gold and gems, a farming glove with golden embroidery and a vibrant green gem, a silver-handled sword with a shimmering, cosmic blade, a red cube sparking with chaotic lightning, a white staff exuding a pure, divine aura, a black hammer with a fire burning within its core, and a wooden wand with glowing purple outlines.
Then, the tools themselves transformed into mirror pieces, distinct and vibrant, and embedded themselves directly into the current mirror frame, becoming a part of it.
The discarded fragments dimmed and fell into the dark void underneath Shin.
The voices were now gone, and the once empty mirror now contained a reflection. It was Shin, the only difference was his eyes, which were now glowing with a myriad of colors.
"My memories... they're not tampered with," Shin muttered, a small smile gracing his lips. The immediate fear of losing himself had passed.
But then, a problem arose. Each of the Primordial Tools' radiant glow began to dim in the reflection.
It seemed the current vessel, Shin,does not have enough primordial energy to sustain them all in their complete form , then they began to revert to their dormant forms to prevent breaking Shin and his soul.
The golden knife turned into a dark obsidian knife absent of its runes.
The blue covered book turned into a normal-looking old book.
The farming glove turned into a simple farming hoe.
The silver-handled sword became a plain wooden sword.
The red cube lost its vibrant red hue and turned a dimmed blue.
The white staff became an ordinary wooden cane.
The black hammer lost its eternal fire. The mystical wooden wand just became a plain wooden wand.
Then, Shin was abruptly awoken after the process.