Spirit's Awakening: The Path of Lightning and Water-Chapter 371: Lending A Hand

The jagged bolt of red and black lightning flared as the Lightning Elemental thrust its arm downward. The energy crackled violently, yet it didn’t lash out.

Instead, the bolt splintered into arcs that spidered along the storm-torn ground, carving a glowing rune beneath Lassim’s feet. The sudden pulse of energy sent a ripple through the air, surprisingly even raising the hair on his arms with the intensity and uniqueness of the lightning mana as the rune blazed brightly.

Lassim’s gaze was drawn and fell towards the rune, its chaotic, jagged lines cutting deep into the earth, but it was far from static. Red and black lightning pulsed along its edges, arcs of energy snapping outward before retreating, as though the rune itself was still under the elemental’s control or infused with a life-giving will, aka intent; similar to Lassim’s lightning fish.

Its shape shifted faintly, reacting to the Tempest’s Cradle’s storm that surrounded him. Each twist of the clouds, each crack of thunder, seemed to pull at the glowing lines, causing the drawing of the rune to be pushed and pulled into new, unpredictable patterns.

The rune didn’t obey the clean, or even consistent, orderly principles of runes he had studied so far or even created himself—it moved in tune with the raw, untamed rhythm of the storm, unbound and defiant.

The previous lightning runes had a consistent set of angular shapes and never budged—yet, contained high voltage power—while his own spatial alphabet used a lot of circular shapes and lines to connect different angles as if to mimic the spatial fabric that made up the universe.

Despite all its chaos, there was something deliberate about its movements, as if the rune was actively trying to convey a message. Lassim’s grip on his halberd loosened as he studied it, his insight into reading the rune and the instincts he’d developed so far from creating his own rune language was telling him this wasn’t just some technique or mark of power—it was the elemental’s way of reaching out, demanding that he understand something.

Lassim shifted his grip on his halberd, his stormy gaze narrowing as he assessed the situation. The tension was unbearable, and the storm roared louder, the arcs of red and black lightning creating a symphony of chaos in the sky that affected the rune.

"What now?" Lassim muttered. His spiritual pressure flared subtly, reinforcing the swirling mini-storms at his feet as he maintained a minimum level of readiness to fight; just in case.

The elemental "stepped" closer, its crimson eyes glowing brighter, and Lassim braced himself, his fingers tightening around his weapon from their loose grip.

Then it happened—a surge of sensation, so sudden and overwhelming that it forced Lassim to take a half-step back and his mind felt a splitting crack down the middle.

It wasn’t a voice that followed, nor a sound. It was a rush of raw emotion, crashing into his consciousness like a wave of unrelenting force. He barely had time to steel himself before his mind was flooded with images.

Darkness.

A storm unlike any he had ever seen, its power suffocating.

The Lightning Elemental stood at the center of it, its jagged, humanoid form radiating with a level of power nearly five times greater than he felt pressing against him now. Its presence was commanding in the storm, its energy resonating in perfect harmony with it.

It felt like it was the storm. Though, it was an unfamiliar storm and not the Tempest’s Cradle that they were within now… At least, now at this period of time. Perhaps long ago? The biggest other factor that led Lassim to believe this was long ago was the fact that the elemental was a pure red lightning creature in this mental image. He couldn’t get a sense of time from this, but he could feel its strength, its purpose in these images—a guardian bound to the storm, existing to preserve balance.

But that balance was shattered.

The image shifted, and Lassim’s chest tightened as he witnessed the moment a corruption began. Tendrils of shadow, dark and unnatural like shadows where they didn’t belong, crept through the storm, coiling around the elemental like living chains.

The elemental fought back, unleashing its power in a desperate attempt to purge the intruder, but the shadows were relentless. They pierced its form, burrowing deep into its essence, and Lassim could feel the searing pain as though it were his own in this mental projection.

The elemental’s light dimmed once more, its once-pristine red lightning energy form tainted by the encroaching darkness. Cracks appeared across its form, jagged lines of black marring its once-perfect red structure.

The storm around it turned violent and chaotic, its harmony replaced by a cacophony of discordant energy that turned it into the recognizable black cloud form that was in front of him. It was no longer the stable mass of red lightning.

The vision shifted again. Lassim saw himself standing within the storm, his halberd glowing with fused mana as the Leviathan constellation loomed above him. The elemental’s fractured form hovered before him, its crimson eyes desperate yet determined. This was the moment of their first meeting when it had summoned Lassim to its innate lightning domain.

"Help me."

That was the only actual message that filtered through the rage and pain he felt that Lassim could glean from the overwhelming flood of emotion and imagery. Yet, there was a crucial other detail that he’d noticed from the elemental’s vision that he couldn’t observe or ever know form his own perspective. His entire body radiated, at least at that time, such a violently golden radiance of lightning mana that betrayed his eyes.

As far as he was aware, his lightning was the standard purple/violet color and his water elements were the standard azure. The only time it differentiated from that was when he began crafting and drawing runes and his mana created his own holographic azure style writings.

However, from this purely elemental being, its vision offered a new dimensional vision that showed his spiritual pressure and mana as having this golden quality to it. It was almost absurd how ridiculously bright it was. It actually made Lassim’s body look oddly similar to an elemental.

That’s when it clicked in Lassim’s pain wracked mind… This elemental actually saw him, not as some mortal or semi-cultivated spirit warrior… but one of his own, another lightning elemental. It finally made sense.

The vision ended abruptly the next moment, leaving Lassim somehow now standing in the center of the glowing rune, his breathing had unknowingly heavy as he returned and processed what he had seen.

His gaze snapped back to the Lightning Elemental, which had stopped its approach and now stood motionless, its jagged but dark and cloudy form shimmering faintly.

There was now an orb of pure red lightning, the same that made up its entire body back from vision vision, in its "hand"—really just a mass of the black clouds and red lightning—that pulsed violently on display.

"You’re asking for my help," Lassim said aloud as his breath was now stable. "You want me to fix what happened to you? To get rid of whatever’s still corrupting your power?"

The elemental’s eyes flickered, and another surge of emotion washed over Lassim. He felt it loud and clear, it wasn’t just asking—it was begging. The once-proud red lightning elemental guardian of the storm had been attacked by a shadow elemental, and now it sought salvation from something it recognized as a kindred spirit.

Lassim let out a slow breath, his storm-filled gaze narrowing. "So you’re offering that?," he continued, nodding toward the volatile orb in its hand. "And then what? Absorb it? Purify it?"

Lassim muttered quietly to himself, "It thinks I’m just like it, an elemental. Does it even know what’ll happen to me if I take that thing?"

The elemental didn’t respond in words again, but another flood of imagery hit Lassim, this time more fragmented.

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The fragmented images this time weren’t as clear as before, but Lassim could still glean meaning from them.

He saw the orb—the very thing in the elemental’s hand—being taken in and traded by its own kind, used as both a weapon and a lifeline of its very own being. There were flashes of battles, brief glimpses of the red lightning cutting through storms in a bizarre manner that merged it all together, and a pulse that resonated with the elemental itself.

This was its core. It was the elemental itself, a fragment of its essence that carried both its strength and defined this unique and individual branch of the lightning mana’s pantheon. This was far different from the basic lightning Famthar bestowed upon all of his chosens. This was part of the reason why all elementals have been mostly hunted down and absorbed over the millennium since time immemorial by Spirit Warriors.

As the images faded, Lassim’s thoughts settled into a sharp clarity. "You’re not asking me to purify it," he murmured as he understood. "You’re giving it to me. It’s payment."

The elemental’s crimson eyes flared briefly, an undeniable confirmation but there was a slight pity there too. It was as if he felt a tinge of sadness for Lassim, the elemental saw only another elemental so lonely, and unaware. It had grown up in the current era where elementals were so few and far between that it didn’t even know about the concept of this barter system between elementals. It felt pity for the clearly young, golden lightning elemental in front of it with its own unique blend of mana that didn’t even understand what the orb meant.

Lassim exhaled, his mind racing. Still, the way the elemental offered it, with no hesitation or apparent fear, told him everything he needed to know.

"You’re offering this because you think I can kill the shadow elemental," Lassim said as he glanced at the orb.

The elemental’s form flickered, its jagged edges shimmering faintly. Lassim felt another wave of emotion—this time calmer, more resolute. It wasn’t just hope or desperation. It was conviction.

"Fine," Lassim said, his grip on his halberd loosening slightly. "I’ll accept and help you deal with the Shadow Elemental. Hopefully your red lightning doesn’t fry me from the inside…"

He took a step forward, the storm around them intensifying as his spiritual pressure rose as he went to meet the orb. The orb in the elemental’s hand pulsed violently, its arcs of red and black lightning snapping outward as if reacting to Lassim’s presence.

For a brief moment, he hesitated, his instincts screaming at him to reconsider. But he silenced them.

Lassim extended his hand toward the orb, the crackling arcs of red and black lightning snapping closer, almost eagerly. The closer his fingers came, the more intense the sensation grew—not just in his hand but through his entire spirit sense. It wasn’t fear or hostility; it was recognition, a response to him, as though the orb already knew him and something else important that he couldn’t quite decipher.

The moment his fingers brushed the surface, a sharp jolt shot up his arm. Disregarding his innate affinity with the lightning element, his fused mana surged instinctively, meeting the red lightning’s raw energy in a brief but violent clash before settling into a tense equilibrium.

Lassim gritted his teeth, his storm-filled gaze locking onto the elemental as he grasped the orb entirely with his right hand.