Redo: Grimoire System in the Apocalypse

Geth stared ahead, not believing what he was seeing. He was too late.

His mind went blank, the Mana he had been controlling fell lifeless, and the purple energy began to surround him.

Even through this, he just stared at the hanging body of his wife before him. Blood dripped down his arm and fell off of his pitch-black shoulder onto the ground.

His heart raced, and he activated Time Delay on himself.

Time slowed to a crawl. A single drop of blood took over an hour to fall from his elbow to his shoulder.

He gazed at Zolis, unsure of what to do. 

She was dead.

Not hurt.

Not dying.

Dead.

A feeling of nothingness washed over him. His eyes lost any semblance of emotion, and a small black hole appeared in the center of his chest.

There was no anger, sorrow, grief... Just a deep nothingness and a need to fill it with something. 

Geth still wasn't in control of his body. He could feel the creature slowly pulling his arm out and looking for another target.

It would take a while for this to happen.

He turned and looked at the black iron door that was cracked open before him.

At first, he'd just wanted to seal this thing away and find a way to deal with it later.

Now, he moved to tear the door open and cross the threshold.

There were no thoughts. No curiosities. His body moved as if running on some primal instinct.

Geth opened the door. The black metal siphoned the Mana that was trying to follow him in.

With a wave of his hand, he sent the Mana back to guard his mental sphere, allowing the purple energy to overtake him.

He looked into the room, finding it was raven black, making it impossible to see what waited inside. Geth tried to extend his senses into the darkness, finding it was just as useless as using his eyes.

With no hesitation, he walked straight into the abyss.

As his foot crossed the threshold of the sphere, purple energy lit the dome, revealing... nothing.

Geth looked around the room and found that it was completely empty. There were no signs that any type of creature had ever inhabited this place.

His feet moved forward without pause, taking him further into the room and the swirling purple haze that filled it.

Geth stopped and sat cross-legged in the center of the chamber. He wasn't sure how his mind knew what to do, but everything felt vaguely familiar.

He closed off all of his external senses and focused on the hole that had appeared on his chest. Both of his hands cupped together seamlessly around the opening.

The space between his fingers began to spin, much like the device he'd made to turn gaseous Mana into a liquid. The purple mist around him crept unhurriedly toward his hands.

With his senses closed off, he didn't know what was happening on the outside. 

A massive red orb left his inventory of its own accord. He would have recognized it as the only item outside of the Dungeon Crystal that had survived the explosion of the World Boss.

The orb hovered in front of him, where a peculiar purple whirlpool had appeared in the center of his chest.

Sensing the orb's presence, the suction of the whirlpool increased severalfold. The globe broke down into fine dust and allowed itself to be absorbed by the strange vortex.

At the same time, Geth's mental sphere began to grow. A third sphere surrounded the original two, all of them increasing in size.

Inside the black sphere, the purple haze raced toward the opening in Geth's chest. The emptiness inside him continued to fill until he felt that he would burst.

His cupped palms flattened together, cutting off the access of the purple mist. The whirlpool hovering in front of him faded out of existence, leaving behind a strange marking on his chest.

Everything in the room settled. The mist returned to floating peacefully near the ceiling while Geth's face dropped into his hands.

The emptiness was gone. Tears fell from his eyes and stained his cheeks when his senses returned to normal.

As the tears fell onto the black foundation upon which he sat, a strange development took place on the outside. 

The creature's eyes began to sting. It lifted its open hand toward its cheek, seemingly not under the effects of the Time Delay.

It pulled its hand away from its face and found its fingers stained by a purple liquid.

What was this..?

The hunger that it had felt... it was gone?

What was this feeling that replaced it?

The creature looked toward the woman still hanging limply from its arm. The discomfort in its chest became worse.

It carefully laid the woman down on the ground, removing its arm from her chest. The feelings increased as it stood over the bloodied body.

This was the first time it had known something other than emptiness.

Geth sensed these developments. He could even see that his skin was returning to its former pigment.

The thing that caught his eye the most, though... was Zolis. A fragile white light traced around her entire body.

It was fading.

The despair suddenly turned into an overwhelming hope that both he and the creature felt. He could feel the beast becoming overwhelmed by these new feelings as it seemed to withdraw into the black mental sphere.

Geth didn't have time to exchange pleasantries. He could feel that his connection with Albus had been restored, and he rushed out to meet him.

"Albus! Albus! I need you to pull up my Skills! Now!"

Albus shook his head as if he were disoriented. He waved his hand and made the Skill screen appear while trying to get an idea of what had happened.

His jaw became slack when he noticed Zolis' Resonance crumbling above him.

Geth barrelled out of the long tunnel that connected the two spheres. His momentum didn't slow until he almost crashed into Albus.

He scrolled down to his newest Skill, Minor Resurrection. Geth pumped in 100 of his SP to upgrade the Skill to Legendary without a second thought.

There was an unlimited use spell between the two options that could infinitely resurrect someone, but it would weaken them each time, and they would lose some of their memories. 

The second option could only be used on a target once a year, but there were no adverse effects.

After a bit of internal debate, Geth chose the second option. A blinding flash of light filled his mental sphere as a massive golden Formation replaced what was once the Minor Ressurection Rune.

An immense surge of new information flooded his mind as the Formation etched itself into the air above him. With each flourishing stroke of Mana, another book full of knowledge drove itself into his memory.

He glanced up at the blinding Formation above him, realizing that there was only a limited number of Legendary Skills one could possess without enough Intelligence.

He didn't have time to admire the intricacies.

Without hesitation, he shifted out of his sphere and took control of his body.