Autophagy

The characters were clamped together tightly, making them a bit hard to read. For that reason, Song Lei lowered his head and looked at them in greater detail. Only until then was he able to start reading properly.

"To the unknown ether, by the grace of the omnipotent Sky God. For those who are unspoken and for those who have been lost. I usher your spirit and summon your tale untold," was written in the paper. This was to be engraved on one side of the dagger. Lowering his vision further, he read what was to be engraved on the other side of the dagger.

"By the name of what lies beyond the blue heavens and to the seven floors of those heavens. I encase this dagger with your holiness and lead the lost to their place."

'Huh, interesting...' Song Lei commented inwardly as he read the runes. 'This feels... Rigid? My usage of supernatural powers has always been... Soft. I never had to use such rituals or engravements up to this point...' He thought as he got up from the front of his door and walked to his bed. Taking a seat and adjusting his posture to sit more relaxedly, he shook the paper in his hand. He was about to continue reading before an idea blossomed in his mind.

"Wait..." He muttered. "Now that I think of it if this stuff is really working, does that mean that there is a god out there? Or is there more than one?" He said out loud as he caressed his chin in confusion.

'This is my first time hearing this being mentioned,' he switched back to thinking without speaking. 'You would assume that I would've at least heard of it from the Heaven Alliance but that doesn't seem to be the case...'

'I'll have to inquire about this further in the future,' he noted down in his mind as he went back to fulfilling his initial motive.

"Once you are done engraving the iron dagger with the runes given above, you should connect it with the aether," the paper read. "To do this, you should take it into your hands and encase it with your Luminescent Soul's energy. Once you do that, you should then feel a faint connection to the aether. Tug on it, as it will follow and connect to your dagger."

"Once you do this, the preparations for your eye-closing ritual will be ready."

After reading the line, Song Lei put the paper aside. Before he continued reading, he might as well craft the ritual dagger.

Fortunately, he had a helper that was nearly omnipotent. Willing up his system shop, he quickly traded a minuscule amount of blood beads for an ordinary iron dagger. Without delay, he pulled it out of the system panel and inspected it from every side.

"Mm. This should do it," he said to himself. Carrying the dagger in his hands, he left his room and went to Aston's side. Much to his surprise, Aston wasn't researching anything at all. He was just laying on the top bed of the bunk, lazily staring at the ceiling that was maybe about one meter away from his face.

"Uhm..."

"Oh. You came," Aston said in an unusually dejected manner as he turned his head towards Song Lei without moving any other muscle.

"What are you doing?" Song Lei asked worriedly. The thought of Aston being sick had appeared in his mind for a short second, however, he didn't think that spirits could get sick.

"Nothing... Just thinking about some stuff..." Aston answered. He then turned his eyes back towards the ceiling. "What did you come here for?"

"Oh... I was just here to use some of your tools for something..." Song Lei answered vaguely. He didn't want to bother Aston as he seemed in an awkward mental state. However, much to his surprise, Aston rolled down from the bed and hit the ground. He then sluggishly pushed himself up. Without even bothering to adjust his hair, he walked towards Song Lei and took the iron dagger from his hand.

"What should I do?"

'Well, I won't refuse the kindness, I guess?' Song Lei thought. He then gave the paper that had the necessary runes written down to Aston. "I need you to engrave these on the blade," he said. He then pointed towards one of the lines and said. "These ones should be on one side, while the others should be on the other side."

"Hmm..." Aston hummed as he looked at the runes. "I want to ask what these are for but it's kind of easy to guess. Is this for some kind of ritual?" he asked. His sluggish and depressed state seemed to have been suppressed by his curiosity towards Song Lei's new hobby.

"Yeah," Song Lei answered. He then proceeded to explain how he had found a book that contained some information about shamanism and his interest was piqued quickly.

As Aston kept listening, his brows became more and more furrowed.

"That doesn't sound natural at all," he said. Tapping his chin and sitting down on his chair, he raised his gaze to meet Song Lei's. "Think about it. Why did you become so interested in shamanism? It could've been anything other than that. You could've chosen talisman-crafting. You could've chosen something like... Puppeteering... But you went ahead and chose shamanism. Why do you think that is?"

"Something influenced me to do so?" Song Lei guessed awkwardly. However, he could feel that he wasn't being influenced by something, as opposed to Aston's thoughts.

"That's what I think at least," Aston said. "I say, gods are not exactly trustable existences. They're hard to understand and their true nature is unknown. This... Sky God. I have never heard of it before. It's called to be omnipotent in the runes but I'm not sure if that's the case."

"Are you trying to say that the Sky God has some ulterior motives and is trying to influence me?" Song Lei asked as he folded his arms in front of his chest. He was going to ignore the fact that Aston was blatantly acknowledging the existence of gods for now.

Aston shrugged in answer, leaving Song Lei befuddled in his own head.

"I'll still engrave the runes though. If it was an outright evil god, the runes written here would have been much more ominous. It should be fine as long as this is all there is to the ritual," Aston said as he turned 180 degrees on his chair. Song Lei sighed deeply and laid down on one of the beds while thinking about Aston's words.

"Sky God huh...."