(Risa POV)
Ramiris led us to the Dwelling, deep inside her labyrinth, once she was done eating. It was a really beautiful place, one that seemed to be literally made out of nothing but light. The dazzling surroundings seemed to really intimidate the children, but Big Bro stood at the front, acting all reliable and assuaging their fears.
Even he was capable of acting reliable for a few minutes or so.
"Alright, so all you gotta do is stand on the platform over there and call out to the spirits, or pray, or whatever. If they're interested in you, they'll respond. If not…" Ramiris began her explanation, but trailed off.
"If a superior spirit doesn't show up, Big Bro will do something about it, kids. Don't worry." I said, ruffling Alice's hair, much to her annoyance.
"Right!"
"Mr. Tempest is amazing!" The kids immediately accepted that, no questions asked. Immediately, they began heaping praise upon Big Bro, who blushed bright red.
"Alright, who wants to go first?" Big Bro asked, changing the subject.
Surprisingly, none of the kids volunteered at first. I couldn't really blame them. It really was intimidating.
"..Well, if nobody else is going to, then I'd like to go first, Mr. Tempest." Finally, Gail stepped up, exercising his responsibility as the oldest of the bunch.
"Alright, then how about we go by age. Oldest to youngest, starting with you, Gail?" Big Bro decided.
"'Kay."
"Fine by me." Alice and Kenya, the next two in line that way, agreed with that plan.
So, Gail, Big Bro, and I stepped onto the stage, and we began calling down spirits for the kids.
Apparently, just standing on the stage was enough to catch certain spirits' attention, so how you personally called a spirit down was completely up to you. Gail chose to kneel down in prayer.
"He's…"
"They're just low-level elemental spirits. No will of their own. I think the dark ones are responding to you, Risa. Since you evolved, you seem to have taken on properties similar to dark and fire-type Spirit Lords, so the dark spirits are responding." Ramiris explained. Sure enough, the air was filled with tiny black and brown lights. No superior spirit, though.
"I think I can work with this." Immediately, Big Bro used his Gluttony to eat all of the low-level spirits, before merging them into a higher grade and transferring the new, Dark and Earth-type superior spirit into Gail's body, instantly stabilizing his magicules and saving his life.
"Huh." Ramiris muttered once it was over.
"What's up?"
"Well, it's the spirit that you just put into Gail… It's got some sort of warped, half-Hero's seed in it." She explained.
"Wait, what?!"
"Yeah. Congratulations, Gail. You might become something of a Hero some day. Probably nowhere near as powerful as a True Hero, but I'll bless you anyway." And with that, Ramiris blessed Gail's Hero Seed.
Next up was Alice. She ended up attracting a bunch of low-level Space Spirits, which Big Bro combined into a single superior space spirit. As an aside, from analyzing the space spirit, Big Bro and I's Shadow Motion evolved into Spatial Motion.
After Alice went, Kenya was up. Unlike Gail and Alice, Kenya didn't have to do anything at all. Almost the exact moment that he stepped onto the platform, a Superior light spirit came out of nowhere.
He actually reminded me of Ramiris. Neither of them seemed to have any ability to read a room, nor did their mouths seem to have an off button. He was about seven inches taller than her, though.
Ramiris and the light spirit bantered for a little while, before he turned to Big Bro and explained that he'd taken an interest in Kenya, and wanted to see if the kid would turn into a True Hero one day.
Naturally, that made everyone guffaw.
But in the end, the light spirit jumped inside Kenya of his own free will, stabilizing the boy's magicule count and granting him a Hero's Egg, which Ramiris blessed on the spot.
After Big Bro shrugged off the unexpected light spirit, pretending that he'd totally expected it, Ryota stepped up to the plate. He actually had to pray for a bit before the spirits would come out, lower-level water and wind elementals. Without further ado, Big Bro consumed the low-level spirits, synthesizing them into a combination spirit just like he'd done with Gail and Alice.
As he did, new information flowed into my brain via Big Bro's Wise One skill. Apparently, he'd gotten a new skill called Quantum Control from the full analysis of six elements (dark, earth, space, fire, water, and wind), and the partial analysis of the final light element. Basically, it was all of the Control Element skills bundled into one higher-tier skill. Theoretically incredibly useful, but I'd already gained the even higher tiered, mysterious Control Particles skill. If he really cared, Big Bro could've gotten the skills by himself, too, but he'd never really bothered, since he could probably just attain them on the spot if he felt like it.
The final child was Chloe. She used a little trick, pretending to be scared so that Big Bro would pick her up and she could peck him on the cheek and whisper something into his ear, but Big Bro managed to pull himself together with but a little blush, which Chloe very clearly didn't miss.
A happy little grin on her face from successfully putting Big Bro off his game, Chloe knelt down in prayer.
And the sky fell.
Seriously, the pressure from the thing that responded to Chloe felt like it was on the same tier as Big Bro Veldora's. The top of this world. Literally a hundred times stronger than my new, evolved power.
It wasn't exactly a spirit, though. At least, not an elemental spirit. It felt more… human in nature. Chaotic.
Human (and most other sentient) bodies had three separate 'forms' that came together to create sentience. First was the astral body. This basically just housed the heart. If left alone, most astral bodies would simply vanish into the wind. This is the only part of Big Bro that had transmigrated from Earth, which was why his soul could hold so much 'skill data,' because his astral body was incredibly tough. Mine was comparable to Big Bro's, but only because I'd assimilated Izzy's soul into my own at the deepest level.
Next was the spiritual body. This was where the soul's actual energy was stored. This was also the 'body' that demons and spirits usually used to enter this world. In a world that was even partially physical, like this one, spiritual bodies slowly degraded over time unless provided a physical body to nest in.
This thing seemed to be a spiritual body. A young woman. It felt like a human who'd somehow managed to forcibly extract their spiritual body from their physical one, something that I'd never even heard of before now. It piqued my curiosity.
But as soon as she realized that she couldn't kiss Big Bro, the spirit lady gave him a disappointed look, before meeting my gaze, her eyes cold as ice. Then, she turned to reach for Chloe.
At that point, Ramiris tried to stop her, but it was too late. Even if she could try in time, the gap in power made any chance of us stopping her laughable. The spirit woman instilled herself in Chloe, her power immediately receding, along with all of her rampaging potential. In an instant, Chloe's life was saved by a mysterious spirit.