MTLNOVEL Chapter 9: Chapter 7: Spirit Bonding
First thing in the morning I make breakfast and finish today's card making, adding another 5 of each Starter Deck and 10 boxes of the Booster Packs, filling the top two shelves completely, minus the Starter Deck I sold yesterday. I update the prices back to the retail price and remove the Grand Opening sign out front before going to the back and preparing what I'll need for the divination.
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First I take an old tatami mat and use Paper Strengthening on an extra piece of card stock to cut the mat down to a 3 foot squared piece. A quick trip upstairs to grab bandages later, I take the card stock I used to cut the tatami mat and roll it in my hand, turning it into a cylinder before folding one end into a vague pen tip and fusing it all together. Slowly, I bring the paper pen to my wrist and slowly flow my chakra from my heart up to my neck. Carefully, I use my chakra to carefully prob along my voice box, barely resisting the urge to gag as I search for the tenketsu point on my neck, knowing that one stray reflex could cause my chakra to go haywire in my neck. Finally, I find it near my the base of my neck, an inch above my collarbone. Flowing the chakra through the tenketsu point, I latch it on to the Millennium Necklace, feeling the connection establish. Allowing the connection to flow, the urge to vomit grows larger as mist starts to leak out of my eyes like water. I brace myself as I force my chakra through the Millennium Connection(tm) before pulling it out, stress wracking my body as I try to keep a rhythmic beat like that of my heart.
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The flow of the mist slowly stalls before stopping as my heart rate stabilizes at a high but steady pace and the push and flow of my chakra along with it. Finally, I flow the tainted chakra through my arm, wincing at the burn as my pen's tip glows before bursting into blue flame. Hurriedly, I stab the pen's tip into my arm and drag it along the vein as I hurry to complete the circle before the strain of channeling the Necklace's power starts eating into my skin. The final circle is messy, but legible, stained with blackened blood as I vomit up the remaining power and wrap the bandages around my arm. The knowledge the system gave me tells me that it will straighten itself out during the first divination as long as the actual pen strokes don't connect.
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It takes nearly an hour before I get up and clean up the mess I made, still reeling from the pain of the ritual, still amazed that I was able to do it so readily, trying not to think about what that says about me as I take some candles out of the storage closet and cut them to size, exactly 4 inches tall with a circumference of 2 inches. I change my bandages and wrap the blood-soaked ones around the candles to act as the blood sacrifice needed for the divination instead of having to slit my wrist in front of a kid. Finally, at around 10, I go out and buy some black-out curtains to install on my shop's windows so I can start playing into the more spiritual aspects of the shop. At around 11 I get back and by 12, the curtains are installed and the spirits are given instructions on how to be more mystical and creepy. I partially close the curtains to darken the store and make the spirits' dim glow more apparent as I finally open the shop and sit behind the counter to start back on my chakra control training. Very quickly I realize that I am performing much better than yesterday, who knew that dark rituals could help with chakra control. Ha. Ha. Ha. I'm going to need to buy more bandages tomorrow.
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A quiet knock on the door brings me out of my thoughts as I see Yugi knocking on the open door to get my attention. I wave him in as I quickly grab the leaves off my forehead. "Is this the place Yugi?" a blond boy asks as he walks in behind Yugi with a stagger in his step. "Doesn't look like much," says the brown haired rich kid beside him, "A second-rate medium running a third-rate shop could hardly compare to the statues my father creates, much less the excuses of what he calls spirits."
"Oh? What do you think these lights are then?" I ask.
"Clearly just some long-lasting fuel you stuck to a set of controllable iron wires. Barely worth consideration."
"And let's say you're right, you aren't but for sake of argument, how do you think I got these to do such sophisticated motions?"
"A sophisticated series of levers should do more than enough to change the direction in unpredictable ways."
"I honestly don't know if I should dissect your brain to figure out what leaps in logic it took to reach that conclusion or if I should do it to find out what kind of mechanism you have thought up to make a small ball of flame go up, down, and around on a metal wire."
"Why not admit that you're a fraud?" He stares at me.
"Why not take a good look at one of the spirits to see the truth?" I stare back.
"Why is that one staring at me like I'm some kind of chew toy?" Me, Yugi, and the brown haired kid who's probably Kaiba turn our heads to look at who I now know is Joey. Joey who is having a staring contest with Red Eyes Black Dragon. "Try punching it," I say suggest. "Wouldn't that be bad luck or something?" Joey asks.
"It's been hogging the counter all day and I won't be able to do Yugi's divination without the only space that is 3 feet wide."
I don't know if I should applaud him or not but he doesn't take a second more to throw a solid right hook at the giant dangerous lizard. I decide I shouldn't when Red Eyes catches the fist in his mouth and bites into Joey's hand, who is now waving his hand and screaming as he curses out the, and I quote, "Giant overgrown butt-munching lizardfucker." Truly, he is a man with a very wide vocabulary. I turn back Kaiba and smirk smugly at him, "Balls of flame on wires he says. Proven wrong, you very much are."
He does not dignify me with a response as he watches Joey wrestle on the floor with the Red Eyes Black Dragon while Yugi tries to break them up, failing miserably since he can't touch spirits. "Hey dumbass, try biting it back," I say, only half jokingly as it would technically count as sharing blood and probably finish whatever weird shit they're doing. Of course, the Red Eyes releases Joey's hand just as Joey goes for the bite, causing them to headbutt and for some kind of runic circle to appear on the floor, none of which I can recognize. Leaving them to do their partnership whatever, I turn to Yugi and Kaiba, both of which seem amazed at what's happening. "So, is Mr. Moneybags here going to buy something or is he just here to try proving that spirits don't exist?"