While it only took me a moment to read the text, weighing the message conveyed to me by the system took a lot longer. Titles were rare, especially when compared to traits or special abilities. Additionally, their effects were, to the best of my knowledge, on the subtle side, though subtle didn’t mean useless, far from it. This might cause side effects similar to some of my traits, namely Ruthless or Titanic Ambition, both of which indicated I was willing to do a whole lot of usually unsavoury things to accomplish my goals. Things like binding a spirit of nature, even if it had been a nuisance, and using it for my own needs. Or, amusingly, it might be the opposite: civilisation, at its core, was nothing but the binding and decoupling from nature, allowing the people within the civilisation to stand above what could be considered the natural order. After all, how natural was it for people to make tools allowing them to inhabit every continent on the planet, while some fanciful planners dreamed of colonising the seafloor?

Regardless, I now had a spirit bound into physical form, though I had no idea just what that meant. Unless I was jumping to conclusions, the figurine left in the crystal cage, its form suspiciously reminiscent of the form I had taken in some of my more meaningful dreams, was the physical form of the spirit. But what that form could do, I had no idea. It might be able to control the figurine, maybe even change its size or use magic, but I had simply no idea. Unwilling to open the cage without some sort of idea what I might unleash, I decided to push and prod on the lingering connection between myself and the figurine, just to see what might happen.

Doing so gave me a fascinating perspective. It was somewhat reminiscent of using Scrying Constructs, only that this construct had a faint presence of its own, not quite an intelligence but it might eventually become something. I was fairly confident that it could react to stimuli, but it didn’t feel as if there was a will involved and no processing of these stimuli.

Out of curiosity, I started pushing the figurine to move, and it immediately did. The sensation was similar enough to the use of my scrying constructs to translate, but it was quite obvious that the figurine was more. I wasn't sure how much more, but I was confident enough to open the cage because the figurine continued to be bound to my Astral Power.

When I did, the result was quite anticlimactic. Namely, nothing happened. The figurine just remained as still as it had been, at least until I decided to make it move into my hand. Touching it caused the connection between the figurine and my Astral Power to flare in intensity, making me wonder just what I could do with it, as it felt almost as if my affinity to Ice and Wind was increased while holding it. Or, more likely, if I tried to channel spells of these elements through the figurine, their potency would be magnified, though how strong the magnification would be, I wasn’t sure. I would have to test this, especially as trying to use Inspect on the figurine revealed nothing. It was as if it weren’t an item but a living being, though when I tried to use Observe, the results were similarly negative, making me wonder just what I had wrought here.

Clearly, experiments were needed, at least once I had put our shelter back together and reset the traps, just in case the spirit I had bound was only one of many spirits haunting this region. If so, I might just catch a few more, if one bound spirit was useful, having more couldn’t hurt.

Sadly, by the time the shelter was back in order, I was falling asleep on my feet and my Astral Power was largely spent. Sure, I had a lot of it but binding the spirit had taken a chunk, as did the restoration of our shelter, leaving me exhausted.

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This is why the experiments had to wait for the night, with the added benefit of letting Luna help out. Though showing her the bound spirit, now curled around a simple rod for easier carriage, produced a highly amusing reaction. Her eyes almost boggled from their sockets as she froze, staring at the construct. A part of me was tempted to poke her a few times, just to see what might happen, but I soon decided against it, considering it a little too mean. It was a good thing that she managed to catch herself farly quickly, otherwise I might have been forced to resort to poking her, or doing something even more drastic.

Once she caught herself, I explained what had happened, answering a few quite insightful questions while giving my own perspective, allowing her to draw conclusions from the events. Having her as a sounding board was, as usual, incredibly useful, as it gave me a secondary perspective. She even added a bunch of potential experiments so we could see just what the bound spirit could do.

Even better, a good part of these experiments were things we could do on the march, meaning we didn’t have to spend the night in our shelter but could continue our journey. For me, that meant relegating Lia to the rear, while I focused on the construct I was carrying, occasionally sending out small blasts of cold air, chunks of ice or other effects into the night, observing how much power I needed for them when I channelled them through the construct in comparison to my usual spellcasting.

As I did, I also added a bit of Runic Magic into the mix, curious to see how the efficiency would pan out when comparing runic spells to normal spells and, lastly, to spells augmented by the bound spirit. Because, as it turned out, my initial suspicion was correct, channelling power through the bound spirit effectively augmented my affinity to its two elements. If there was no loss of efficiency at higher levels of Astral Power, I had a genuine weapon of magical mass destruction. It would be interesting to see if the boost also worked when I used magical rituals, especially the large-scale ones. I somewhat doubted it, but even if it only boosted the swift, quick-and-dirty spells I used without invoking runes, it was a tremendously useful tool.

And that utility was limited to the bound spirit’s ability to enhance spells I was casting.

Working with the figurine, I soon realised that it had a rudimentary intelligence, not a real will of its own but more something along the lines of muscle memory, allowing it to move independently, though it needed the connection to my magic to power itself.

In other words, where I needed to directly control my scrying constructs to move, meaning I had to make them flap their wings, keep balance, control their claws, and everything else, the bound spirit had greater utility. With it, I merely had to give directions or set a destination, and as long as I knew the path between the bound spirit and its destination, it could make its way there on its own. Even seeking out people, as long as I knew where they were, was possible, something I tested by having it follow Lia.

Sure, there were a lot of limitations to the little construct, but, overall, it was incredibly useful, though it obviously wasn’t actually intelligent. It was more akin to a conduit for my will, somewhat similar to a remote-controlled drone with a limited autopilot, which was tremendously useful. Sure, it couldn’t operate on its own, but given that the link between us was invisible and I might be able to improve on that by channelling it through the Astral River, that wasn’t a huge disadvantage.

When I considered that connection, I had another idea I wanted to try out. Namely, could I cast through the construct without it being in my hand? If yes, I could use it to attack opponents from unexpected directions, have it infiltrate small spaces or perform a myriad of other tasks my humanoid body could not accomplish.

A few tries later, I had a wide, gleeful smile on my face. It worked like a charm, allowing me to perform Ice and Wind Magic through the connection with only a small loss of efficiency. Instead of doubling my efficiency, the boost was reduced to maybe twenty-five per cent, which was still incredible.

Finally, Luna came up with a battery of tests to investigate what, if any, connection to the divine realm the construct retained. Those were mostly tests to see how my spells interacted with certain barriers she put up, as we didn’t have another spirit or similar entity to test them on, and they worked in a few unexpected ways. With the bound spirit, my spells appeared to have partially shifted into another plane, one that her divine spells could interact with, too, but normal spells could not.

Another thing to investigate in more detail. Luckily, it seemed that the spirit I had bound was the only one in the area, meaning our travel wasn’t interrupted any further.