An hour or so after leaving it, Rakna returned to the 250th Plateau.
"Aah…" He sighed. "Temat is certainly a strong-headed individual," he muttered and stepped into the streets of Clockwork. "Convincing that kind of person is not my thing."
"{Is that why you told him to make a visit later?}" Fray asked.
"Well, of course. We both know the perfect person for the job," Rakna chuckled to himself. At the same time, he greeted the city's automatons, who honestly were the most welcoming people he had met in the System yet.
Although Rapture was like some kind of bitter soldier, his citizens were very friendly.
After a few minutes, the therian eventually reached his destination. He entered a building with a wide entrance hall designed much more organically compared to the rest of the city. After asking the automaton at the reception for directions, he headed for a certain room.
"Ah, Rak," upon entering, he was promptly greeted by Allan lying down on a hospital bed. Marie was sitting at his side, with a third person there too.
"Looks like you're doing fine," Rakna snorted and turned toward the other visitor. "If I remember correctly… you're Quill Frazen, right?" It was the same man who had presided over the Tutorial this year, as well as the leader of the Madness Guild, which Allan joined.
The outwardly ordinary man nodded quietly, his eyes hauntingly blank.
"Were you at the Forefront earlier?"
"I was," Quill responded curtly. "I left early and came here to check up on my guild member after hearing about what happened. It is one of my routines to diagnose my people after a particularly strenuous battle to make sure their Berserkr Skills are not going out of control."
"And as you can see, I'm fine," Allan raised his hands. "With my other skills, I don't think it's even possible for me to go crazy anyway," he snorted.
"True," Rakna smiled, remembering the first time he saw those skills' descriptions. He walked to his friend's side and used CrystalSight in between two blinks. "Yeah, you're fine. The only thing to worry about is your Nirvana Skill. Was Kali hard to handle?"
"It was fucking tough," the blond groaned. "If it wasn't for the 'Glory' you attached, it might have killed me for good to be honest."
The therian snickered and flicked his fingers, pulling out an identical pair of Skill Cards from his storage. "You were unlucky. Hans, Ceres, Evelyn, and I finalized it yesterday. You might have won if you had gotten it in time."
"You mean… that?" Marie perked up. "You finished it?"
"Here," Rakna tossed the cards, and both of them caught theirs.
❮ ◈ ❯
Designation: Skill/Cognitive
Name: Unification
Tier: Unranked
Learning Requirements: ---
Description:
A profoundly complex formula crafted by three law-breaking beings, combining the quintessential power of the Philosopher's Stone, the World Formulas, and the Tales Incarnate of the universe.
Inspired by the concept of Synthesis, this skill is capable of temporarily combining several status elements into one to bring out their innermost potential. While the activation may fail or succeed with varying degrees, the skill was designed to never harm its user. Furthermore, it will automatically restore the elements to their original states after a certain amount of time has passed.
Cost: None.
Duration: Variable.
Cooldown: Variable.
Note: A unification state must be willfully cancelled or automatically run out of time for a new one to be formed. The time limit varies depending on the nature of the synergized elements.
❮ ◈ ❯
"Damn, you really did it," Allan laughed. "This is so much better than the System's synthesis. The options are endless. Just being able to synergize my 'Diamond Fists' would boost my strength by a ton."
Quill's eyes narrowed in thought as he stared at the card. "That's… groundbreaking," he couldn't help but comment after peering into the description. "Would you sell it, by any chance?"
"Right now? Probably not," Rakna shrugged. "It takes time, materials, and the continued effort of four of us. I can't mass produce it. I've just barely made enough for my Guild. But, maybe one day, we might sell it through Harvest."
"I see…" Quill hummed. "Then, if I may ask, is it possible for that skill to fuse statistics?"
The therian raised an eyebrow. "That's a good question. Allan and Marie are the first I'm giving this skill card to, but since it's partly a scale model of my own powers, I'm pretty confident it can. Why ask?"
"Because this might potentially be an unprecedented shortcut," he answered and turned to Allan with a sharp look. "River, have you ever heard of Chakra?"
* * *
Sometime later, Rakna headed for his second order of business. He opened his eyes after the end of a System transfer and found himself in the 146th Plateau, The Nest.
The biome of this particular range of Plateaus was a massive underground hive. The sole source of light were the seams of green ore encrusted in every wall, which the Wilden continuously dug large tunnels and rooms into, which sometimes were as big as full-fledged cities.
"They moved places, huh? Should've expected that," Rakna said and closed his eyes. He had come here to pick up Pronos, whom he had entrusted to a certain Local. As his Soul Beast though, the hydra was easy to trace. "Found it."
The therian looked up and intoned, "[ReverseCosmos.]"
Space folded into itself at his behest and a wormhole swallowed him. It instantly relocated him where he wanted to be; dropping him off at the edge of a vast subterranean basin of water.
Rakna looked over his shoulder and groaned. "This skill remains terrifying no matter how many times I test it," he commented as he inspected the wormhole he opened.
Inside ReverseCosmos, he could manipulate the laws of physics to his heart's content. Though most of it was incredibly taxing on his psychic energy, especially when it came to stopping time like the Sage did, something like this small wormhole was rather easy.
But the scary thing wasn't that; it was the permanency. Space, for example, was a fundamentally stable dimension. It meant that if he altered its shape one way or another, it would not return to normal once he lifted his control over it.
In other words, should he not do anything right now, this small wormhole would never close up unless someone else decided to close or outright 'destroy' it.
"Hm, this one's a 5/10," Rakna commented and snapped his fingers, closing the wormhole. At the same time, he used his skill again, but on the water in front of him instead. The surface parted for him and created a perfectly straight tunnel toward the bottom.
The therian unhesitatingly jumped into it and after several seconds of falling, he landed softly at the bottom. He smiled as his eyes shifted to look up. "Hello again."
In response to his greeting, two pairs of yellow eyes approached from within the depths. Then, a fitting number of heads peeked into the dry space, each with the very recognizable features of a cobra with green scales.
One of the heads hissed and spoke up, "I wish you would stop carving my waters, Beast Emperor. I am not fond of what it does to my senses."
"Well, I have to make my way down somehow."
"You do not fool me. You can breathe underwater, can you not?" The other head questioned with an exasperated tone. "No matter," it huffed and plunged back into the waters.
Rakna chuckled and released the water, refilling up the gap. And as he was submerged, in turn, a quick rune was all it took to stop the water from wetting his clothes.
After getting his runes to the Divine stage, incorporating the Original Language, and evolving it into RuneSage, it wasn't inaccurate to say that he could pretty much do anything with them.
He followed behind the twin-headed cobra; a creature better known as Assiel, a Local despite his appearance, and the gatekeeper of a nomad village originating from the 245th Plateau.
As for where that supposed village was…
Assiel revealed its entrance with a burst of mana. A whirlpool formed in the center of this basin of water and then expanded, swallowing both the cobra and Rakna. Before he knew it, the latter was in a completely different place.
In a world full of water, a sphere of light mimicking the sun was above him, and a village married to the maritime plants and minerals extended for kilometers below him.
"Come, your little abomination is at the Aqua Stem," Assiel said and swam toward said location like a torpedo. Befitting his level in the 700s, the serpent was fast and then some.
"[East Star,]" Rakna whispered and the water around his legs blurred as if becoming part of his Internal Art. Bhumi's inheritance had taught him how to resonate Ki with elements; notably the four basic elements of matter. "[Gonakadet.]"
The blurry water exploded and shot forward in the shape of a strange creature with the head of a wolf and the body of a fish, carrying Rakna with it. He caught up and Assiel accelerated further with him in tow, creating vacuums in their trails.
Five minutes later, both of them stopped next to a prominent landmark in the form of a massive plant stem growing from the sea floor. The material it was made of was strange; it was not in any way vegetal and practically was like jelly instead. It also clearly was in its early stages of growth considering the relative size of its leaves, yet it was somehow bigger than a skyscraper.
"When you came asking for advice on how to train an Ouroboros, I was unsure," the twin-headed cobra began to speak. "Then again, your logic amounted to 'ouroboros = snake = me'."
Rakna awkwardly cleared his throat.
"Regardless, there wasn't much to do. Your pet already had a good grasp of his magic and plenty of auxiliary skills to make apt use of it. The only problem was his Path Skills," Assiel remarked as he gazed at the stem. "He was underusing the Cycle of Eternity."
"…that's true," the therian slowly nodded. "I think he used 'Life' only once."
"I had assumed so. So, I brought him here," the serpent flicked his tongues. "What you see here is the Aqua Stem. It is the pillar of the dimension we're currently in. Every month, it drops one leaf to maintain its stability and then grows another until the next. It's made of Ether, which is a form of spiritual energy that channels the raw force of nature."
Assiel began to swim toward the base of the stem and Rakna followed. "The Road to Eternity has three 'Cycles', as you should know already; Life, Death, and Rebirth. The Aqua Stem inherently is a beacon for the first and last."
"So, you sent him inside?" Rakna asked as they touched the sea floor. He tapped the liquescent plant in curiosity, creating ripples on its surface. He couldn't see through the exterior, but Pronos definitely could be felt inside. "Is that fine? It doesn't damage it?"
"Admittedly," Assiel huffed. "Your pet has been greedily draining its power to the point of wilting a leaf earlier. But this Stem has existed for more than two thousand years. He alone can't exhaust its power. Within a year, the deficit will be covered, even with this dimension's upkeep."
"I see."
"Also, you did bring what you promised, right?" The cobra heads narrowed their eyes.
Rakna let out a chuckle and took out a certain orb from inside a whirlpool of soul flames. It had a pure cyan hue, an intermittent glow, and a terribly small yet complicated rune inside. "This is the thing you asked," he said and tossed the object.
The twin-headed serpent caught it with the water currents before appraising it. After a quick but thorough inspection, he hissed softly. "Yes. It's perfect. Your skills are truly transcendental."
"I'm still wondering why you asked me to transmute the water of a hundred different places into one liquid," the therian commented. "Not to mention a Blood Rune… Are you trying to carry out some kind of ritual? Does it have anything to do with the small divinity over there?"
Rakna glanced at the submerged village where he could see mermaids, fishmen, and even nagas; a much rarer race that he had yet to find anywhere else on the System.
"It's none of your business, Beast Emperor," Assiel countered dryly. "But we have no intention of causing more unrest in the System, so don't fret. It is more likely that our goal will not reach its conclusion within its walls anyway."
"You intend to continue outside the System, huh?" The therian snorted. "Then pray that we come out of it alive then," he said and ended the conversation by sending a bolt of soul power into the root of the Aqua Stem.
He then stepped back and waited exactly three seconds before a giant silhouette burst out from the mysterious plant, releasing a burst of power. Rakna shielded himself from the waves with his Serakals and looked up.
He blinked. "Well, you changed a little…"
Pronos seemingly had gone through a second evolution inside the Aqua Stem. Most strangely, he had reverted to having one head, but aside from that, his body had gotten an enormous boost in both length and size.
His scales were glistening as ever, reflecting a bright cyan color that now faded to dark blue as it got closer to his belly. The small spikes he had around his heads before now pointed inward and wrapped around his neck like a scarf, each displaying a slightly different shade of gray as if they were made of stone.
A circuit of Eion was coursing through his body, lighting up with the rhythm of his heartbeat and occasionally causing a certain circular pattern to appear repeatedly.
Pronos cried out, his vocal cords deepening it into a growl. His body coiled around the area with enough coverage to make it look like a barricade and he started rubbing his head against Rakna.
"Hah," the therian stood his ground as the giant snake tried to nuzzle him. "Hey now. That's quite the change again," he commented as he stroked Pronos' head. "Let's see… you've unlocked water magic, huh?" He said after opening the pet status. "Several skills have leveled up… new Path Skill too. Your race is still Hydra though, but not Nine-Headed anymore."
"But then what happens to your Nirvana Skills and regeneration…?"
Pronos hissed softly in response and lifted his head. His eyes shone, and from another part of his body, a second head grew as if bursting from his insides. It joined the first and they both looked at Rakna with proud faces.
The therian smiled. "I see. Rebirth… it's quite something. Somewhere in between Hans' Rewrite and my ObsidianBlood?" He mused and the large snake tilted his heads in opposite directions as if shrugging. "That's overpowered in many ways… Well, regardless, congratulations, little guy. You can come back."
Pronos hissed agreeingly and his heads almost macabrely fused into one. He then swiftly shrunk to his most accustomed size, swimming toward Sonata and burrowing himself under it.
{Welcome back, I suppose,} Bhumi snorted.
"Then, I'll be going," Rakna said, and faster than most Hosts could track, he wrote a large rune at his feet with his Valkals.
"May we meet again, Beast Emperor."
"Right," the therian chortled. "Let's wish each other good luck then. Goodbye, Assiel," he said and exited the marine dimension.