"Now, however, we are at the rank of a titan... the one you actually asked me about..."
"So, what is a titan, what does it do?"
"I'll be honest, I'm just going to explain to you every rank I understand by now, so just wait a lil' f#cking bit, you'll get it into you little head real soon..."
"Were the insults necessary?"
"No, but I like insults, now shush!" he said, also making the corresponded gesture to the shush by putting his index finger over his old, crackled lips, formed to the form of a kiss, or just the shush sound, whichever was more interesting to think about...
"The rank of a titan is one of the most special ones, it is perhaps the greatest step in strength, aside from the last few ranks, if there is such a thing as an end to the ladder of power, the hierarchy only really seems to end at the great pillars and that mysterious old man I sometimes heard about..."
Avere noted that down to ask later, already knowing he didn't want to miss what Adelius was going to talk about now.
"It is also known as the first step to becoming a god, it is the step of exerting yourself onto the world."
"What?"
"When we use magic, we convert energy into happenings, we use a natural phenomenon, one that is often influenced by the gods, such as the system of the god's gambit, the silver contract, the fictional pyramid, all weird systems, all real..." he paused once more, as if to torture Avere with that very act.
"Aura utilizes your own magic and makes your intent real, but still through natural means, that being magic, it is a part of this world that is relatively easy to understand, basically the same as wild magic, the one you use...." he paused once more, annoying Avere with it.
"But the rank of a titan is different, it is the rank where your story starts to take form, for example, if you were a baker before, and if you fought for baking, however impossible that may sound, you'd grow stronger in relation to that..."
"You could get the power to summon baked goods out of thin air, you could get the power to make gold if that was your goal, though in the end you still need matter to transform, if you fought to survive, you could gain abilities in relation to that, and so much more."
"For another, real example, Ukor, the beast you met in your previous challenge, always tried to make himself big, to fight, he thought of himself as special and powerful, so he gained the skill of enlarging himself to great degrees, capable of even beating dragons with relative ease as their main ability is their size."
"What was your skill that you gained?"
"I was able to strengthen others, having been a general and a leader my whole life, having done what I thought was right, I was able to hep others grow greater, as a kind of teacher, one of the reasons I was able to take over the kingdom, just by creating strong warriors, mostly transcribes."
He paused once more, though Avere felt as if he had already explained everything...
"Then there is the next one, the one I died at..."
He took a breath, seemingly regretting something.
"It is a rank where one loses as much as they gain..."
"How so?" Avere asked, innocently, Cades intent reigning him in, wanting to know more.
"How do I explain this..."muttering to himself he said.
"Okay, when you are born, you become something, and your matter, your flesh, " his eyes looked upwards, " tries to take form, giving you an appearance, something that is later dictated by the way you life, by what you want to be, by your story, by who you are, something that makes you yourself."
He heavily blew air through his nose, his eyes seemingly trying to look away once more.
"But when you become formless, you lose that, and while you don't just become something like a living monster of flesh, things just change..."
He looked intently at Cades.
"The formless rank gets triggered through a tragedy, not understanding like the other ranks, it is not a power-up per sé, it is something you can already do, just something your body normally refuses to do, it is to change your form to survive, for your muscles to grow stronger, for your beauty to become more, all relative to who you are..."
"To give you an example, Kurakkan's, being's supposedly created by the old man himself" Avere still didn't know who that was, "are of the formless rank, so they are wildly powerful, but just a difficult rank to explain..."
"Okay..." Avere said, burning what had been said into his memory, though the way to becoming a formless did not sound very inviting to his ears.
"I never reached that rank, but from what I know, it is the last step before becoming a god, mostly healed by divine beasts, kings of entire species, supreme rulers of entire worlds, and so many more, the best example being a child leviathan, a being I saw once, as big as an entire ocean, as powerful as fifty dragon's bites, all at once, as intelligent as myself, or at least, it somehow made those around it seem lesser in all regards, including the capability to think..."
"Honestly, I think it has something to do with understanding who you are, or some cr#p like that, maybe I'm also completely wrong, I never reached that stage, and in most cases, this one being an exception, it is not normal to tell others to ways to ascend like I have been doing up until now."
Avere still burned all the new information into his mind, but he still had things he wanted to ask, some questions that had come up during this entire explanation, questions for one of the first people who actually explained stuff to him.
"Who is the old man you keep talking about?" he said, and Cades, hiding deep within the subconsciousness, felt his non-existent blood freeze as he remembered tiny fragments of that instinctual knowledge he kept hidden so well.