Chapter 174
Stranger phenomenon (2)
IAM could feel himself—slowly but surely—forcing his hands down toward the desk, each motion a brutal contest of strength against his own body. His fingers trembled violently as they descended, his muscles straining, tendons taut and burning. Every inch gained was agony, as if invisible hooks had embedded themselves in his flesh, yanking his arms upward with relentless force.
Sweat beaded along his brow, slid down his cheek, and still his hands fought him. Not metaphorically—literally. They twisted against his will, fingers twitching and clawing, desperate to reach his face.
It wasn't just his body rebelling—it was everything. The more he tried to resist, the more the pull tightened. With each act of defiance, the pressure multiplied. The progress he made felt like it was being immediately undone, then redone, then undone again. Every inch he gained was met with twice the resistance, and the further he went, the more he realised that something about this pull wasn't just physical—it was psychological. It was trying to wear him down. It wanted him tired. It wanted him to give up.
It felt like a loop—a cruel, grinding cycle. Like walking through a corridor that folded back into itself, no matter which direction you chose. Forward, backward—it didn't matter. He wasn't moving. He wasn't escaping. The repetition was maddening. It chipped away at his motivation, bleeding him of hope until only instinct remained.
It was demoralising. Deeply, fundamentally so.
Like fighting yourself in a dream—knowing exactly what you needed to do, and still failing with every ounce of will you could muster.
And yet—he couldn't stop.
Stopping wasn't an option.
Because if he stopped, even for a second, he could die. Not figuratively. Not symbolically. Actually—literally—die. Right here. Right now.
This time, there was no second chance.
He would just die.
In a random reading booth.
In a random library.
In a random academy.
As a random student.
That would be it. The end.
Just the quiet, pitiful death of someone who passed through the world without ever leaving a mark.
He would die as someone who never achieved anything.
Nothing—except for the vile and disgusting title of the sole survivor of the Hold.
He hated that title. Hated what it meant. Hated that it was all he had.
Because when it came down to it—
That would be all he was.
That would be the only thing left behind.
He would die as a nobody.
IAM kept going.
Even as the strain turned his muscles rigid, even as the trembling in his arms grew more violent with each passing second—he kept going. Inch by inch, he forced his hands downward. Every part of his body screamed, twisted, rebelled. But he didn't stop. He couldn't. His focus narrowed into something razor-thin, cutting through the chaos in his mind until—
His hands finally reached the table.
They touched the surface with a thud. His palms flattened against the desk, and for a split second, IAM expected relief. Expected the pressure to release and the madness to fade.
But instead—
It worsened.
Immediately.
The pull didn't fade—it multiplied. It surged through him like a wave crashing from the inside out, and for the first time, IAM understood just how deep this thing went. Whatever force had gripped him was not done.
Get it off.
The words came like a whisper, but they weren't his own.
Take it off.
They filled his ears.
Remove it.
They were not suggestions—they were commands.
Then the thoughts snapped. Broke loose.
Wrong. Wrong.
WrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrongWrong.
It flooded him.
A wall of repetition slamming into his mind, over and over, until it felt like his skull would split from the pressure. The word pounded through his consciousness, drilling into the base of his brain. His vision pulsed like a vien.
IAM almost blacked out.
And when he came to—
His fingers were already halfway to his face.
His hand hovered dangerously close, twitching with anticipation, fingers flexing.
He barely managed to stop himself.
It took everything—everything—to halt the motion just in time.
And then, through the haze of pain and panic, IAM realised his mistake.
He had been resisting—fighting with everything he had—but that alone wasn't enough. The pull wasn't going to stop just because he endured it. If anything, it was growing stronger the longer he stayed in place. Holding it back was like trying to keep a lid on a storm with bare hands.
No.
What he had to do was clear now.
He had to quicken his transition towards the next level—simultaneously as he resisted the pull.
It had to be at the same time.
IAM took a deep breath, or at least tried to.
But he couldn't afford to wait.
He forced himself to redirect a little of his attention—just a fraction—towards solidifying his concept. It was difficult. Painfully so.
But he had no choice.
The good news—if it could be called that—was that he was not too far at all.
The concept was close to completion.
All he had to do was answer the question.
Just give his own definition based on his understanding.
Even in the middle of this—
That was what it came down to.
The bad news was that even the slightest lapse in focus had nearly sent his hands crashing down onto his own face. He had managed to halt them just above his skin. Every nerve screamed at him, every instinct urging him to yield.
He couldn't do both. He couldn't fight the pull and shape his concept at the same time. His mind felt like it was being squeezed between two opposing realities, and the tension was already clawing at the edges of his consciousness.
There was no choice. He had to gamble. He would have to commit fully—focus solely on one thing. Define his concept first, even as the pull clawed at him and tugged at his flesh and sanity.
It was a risk so extreme that the weight of it pressed down on him like a physical. But he could also feel the mental exhaustion creeping in, a heavy fog of pressure building from the strain. If he delayed, if he hesitated, the pull would claim him. There was no room for error. It was now, or surrender entirely to the force that sought to overwhelm him.
IAM once again let his hands hover near the table after struggling for a long, tense moment. They trembled just above the surface, suspended in the air, and he knew with grim certainty that if he hesitated even for a second, he would lose himself entirely—and die.
He braced every fiber of his being.
With a violent surge of will, he slammed his hands onto the table. The pull hit him immediately, stronger than before, clawing at him from every angle. The sensation was overwhelming, but amid the chaos, one question echoed through the storm in his mind:
What was speech?
His hands moved almost automatically, racing toward the surface of his face, his palms stretching across his vision. The world seemed to blur around him, but his understanding crystallized with startling clarity.
His definition was simple, but profound:
Speech was the act of delivering one's intent in its purest form.
When I speak, I must speak with intent.
When I speak, I must speak to influence.
To speak without intent was to betray oneself; to speak without influence was to waste the power of communication itself.
IAM felt his mind erupt.
To be precise, it wasn't his mind—it was his core. The understanding he had forced himself to grasp could no longer be contained, and it burst outward, shattering the fragile boundaries of his previous limits.
For a moment, it was as if the world had hit pause. Everything hung suspended, motionless, every particle frozen in time, the chaos and pressure suspended in midair.
Then, slowly, imperceptibly at first, the fragments began to pull themselves back together. In contrast to IAM wanting to pull himself apart, his core wanted to pull itself together.
With a minor implosion, the core recombined, and a surge of mana roared through him, forcing its way out of his left nostril as a new Avien simultaneously formed. It reached into every vein, every artery, every fiber of his being, binding back into his core as if it had always belonged there.
An impossible flush coursed through his body, electrifying every nerve. His body shuddered as the new core settled, larger, denser, and yet… different. There was a quality he could not yet name.
His Avien hummed with unprecedented vitality. Mana flowed through it with a speed and intensity he had never experienced before, reinforcing every inch of his body, embedding power into the very marrow of his bones.
IAM could feel a thousand changes coursing through him at once—his mind, his body, his very essence—but all of it faded into the background as he clung to a single point of focus.
His hands trembled on his face…
Had he made it in time?
Was he about to die a gruesome death as he watched himself take his body apart, slowly and painfully?
He felt the terrifying prospect of becoming a stranger in his own flesh.
A tense silence filled the room, thick and suffocating, as IAM waited, every nerve screaming, every breath heavy with anticipation.
...
...
...
...
Then, with painstaking slowness, he pulled—
His hands from his face and let it fall into his lap. He stared straight ahead, chest heaving, as a rush of adrenaline coursed through him.
He had done it.
He had resisted.
He had survived the Stranger Phenomenon.
And in that exhale of relief, he realized—he was now an experienced-level ascender.