9:50 PM
The euphoria of completion faded slightly as Orion turned his attention inward again, examining the two completed ring halos that now encircled his heart in concentric golden bands and golden tendrils connection the halos to his heart, beautiful and powerful and finished, and his mind immediately jumped to the obvious next step because why stop at two when he could have three, when the exotic energy was still abundant around him, when advancement was right there for the taking?
He reached out eagerly to the exotic energy filling the chamber, already anticipating the rush of power as it flowed into him, already imagining the third ring forming in perfect parallel to the first two, already feeling the future enhancement that would take him from eight times baseline to sixteen times baseline, and he began pulling energy in with the same greedy intensity he'd used to complete the second ring.
