Cassandra Blackthorn's letter rested on the rustic wooden table, exhaling a scent that blended the sweetness of jasmine with something metallic and dangerous. Aslam observed it, no longer with his initial irritation.
— A tracking seal... — he said in a low voice.
His fingers hovered over the black wax seal. He didn't need complex spells to feel the rhythmic pulse hidden there.
"A passive tracking signature," he thought, a lopsided smile forming on his lips. "Ingenious. She doesn't just know where the letter was left; she knows exactly who opened it and where the recipient is located at this very moment."
His first reaction would be to remove the wax, but Aslam halted the movement. Destroying the seal would be an alert—a silent scream that he was more than a mere Silver Rank prodigy. Instead, he decided to mask the signal, enveloping the letter in a film of static mana that would freeze the object's location in the perception of whoever was watching.
Aslam stepped away from the table, satisfied with the disguise. He knelt on the aged wooden floorboards. His fingers fumbled through the cracks until they found the correct protrusion. With a sharp tug, the board gave way, revealing the Orb of Tirath wrapped in thick linen cloths.
He closed his eyes and sent a single filament of mana, thin as a spider's web, into the interior of the sphere. Unlike modern storage crystals, which act as static buckets, the Orb reacted like a living organism. He felt the mana being sucked in, accelerated, and returned at a frequency that harmonized with the surrounding environment.
The flow of mana came skittish, vibrating at a metallic frequency that defied the fluid nature of conventional energies. It was a compressed essence, stripped of unnecessary volume and as free as it naturally is, leaving only a dense and aggressive core.
Aslam observed the phenomenon with dilated pupils. He identified the principle behind that mechanic: the Orb functioned as a high-pressure centrifuge, crushing the mana until it became compact enough to fuel gears. The idea struck like a bolt of technical insanity. If he could use his own circulatory system as part of this circuit, the results would be unprecedented.
He intended to inject his own mana into the Orb, allow the artifact to accelerate and compact it, and then reabsorb it. With the volume reduced, he would be able to store triple the energy density permitted for his current physical stage. A closed feedback loop that would push Kaelus's body to the absolute limit of rupture.
— Let's see if you can take it, Kael — he murmured, taking the remains of the Astragor and the Flaming Petals.
He consumed the Astragor resin first. The substance slid down his throat like molten lead, acting as a surfactant that made the walls of his mana channels extremely elastic. Immediately after, he crushed the flaming petals between his teeth. The residual heat from the flowers acted as a thermal catalyst, preparing his nervous system for sensory overload.
Aslam felt a shiver of anticipation run down his spine. The technical challenge outweighed any instinct for preservation. Even in his previous life, when he reached the apex of the Connection Rings, it was these moments of calculated risk that made his blood boil. He was ecstatic, his mind operating at a frequency of brilliance bordering on madness.
— Initial circuit, activate.
Aslam's mana left his pores in silver threads, plunging into the obsidian darkness of the artifact. The Orb projected an amber light dodecahedron, sealing the room. Within this cocoon, Aslam became the center of a whirlwind. The compacted mana filled his meridians, occupying spaces previously considered "full."
Inside his thoracic cavity, Aslam's spiritual vision focused on the center of his existence: the heart. Around the vital organ, the two existing connection rings spun at distinct speeds. The first, of Awakening, was a thin and stable line; the second, of the Inner Forge, shone with the solidity of tempered steel, displaying the three runic marks indicating its level: 2.3. However, what Aslam was forcing now was the consolidation of the third.
A thread of saliva escaped the corner of his mouth, but he didn't care. Technical excitement overrode any aesthetic dignity. He felt the system vibrate at a dangerous frequency—a crystalline hum that echoed at the base of his skull.
In his thoughts, the image of his own magical system was clear: a glass structure under the impact of a hammer. If one of these rings shattered now, the pressure accumulated by the Orb would exceed the elasticity granted by the Astragor. Rupture would mean the absolute end. The compacted mana, without the control of the vessel, would expand from the inside out, shattering his meridians and his very consciousness. Without the mastery of the rings, his mind would become a portal flung wide to the void, where ancestral entities and hungry echoes of Veyra could hiss maddening secrets directly into his ear.
Risk was the seasoning needed for evolution.
Aslam saw the mechanical mana coating every one of Kaelus's vertebrae. The total volume of energy in his body decreased drastically as the mass increased. He was transforming into a star: appearances are deceiving, but his gravitational weight began to distort the perception of the environment within the dodecahedron.
His heartbeats became slow and heavy, synchronous with the internal rotations of the Orb. The accelerated mana entered his skin like incandescent needles, piercing the resistance of the Forge to found the foundations of Expansion.
The Third Ring began to transfigure. It emerged as a scar of solid energy, forged by the unsustainable pressure of the mechanical mana the Orb spat back. The circle was, initially, smooth and without marks, indicating the exact threshold of level 3.0.
His blood pressure had already soared to a dangerous level, but at the moment of transfiguration, it reached levels that would make an ordinary man's heart explode instantly.
The outside world faded; the sound of the wind in the cracks of the inn and the distant noise of Eldria's streets were replaced by a sharp, deafening hum, which soon gave way to an absolute auditory vacuum. He went deaf.
Aslam leaned forward, his body trembling under the weight of the mechanical mana. A violent nausea rose up his throat, and he vomited a dark, viscous blood, saturated with metallic remnants of Astragor. The fluid hit the wooden floor with a heavy, almost solid sound, such was the energy density it now carried.
His eyes, previously green and clear, transfigured. The capillaries burst simultaneously under the strain of the transition, tinting his sclera a deep, scarlet red. Aslam's vision became a tunnel of shadows and amber lights, where every detail of the room was bathed in a bloody hue.
— Just a little more... — he tried to articulate, but the words were merely a choke of blood.
The Expansion ring, which should have consolidated into a clear, thin circle, reacted violently to the overload. The torrent of mana was so vast and compressed that Aslam's spiritual structure found no resistance in the first stage; it simply ran it over.
He had skipped an entire level. The Third Connection Ring was now in the stage of Elemental Sentinel—just one level below the apex.
The scene inside the dodecahedron was one of pure horror. Blood trickled from Aslam's ears and nostrils, tracing dark paths over his already ruined tunic. His sclera, overtaken by absolute internal hemorrhaging, glowed in a demonic scarlet that seemed to emanate its own light in the shadows of the room. To any outside observer, the sight would be unbearable.
However, amidst the physical agony and the deafening silence of his temporary deafness, Aslam displayed something that defied sanity. His lips parted, revealing teeth stained red in a wide, predatory grin. It was an expression of maniacal euphoria, a delight that only a master who has already touched the apex of existence could feel when flirting again with the abyss.
The physical world crumbled into black ink. Blindness arrived like a light being switched off, a wall of darkness that isolated Aslam within his own mind.
He then began to rave. Floating over a sea of mirrored mercury, under a firmament that poured molten gold. He was, once again, the apex. His consciousness pulsed with the memory of when his will shaped the laws of existence.
The Entity emerged from this abyss of memories. It manifested as a storm of ethereal chains and colossal eyes that held the weight of dead galaxies. It was The Jailer—the name he had gently nicknamed her—the force that had sentenced him to the exile of fragile flesh. Her presence crushed the soul, bringing back the piercing cold of the original seal, the mark of his fall.
While the vision of the Entity tried to subdue his spirit, the Third Connection Ring roared in his chest. The mana of the Domain flowed like lava through his energy channels, incinerating the physical pain.
The loss of vision was irrelevant. Fleshly eyes were limited tools, narrow windows to a mediocre three-dimensional reality. Aslam now possessed something superior. His perception detached from light and merged with the fabric of mana through the Ring of Expansion.
His silent laughter was the last act of his conscious will before the collapse.
The room was plunged into a deathly silence, broken only by the rhythmic sound of blood dripping onto the floor.
It was 9 AM. The world outside continued its indifferent march while, inside that room, his mana was already at work.