12 | New Lead: Exploring his powers. - The Great Convergence: The Most High Unknown

Soon after, Leon left the room. He gave gentleman's bow before leaving and closed the door shut, leaving El in silence.

"Hah!" "He was really serious!" El spoke letting out small breaths as he recalled how Leon had bowed several times before letting him go, he had even had to chase him out.

Composing himself, he walked towards his bed and laid down, summoning his status window.

== << [| Status |] >> ==

Name: El

Age: 0

Religion: Christianity

Identity: Righteous Ritualist

Title: Apostle of the Gods | Son of the Most High One

Class: Anointed one | Sealed

Talent: True Authority | Manifestation: 1%

Path: All Root | Stage: Bearer | Manifestation: 1%

Power: Finality | Manifestation: 1%

Flaw: Destined

== << [|-----------------|] >> ==

He clicked his marks.

== << [| Marks of divinity: They refer to the marks of divinity a being may place on you. This means that you are theirs and have become their own.|] >> ==

== << [| Mark of the Holy: Your body is pure, everlasting and true. No disease can affect you; age cannot make you weak or lead you to death. Your regeneration is flawless and fast; if your heart is busted or pierced it can regenerate. If your head is cut off, it can grow back. Limbs and even your whole body can regenerate itself. You can heal the sick and raise the dead. But you are a half immortal, you are not a being, thus you can still be killed by a higher divinity.|] >> ==

"Oh wow, I guess I can now perform some miracles, and maybe I can't even die now?"

== << [| No. You can still die. |] >> ==

"Huh! Since when could you respond?" El asked in shock. The system had never responded, never talked or had spoken to him before.

== << [| Isn't there a first time for everything? |] >> ==

"I think I've become delusional after blood loss," El sighed in disappointment.

== << [| "Didn't you read the description for the Mark of the Holy? Your body keeps regenerating. No disease can make you weak or kill you, and age cannot make you weak or lead to your death. Losing blood won't even affect you!" |] >> ==

Well, the system isn't wrong. I do feel as if my blood has become thicker, and all the blood loss can't affect me anymore…

Looking at the interface before him and completely understanding, he then shouted in joy, "Nice! So then," he said, cutting his hand open and drawing some blood out, "let's see if it will work…"

Just then, the wound closed almost instantly, and the blood that came out dried into pure dust before withering away.

"Nice," he muttered.

Then, he checked the next mark he received.

== << [| Mark of the Abyss: You are the embodiment, the ruler, the king of shadows. The shadows cling to you like children. You use them as slaves and servants to do your bidding. They can act as armour, an endless deep hell even deeper than voids. You are the sovereign of hell. You can call forth the dead and make them into armies. You have supreme control over the Seven Evils and the demons of hell. You may devour concepts, powers, souls, and memories. You can manifest a void. You can manifest rifts and condense weapons into pure nothingness. You carry the abyss in your shadow. Silence exists where you stand. You possess the endurance of the abyss. But the abyss is bottomless. The more you draw from it, the more detached you become. Your emotions become illusions. You feel distant. Friends and family are quietly forgotten. You may start seeing the world not as life, but as something temporary. |] >> ==

El slowly gazed down at the granite floor as he understood what he had just read. The granite floor slowly became a floor of shadows, a bottomless pit of void. His room became devoid of items as shadows came out to cling to him, hug him, feel him, and whisper in his ears.

Hell, now felt so near to him. If he wanted to go to hell right now… he could. No. He already was in hell. Space and time began to twist around him, blurring everything. The distortions of reality faintly echoed around him, still suppressed by the inevitable silence he carried. But he felt its gifts. He felt nothingness slowly cling to him.

But even then, the Mark of the Holy stood as his balance. It tilted on his right side of his head, forming a small, white, fractured crown upon his flowing red hair.

El blinked twice, dazed for a moment, then steadied himself and returned to reality.

He checked his other mark.

== << [| Mark of the Thousand Threads: You possess an affinity for time and space. You may rewind time and bend space to your will. You have the ability to manipulate fate itself. You can attract the opportunities in life that you desire and dispel misfortune and ill outcomes away from you. Destiny clings to you like a younger brother. You can change the fates of others and rewrite their destinies. Cause and consequence are yours to control. You can multitask with reality, divide and conquer; your mind feels divided yet united. A thousand actions of observing, fighting, defending, scheming, and calculating can occur simultaneously. But you face entanglement. If too many bonds snap, your mind may fracture. You may no longer see people as living beings, but as nodes in a network of reality. |] >> ==

"…I see."

He lowered his gaze, as if tracing invisible threads in the air.

"Every mark I obtain demands a price. Equivalent exchange is merely the surface. Sometimes the price sharpens me, tempers me, turns poison into medicine. Sometimes it corrodes."

A faint smile touched his lips, calm and detached.

"At times, the cost can be suppressed, digested, converted into strength. At times, it festers in silence, waiting for the moment my guard falters."

He lifted his eyes again, steady and clear.

"In the end, a mark is not a blessing nor a curse. It is a transaction. And whether I profit… or go bankrupt… depends on whether I can afford what it asks."

He let out a sigh and checked his other mark.

== << [| Mark of Transcendence: You are transcendence itself. You keep transcending your limits continuously. No bondage can restrict you. No limit can define you. Reality itself cannot cage your glory. You continue to evolve even now as if it is your birthright. One second you're as weak as a small child, the next you're as strong as an adult. Once you transcend something, it no longer applies to you. If you transcend fire, it cannot burn you. If you transcend destiny perhaps, well… It cannot restrain you or control you. But, as you keep transcending the world begins to lag behind… |] >> ==

"Damn.. This is actually good, but what does it mean by as I keep transcending, the world begins to lag behind?" El asked, hoping the system would respond.

At first, the system did not respond.

Then,

== << [| You will find out. Sooner or Later. |] >> ==

El looked at the interface with a raised brow, trying to understand what the system meant by sooner or later. But he quickly shifted it aside and continued exploring his marks.

== << [| Mark of creation: You can form matter from nothing; beings, items, pencils, landscapes, worlds, creatures. You could sculp reality as a potter shapes clay. You could make laws like breath. But those Laws could turn on you. You can define how things function. You may give life to the dead. Minds into the mindless. Breath into beings. Souls into vessels. But what you create develops will. You may erase and rebuild, shape reality into what you want. Create abilities, artefacts. But everything you create reflects the creator, you create life, you inherit its suffering, if you create darkness, you inherit its detachment. Creation attracts, envy, imbalance, imitation. And the more you create, the more you decide what deserves to exist. |] >> ==

Digesting what he read, El shaped a small, void like, misty tentacle cube. The formless cube radiated a small fog around it.

The aura then began to tremble vigorously, making ripples of space in his room. The tentacles then stretched out and hugged El's face whispering to him "Papa, I've found you."

El smiled at the little creature he had created from thought. Remembering that whatever he creates is given will he quickly promised it, he would never abandon it.

"Little one, I name you Ben El."

The creature then tightened its tentacles around him and stretched itself softly growing into a small human form. It had no eyes, no mouth or nose, nothing at all. It was formless and had only taken the form of El…

It slowly muttered its name.

"Be..n El!"

"Ben El!"

"Yes, yes little one."

He then lowered Ben El, allowing it wander around the room.

As Ben El wandered with its tentacles, griping the floor with its suction cups but creating no slime. The creature turned around to smile at El, then it began to create little constructs out of nothing. The blood on the ritual symbols dried up and withered away. The withered blood was then pulled into the construct that Ben El had created.

As the creature was doing this, El continued to check his marks.

== << [| Mark of Destruction: You are the vessel of destruction. Entropy, disease, decay, erasure, silence, destruction, death, stillness, all things, all ends have become you. You can unmake everything. Iron turns into rust, living becomes dead, beings become dust. Structures vanish as though they never existed. You are the end point. You are the nullifier. You can nullify attacks, erase magic and powers, become the End of all things. But you begin to see life as fragile. When you see people suffer, you think death will end their pain. You see life as impermanent, fragile and ultimately meaningless |] >> ==

As El read this with an emotionless expression, the shadows around him began to ripple around his hands, the objects, the wardrobe at the corner, the desks even his bed all shivered from repulsion, as if they were trying to escape from him. Even as he was sitting still on his bed, there was a faint hum of absence around him; the potential of all things undone.

This time, he no thoughts about this peculiar mark. Although it was one of the strongest marks he had on his body, it became a passive death to him. A virus that will slowly and inevitably spread to melt his own view of reality.

He checked his other mark.

== << [| Mark of Chaos: You have become unstable. You are the root of creation and destruction. Possibility and encounters encroach towards you in silence. Your perspective becomes broadened and awake. Illusions and imaginations become your friends as you try to hide away from reality. You can alter probability to your will. Events collide together in harmony. Arrows and attacks don't reach you. Objects transform as energy fluctuates. Landscapes shift, laws of physics, magic fluctuate. Reality feels slippery. The world becomes like fluid, like clay, but clay that reshapes itself even as you mould it. Paradoxes and contradictions coexist around you. Light and darkness dance in harmony. Fire and water become one. But chaos in never loyal, it only obeys you partially; it always resists your full control. Small miscalculations may spiral into disaster. Extended use may erode your sense of self. Reality and the world, becomes malleable to you; contradictory and indifferent. |] >> ==

El read his last mark, a thin smile spreading across his face. He tilted his head, observing his surroundings, then rose from the bed, unsummoned the interface, and walked toward the mirror hung above the desk on the other side of the room.

Around him, the air began to shimmer like liquid heat and fractured glass. The shadows twisted at impossible angles, and the colours flickered unnaturally. A subtle hum filled his ears, and he felt something shift within the silence.

The room was no longer bright.

The moment Leon had left in joy, the room began to dim, the lights shutting off one by one.

El looked at his reflection.

His hair was blood red, almost too vivid, crimson and heavy with the colour of war. His eyes were unnaturally black, absent and devoid of light, as deep as the shadows beneath his feet. His lips were pink, his nose slim. His face was handsome and smooth, carrying a cold, indifferent expression.

He tried to force a smile. It spread across his lips, then faltered and collapsed, returning to indifference.

He turned and watched his little creature dancing around the large room, playing with the shadows as if they were companions.

Leaving the mirror, he returned to his bed and lay down, summoning the interface once more and observing it in silence.

== << [| Status |] >> ==

Name: El

Age: 0

Religion: Christianity

Identity: Righteous Ritualist

Title: Apostle of the Gods | Son of the Most High One

Class: Anointed one | Sealed

Talent: True Authority | Manifestation: 1%

Path: All Root | Stage: Bearer | Manifestation: 1%

Power: Finality | Manifestation: 1%

Flaw: Destined

== << [|-----------------|] >> ==

His gaze fell upon favourers, class, then shifted ad settled on his path, talent, his power and flaw.

== << [| Talent: The natural ability of an individual |] >> ==

== << [| Talent: True authority: You are the absolute commander of existence. If you say "Stop" Reality stops. "Kneel" Reality Kneels. You can override powers: flame may burn but if you declare it extinguished, it obeys. Define Order: Rules and Laws are strengthened in your presence, wherever you go, all things flow in harmony. Assign roles: You can elevate or demote beings. Grant titles that carry power and burden. Punishment and blessings manifest because you decree them. But your will must be strong, strong enough to command. A petty cowardly boy cannot command a bully to kneel; he will be crushed. If you abuse it without foundation, rebellion grows. The lonely truth is that: The more you stand, the fewer stand beside you. |] >> ==

== << [| Note: To increase your manifestation, make True authority a passive for you, make it something you do in your everyday life. |] >> ==

El calmly gazed at the screen before his eyes, understanding the implication of his Talent. An invisible pressure began to spread outward from him making the air heavy.

"As for this True authority I'll try it on the group," El smirked wickedly.

He then glanced at his path and tapped it to see more information.

== << [| Path: a journey of growth for a specific specialisation or enlightenment. |] >> ==

== << [| Path: All root: You are origin itself. Every beginning resonates with you. You sense the core of existence, the core of life, the foundation of all things. The foundations of all things are within your grasp. You can manipulate them like strings of fate and play with them like clay or sand. You are connected to the frame works of reality. You can manipulate the growth and start point of everything. |] >> ==

== << [| Note: To increase the manifestation, you must grasp the foundations, the origins and manipulate them. |] >> ==

"Hmm? No, But in this path? Is this like a perfect path?" El asked, slightly confused though happy that there were no consequences.

== << [| Every path is perfect. It's just the man who takes the path that isn't |] >> ==

He then checked his power.

== << [| Power: Finality: there are no words needed to explain this power. It has its own goods and bads. Whatever you do is final. If you kill a god or a being it can't resurrect. It counters every possibility and is the end of every beginning. Be careful though. Don't make mistakes, as it can't be reversed.. Live with no regrets! |] >> ==

Finally, he checked his Flaw.

== << [| Flaw: The balance of an individual |] >> ==

"I already have so many balances though!" El sighed in annoyance.

He then checked to see what his flaw was all about.

== << [| Flaw: Destined: You are destined for both good and bad. Though you have the power to change the fate and destines of others, it is a pity you cannot change yours. |] >> ==

El let out a sigh.

He had no words to describe his frustration, his annoyance, nor his joy. He simply tilted his head and watched his little creature dance and play with the shadows.

"Come here, Ben El. It's time to sleep," he said softly, though his voice echoed through the large room.

The little creature paused and turned his head, then ran toward El. He climbed onto the bed and lay beside him.

"Papa, time to sleep?" Ben El asked.

"Yes, little one," El replied, kissing his forehead before closing his eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow, by GOD's grace."

The little creature giggled softly, then closed his eyes.

Chapter 21 - 12 | New Lead: Exploring his powers.