Limitless Rivum: Ascension of The Slave
Varek Kael Mourne woke up in a courtroom.
Not from sleep. From death, a whole other life, a whole other world, finished. And now this. A verdict already being read, a collar already heating against his throat, and the people who were supposed to be his family sitting quietly in the gallery, watching it happen, having arranged most of it themselves.
The charges were serious. Sexual assault on Princess Selira Voss, a girl he had never met, in a body he had only just arrived in. The trial was over before he could understand the language properly.
His cultivation pathways were destroyed with Voidrot Poison in Mol Sareth, a slave world with a red sky and a long memory for suffering. By the time the collar locked, he had nothing. No power, no allies, no name that meant anything anymore.
He started paying attention anyway. It was the only thing left to do.
Mol Sareth broke people slowly. The Yoke Pits went two kilometers underground and the ore disrupted every piece of Forge Rite equipment, so they used hands instead. His hands.
Eighteen days into a punishment sentence in the Molten Trench, with the heat coming up through the stone in slow even waves and his body starting to lose the argument, he made a simple decision. He had already died once. He did not find it impressive enough to do again.
The systems arrived in that silence.
[Ding.]
[System One Activated: The Remnant Archive]
[You may now summon and commune with any being that has ever existed across all of Rivum and beyond.]
[Cost per session: fragments of your remaining lifespan.]
[System Two Activated: The Cracked Mirror]
[Fragments of your own future are now visible to you.]
[They are incomplete. They are out of order. They will not explain themselves.]
[First Activation Reward: Ghost Channel Restoration-0.1% of destroyed pathways rebuilt.]
[First Activation Reward: Lifespan Extended-10 years granted.]
[First Activation Reward: Nullpath Seed Implanted-dormant in scar tissue. Condition for awakening: unknown.]
[First Activation Reward: Archive Tier One Unlocked-Surface Dust. Summoning range: common mortals and minor cultivators.]
[First Activation Reward: Mirror Fragment Delivered]-A single image. His own hand. Holding a key. No date attached.
He read through all of it. Then he stood up.
There were nine cultivation ranks between him and something the old records called Omnipotent, a word that appeared exactly once in all of Rivum's documented history before someone went through the trouble of removing it. There was a clan that needed to fall. A princess whose death was needed.
He had a dead engineer's knowledge to steal, a collar to dismantle from the inside, and two systems that had just handed him more tools than anyone in this world knew he was carrying.
He had time.
He had done harder things with considerably less.
---
Author's Note: Varek is not a hero. He was never going to be one. This story does not redeem him, and it does not ask you to root for him, it only asks you to watch. The pacing is medium to fast. Things move. People fall. Enjoy.
Extra tags: #R-18 . #LimitlessEvolution . #UniquePowerSystem #Haren(In the far far future).
