I pulled a black shard of the arm from my cheek with a grunt, teeth already gritted against the pain at the end of my arm. The explosion had dislodged the ring device that had been keeping the sensation at bay, and if having my arm ripped off in the first place had hurt, feeling the whole thing fracture and shatter apart was substantially worse.

“Interesting. This has never happened before, Hunter.”

“Yeah, it’s super-interesting but also painful. Really, really painful.”

Having said that, and free of shards – I hoped – I pop yet another of my dwindling supply of healing pills and sat back in the damaged, but still comfy chair.

“Viewing the recorded data will be a requirement; to my knowledge, an implantation has never been tested on a user of a varying energy system. Your channels seemed compatible, but perhaps there is another explanation, Hunter.”

I was having some trouble paying attention through the pain, but I did catch that the Construct had apparently never tried this before, which I will admit, I found pretty annoying. I had already agreed to act as their lab rat, I did not appreciate being the same for an entirely different experiment.

“What do you mean, you’ve never implanted a whatever before? All you world walkers wandering around the multiverse and nobody ever thought to dip into another?!”

“Dee Kay Yu Three. Taking on another energy system at the Construct – or Paragon – level would be foolish, as the additional energy would immediately force an Ascension, Hunter.”

“What do you mean, ‘force an Ascension’? Haven’t you guys already been through an Ascension? Maybe it’s different for Apexes? Ugh, why does it have to be such a secret?!” Seeing the Construct lift its head to speak, I remembered myself and added, “Dee Yu Kay Three” to the end, also remembering to modulate my tone, though DUK3 did not seem to care nearly as much as Lucas had seemed to.

“A being that reaches the point of Ascension and successfully subverts the tribulation, gains Authority and becomes like myself, able to exert limited control – within our bailiwick - of the world around us, within the confines of our Domain. However, this subversion may only take place a single time. Subsequently, reaching the point of Ascension again results in Ascension, with zero percent variability, Hunter.”

Pain forgotten, or at least pushed to the back of my mind, I sat staring at the being in front of my, mouth hanging open as blood dried in my beard. This was more information that anyone had ever given me about the method of becoming an Apex – or a Construct. How did a person subvert a tribulation? It could not be easy, if the number of Apexes was any indication, but perhaps some of that was due to the lack of knowledge of it being possible? Maybe that was on purpose, given what had happened with the Multiplicitous Self; maybe they wanted to limit the number of people who could attain that level of power.

It was all guesswork of course when – if – I ever got back to my new home, I would need to speak to Walker about it – somewhere very private – and see if any of my theories held water.

In the meantime, I refocused on DUK3, who was turned away from me, their gaze locked on a glowing panel.

“Thank you for that. It’s really been sort of a mystery how Apexes come about; I think they want to keep it a secret on my world...”

“Interesting. If you like, I can look into excising the memory, Hunter?”

“Uh, no. No, I’m think I’m good. Thanks for the offer though, Dee Yu Kay Three.”

I did not need somebody messing around with my memory; I was doing pretty well, mentally, when compared to my last life and there was no way I was risking that. And besides, I did really want to know...

Several minutes passed in silence as I sat gripping the end of my arm to minimise the blood loss, I watched in morbid fascination as the skin crept back across the vivid red and white of the wound. It seemed much quicker this time than when it had originally been torn off, even without Darina’s assistance. I did not know a ton about medicine, but at a guess I thought it was likely due to the much cleaner wound.

“It would seem that while your energy system and circuits are compatible, you seem to be using a variant of Experience. The materials of the prosthetic were unable to handle the anomalous load, Hunter.”

“I’m at the Path stage, so I use Praxis rather than base Experience. Uh, Dee Yu Kay Three.”

This was the first time somebody at the Apex level had failed to place my advancement, though maybe the system the Construct used called it something else, or produced it at a different stage.

“Praxis? Please elaborate, Hunter.”

“I guess you call it something else. Praxis is what we call Experience after it’s been refined for the first time. Above that is Veritas, and I think there’s a level past that, but I don’t know the name, sorry. Dee Yu Kay Three.”

“Refine Experience, you say? And multiple times? Very interesting. This must be what separates your specific system from the others. As you are the first user of your system I have encountered, I was unaware of this peculiarity.”

“Wait, you don’t refine Experience at all?”

“We do not; each system operates differently. Our system relies on increased material capacity, however due to the low absorption rate we focus on increased efficiency. There is a system in which they link multiple bodies and use them all to store Experience, like using many bottles, rather than one large bottle, Hunter.”

That was a little shocking; I had become so used to the ubiquity of cultivation that it had simply never occurred to me that it would not be the basis for everyone. When I had visited Lucas’ world, and had seen the crew using Sigils, I had assumed it to be a different execution of the same system, but now it seemed that was pure bias. Or ignorance, at least.

I wondered why nobody tried mixing systems – super-charged Sigils sounded badass, though maybe it was not as simple as that, given that world walking was restricted to people who could – apparently – not practise additional systems. I wondered if there existed any cross-system disciples out there, trained by some wondering ‘walker.

“Wait, if your system – the prosthetics, I guess – has higher capacity, why did it explode? … Dee Yu Kay Three.”

“The system relies on material capacity, which we have augmented with design. The design, whilst adequate for Experience was not robust enough to contend with higher order energy, Hunter.”

The disappointment hit me like a missed step, and I let out a long sigh of disappointment; I had been without my arm for a relatively short amount of time, but while I had managed to deal with that, based on the fact that I would be getting a new one when I returned to the Citadel, yet having one dangled before me and having it not work out was difficult. Of course, I knew that I could still have it regrown, but that was likely months away. I also wondered if this meant that the Sigil Lucas had said he would teach me would not work.

“Well, thanks for trying, Dee Yu Kay Three. I guess I’ll just need to wait to have it regrown.”

“You seem to have established a mistaken perception, Hunter. While this setback would stymie many of my peers, I am not so easily balked. If you would return to your down-cycling cell, or perhaps seek Lucas out, I will return to the design stage of your replacement, making sure to compensate for your Praxis. And indeed, orders beyond it. Two novelties within a single millennium; most invigorating, Hunter.”

*

***

*

My arm had mostly stopped bleeding by the time I found Lucas, and all the lesser punctures and lacerations had long since closed. The pain had retreated to a dull ache, interposed with the occasional sharp pain as my sleeve brushed against the raw flash.

“It did not go well.”

“No, no it did not. The arm exploded.”

“Fascinating. I wonder what your Praxis will do to a Sigil?”

I could not say that I was overly enthused that Lucas also seemed to be interested in using me as a Guinea pig in multiple experiments. But it was not like I could actually do anything about it, and if I was being one-hundred percent honest with myself, I also wanted to see what would happen.

“Well, hopefully it won’t explode. I’d rather not lose my other arm.”

“It is possible, but unlikely.”

“... Then I’m glad we’re waiting until I get my new arm, if I’m going to lose one, I'd like a spare... on hand...”

“Droll.”

“... Sorry. Anyway, have you put any thought into which Sigil you’ll be teaching me, or do I get to pick? What’s actually involved?”

“Given your apparent penchant for injury, I had thought to teach you a shielding Sigil. It will be interesting to see if you can produce one, without the entire Lexicon.”

“Lexicon?”

“In our System, we spool Experience within the Lexicon – a library of Sigils Inscribed upon our minds. It allows us to store more Experience than would be otherwise possible for our bodies.”

“So, I guess the larger the library, the more energy? Is that how you ascend, you memorise the entire library?”

“No. The Lexicon is merely the First Height. To Achieve the Second Height, the Lexicon must be inscribed on our bones, and this allows us to merge any two Sigils. The Third Height involves Inscribing the Lexicon upon our flesh, which allows us to increase the energy output of a Sigil. The Fourth Height is inscribing a subset of the Lexicon upon an external object, making it part of us and allowing limited customization of those Sigils upon it. A Shield that burns, for example. The Fifth Height is achieved by creating a Sigil and inscribing it upon our souls; this Sigil can be drawn by will alone. Once each of these has been spooled in their entirety, Ascension is triggered.”

I looked at the glowing lines on the Paragon’s flesh and shuddered, remembering the word he had used; inscribing. It sounded painful, and I wondered where it stood in relation to burning channels; I guessed the process of carving the... Lexicon... onto their various parts fulfilled something like the same purpose, but it seemed to alien compared to cultivation, but maybe each system was alien compared to the others. DUK3 had not gone into a tone of detail about their own system, but I had assumed it was basically Cultivation with different storage, but perhaps it was just as strange.

“That sounds painful. So, you have the whole thing, every Sigil carved into you three times?”

“Correct.”

“Wow. So, if you need the whole thing at least once to be at the first stage – height – what good will one Sigil do me?”

“As I said, it will be interesting to see if it possible. I am hoping that your Praxis will allow sufficient energy output to power the Sigil in the absence of the entire Lexicon.”

“Couldn’t I learn the entire thing?”

“I doubt it.”

I gave him a flat look, which he returned without comment.

“Come on, I’m not that dumb.”

“The way in which you smashed yourself into a wall earlier suggests otherwise. That is not the reason, however. It takes years to Inscribe the Lexicon, and you have months. At most.”

“Ah. Okay, that’s fair. It seems like it takes a lot longer than cultivation.”

I did have to wonder if that was true, however. Outside of freak instances like me, it apparently took people around ten years to passively gather enough Experience to form a Focus, and while it sounded less painful than Inscribing, the channel burning probably made up for that.

“I had not encountered a cultivator below Apex before yourself, so it never occurred to me to investigate the inner workings of the system. It seems like your system enjoys the advantage of power. It is my observation that each system has a distinct advantage. The speed the beast people gain power at is substantially greater than any other, for instance. A user of that system can go from nothing to Ascension in a mere few decades, without doing much of anything.”

“Beast people?”

“A people I encountered as a younger man as I walked the worlds. They implanted the cores produced by beasts within themselves. Quite an ingenious system, though I must admit I thought it close to cheating.”

It seemed that the multiverse was much wider than I had thought; that was five systems I had heard of now, and I wondered just how many there were out there in the uncountable worlds I had seen floating in the void.