Morgan clapped her hands and a wave of darkness spread out with her as the centre. The shadows gathered, coalescing into the forms of a table and nine chairs before gaining colour and definition. I realised that she had just summoned the furniture here using her Aspect of Space. The chairs and the table were all crafted out of a beautifully polished dark wood that had been ornately carved. Crimson fabric with gold embroidery had been used for the upholstery of the chairs. The patterns looked suspiciously like peacock feathers. They looked like they came straight from the Imperial Palace.

If she already had the furniture stored away in her shadow, that was impressive in regard to how large her shadow-space was. But, if she had summoned the furniture from the Imperial Palace a large distance away, then it was a mind-boggling display of her mastery over the space magic.

“Come on, take a seat.” Morgan walked over the table, drew a chair and settled comfortably into a chair.

Isabella and Astarael – or rather, their Doppelgangers – had already condensed their bodies and donned the full-body black robes that had been provided to them. They took seats to Morgan’s left and right respectively while I sat directly across the table from them.

Leaning back in her chair, Isabella explained, “This place is the Nexus. This is where we Demigods gather to meet. The Circle of Demigods as the name suggests is a society with each of its members at Tier 6.”

“Then why am I here?” I couldn't help but ask.

“Because you passed the inspection,” replied Astarael, in his deep hissing voice. “Your mindscape shattered, and you are perfectly fine – neither in a vegetative state, nor magically crippled. Your path to Demigod is unimpeded. It is just a matter of time. We just decided to induct you in early.”

“That’s… that’s…” It was great news. I was simultaneously stunned and overjoyed. After my conversation with Isabella, I had an inkling that this might be the case, but hearing it said aloud was huge rush.

“That’s horrible news.” Morgan finished my sentence for me with a grin. “It means that you’ll be a top target for assassination. The other nations aren’t idiots. They won’t like the idea of a fledgling Demigod being nurtured in Regiis. They’ll love to nip this threat in the bud.”

Her words were like a trough of cold water dowsing the fires of my enthusiasm. ‘Oh… shit.’ My demonstrations of my powers were always in public settings and extremely flashy to boot. In the eyes of the informed, my situation would be clear as day.

“We are drawing you in to this society so we can protect you. And so that we can toughen you up so you are harder to kill. Hopefully speed up your promotion to an actual Demigod.”

I relaxed slightly at her words. With their protection, I could breathe easier and having Demigods coach me in magic was something I had never even dreamt about.

“But,” I asked. “How did you affirm that I would definitely be able to reach Demigod?”

Isabella answered, “It was me. When I found out about your specialty, I contacted the other Demigods through the Nexus and they took an interest in you.”

Was this why the Salamandra clan had been so proactive? It made sense for their sudden change in attitude. Then what about the other clans? Why had they been so antagonistic? And the Pholidota? Was that probe by Reinhart actually initiated by the Unbounded Demigod, their ancestor?

“We discussed about the steps we should take. We were just going to keep tabs on you and protect you in secret but after today’s performance, your value in our eyes as well as the danger you are in, increased. So, here we are.”

“The others will be sending their Doppelgangers in a while,” said Morgan. “Us three were in the Capital at this time so we were the first to arrive. The others will wrap up whatever they are doing before projecting their presence here.”

That made sense. After all, although a Doppelganger could act independently, if one wanted to remotely control it, they would have to focus on it to synchronize with its senses.

After a bit more discussion, a lot of things became clearer in my mind. Things like how a Demigod cultivated their soul.

It was as I had guessed. The route to strengthening a soul was through the comprehension of Aspects. Just like Mastery of an Aspect was a necessary condition for promotion to Tier 5. One needed to be a Grandmaster to even think about trying for Demigod.

The Grandmaster realm was a mystical state of mind where one formed an intuition about the Aspect. Just by looking at something related to the Aspect, they would get an idea as to how to replicate that effect using their magic.

Progressing through the realms of an Aspect was really no different from learning any mundane skill. Take for example an artist learning how to do figure-sketching for the first time. They either get someone to pose for them or use a reference image to copy from. As they get better and better, their copies become more and more accurate until one day they become indistinguishable from the originals.

That is Mastery.

Then they move on to drawing a different person, in a different pose or using a different reference. Male, female, sitting, standing, running, walking, lying down… they keep on drawing different takes on the human body. Slowly but surely, they start noticing some commonalities between the figures. The proportions, how the muscles are laid out, how the skeleton might be aligned… all of these things – the fundamental principles – become clear to them as they do hundreds of figure studies.

Suddenly, one day they realise that they can now draw any figure they want to with just a glance. They don’t need the references anymore. They can even draw something straight out of their imaginations, and it will come out looking realistic. They have developed an intuition for the human figure.

That is Grand mastery.

The way one went about reaching that realm was by Mastering the same Aspect again and again in various ways. Once they reached Grandmaster, it would only take a glance at someone else’s method of mastery before they could recreate it.

It was an extremely time-consuming endeavour as no one really knew how many types of mastery one needed to achieve before the quantitative change sparked a qualitative change. It was all dependent on the person’s comprehension talent. A talent very different from magical talent which only depended on bloodline density.

Mastering an Aspect generally took one or two years. Collecting and studying around a hundred Aspects would take a lifetime. It was no wonder that most mages ran out of time before even obtaining the qualifications to attack the Tier 6 bottleneck. It was also why most Tier 5 mages went into secluded meditation. They were trying to race against time and cram as much as possible to achieve Grand mastery before their lifespans ran out.

This was where the comprehension talent came into play. Someone with better talent would not only need less time to learn one method of mastery, they would also infer the fundamental principles much faster, therefore needing to master fewer methods.

All the Demigods were gifted in comprehension. Some more than the others. On one end of the spectrum was Isabella, promoting at a mere thirty years of age, while on the other was the Sunlight Soldier who had promoted at the ripe old age of one hundred and forty.

Then Isabella casually dropped a huge information bomb on me.

“Oh, I’m a reincarnated Demigod," she confessed. "I'm a big cheat. Somehow, I was lucky enough to retain my original persona while gaining the comprehension of the Aspects from my past life. I didn’t gain any memories of my past life, but my Aspect of Water was already at Grandmaster since the day I Awakened my mana. It was only a matter of cultivating till Tier 5 peak again. Simple mana cultivation. That also gave me a powerful soul which could stave off Vita’s whispers… so I never needed to marry.”

Then again, when I thought about it a little, it made perfect sense. There was no other explanation for how she could blitz through the cultivation stages so fast. If it was all her talent, then it would be a little too exaggerated.

Comprehension also dictated the rate at which a mage’s strength grew after they became a Demigod. That meant that age really wasn’t an indicator of a Demigod’s power. A newly minted Demigod with high comprehension could easily overtake a veteran who had promoted with one foot in the grave.

Apparently, the path after Grandmaster was a boundless stretch of flat land. No one, not even Emperor Adam or all the Demigods who came after him, had managed to reach the next realm. The Sages (Demigods) of Huaxia even had a name for this eternal search for truth. They called it the Dao Seeking stage.

Qi Gathering, Domain Formation, Solid Core, Crystal Core, Nascent Soul (Demigod), Dao Seeking, and once the Dao was found, one would transcend the mortal coil, gain immortality and become a Dao Divinity.

All of this was pure speculation, of course, but there was the omnipresent disembodied soul that was Vita. So, no one could say that the theory was totally without merit.

After a while, the conversation shifted to the purpose of the super-topology that encompassed the Capital and the secret technique of the Empress. I was shocked to learn about the weapon of mass destruction sitting at the heart of the Empire. It gave me the chills. I was also surprised to hear about Artemis’ truancy of a part of the technique which let her create her skill.

When I brought up my concern about people coming after Artemis to steal the technique, I was assured that it wasn’t really a big deal for a Demigod to replicate. It was suspected that, if not at the scale in Regiis, all of the other nations had similar arrangements of their own.

Which wasn’t reassuring at all. We lived in a crazy world where we could blow each other up to hell and back at any moment! This was the stuff of nightmares and dystopian novels. I wish I had remained ignorant of it.