As Aki finally recovered from his violent outburst, he forced his body to breathe despite the lack of atmosphere, the movement somewhat meditative at this point. Despite the lack of light, his attempt at destroying his unfamiliar surroundings with the roots had given him enough understanding of the small semi-circle he laid naked at, so he was able to understand that he was likely inside Ames due to the fleshy substance composing everything and the sheer complexity of the runic framework around him.

Really, he was half sure that he was looking at his own runic alphabet, but the sheer amount of power they outputted could only be surpassed by the overwhelming belief that they would work behind each stroke.

Despite this fact showing him that it was not a very effective or concise alphabet after reaching a certain level of power, it also sent waves of warmth into his heart, as this was what the trust and love of a higher being felt like. Lines and more line of pure dedication and belief that could subvert reality.

Maybe only dating someone at or above the second step wouldn’t be so bad?

Certainly, that’d be a pain to figure out at this point, but he had three people that cared about him already, so maybe he was jumping the gun far too much by searching for a lover at this point of his development.

For a moment, the whole room flashed white, his half a sphere increasing in size and his body sinking a bit into the floor before being spit back out as it grew back to the same proportions of before.

And he should probably stop messing with the insides of the resident cat.

But how did he leave? His regeneration was back, so it wasn't like his soul was healing either. To begin with he could probably turn off the regeneration multipliers.

He had to wonder whether wealthy scions in the Nexus were ever taught how to perceive and manipulate their own soul structure or if they could be killed by forcing themselves to produce more resources than they had the capacity to actually provide, but otherwise it should only ever be a problem for people with several important paths like him, so he should really focus on his own recovery.

Well, he could guess several reasons why he was here, but the most obvious was his current mental state, so he should probably try to fix that a bit before trying to contact the girls.

He'd sigh if there was air in his lungs, but at the moment he could only keep his body functioning with some dregs of mana and vitality he maintained mostly through sheer focus of his Keeper image. Meditating to properly calm his mind in this state was going to take quite a bit.

……..

An hour later:

AND BOIL THEIR LIGAMENTS UNTIL… That’s gross and has the texture of rubber fuck face, think of something tastier.

………

Three hours later:

Staying here would be… Insanely unsatisfying due to a lack of entertainment and our general fear of death, which would only become worse as we waste aether on our images and get tagged as a level 75 heretic.

…

Five hours or so. That had been how long he’d taken to put some order in his thoughts so that his rationale could have a greater effect on his body. Luckily, he didn’t have to take even longer directly gathering his own determination thanks to his dungeon basically flooding him with emotion at all times thanks to his now millions of contracts.

Normally he just picked off a bit and fed it to his image while letting the dungeon keep most of the byproduct of supplying aether to so many, but at the moment he kind of needed it to jumpstart his moving again.

In fact, that even muffled the negative emotions he did feel at the moment, so it was overall a sort of hard reset for his emotional state that would allow him the time to actually start healing the shame and wrongness he felt from merely existing at the moment.

Really, the only reason he hadn't used this same method before was because he'd been trying to 'heal naturally', read as do or die with a lot of emphasis on the latter as he had not carried around nearly as many preparations as normal.

To be fair, he WAS a cockroach like existence.

With all his stats on the low end of average one would think him a jack of all in the big picture of the Nexus, but he had his own advantages that allowed for him to be better than a specialist. All his attributes were ranked, each of them had enhancements from the system itself and his physical body was further enhanced by his mental stats, which of course included both his astral 'organs' and his whole nervous system.

For him to die he'd need either to be hit with overwhelming power or to be locked into battle for so long that his soul actually collapsed under the sheer demand for resources to keep going.

He had one last card to play before he could just lay down and snuggle until his worries were gone though.

……….

"If that's an option then it is no wonder that old monsters keep sending people to newly assimilated worlds." Murmured Lea as she turned to look in the direction of the danger sone's obelisk.

After Aki was swiftly released, he made sure to explain the benefits of completing a danger zone, which shocked the two women present despite his ridiculous half naked ass caressing the little purple cat floating around waist height.

While Ames could not remain 'full size' without draining him thanks to some stupid restrictions ment to be the most inconvenient possible, she still had a direct connection to his soul, so flooding him with energy would only carry some penalties in the end.

Immediately however, they all agreed Aki should take on the bonuses due to the sheer amount of stats he already possessed. After he invested the last of his skill points.

[Congratulations! You have completed the Arcane III path (1000/1000)! +100 mental stat points. Your skill Arcane aff… Due to sinergies, you have gained +10% spell efficiency.]

He didn't think much about it and just shoved all the points into intelligence. It technically increased his everything thanks to the sinergy he had going on, so he might as well increase how much it'd grow with the whole debacle.

With his friends behind him as he quickly cleared the way through killing the mole like people of this danger zone, Aki soon found himself in front of the obelisk and with a reward prompt appearing in front of him, the second option now offering +50 in all attributes to party members plus 50% more XP, though the later was not actually useful for them thanks to his previous two choices.

"This is it. If I suddenly start glowing try to create a vacuum and trap the heat, and if I don't pass a personality tests you shove me into a bubble of nether and try to dissolve whatever is trying to hitch a ride in my body, don't even mind destroying it in the process, I'll live." He explained and saw them nod. Not hesitating any longer, he gave the prompt a confirmation.

For a moment, it seemed like nothing was going to happen, but suddenly he was burning and being surrounded with a strange translucent sludge coming from the obelisk around where his palm was touching it.

In all honesty, this was not even close to the worst possibility he'd imagined. The only real problem was that the heat was coming from his soul as what was likely tens of thousands of units of mana started flowing into his soulspace, forming more and more esoteric spells he could barely start comprehending while fueling the clear sludge into his body.

The pain was… honestly dissapointing, but he was probably not the person to ask when it came to reasonable levels of torture, but due to that he had more than enough time to analize what was happening and figure out what the sludge was.

He was 80/20 between a liquified soul captured to fuel the obelisk and aether that contained the essence and power of someone else, but it wasn’t like he was very good in actually using the thing, so instead he focused on how the spells were being cast, his image recording the camouflage and what it could gleam beneath it plus the process of fusing his body with the sludge, which seemed to slowly convince his soul that he should have more power instead of instantly inflating it or adding something like normal.

To be fair, he quite doubted any soul could just expand over fifty percent at once without just popping, so this kind of situation made sense. Still, it wasn’t like the design behind it was benign either, as one of the reasons he was sure this sludge was from someone else was because there was currently something resembling a consciousness trying to infiltrate his soul through it.

Considering those lines at the end of every reward from the danger zones, he could guess it had one of two intentions. Either it would bind him to the planet as a saviour or it’d turn him into a beast guided by instinct who would cause all sorts of trouble, causing the eventual rise of a champion to defeat him.

Really though, the biggest damage this did to him was allowing him to know he would be losing on a lot of potential XP acquisition thanks to that part that said everyone could only get +100%, as for him that could have meant a whole +2550% were he to have his rate multiplied by eight in the end as well. Add to that his propency of fighting people way over his level and he’d likely get a white grade class capped in at max a dozen or so fights with people at level +100.

Not like he had a clue about how much XP the higher levels required for a white grade.

Whatever this would-be-ego wanted to do however, it ended up turning into fuel for transformation as he blasted it with waves of pure aether guided by his image, quickly dismantling the startled thing as it’s mind was washed away in pure possibility and energy.

After what felt like some ten minutes, he was back to normal.

Ocissus Aki

Class: N/A

Lv: 0 (100%)

Tier 1 Nexus citizen

HP (R per hour): 6150/6150 (979)

MP (R per hour): 12561/12561 (1466,2 *3.05)

SP (R per min): 6150/6150 (979)

Vitality (O): 466 []

Endurance (O): 466 []

Strength (O): 386[]

Agility (O): 438 []

Perception (O): 466 []

Archives (Y): 706 []

Madness (Y): 496 []

Search (Y): 446 []

Knowledge (Y): 496 []

Efficiency (Y): 426 []

Free points: 0

As in, a kryptonian after a solar flare event or a saiyan after healing from a near death fight.

"Well, that was a disappointing process, but the result is certainly great. I feel invincible and ready to get my ass kicked by the next tribulation!” He excitedly exclaimed, which confused the girls around him, before Ames suddenly reformed into a plain looking, if a bit too pale, cat girl.

“Did you just summon a heresy tribulation to kill you?!” She huffed, face darkening as the surroundings started to get distorted.

“Well, i tried to, but i only got one level out of the two i needed, so i have to go through at least another one of these before i get there, which i’m pretty sure is going to be sending over someone who has less stats than me, but a lot of skill.” He said with a shrug.

[Congratulations! You have completed the Intermediary soul bond path (250/250)! +6 to all stats. Level up gains increased by a small amount due to your partner's abilities. Due to the power of your partner, you gain additional 4 free stats per Level.

You have gained the ability to instantly summon your partner to your current location. Consumes ½ of your total Health, Stamina, and Mana. There is a one-month cooldown.]

“Aki, why did I suddenly get seven hundred and twenty free points?” Asked a suddenly confused Lea as she read the part of the notification that explained she could now summon her summoner as well.

“Because I'm awesome. You’re my summon and soul bound, so I can just pay the price for powering you up when a new modifier is being applied to your class construct and directly increase its size and complexity, which directly adds more stats to you like you had that modifier since level zero. This time the add on was a fourth of my extra attributes per level.” He bragged while a flashing red alert appeared on the vision of the three system users.

A tribulation was coming.