Yuriko settled next to Eli’Theria. Fri’Avgi had been back inside her Anima since without the artefact, the Colossus was inoperable. That was a better lock than anything else she could device. Then again, without an Orb of Authority, Eli’Theria would not allow anyone else to control her either.

Anyway, she debated whether to drink the Ambrosia right then and there, but wondered if it would be better to do it where she had more privacy. She thought about doing it inside Eli’Theria, but while in the Colossus Core, she barely had any awareness of her body. It was as if her mind connected to Eli’Theria and the Colossus was her body instead. Since she had to advance Radiant Body Refinement along with the other two considerations, she was better off having full control over herself.

Still, going off to be alone wasn’t feasible since they were in an active warzone. She just didn’t know what kind of effect downing nearly a Ren of Ambrosia would have. Hopefully nothing too spectacular, but maybe she should find an empty building to hide in. She sure wasn’t going to sequester herself in the mountains, not when it seemed so hostile. She had an inkling that it was the Chaos Duke’s work, though if he did have full control, or even partial control of the mountain range that practically spanned the entirety of the plane, then perhaps they were in more trouble than she expected.

She settled for doing it behind Eli’Theria, putting herself between the Colossus and the wall. She settled into a seated meditation pose, pulled out her canister from her hip satchel, and was just about to open it.

Wait.

‘What?’ she asked sourly.

Don’t drink all of it at once. A single droplet at a time.

Yuriko, in fact, had been about to go bottoms up on the Ambrosia, rolled her eyes and nodded. ‘Anything else?’

Intent and Will is key. If you just imbibe it without having a clear focus, who knows what it will react to. On the other hand, if you let your subconscious guide the process, you might get surprisingly good results… No, it’s better to direct the power of unadulterated potential. Expand your Anima reach with the first drop, refine your physique with the second, then refine your Animus with the third. The fourth drop goes to your Colligia, and the fifth drop leave to the Threads to decide.

‘Oh. Alright.’ Yuriko muttered. She uncorked the canister, raised it up to her lips, and carefully allowed a single drop of Ambrosia, an ORen of it, to touch her lips. She kept her mind focused on her Anima reach, wishing to increase it. Ever since her Anima first pushed past her body, she had slowly transitioned her combat style, Ancestors, even her everyday affairs, to utilizing her Animakinesis…no that wasn’t quite true. It was only after she reached Actualisation, and when she threw off the last bits of the Imperial Path, was she able to use Animakinesis. She couldn't help it though, it was too convenient.

It was with those thoughts and images in her mind when the droplet of Ambrosia touched her lips, and as soon as it did, it burst into a small puff of steam that she reflexively inhaled. She could feel it going into her lungs, burning a line of power all the way down her windpipe. The Ambrosia curled around her lungs, somehow jumping from one side to the other to the beat of her heart, quickening as her pace increased, eventually seeming to blur between the two until it was practically a line while going through her heart… and her core.

Then, it turned back into a droplet, a scintillating burst of colour contained within an orb that slowly crunched down until it was akin to a grain of sand. And just like that, it transitioned from her physical body to her Anima, where it burst into a powerful shockwave. Her tightly contained Anima burst out of her control and expanded to its full reach, thirty three paces away. Everything expanded, including her normal protections. Her runescript weavings that contained her external Animus reserves as well as the compact regeneration lines wavered at the force, destabilised, and then began to leak Animus into her Anima. Radiant aspected Animus and Chaos washed throughout her aura, burning all the while. White hot pain seared through her Anima as it charred and burned. The wave of force from the droplet pushed the borders of her aura, stretching it thin. The entire thing cracked and fissured, and dissolved…

The pain was immense, as though her entire being was slowly being minced. Every inch of her was shrouded in pain, and it was only when her blood dripped down from her lips did she realise that she’d bitten through the flesh. Blood, crimson, yet glittering with flecks of gold, dribbled down her chin and onto her lap, but she was barely aware of it. That pain was minuscule, and was nothing more than a distraction from the true pain and terror of her Anima unravelling…

In between waves of pain and torture,Yuriko wondered if what she did was a mistake. She had focused on her Anima expansion, of her Animakinesis in particular…but why did it hurt so much!

But then, there came a wave of soothing calm. The fragments and shards of her broken Anima mended itself, good as new. Better, even, and she realised that the single droplet of Ambrosia increased her Anima reach by about ten inches.

A gasp of pained laughter escaped her lips. Ten inches! Within a couple of minutes, it seemed. She could reach a hundred in…uh…some time! Yeah.

Shivering and trembling, Yuriko grabbed the Ambrosia canister, which had recorked itself due to the protective runescript lines she etched on the cover and the bottle itself, popped the cork, and prepared to take another droplet.

Then she stopped. Her hands were still trembling and her mind was a mess. The expansion was nearly as bad as experiencing constant fissuring and repair cycles compressed into a small amount of time. And her mind wasn’t clear. Her thoughts jumped between the pain and elation. She could easily grow stronger and all she needed to do was consume a precious resource…

Would Ambrosia help her throughout her journey? From Transformation all the way to Ascension?

If you had an ocean of it, sure.

Ah, there was the rub. Huh.

She supposed using Ambrosia to save time now was the best use. She meditated for a couple of minutes before she felt herself ready to consume the next drop. This one for Radiant Body Refinement.

Her current progress was at ninety-one percent, though it was just a bit over that. It had been weeks since it progressed that far, and she had worked on Radiant Anima Refinement afterwards, so it was quite understandable that it hadn’t progressed beyond that. She needed to get to ninety-eight percent, at least. Maybe ninety-nine?

That would take all the Ambrosia you have.

So, ninety-eight percent then?

Still too much. You can progress to ninety-seven percent and similarly bring Radiant Anima Refinement to that level. You’ll have enough left to push one of them to ninety-eight percent, or you can push for 100 paces with your Anima Reach. You have to pick one.

‘I can’t get all of them?’

Sure, if you spend the next century refining yourself.

‘Ah, that’s too long.’

As I’ve told you before, the benefits would be minuscule when you reach Manifestation. It will just make it harder to reach True Incarnation if you don’t breach ninety-eight percent on both, but that’s what I’m here for. And a pure Refinement isn’t really perfection.

Yuriko felt her eyes narrow, ‘If it isn’t perfection, then what is?’

Nothing is perfect. Came the man’s sardonic voice, Because as soon as you think something is perfect and stop improving, that’s when it falls short.

Yuriko snorted, ‘Words of wisdom?’

Don't you know it, heh. If only one reaches ninety-eight percent you have a good chance of reaching True Incarnation based on that alone, but we aren’t going to stop with just that anyway. There are more things to improve on, more things to discover, which will widen the path for you.

‘Fine, fine,’ Yuriko groused. Damien had only been repeating his earlier sentiments, but something within her protested at the idea of not reaching the best state she could. No matter, she could suppress her perfectionist tendencies. Hopefully.

Once the droplet of Ambrosia touched her lips, she focused her Will on it and made sure that it actually went down her throat and into her tummy instead of into her lungs. As soon as it did, it went deeper into her core muscles, before expanding. Somehow, it moved towards her heart, before crazily circulating around her body. Unlike her Anima expansion, the physique improvement was practically painless.

Part of what she learned in Natural Sciences was how the human body worked as well as general anatomy. Still, she had no idea of the finer details of Radiant Body Refinement. All she knew was that it improved the little bits that made up her body and replaced a little bit of it with contained Radiant energy instead. Not all of it, but a small fraction. The percentage progress of her Radiant Body Refinement pertained to how much of her body contained that nugget of Radiant energy as well as how well it could retain it. Counterintuitively, eighty percent meant that her entire body contained that little bit of Radiant energy while the remaining percentage points pertained to how large a nugget of Radiant energy was contained in each of her particles. At a hundred percent, it meant all of it was Radiant, while ninety-eight percent to ninety-nine percent meant that it was around a tenth of each particle. Roughly speaking anyway. All she had been doing was to wash her entire body with Radiant energy when she broke it down through heavy training and allowed it to replace what was gone.

With the Ambrosia, and with the fact that she was over ninety percent, all it had to do was reinforce what was already there. The Ambrosia not only augment the tiny nuggets of Radiant energy within her, but also modified, improved, and altered the remaining mortal parts to allow it to contain, channel, and restrain Radiant energy.

The improvement was done in less than a minute and with her none the worse for wear. She could immediately move to Radiant Anima Refinement, which she hoped would not be as painful as Anima expansion…

She was wrong, it wasn’t as painful. It was so much rotting worse!

Where the expansion ripped her Anima to shreds before rebuilding it, refinement felt as if everything that made up her Anima was turned into a vortex, shredded, melted, reforged, then quenched. She thought that she’d never experience as much pain as before, but this one was tenfold worse. She might have blacked out, but Damien jolted her awake before her Will could expel the Ambrosia and waste it.

But the process of Anima refinement was actually more automatic than the others. She fell over from her seated meditation, then writhed on the ground for a few minutes, and by the time it was over, she felt as if she had a nasty case of sunburn, which she hadn’t experienced ever since she began her Strengthen Physique four years ago…

But it was done. She felt her Radiant Anima Refinement progress go up by a single percentage point. Which might mean that it would only take less than thirty drops, but then again, the higher it went, the closer to perfection, the more drops it would take. But she already spent close to twenty minutes in the process and there were two more droplets to take to complete the cycle.

She took another couple of minutes to recover. Not to her best, but she doubted she’d reach it anytime soon. She took another droplet and directed it towards her Colligia.

An Ennoia had a lattice of Radiant energy around her Animus core, while the Colligia began to taint her core with its energies. She wasn’t sure how much of her core had to be converted, but that little droplet of Ambrosia passed through the lattice, turned into some kind of amalgamation of Radiant Energy and distilled Chaos, then merged with her core. It was much like a drop of ink mixed into a glass of water…

Since she hadn’t progressed much with her Colligia, she didn’t really know how it affected her. Her Ennoia basically allowed her to use Radiant energies. Now she knew. A part of her Animus core became suffused with Radiant energy, and she could now draw on Animus already merged fully with Radiant. It was something she’d never managed to accomplish before, or even thought of. Wild ideas suddenly flurried around her mind. With Radiant Animus, not just energy, her sunblades and sunshards!

She couldn’t wait to try it out!

But she still had one more droplet to absorb to complete the cycle. She let another ORen of Ambrosia touch her lips, and this time, she let it do as it Willed.