'What changed…?'
Atticus had gained the fragnts, acquired the fifth art, killed all the Marquis, and won the Verge Gas. That was the last thing he rembered.
A great deal had happened, yes, but none of it should have altered his bloodline in any aningful way. He was just about to frown when a sudden thought struck him.
'What if I didn't witness the change?'
The world wouldn't pause simply because he had fallen unconscious. Ti wouldn't wait for him. If sothing had changed, it could have happened then, after the Verge Gas, when there had been only…
Atticus' eyes widened.
"Because I'm in the Span?"
The strange woman blinked, faint surprise crossing her features, before she nodded.
"Yes."
"Why?"
He half expected the usual refusal, but to his surprise, it didn't co.
"That's simply how it is. The Span is where the middle planes truly begin. Beings who reach the threshold of ascension undergo an internal change, one that forces any latent power within them to awaken. So call it an aspect, others a bloodline. The na is irrelevant."
"But I awakened my bloodline years ago."
"You awakened only a facet of it," she replied, shaking her head. "It was never truly awakened. Your entry into the Span forced every dormant part of it to surface. You are only now beginning to glimpse the true potential of your bloodline."
'I see…'
Atticus had always wondered how Ozeroth's Omnicognition had co to be. It never felt like a power one could learn or cultivate, but sothing innate, sothing that simply was. From the man's mories, Ozeroth had awakened his aspect upon reaching tier seven on the spirit world, and while that wasn't false, it clearly wasn't the whole truth either.
The absence of any spiritual faction gods in the Verge had never gone unnoticed. It was obvious now where the Spirit King had been acting from, where Ozeroth himself had co from.
The Span.
Ozeroth had awakened Omnicognition because he crossed the threshold required to exist within the Span. And now, after all these years, Atticus had finally reached that sa point, fully awakening his own bloodline in the process.
'Aspect… hmm.'
It still felt strange. This power had been with him for years, lingering deep within him, only to fully awaken now, and yet, he had no clear sense of its origin.
There was no doubt that his bloodline was far more exceptional than any Ravenstein that had ever existed, which ruled out the possibility of simple inheritance. That left only two explanations.
'Either the one who reincarnated gave it to … or the fragnt mutated the Ravenstein bloodline itself.'
They were only assumptions, and Atticus forced himself to set them aside, pulling his focus back to the present.
'I need to master this power.'
The enemies he had made through the Verge Gas were far too many to ignore. Any increase in strength, especially one this significant, was an advantage he had no intention of wasting.
Atticus stood monts later, wincing as the woman announced his next command. He exhaled slowly, forcing his mind to settle before attempting it again.
Ti blurred soon after. He beca so absorbed in the process that he lost all sense of how long he had been training.
What remained clear were the sensations, the constant stabbing pain that followed each attempt, the brief windows where he could rest, recover, and think, the unending stream of casual commands from the strange woman, and the monts where he had to actively restrain himself from lashing out at her in frustration.
Yet alongside all of that, Atticus began to notice sothing else. The pain was changing. The stabbing headache that had once threatened to split his skull slowly diminished the more he practiced. The realization made him glance at the woman almost imdiately.
Was this why she had left him to it? Because she had known from the start that this would happen?
Atticus ripped his gaze away from her. There was no point dwelling on it. Instead, he turned his focus to another pattern he had noticed, one that had beco impossible to ignore. The commands the woman gave him to train were deliberately structured, and it hadn't taken him long to recognize it.
No fire may burn.
All motion cease.
All heat vanish.
Pressure increase.
Light vanish.
Darkness vanish.
Each command, though taxing, was direct and uncomplicated, targeting a single state or interaction at a ti, without layering multiple processes together. Atticus could effortlessly imagine how a command like kill that man, or anything that required coordinating countless elental molecules, would place an exponentially greater strain on the mind than these precise, isolated directives.
And it wasn't only the strain that was changing. As his control sharpened, his range expanded with it. What had once barely reached three ters had grown into a full ten. Within that space, every elental molecule was perfectly still, silent and expectant, as though awaiting his word alone.
Eventually, Atticus leaned back against the wall at his usual spot, taking a mont to recover before the next attempt. His breathing was far steadier now than when he had first begun, and his thoughts no longer felt scattered. Without aning to, his gaze drifted back to the strange woman.
'She's still not saying anything.'
Despite the progress he had made, or the fact that the strain from each command had diminished to little more than a lingering headache, the woman hadn't altered the training in the slightest, continuing to issue commands with the sa casual indifference as before. From everything he had observed, it seed clear that the more strain he endured, the faster his advancent beca.
'I don't have ti.'
For all he knew, the fragnts were growing stronger with every mont he remained here. While he understood the need for caution, he couldn't ignore the gnawing thought, if there was a faster way to grow stronger, why shouldn't he take it?
And so, when he finally found that he could no longer hold it in, Atticus asked the question that had been weighing on him.
From their earlier exchange, Atticus had begun to grasp the woman's personality, if only slightly. She was rigid in her belief that nothing should be given freely, yet for reasons he couldn't fully understand, she seed intent on teaching him. And so, he leaned into that. He frad every question he asked as part of the training, using it to draw out hints, then piecing them together until he uncovered more than he had expected to learn.
The truth behind not altering his training, as it turned out, was simple. His mind simply hadn't grown enough to endure more complex commands. Attempting anything beyond what she had already given him was enough to rupture most minds outright.
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