Mid Sector 99 - Planet Kizar
Sitting before a desk cluttered with scattered papers, overturned notes, and books torn apart in fits of uncontrollable frustration... Shaddad did not look well at all.
At that mont, both of his hands were pressed tightly against his head, his fingers buried deep within his thick hair as if trying to hold his thoughts in place, his elbows resting heavily on the desk while he stared at several disordered sheets before him... it was impossible to tell how long he had been in that exact position, unmoving, lost within a storm of thoughts that refused to settle.
More than fifty years had passed since he had declared his complete seclusion, cutting himself off from the outside world in pursuit of a single goal... to reach the next step, to find a viable thod to break through into the Nexus State using the body array as his foundation.
But the progress... had been far from satisfying.
And that, in truth, was expected. Shaddad had known from the very beginning that this was not a path ant to be walked easily. It was a path where many had stumbled and failed before him. Even with the solid foundation he now possessed, even with the unique array that no one before him had ever held or understood to such depth, the journey would never be simple.
Yet knowing this did not ease the burden.
Theory could never calm the weight of reality... failure remained ntally exhausting, deeply frustrating, slowly eroding one's spirit, until even the desire to move forward began to fade into sothing distant and fragile.
Yes, he had spent tens of thousands of years studying the power of the body within the academy, diving into its principles, refining its limits... but what he was doing now was fundantally different.
Back then, he had explored the achievents of others, examining them, dissecting them, searching for imperfections and hidden gaps to refine and improve. It had been a passion, almost a habit, sothing that occasionally yielded results, often by reducing costs or optimizing processes... but he had never been bound by a single, pressing objective.
Now... everything had changed.
Shaddad was no longer studying the paths left behind by others.
He was attempting to create one.
He had to invent a thod, a completely new approach, to use the array as a bridge to break into the Nexus State. He was no longer walking along illuminated roads paved by predecessors... he was advancing through a dark, uncharted path that no one had ever stepped upon before.
All he had to guide him through that darkness was a small lamp...
And that lamp was nothing more than the accumulation of knowledge he had gathered over all those countless years.
But even that... had not been enough.
The current concept of strengthening the body beyond the World Cataclysm level was, at its core, simply an amplification of the cells' capacity to store energy.
Yet this transformation was riddled with flaws and limitations.
First, the cells had already expanded significantly within the World Cataclysm stage, their storage capacity pushed to a high level, so any further increase was marginal, offering no true qualitative transformation.
Second, that marginal increase ca at an unbearable cost... a cost asured in rare resources so vast that breaking into the Nexus State through bodily strength alone would demand billions of pearls.
Billions.
A price so absurd that only a handful of Behemoths had ever even considered this path, not as a necessity, but as a luxury, a ans to enhance their power rather than define it.
But this approach... would not work anymore.
If there was to be a true path of the body, a complete and viable system, then it had to be truly complete. It could not rely on incrental gains. It required a qualitative leap at the level of the Nexus State... not just an increase in quantity, but the birth of sothing fundantally different.
What he had laid down with his master and his senior brother Jabba... could not end here.
No... not just them.
Dozens of capable assistants had contributed over the years, refining the process, reducing costs, pushing the limits step by step.
Especially after the support that Sky Opening City received following His Majesty's announcent, the advancents in arrays, inks, and materials had reached a level that could only be described as revolutionary. The cost of using the array-once the most expensive among all cultivation paths-had now dropped to a point where it was approaching the cost of the soul path itself!!
And yet... it still was not enough.
He needed sothing more.
He needed a breakthrough... a leap that would introduce sothing entirely
new into the system.
A leap that was not just theoretical...
But possible.
And then...
It happened.
Shaddad had stumbled upon an initial idea, a fragile yet promising thread,
hidden within the daily reports that Jabba sent. Reports detailing the behavior of molecules within the blood of various beasts, their structure, their transformations, their hidden properties.
And when he began connecting those fragnted ideas together... aligning them with the known thod of breaking into the Nexus State through the
internal energy system...
A path began to take shape before him.
At the World Cataclysm level of bodily strength, every cell becos ard and elastic, capable of expanding to absorb vast quantities of energy, then compressing that energy and converting it into a more primitive form that the body can endure without collapsing.
That was the limit of the current system.
So what cos next?
Those cells were still closed and isolated, each one functioning like an independent chamber, with energy moving from one to another slowly and inefficiently due to the reinforced boundaries surrounding them, boundaries that were originally ant to protect but now acted as restrictions.
So why not create a thod that allows the cells themselves to open, to loosen those rigid boundaries and permit significantly larger amounts of energy to flow freely between them at the sa ti?
Such a change would not be minor... it would fundantally alter the way energy circulates within the body.
It would form a true Nexus State between the cells themselves, not just at the level of energy pathways, but at the level of the body's very structure, transforming the entire body into a unified, moving core of energy, a living system where power flows continuously without obstruction.
Theoretically, a Nexus State that succeeds in constructing such bridges between cells would not be inferior to any Nexus State achieved through other cultivation paths... on the contrary, it would be sothing far more terrifying, a body that could endure endless pressure, absorb overwhelming energy, and release it without hesitation... an unstoppable tank in the truest sense.
But...
Shaddad pressed his head even harder, his fingers digging into his hair as if trying to pull clarity out of the overwhelming complexity of the idea.
He had already drafted an initial blueprint, mapping out the core concept with
careful thought. He excluded every thod that could potentially damage the cell walls, eliminating unstable approaches one by one. He gathered a wide range of possible materials, along with nurous ink components that could support the transformation.
He went even further... he considered additional modules that would need to be integrated into the array, laid the foundation for catalytic factors that could accelerate the process without destabilizing it, and even prepared preliminary ergency serums in case sothing went wrong during the process. Yet despite all that effort... everything remained nothing more than ink on
paper.
For example, although he had excluded the most dangerous thods that might compromise the integrity of the cell walls, several viable paths still remained, each one branching into countless possibilities.
And each of those paths required its own unique combination of materials, its own ink structures, its own catalytic systems, and its own specialized array components carefully designed to maintain balance.
Every single one of those potential materials still needed to be tested individually, then compared, refined, and optimized... just to determine which one was even viable, let alone optimal.
And even after going through all of that painstaking work, there was still the terrifying possibility that he had chosen the wrong path entirely... forcing him to abandon everything and start over from the very beginning once again. "Ugh..." Shaddad lifted his head slightly, his voice strained with exhaustion. "Do I really have to ask the master for help again?" That strange pen... the Seraphim quill, as the master had once called it. That object still lingered vividly in his mind, its presence almost haunting, ever
since the day he saw it effortlessly resolve every complex issue within the array, as if the problems themselves never existed.
But at the sa ti, he had also seen the master's condition afterward... the exhaustion that could not be fully concealed, the fatigue that lingered beneath his composed exterior. It was clear that such a tool did not function without a price, and given the results it produced, that price could not be small.
Who knew what that pen truly consud? Perhaps it drained life itself, piece
by piece?
With what right could he go to his master and ask him to pay such a cost, just because he wished to reach the answer faster?
"...." Shaddad almost crushed his own head under the weight of his thoughts,
his breathing growing heavier, then suddenly his eyes snapped open, as if a realization had struck him.
"At this rate... I will never finish preparing the array before Nihari's ascension
deadline... what will the master do to if he finds out I hesitated and delayed instead of consulting him directly?"
Then, without another mont of hesitation, he stood up abruptly, the chair scraping behind him.
"I will tell him everything, all my problems... and let him decide!" Whoosh In a swift motion, Shaddad gathered all the scattered papers, notes,
and books into his spatial ring, not leaving a single piece behind, then rushed toward the door at full speed, his movents suddenly light and decisive. A bright, almost childlike smile appeared on his face, replacing the exhaustion
that had weighed him down monts ago...
Most likely, the master would refuse to help, or simply direct him to consult
Jabba instead... that outco was almost certain.
But it no longer mattered.
At the very least... he now had a proper reason to go and see his master.
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