[Processing Results…]
[Rewards Granted]
+1 Resolve (Permanent)
Your inner will solidifies further. Your thoughts grow quieter, more disciplined, less prone to distraction. Instinct and intention align with sharper precision.
Skill Acquired – [Neural Fracture]
Classification: Psionic Offensive Technique – [Neural Shear] Lineage
Prerequisite: Neural Shear
Description:
Neural Fracture converts your ability to maintain multiple streams of consciousness into a focused offensive application. By projecting accelerated psionic threads toward a target, you disrupt the synchronization between body and mind, producing disorientation, delayed reactions, and temporary motor dysfunction. The attack exploits the inherent latency of biological and artificial systems.
Hidden Reward Unlocked — Concord of Souls
Type: Bond – Evolving
Status: Inactive (Awaiting Mutual Acceptance)
Description:
A singular connection that bridges two conscious beings through psionic resonance. Formed through mutual consent, it intertwines emotion, intent, and essence—an equilibrium between will and trust. As the bond matures, it may evolve into a profound union where both souls resonate as one.
Optional Objective Completed: Discover an instinctive method of energy replenishment.
[Reward Granted: Psionic Recovery Efficiency +12%]
Your body adapts to the rhythm of the Rift. Energy flow now aligns with your natural metabolic cycles, enabling passive psionic regeneration during rest and focused meditation.
Optional Objective Completed: Form a stable psionic construct with at least three Threads woven together.
[Reward Granted: +3 Cognition]
The resonance between your Threads has reached structural cohesion. Neural pattern stability enhanced. You may now sustain one additional active Thread without destabilizing your core essence.
[Analyzing anomaly progression...]
[System Parameters recalibrating — Tutorial trajectory deviated beyond predicted bounds.]
[Reconstructing quest framework to align with subject’s current state and environmental variables…]
Designation: Anomaly - Tier 0
Status: Unawakened | Rift Integration Incomplete
Region: Ithural | Local Recognition: Confirmed
Primary Objective:
? Form a stable core before the entity known as Orrhal breaks free of its bindings. (0/1)
Optional Objectives:
? Confront and overcome three manifestations of Orrhal’s Eye. (0/3)
? Single-handedly defeat Orrhal’s Avatar. (0/1)
? Establish a Concord of Souls with a willing entity. (0/1)
? Discover a new method to enhance or manipulate one of your main affinities. (0/1)
Rewards:
? +10 to all attributes (permanent)
? Customized Tier Advancement
? Customized mana core schematics
? Final Quest Unlocked Upon Completion
? ??? (Hidden reward based on choices, affinity, and behaviour)
Raime stood motionless as the new lines scrolled before his eyes, each one cutting deeper than the last.
Orrhal… breaking free.
The words lingered like frost in his chest. He had suspected it—the growing tremors in the Rift, the strange fluctuations in ambient psionic energy—but seeing it confirmed by the System lent the thought a crushing weight. The entity that had nearly destroyed Neimar’s people, that the Sovereign himself had sealed away ages ago, was stirring again. And the timer was running out.
He exhaled slowly through his nose, steadying his pulse. The System’s tone was matter-of-fact, detached as always, but this time it felt almost like a warning. Form a stable core before Orrhal breaks free. The inevitability of it sent a chill through his bones.
“This isn’t good,” Raime murmured, scanning the quest again. “It’s pushing me on purpose. It knows what’s coming.”
Neimar’s voice surfaced behind him, low and contemplative. “The System adapts to circumstances. You’re still under its jurisdiction, even as an anomaly. It wants you… normalized.”
Raime turned to face him. The Sovereign was calm and imposing, like usual. “You knew,” Raime said, not accusingly, but with quiet resignation. “You knew Orrhal was close to breaking out.”
A ripple of sorrow crossed Neimar’s eyes, the kind that only age and failure could forge. “Yes. The bindings on that monster were never meant to last forever. It is millennia that I keep him sealed in the mountain. But that time is running out. Soon, he will no longer be bound, and we will have our final battle.”
Raime clenched his jaw. “Why didn’t you kill it before, hell why don’t you kill it now?”
Neimar didn’t answer at once. The silence stretched until it felt like the air itself was holding its breath. “If he dies, Ithural ends,” he finally said. “And with it I, you and all the people sleeping in the coffins. Perhaps much more beyond it.”
Raime let that sink in. There was no bravado in Neimar’s tone—just fact. The kind that didn’t allow for resistance.
There is nothing I can do, Raime realized. Nothing except what I was doing already.
The System had given him a path—a narrow one, laced with impossible timing. If he could form his core before the Sovereign’s bindings collapsed, he would ascend. Tier I. Recognition. The key to open up the portal again.
Raime tilted his head, thinking. “Would the System help me with the ascension this time?”
Neimar nodded once. “The quest itself is guiding you through a supported ascension. You won’t need to form your own channels manually or connect them across every part of your body to the core. It will establish the pathways for you—it will adapt them to you, a great boon.” His expression softened. “Creating your own network takes time. Months, even. You’re not prepared for that yet.”
Raime’s eyes narrowed faintly. “So… I just need to condense the core.”
“Precisely,” Neimar said. “Compress the soul and form the core. Everything else will be dealt by the System once it recognizes the formation. It will save you a great deal of effort and time.”
Raime ran a hand through his hair, If the System is going to such lengths to facilitate me… the situation must be much direr than expected. The weight of the circumstances settled into him like cold lead. “And the customized mana core schematics?”
“They’ll only be generated after you finish your new mission. It will take in consideration your new core.” He paused, gaze distant. “The System truly see all.”
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Raime gave a short, quiet laugh. “I would prefer less monitoring to be honest, I was never a big brother enthusiast.”
“That irony isn’t lost on me,” Neimar said dryly. “But don’t mistake its efficiency for kindness. It’s only doing what it must—to reclaim you from the fringe. Your noetic core could be a source of divergence, thus, a mana core will stabilize your cultivation and bring you closer to the orthodox path.”
Raime looked down at his hands again, flexing them. The faint hum of psionic resonance lingered beneath his skin, steady and familiar. The Radiant Seed pulsed faintly in the depths of his soul—silent, but alive with promise. The quest was clear now. Everything led toward one singular point.
Forge the core.
He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in the faint, charged air of the Rift. “Then we’d better move faster,” he murmured. “If Orrhal’s stirring, we don’t have much time.”
“Indeed,” Neimar said. His tone was calm, but there was a shadow behind it. “Once the last chain breaks, everything will crumble quickly. We have a need for speed.”
Raime looked up sharply. “Let’s start again then. I feel better than ever, I can increase my attributes again and that should accelerate my progress right?”
Neimar’s gaze met his, ageless and steady. “Do it, the rewards allows you to gradually adapt even when crossing the thresholds, I shouldn’t remind you of the danger that it pose, but you have wiggle room at least. It’s sink or swim, as you human likes to say.”
The words hung there, heavy and unrelenting.
Raime didn’t flinch. “Then I’ll fly.”
He turned toward the palace’s far hall—the locus of power he usually trained in—and began walking, each step measured and certain. Behind him, Neimar’s form dimmed, his voice whispering across the stone, audible only to himself.
“Let us hope, disciple… that the System’s path doesn’t become your cage.”
Raime walked back through the corridors of the temple, the air humming faintly with residual psionic energy. Every step echoed in the vast silence, steady, deliberate—more to keep his thoughts in order than out of exhaustion. He couldn’t stop now. The Rift itself seemed to be shifting, a subtle pressure rippling through its distorted reality, was his imagination or the Eye’s slow awakening was disturbing even the fabric of this world?
Neimar’s words lingered in his mind—sink or swim. It wasn’t just a metaphor anymore. The Rift was a tide, and he could already feel it rising.
The battle, the rewards, the revelations—they had changed something inside him. The radiant seed still pulsed faintly beneath his consciousness, and the refined vessel the System had forged out of his broken limits moved with impossible grace. Even fatigue felt distant, like a fading memory. He should have been tired. He wasn’t.
I will not stop now, my body has been restored, my limits extended, I will push harder and build this stupid core before everything goes down the drain, damn System. As soon as I manage to get a modicum of piece, it put a ticking time bomb on everything. No, it has always been there, and strangely it is meant to set off at the right time to mess up with me… I don’t believe it for a second. This was all scripted, I don’t know how, but the System managed to make all the pieces fall in the right places. And I’m one of them.
He reached the main chamber—the same place where he had trained, bled, and reached for the unseen. Dust motes hung in the air like tiny sparks, swaying with the currents that brushed his skin. He stopped in the center, drew a long breath, and levitate in a meditative position. Then opened his status.
Status: Raime
Race: Human (Altered)
Level: 0 (Unawakened)
Attributes:
Strength: 51
Vitality: 51
Vigor: 51
Resilience: 51
Finesse: 51
Perception: 51
Insight: 55
Clarity: 55
Resolve: 56
Cognition: 60
Available attribute points: 16385
Racial Trait – Mind Over Body
Titles:
-
Traveller of the In-Between
-
Anomaly
-
Ithural-born
-
The One Who Refused
-
Transcendent Divergence
-
Progenitor
It had been a while since he had looked at it. Not because he’d forgotten, but because it hadn’t mattered. No attribute had improved, no new System skill was added, no title or change of any kind happened for a bit. But in truth he changed, and not little, his mind, his disposition and his capability, all refined by the experiences he lived through. Now though, he could progress again, and push further beyond.
He hesitated for just a moment, thoughts diverging from his status. He hid it from me.
Neimar’s omission still burned at the edges of his mind. Orrhal breaking free—the chains weakening. Part of him wanted to be angry, but what would that change? The Sovereign had been right; there was nothing Raime could have done to help. The difference in scale was beyond his comprehension.
Still, that sense of impotence clawed at him, familiar and infuriating. He clenched his fists, a faint psionic hum vibrating through his bones. He was tired to feel powerless.
A deep, steadying breath. Then, slowly, he began distributing his saved attribute points.
He had earned them through blood and battle, through many fights and difficult experiences. He’d hoarded them for the simple reason that he couldn’t use them, but now, knowing that the core formation would demand vast reserves of energy he was glad he accumulated that many. The sovereign estimated that at least seven to nine thousand would be necessary for his advancement. but with the recent reward, with his refined vessel, he could afford to push further.
He could almost feel the strength waiting beneath the surface, like a storm begging to be unleashed.
It’s time to move forward again.
He began the process, assigning all the points he could to Cognition, by itself it will boost the other attributes thanks to his racial trait. And so he found a new ceiling.
Status: Raime
Race: Human (Altered)
Level: 0 (Unawakened)
Attributes:
Strength: 74
Vitality: 74
Vigor: 74
Resilience: 74
Finesse: 74
Perception: 74
Insight: 78
Clarity: 78
Resolve: 79
Cognition: 121
Available attribute points: 16324
Racial Trait – Mind Over Body
Titles:
-
Traveller of the In-Between
-
Anomaly
-
Ithural-born
-
The One Who Refused
-
Transcendent Divergence
-
Progenitor
The sensation of his mind expanding was sublime, he could feel the superior processing power flowing through his synapses, the brain seemed to restructure itself into a quantum computer. With a mental command he split his consciousness in two like before, it came without any kind of strain now, so he split it into three, then four. He started to feel a certain kind of strain, and hearing four stream of thoughts was strange but he adapted quickly. At the fifth split he felt a clear resistance, similar to the one he felt at the beginning of using Neural Shear, but he was satisfied.
His body went through a similar transformation, despite receiving less of a boost, the enhancing of his flesh was even more pleasurable, he felt like he spent ten days at a spa, getting the best treatment possible, and at the same time he felt his muscle capable of coiling tighter, of fighting for longer, a boundless energy was flowing through him, he felt like going out and searching for another fight with a Tier III. But it wasn’t over, after calming down for a second he pushed all the attributes to his current limits, then he added a single point to each, to cross the threshold again.
Another bout of euphoria hit him, but this time he was more prepared, another wave of enhancement swept through him, but this time he felt an underlying strain take hold of his whole being, still, he didn’t started to mutate to accommodate more power than his vessel could. No, his body was resonating in a strange way with his soul, adapting to the new infusion of power, he could feel that it will take time, and will not be without cost, it felt like his body was starving for nutrients, he will have to take can of that soon. But first he checked his new status.
Status: Raime
Race: Human (Altered)
Level: 0 (Unawakened)
Attributes:
Strength: 108
Vitality: 100
Vigor: 101
Resilience: 98
Finesse: 110
Perception: 115
Insight: 113
Clarity: 110
Resolve: 117
Cognition: 121
Available attribute points: 15980
Racial Trait – Mind Over Body
Titles:
-
Traveller of the In-Between
-
Anomaly
-
Ithural-born
-
The One Who Refused
-
Transcendent Divergence
-
Progenitor
Apparently his training bore unexpected fruits, despite not gaining attributes directly, he could clearly see that directed effort would shift the ratio between them. That was good to know.
And still, the System didn’t register any of the skills it imparted me… why is there no section about skills? Or maybe only class skills are considered real skills? I suppose I will know in a bit, if the stupid Eye doesn’t destroy everything before.
Raime refocused all his thoughts stream into one, his perception of time slowing significantly and his mind operating at greater efficiency, in the palace he didn’t need to be aware of his surroundings so he refocused on the task at hand, compressing his soul.
After a minute of trying to focus though, he gave up.
He sighed, rubbing his temples. So much for calm meditation. His stomach growled in protest. “Fine,” he muttered, standing up. “Food first…”
If my mental attributes were any lower, I would probably eat my arm by now.
While flying in the corridors he briefly encountered Neimar who was passing through, “I need a snack,” he told him with a straight face before continuing away.
The Sovereign watched him go toward the kitchen, an inscrutable expression on his ancient face.
“A snack?”