Without any conscious thought, his body began to move toward the pillar, one step after another. There was a silver walkway in front of him that was linked to the pillar, perhaps fifty paces across, but every step felt like crossing a battlefield.
This silver walkway seemed to have emerged from the presence of this pillar, and the air around this small area was thick; that was the only word Elias could use to describe it. The air hummed with latent power, and each breath he took tasted of metal and ozone and something older than either.
It was as if he were walking not just towards a piece of Divinity, but towards something alive that had bled in the past. He reached the basin, and the liquid light inside it rippled as he approached, as though it recognized him.
Every Fragment was unique to an Angel, and so he was born to be here. This knowledge came to him as easily as breathing.
For a brief moment, he was confused about what he needed to do, but as if it was instinct that were placed in him the moment he was born, Elias knelt, knowing this was what you did before Divinity, but he did not bow or pray, the gods were dead, and prayers were no longer needed, not when you could seize their powers for yourself.
Elias looked deep into the bowl of liquid light, and because there was no other way, he looked inward.
He closed his eyes and turned his perception inside himself, and it was easy because the heavy weight in his chest led to his Lumina Pools, and the sight stole his breath.
His Pools of Lumina were no longer pools. They were oceans.
"No wonder it feels as if I am carrying a mountain in my chest." he sighed in astonishment.
Elias did not know what the goddess had been trying to accomplish when she seized his Lumina Pools or what the Fate-erasing strike did inside this space, but it had expanded all of his hundred pools of Lumina.
One hundred vast, bottomless chasms, each one so deep that light itself seemed to bend and slow as it descended into them. The walls of each pool were no longer flat; they curved inward like the inside of a sphere, lined with veins of gold that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
They were not just deeper. They were wider.
Each pool now occupied more space inside him than should have been possible. It was as though his soul had been stretched, remade, given room for something far larger than any mortal or even ordinary Siphon could contain.
His Status Screen suddenly vibrated rapidly, and even in this space, he could feel that something was different. Elias widened his eyes for a brief moment as he thought something was intruding into this space, and that was all he could do before his consciousness was frozen in place.
A vast presence entered this space, and Elias felt as meaningless as a speck of dust floating in the wind on an endless plain. This presence dwarfed the goddess and anything Elias had ever felt.
Yet there was something about the presence that was cold and mechanical. Elias had felt like dust because whatever this presence was, it saw life in abstract terms, and then he heard its voice.
[WARNING- SEVERE CONTAINMENT BREACH DETECTED.]
[ANALYZING- #ERROR# ALIEN FRAGMENT ASSIMILATED.]
[WARNING- CAPACITY EXPANDED EXPONENTIALLY... HIGH RISK OF CHAOS GATE BREACH.]
[ANALYZING- SOLUTION FOUND- EVOLVE OLDEN TALENT.]
[REQUESTING PERMISSION #ERROR# CONNECTION UNSTABLE.]
[ANALYZING HOST- FOUNDATION SUITABLE FOR TALENT UPGRADE.]
[REQUEST FOR PERMISSION ENDED]
[OLDEN TALENT UPGRADED TO ELDER TALENT.]
[CONGRATULATIONS HOST... ELDER TALENT AWAKENED: ADAPT.]
Elias’s consciousness was still frozen in place, but every word spoken by the presence was etched permanently into his consciousness as if branded by a hot knife.
He would be foolish if he did not consider that this was his Status screen and that it was far more mysterious and powerful than he had initially believed.
Most of what the presence was speaking about did not make much sense to him, except for the end, when it talked about talent.
Not all Siphons had access to a talent, and only a rare few were able to get them. Usually related to bloodlines, talent was another dividing line that separated a weak Siphon from a strong Siphon, and what made the Stoneward Asylum special was that every member of the Order had unique talents, and it seemed Elias had become one of them.
He had been a bit worried when he hadn’t seen any talent the first time he opened his Status screen, but it seemed he had to Seed his Lumina before his talent was awakened.
However, he was a bit disappointed. Why was his talent Adapt, and not Darkness Manipulation like Rhys or Flame Control like Brother Valerius?
He did not think there would be potenti....
[TALENT FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED... CONTAINMENT PROCESS INITIATED.]
As if squeezed by the hands of a god, his massive Oceans of Lumina began to shrink.
A massive storm that should be able to shred through continents arose inside this space, but the presence easily contained all of those forces, and even his fragile consciousness was not hurt.
Elias could only watch in astonishment and a faint sense of loss as the oceans of Lumina he had seen a moment before began to shrink.
Of course, the first thing he had thought about when he saw this anomaly was that he would never be able to fill up even a single pool in ten lifetimes, and he would remain as a Level 0 forever... he still wanted his infinite pools damnit.
A terrible screech emerged from the shrinking Ocean of Lumina; it was the goddess.
Multiple massive golden tentacles erupted from the shrinking oceans of Lumina, reaching for the force that was squeezing down upon them, but whatever power that was responsible for the creation of Siphons and gave them a Status screen was far greater than this fragment of the goddess left behind.
The tentacles were shattered into streams of black liquid, repeatedly purified until they shone like a river of gold, and that gold was added to his shrinking Lumina Pool, which seemed to gain more solidity, as if it had been made of stone and was now metal.
[BROKEN FRAGMENT OF DIVINITY DETECTED... ASSIMILATED INTO ELDER TALENT.]
[ELDER TALENT UPGRADED: EXTREME ADAPTATION.]
Hearing the fading screams of the goddess, Elias thought that perhaps a smaller pool was good enough. Clearly, the strike from the Commander had not been sufficient to cleanse his Lumina Pools of her presence.