Jason woke up bombarded with his senses, he hadn't even opened his eyes and he could clearly see everything omni-directionally within one meter around him. When he tried to retract his light as he normally would he realized there was no light to pull back.
For some reason he just knew perfectly everything around him.
Dazed, confused, and overstimulated, he finally dared to open his eyes. It very clearly wasn't a dream, the transparent walls all around him were cracked, the Sword of the Citadel stood before him same as it had when he entered, the throne behind it empty.
He immediately focused on the visuals he was getting of himself unconsentually at the moment, he didn't recognize himself much at all, nothing was the same.
'I have two hearts pumping in opposite directions with black and white blood, my bones appear like glass made from the universe, my pupils are two rings with a line through them, there's a living ball of letters below my brain, my brains a fucking liquid rock, and there is a ring shaped doorway to another world inside my brain that feels like it wants to fucking pull my ass in!'
(A/N: -*words*- will now show that its a conversation being conducted by thoughts alone)
-"Relax child, take a breath Jason."- Oberin's voice sounded though his mind, with it silencing his thoughts and then that blue wind swirled around him again as he breathed in seeming to further put him at rest.
-"Is this a success to you, I seriously have no idea??"-
-"It was a stunning success. You've probably reached a state beyond even what I would have if I was able to break past the Pseudo-Supreme barrier. Let me just show you okay, use your light to see through your eyes as your normally would but don't direct it."-
Responding with action Jason did as he said. When the light reached his eyes, the radius of perfect omni-directional vision enhanced without the need to constantly pour more light in as he normally would. Instead of seeing with his light directly the more light he had in his eyes the stronger and wider the view range.
-"Interesting, now try to just focus on where that sight is with your eyes themselves, try to change the shape of that vision or just make its range smaller. Then try pulling your light out of your eyes."-
Again choosing to act instead of responding since Oberin was just reading his thoughts anyway. Jason focused on his eyes trying to only see in the range of actual sight. Oberin seemed to be right as with just the thought of using his eyes to do that made him feel his vision range change to only what he pictured.
Closing his eyes, and pulling the light out of his eyes made the vision recede until completely fading and it was as 'normal' as if he didn't have it. The light receded to the Divine Spirit Core automatically being absorbed by the ∞ symbol inside.
-"That 'marble' you see should be what my spirit core transformed into inside of you, I think the most accurate way to call it would be a Divine Spirit Core. Normally when a god takes a physical form, a rune forms of their nature and the body then condenses around it and it functions like the brain of a code since their consciousness resides in their spirit as one.
In mortals it is the place to which we store our core internal spirit energies. Fundamentally different but similar in that are the power generators of spirt energy, in gods the energy they use and manipulate is an extension of themselves. In mortals when it leaves us we have no consciousness in it without using soul force to transmit our commands in various means. We so more imbue our energy and manipulate it in arrays while gods wield a more raw fluid power.
The other difference is that a god births more energy from their rune at a rate constantly based on their comprehensions into their aspect. While a mortal captures and refines energy for the engine to use and produce. We thus can sometimes produce more explosive complex powers than gods, while they can easily outlast us given enough reserve and recovery rate.
You are a god but also a man, a direct conflict with logic, so that core of yours seems to show that. An engine to stoke the flames of your source and a prison to consume, capture, refine, and release them. It is also connected to your meridian network running parallel to and beyond your nervous system.
Cycling energy through the meridian channels in different patterns is a way of releasing immense power from the body itself, something a god does not have thus can not use, these are called internal spirit arts. Gods use external spirit arts, manipulating spirit energy in patterns externally.
They both have their pros and cons.
The gateway inside your brain was formed of soul force and is of immense interest to me too. It seems to be the very thing we were chasing all along. The six runs on their have a connection to the band around your Divine Spirit Core and again to both your eyes. I believe this is the very thing we wish to accomplish by breaking those chains.
I don't think I need to explain more, pull light through your eyes push it towards the Divine Spirit Core and then to the Soul Gateway. We'll understand it all once you do."-
The way Oberin explained the concepts to him reminded him of a certain eccentric old man that had come to be his best friend in their more recent years together once he had surpassed the level of student.
-"Can you check and see if Erog is alright, that should be within your power, right Oberin?"-
-"Yes, one moment."- Having been activly reading his thoughts Oberin understood without needing to ask. He searched within the dimensional sphere for a moment.
-"I found him.... But thinking about it, lets test something else at the same time. Do as I said before but as you feed the energy to the gateway ask the question as to what I saw of Oberin. Close your eyes and picture it within your eyes."-
Jason again responded in tune closing his eyes. He began to accumulate light or rather infinity and stream it through his eyes, where it then was sucked into a pinhole the opened facing forward sucking in the light. The band of six runes around the core lit up and the petals moved to form a pin sized hole on the other side. The Infinity symbol in the center lit up streaming energy back towards the gateway.
when it reached the gateway he asked the question in his mind, it seemed to be sucked in with the energy. His consciousness was sucked in too after the runes on the gateway flashed.
When he realized what was going on there was a gateway behind him the same as what was in his head. Focusing on himself, he was back in his light ball form.
A transparent crystalline textured beam stretched out from the border of the gateway until it reached a point and a very small star formed.
Suddenly he felt very weak and a giant weight way down on him.
-"Jason can you hear me!?"-
-"Ugh, yeah. Do you hear me?"-
-"Thank god yeah, yes I do. All the soul force coursing through your brain streamed to the gateway and is now revolving around its edges cyclically. I tried to talk to you as I had been and didn't get a response. Panic I tried to connect a strand of soul force using the Citadel to it and nearly zapped it of it's last reserves before stabilizing. I can't see your thoughts anymore though, can you try using your light or rather soul force to connect back to me or something?"-
-"Yeah sure, I think I can literally feel the entire citadel now that I'm paying attention to it."-
Jason began to do the consciousness equivalent of a blind man who had been paralyzed all their life being cured and stretching their limbs for the first time. He could feel all sorts of things within himself he could control at the moment; however, he had no idea how they would react or feel when he tried to 'flex' them.
-"EASY EASY EASY! Gentle, please we don't have much reserve power, you just disrupted and activated 80 different function of the citadel I had to rapidly shut off, or risk the dimensional sphere destabilizing. Focus on my voice and picture your light connecting a very thin thread back to where it flows into from. I know it's abstract but I can't think of much else."-
-"My bad my bad, sorry let me try again. I think I understand now."- Through the ring in his brain on the other side a loose string of soul force tethered to Oberin's and then pulled tight.
Oberin's consciousness followed along the string as it tightened reaching a ball of light in a void.
-"Well hello their kid, I'm much more used to seeing you like this honestly. This is incredible, picture all you just saw and felt, then imagine bundling it up and push it into the string you just made to me I can only see your active consciousness now. This is what would commonly be called a soul bound mind link, but I think we just bound the core of the Citadel permanently with yourself on accident."-
Fiddling with his light for a moment Jason figured out what Oberin meant with a few directions along the way thanks to him being able to know what he was doing actively again.
-"So when you asked the question that connection formed to the star like node there? Truly phenomenal, also side note, to experience the sensations of a god is quite the feeling. This would normally be impossible since a mortal and god share no common way to connect like we just did normally. So I'm without a doubt the first mortal ever in existence to experience this, if I still had a body I'd be dancing around a giddy blathering mess of excitement!
Humor me again and if I'm right you're in for a treat indeed. Try to stream your light into that star like node there."-
Jason effortlessly moved through the void making Oberin giggle at the feeling of moving without a mass or the feeling of a body to anchor to.
When he manipulated some of his light towards the node he began to loose connection of it as it entered. The star node at the end of the light stream began to shine being pulled closer to the gate.
It grew closer and closer with more light, Jason was feeling noticeably weaker as he did until it was fully pulled into the gate. The gate rippled and a small wisp of light floated out from it like a water droplet moving in reverse from a puddle back to the clouds, pausing after moving around a meter from the gateway. It flashed and formed a solid low polygon sphere with light trapped inside.
Soul force as he had come to recognize this particular infinity aspect form to be ebb and flowed between this orb and the gateway, it's runes in particular.
Once it stabilized in a rather slow cycle, the wisp inside began to twist and turn into the shape of an infinity symbol forming an endless cycle. Once it had stabilized too, a beam of wisps came streaming from the gates center.
As they revolved around the orb slowly being pulled in from their orbit, being absorbed into the slow endless cycle the infinity symbol grew from 5mm wide to 6mm. An infinity symbol appeared at the gates center.
Once this symbol lit up everything connected together, the answer to his question came in the form of a vision of Oberin looking on as a man driving a coal powered carriage, in tow pulling another unpowered cart with a self stabilizing under carriage full of all his most prized positions. Racing twice as fast down a hill towards what appeared to be the borders of the Rowbal Empire on zooming out. For some reason he also knew exactly some context around his situation like his health and mental state without having been able to check that.
-"Your question was 'What did Oberin see? How's Erog doing and where is he now?' it seemed that was answered at the cost of soul force and a small amount maybe because I could have easily shown you that.
That's how it was for us Guardians. The stronger our connection to our infinity aspect, the deeper the questions we asked subconsciously were revealed to us like a divine revelation in small parts. With enough time and thought on our part we could piece things we didn't yet know together quickly. Like one lesson could teach us three more."-
Oberin paused, letting him think through it before continuing.
-"What you have gained seems to be a much more complete version of that power. Ours was like mere insights compared to what you just did. All you know and can be known is stored and accessible in your mind.
Our predictions for a Supreme Master Guardian were things like sight that could pierce the heavens, a mind that could deduce the secrets of anything with a glance but this is far beyond that.
It's almost like an infinite constellation of knowledge or..... Hm, an Infinite Archive? All knowledge is already technically here it just needs to be cataloged and collected by you.
One of the features planned for the Citadel was the ability to store insights and knowledge as a backup of everything our great minds had understood in one place better than any book could ever hope to accomplish. I had planned to call it the Infinite Citadel Archive, or Infinite Archive, a place where hopefully one day any question could be answered.
But I feel 'the Infinity Archive' would be a very fitting name for this space and ability you now have at your finger tips." Oberin sounded quite happy while he was explaining his reasoning, Jason could easily picture a wide grin across his face.
-"You get a little too carried away when it comes to naming things don't you?"- Another light popped up an eighth of the distance from the 'Soul Gateway' as the last one just as he said that.