Jason quickly filled the star that popped up with his light. Once the gate consumed it, the refined wisp that shot into the core of the infinity archive. As it slowly merged into the infinity symbol at the cores center, the knowledge that he in fact did filled his mind. Following a series of vivid visions from Oberin's viewpoint analyzing him as he went through the transfer, along with it he could hear his comments coupled with feelings about himself naming each transformation as it took place.
-"What'd you find out from that one? I can't see whatever you learn in here either I suppose."-
It was quite a bit surprisingly to Jason, it lead up right to the moment he asked it his next question. It even gave him some other small insights as to what Oberin had named even each action he had observed Jason make since they started exploring the changes within him.
He balled up the soul force imbued with what he just experienced sending it through the mental link. He didn't know how to explain it without showing it to him first, conveniently Oberin had just taught him how to do just that.
-"On 'archiving', as you called it, that 'comprehension' as I'll call them, I got the, answer, first hand experience, the context, and the understanding of it.
I felt your joy and excitement in seeing something new, that fueled your thrill behind naming something. It gave me context that this isn't the first time you've done this, it's more of a habit, but it's something key to your character that lead to who you are now. Also, as it taught me, you take it very seriously at the same time.
Another thing is it seems it makes the connections for me automatically. When I called them 'comprehensions' instead of 'knowledge stars or nodes' like you had thought up, I could feel through the link your emotions, and you lit up with satisfaction.
I or the Archive automatically comprehended that you respect a good name so much that it doesn't matter where it comes from, or you'll easily change it if a better name comes to your mind.
That's kind of incredible, I spent a lot of my time laying out everything I knew since I could never think about it all at once. I'm sure you saw my morning routine, in fact I have a hunch you never missed it actually."-
Jason felt Oberin's mood pick up a bar with each part. He did too, even with Erog he couldn't share everything he was learning and doing because he just didn't know where to start explaining the things he knew if he wanted to.
Oberin rapidly replied. -"Guilty on all points presented. Your accuracy, even in your assumptions, are all dead on. Our 'sight' only ever reached a divine yes or no with a little bit of what feels like a few intuitions, in comparison to the Infinity Archive. Notably what will be just its beginnings; a lesson to never forget, don't ever believe there is a limit to which you can evolve even the most simple of things."-
-"Alright then, I'm heading back out. Seeing this makes everything else out there seem interesting, it all seemed so overwhelming before nothing even felt the same, I was already just getting comfortable with my body. In here though it's very calming to me, it's very familiar being separate from everything like this, just observing."-
Jason brought his mind through the gateway, he noticed halfway through that he could be in both at once. He was far less aware of his body and the world around him, but he felt the same for inside the Infinity Archive. His light moved around inside far slower than before, and he just felt as if he was really sluggish responding to his senses.
His vision was blurred, his sense of location, up and down, hearing all of it was like he was underwater.
Moving through the gateway fully, the world had returned to how he felt it should.
-"With a stronger soul force you should be able to do that with ease I'll bet"-
Speaking aloud this time Jason asked "I can accumulate more easily like this."
Still sitting with his legs crossed, he started to accumulate light on how he normally would. A ten-armed spiral formed at a very large radius of forty meters.
-"Hold on, stop, you'll never get anywhere like this."- He stopped right away, letting the light strands fade away.
-"Let me just say before normally most of the things you've done like the soul link, among many many other things would have taken most many hours of study to even start doing. You instinctively find things out and jump a lot in the process.
It's not a bad thing you've just never been able to experience the world out here, you've never seen or heard of someone cultivating besides yourself. Letting you roam amongst a lower realm world for a few days would make you figure out what I'm going to tell you all the same.
That 'accumulating light' you do is called cultivating, a poor excuse for it too, though it doesn't really matter in your hands. By absorbing the various kinds of energy around us, refining it into what we desire. Then using the refined essence to evolve our body or accumulate it for use later.
You're able to skip many barriers, your aspect lets you refine anything instantly and it also allows you to convert it to whatever you wish when used correctly. However, right now what you're doing is akin to filling a bottomless well.
You're a god so you can absorb an enormous amount of your aspect inside your core spirit rune, your true infinity aspect can be used universally shifted to any state or converted to fulfill any purpose. Our infinity aspect was more of a poor imitation it seems. We could only transform it into something we completely comprehended, our auras would reflect that, it would emit a watered down sensation of your owns projected authority.
When I look at yours I can feel the familiarity of my own power but its among an infinite amount of others I don't recognize.
The point is it's all so automatic and just plain easy for you that you haven't gotten to see all the details along the way. Your infinity energy automatically shifts between different mediums to operate each. Before when you did this you just converted your light on demand.
Then when it started to assimilate with the rest of your body. As an example, think to when it merged, taking on the property's of essence blood. You had oversaturated what could be absorbed and refined by your actual existence at those moments.
Your True Base Essence or your true self was watered down by all the base essence it collected, your influence holding it all together was faulting causing it to overflow into the rest of your body.
When you had taken on the body of that mortal it was like the ball of infinity essence you are was tethered or attached to its brain. You simply pulled all your light inside your head and kept it there.
Now you are not only anchored in the body you have something to store and refine more soul essence, the soul gateway that contains a world for your more primal energy or your true self to dwell. When it's outside you it was as if there was a constant layer of glass between you and the physical world no matter how close you got to it, or how much you could see.
That soul gateway is the doorway out of that world of glass, you made many small, simpler ones when you connected to your body originally allowing your lets call it 'Existential Essence', to be converted into soul force which then slowly evolved the nervous system by constantly being saturated with it.
Your Divine Spirit Core can be used to contain any energy, and refine it. What you'll want to do to refine more core energy is feed any energy you want into the rune floating in the middle there.
It's a universal rune, or called the tongue of the universe by some, they are the most basic knowledge of the infinity aspect most have some knowledge of it for practical purposes. We took it to another level and for us Guardians it was a major aspect of study, with implications in every other field.
Using them in speech could impart perfectly your meaning to another. Effectively allowing them to easily understand what you wished to convey even if you didn't speak the same language too.
They are of a language that resonates with the world around us universally.
This particular rune means infinity, and other than the actual infinity symbol at the core of the infinity archive and in the center of the soul gateway I don't recognize any other within you.
This rune for infinity is the most basic, what we would refer to as first class infinity, the rest must be of a level we never reached or I just never heard of the discovery. It might increase as your cultivation improves in the avenue of the spirit and arcane arts particularly.
I'm sure that all the runes in the 60 petal shell around the core have a purpose you'll have to research.
I know this is all a lot but you should be able to easily recall all this information right?"-
-"Since you started, like 30 comprehensions have appeared inside but I haven't missed a single detail. You're good to keep going."-
-"Alright, as long as you're still following then, next you have your body, an entire branch of cultivation that some dedicate their entire lives to is martial cultivation, they create arts to be executed using their blood essence and runes they nature within their blood, bones, and the rest of their body's. Many who do use their spirit core solely to refine their body as such.
Your bones appear to be similar to infinity stone, a crystallization of a particular infinity aspect we only ever managed to stabilize in small amounts. Your marrow inside seems to use it as a medium to refract and somehow separate your Existential Essence into a light and dark force and then polarizing them with an opposite energy. Storing them then in separate circulatory systems that when recombined at there destinations balance polarity then repulsing one another.
The balanced polarity blood flows back to its respective heart, and the rune removes the energy from the blood and refines it to much greater purity. Each heart sends that separated energy into the closer lung where it's collected by the other and imbued into the blood of the other before it exits, increasing the polarity slightly with each cycle making the next reaction more explosive.
This process is slowly refining your body increasing it's strength refining it a little bit at a time with each cycle. You also shouldn't need air to breathe anymore since you don't use it to do so.
To cultivate is to not just simply accumulate more energy, but use that energy to refine and fundamentally evolve your body so it can accumulate more. You're fortunate in that your power automatically shifts to do this process but all you've been doing is keeping the level of energy you use topped up while you slowly advanced.
Truth be, you're only at the first level, yet your foundation is terrifying. The level of someone's cultivation has many local terms but we Guardians broke it down and found out using the universal runes a universal ranking system that applies even to you.
Using an array we can divine the ranking of someone who submits themselves willingly or with force to it. Your soul is open completely too me, before the transfer array was used I used it then to check and again now.
The ranking before was 0:0:0 now it reads 0:0:1, we refer to the the last number as 'Stage' one must progress through ten similar stages of change. That leads to the second number, we refer to this number as your 'Realm" as every ten stages advance your cultivation one realm. Finally, ten advances to your Realm leads to another tier of evolution and fundamental changes taking place so we refer to this level as 'Tier' due to such.
The last two numbers are of very little importance compared to someone's Tier. I was a existence that had reached the 83rd Tier, 9th Realm, and 9th Stage of my cultivation the power I could wield at my peak was something you will only one day come to understand.
With each change and increase in Tier, ones power increases drastically, the chance of 100 mortals rated 0:9:9 defeating, let alone killing another of the same race, ranked 1:0.5:0.5 is pathetically small.
The power difference wielded is immense. This will be of very little importance to you for the current moment.
Let me leave you with a recommendation for a cultivation method then use the Infinity Archive to grow from there. I'll provide insight into the world as needed to save your soul energy on refining Comprehensions.
Do as you would normally, but draw the energy into your Divine Spirit Core through your eyes, feed it to the infinity rune, draw out Existential Essence and direct and feed it into your marrow and soul gateway.
This cultivation technique will help you refine everything at once at least, allowing you to be observing the changes that take place in your body. When they stabilize begin to repeat the same changes you will likely have raised a stage. You'll need to develop more advanced methods on your own.
Begin to experiment with uses for each of these powers too. You're not subject to needing anyone to teach or needing countless hours of research, your major limiter will probably be creativity and ingenuity.
Take inspiration but never take what you see as a goal but rather a checkpoint, you're immortal beyond definition, nothing is out of your reach but death you need to learn to enjoy it. Exploring the limits of your knowledge is something you're keen on, I don't know if it relates to your aspect but cultivating seems to be a natural process for you anyway so exploring the limits of it will pay you back deeply rather than remaining an observer."-
Oberin voice finally faded. Jason sat back down and this time kept his eyes open as he followed Oberin's advice for what to do when the energy around him began to pour through his eyes.
The six runes around each of his eyes lit up, syncing with the same runes in a band around the Divine Spirit Cores. As the energy pooled into the Infinity Rune within Jason realized he could feel all the different energies he was absorbing more clearly the longer it went on.
Each had a unique feeling, some hot, cold, sharp, heavy, calming, invigorating, fearful, a combination of these and many others. The feeling would peak as each steam was swallowed into the 'spirit rune' as he thought of a name for it, getting a little happy about it and then questioning where that came from.
He briefly entertained those emotions before dismissing them just as quickly, focusing again on the process at play. The faster energy streams poured into the Divine Spirit Core the wider the opening in the lotus petal opened. He then tried to pull some of his base infinity aspect essence from the rune.
Another hole opened on the other side seaming to pull a steady stream out aimlessly through his whole body. He willed some small streams to directly flow into his bones it started swirling around them disappearing into the glossy surface of his bones.
As the bones pulled more energy in on their own, his base essence stopped wondering aimlessly. Shifting instead into channels that ran parallel to his nervous system. The base essence moved with more ease on its own instinctively through those channels, after twenty seconds he didn't have to focus on channeling it along anymore.
As long as he kept feeding energy to the rune it would continue to produce more of his base essence as he willed it.
'Let's try my Soul Gateway now.' Jason drew a few of the light streams of his base essence towards the gateway. The gateway responded automatically creating a whirlpool effect around the out edges.
Wisps of light rotated quickly inside the gateway. Keeping in mind what Oberin said about observing the changes, Jason maintained the process with little effort and did exactly that.