"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKK!"
Atlas screamed from the unimaginable pain of his body being torn apart. Dense gas was being forced into his mouth and nose, and his ability to breath was rapidly diminishing. His muscle fibers were being torn apart and reformed every second, and his bones felt like they were disintegrating. He felt like a tree's branches were forcing his way through his body, tearing through nerves and blood vessels. His rapidly breaking veins and arteries showed tell-tale signs- as he continuously vomited blood throughout the entire ordeal, and his skin became a dark purple with the loose spilled blood flooding his entire body.
Atlas' mind was no exception to the torture, as a seemingly endless stream of information filled his brain far past its maximum capacity. This stream of information was chock-full of languages and concepts never before seen on Earth, yet their sole owner was actively wishing for his own death due to the massive sensory overload he was currently under.
[ HP: 359-> 350 ]
[ HP: 350->228 ]
[ HP: 228-> 29 ]
[ User's HP has dropped below 10%. ]
[ Forcibly activating Authority: Spatial Distortion. ]
[ DP: 926-> 1 ]
Atlas thought his eyes were disintegrating as well, as his clear view of the church's crowded interior- albeit dyed red with the blood spilling from every pore of his body- faded into a pitch black void that remained no matter which way he looked. His delayed nerves quickly relayed to his overflowing brain the feeling of being warped through space itself, and needless to say it did not improve his condition.
[ Skill Acquired: Pain Resistance LVL. 1 ]
[ Aptitude: 99 ]
[ Skill: Pain Resistance LVL. 1-> Pain Resistance LVL. MAX ]
His pain slowly but surely fading away, Atlas pried open his tightly shut eyes and glanced around at his surroundings without moving his head- as he feared if he did, it would come clean off. Taking his time and twitching his fingers and toes one at a time, he counted 20 and breathed a short but deserved sigh of relief. He slowly slid his left leg centimeter by centimeter along the smooth surface beneath it, then did the same with his right. Making the mistake of getting too ahead of himself, he tilted his neck down to look at the state of his body, only to be absolutely decked with the migraine of the century- which gatewayed his recommence into vomiting copious amounts of blood.
Missing the pain that usually would accompany the blood loss, Atlas powered through the nauseating sensation of losing bodily fluids rapidly to take an inventory of his limbs. After confirming that everything that should be there was, in fact, there, he laid back down to slowly read through the unfathomable amount of system messages that he had seems to subconsciously close.
Gathering his thoughts, he formulated a chain of events- using the system messages as a guideline or blueprint for it. Firstly, DP was not only a stat of his own but also a naturally occurring substance, meaning it was similar to magical energy or Mana in fantasy genre entertainment. But seeing how he was only overloaded with it when he entered a church, he concluded that DP is an acronym for Deity Power- and it is only present in large quantities in religious areas. Secondly, external DP would automatically be absorbed by the system into his body, as he did not receive a panel option to refuse the absorption. DP was like a power source for him, as a massive influx of it unlocked what the system called his Potential, which was most likely his future self's stats and skills. This borrowing of his own future stats and skills would explain the exponential increase in all of his stats- albeit only temporarily- as well as the evolution of Metacognition into Enlightenment.
But what should have intrigued him the most was that his Race changed from Human to Deity Incarnate. However, as he was still under the effects of Enlightenment, his mind automatically filled in the gaps in his knowledge- and his thought process warped completely. Rather than taking each event step by step and using them as evidence to reach a feasible conclusion, his mind instead instantly reached the correct conclusion, and Atlas would force himself to backtrack and prove the reached conclusion, even though he already knew it was correct.
This inverted process of thinking threw him off to say the least, and Atlas found himself trying to retain as much information about the system as he could before Enlightenment wore off. Sitting in a crisscross position, he placed his comfortably together in his lap and focused on his Empyrean Circuit- which was like a pathway of interconnected channels throughout his body that could channel and guide his DP. But of course, just as his luck would have it, as soon as he began to focus the system graced him with even more notifications.
[ Excess DP has been safely stored. ]
[ Some DP was not able to be stored. ]
[ Would you like to use the unstored DP? ]
Piquing his interest but not his curiosity, he asked:
"What can I use it for?"
[ The user may add it to their existing DP status point, or they may retain the LVL. MAX state of one of their skills. ]
'What? I can keep one of my level max skills? I thought I would only be able to keep it as a stat point.'
Thinking it obvious which skill to retain,
"I want to use the unstored DP to retain Enlightenment LVL. MAX."
[ Enlightenment LVL. MAX is not a suitable target for retention. ]
[ Please select another skill. ]
'Knew it was too good to be true.'
Formulating a plan, he asked the system before he selected:
"How long until my Potential initializes?"
[ If you remain in this space, then 36589 seconds. ]
[ If you exit this space, then 1097 seconds. ]
'I will remain here until my Potential reverts back.'
"Steel Hammer of the Eunuch, I'd like to commission you."