Darkness,
It was complete darkness,
'Where am I?' Tirus thought as he tried to open his eyes. He felt as if he lost over half of his connection with his tentacles.
When he opened his eyes, he saw tens of spell models and 3 innate spell models in front of him.
'Am I breaking through?'
The road to the Morning Star was vast and long. Many Crystal Phase Magi did not even have the chance to come into contact with this bottleneck, with that being said, the first threshold for advancing to the Morning Star realm was for a magi's spiritual force to reach a critical value, filling up one's entire sea of consciousness.
One has to condense their crystallized spiritual force into a point mass. Thus breaking through to rank 4.
His felt his spiritual force rocket up continuously, exceeding 370, then 380. It reached 385 before it began to slow down.
Shortly after, the value shot past 390, making its sprint towards 400, the limit of the Crystal Phase.
395, 396, 397.
At this value, it began to slow, with the swift change relegated to decimal places.
[Beep! Injected spiritual force reaching critical levels!]
With his sea of consciousness swelling up, and the reminder from the A.I Chip, he realized that not only had his spiritual force reached the value of 399, even his sea of consciousness were filled with black-with a tinge of red in the center.
Inside his sea of consciousness, the three layers of the spiritual force core nucleus started to emit dazzling lights.
The spiritual energy he absorbed just now was 47% of the energy he painstakingly accumulated by killing everyone he could.
'I can absorb more.' This thought flashed by Tirus's mind as he felt an endless amount of spiritual force, ready to be devoured by him.
As he started absorbing the spiritual force at a rapid speed, a terrifying change started to occur immediately. In his sea of consciousness, under an enormous compressive power, numerous amounts of spiritual force crystals moved towards the center.
He felt himself go dizzy under the enormous pressure exerted at the heart of his spiritual force.
The sea of consciousness was essentially the home of the soul. The moment that it experienced any damage, the Magus would be in deep trouble.
Under the immense pressure that the spiritual force was experiencing, sounds could be heard coming from the center of his sea of consciousness. It wasn't a good sign.
"Construct the fourth innate spell!" Tirus commanded with difficulty.
[Beginning assignment. Supplementary work initiated, transferring atomic microscope] the A.I. Chip replied loyally.
All of his innate spell models flashed past his eyes as they stopped at one place, covering each other layer by layer. On the third layer, a fourth layer started to appear.
As the center of the core nucleus had a unique structure, the crystals became smaller as one went closer to the centre, but at the same time, the details on each rune became more intricate and they grew much more specialized.
At the center of the fourth layer, even though it was a quarter, the size of the first layer, it was still important that there be no errors when one was carving the rank 4 rune. That was an out-of-the-world request of a Magus' spiritual force manipulation abilities.
"It's no wonder that most Magi fail at advancing to rank 4. Even with the assistance provided by the A.I., Chip, this task seems to be too difficult …"
With the help provided by the A.I. Chip, Tirus, who had already initiated the atomic microscope, had started to carve down the fourth innate spell model.
The attention to detail required to carve a rune in the sea of consciousness was much greater than carving a statue, and the act was much more difficult, even though he had full knowledge about the process due to the information he got from his meditation technique's records.
Once he completed the final stroke of the rune, he felt as if he still had his body, then he'd have already collapsed due to exhaustion.
Under the immense pressure, it seemed like completing the fourth level rune properly was a big challenge. It took a while for his consciousness to stabilize.
Once the innate spell had been completed, his entire sea of consciousness started to tremble.
Boundless rays of lights started to radiate from the center of his sea of consciousness. The four layers of intricate runes started to bind together in a picturesque order, much like a piece of artwork.
Once the center-most part was filled up, the entire crystal started to shake violently, strengthening tremendously within seconds, and the immense pressure that was present previously had disappeared.
"This rune?" Tirus observed the rune that was a combination of all his innate runes. It represented all of his achievements so far, and hence he commanded the A.I. Chip to record it down.
Perfection.
The first impression this rune would leave on a person was that of perfection.
A gigantic rune was created by the combination of these small runes, which circulated continuously and looked pretty much 3D. Regardless of how one looked at it, it was flawless.
'So this is my path, huh, no…it's still incomplete.'
Once the four layers perfectly crystallized, they started to crumble inwards, shrinking to a point that rapidly started revolving. Much like a black hole, it started to suck in everything in its surroundings.
The spiritual force crystals inside his sea of consciousness started to shrink as they got sucked into the black hole.
[Initiating the construction of point mass. Guidelines activated.] the A.I. Chip reported.
Tirus, too, started to construct his personal point mass according to his understanding and the information from his A.I. Chip.
*Boom*
An immense suction force could be felt coming from the mass point of the spiritual force.
Not only were the spiritual force crystals sucked in, even the sea of consciousness was broken through and more energy. When a magus formed his point mass, they'd have all of their cultivation and accumulations concentrated into a single point.
From their personality to their spiritual force, from their spiritual force to true soul, from true soul to their physical bodies. Everything would be concentrated in this point mass.
But Tirus didn't have his normal, humanoid body right now, and so, the fleshly root like tentacles started retracting into the ground, into the egg shell. Acting as his fleshly body in the point mass formation process.
*Slap*
Tirus's consciousness suddenly blurred. Time seemed to pass extremely slowly, and at times it felt like eternity was squeezed into an instant.
It took the sounds of glass shattering for him to wake up again.
This time, his sea of consciousness felt empty.
There was a dim light shining at the center of the core, the result of shrinking the spiritual force a million times over, such that the nucleus core's density and purity had reached a remarkable level.
This was the point mass of a Morning Star Magus.
The source of the light shook, and the purified energy of the Morning Star realm, the energy of the point mass that was also known as soul force, started to leak out into the entirety of his body.
The point mass was golden, but it also gave off a blood-red light as well.
At that point, he had entered the Morning Star realm.
[Beep! Host's 'record of the nameless wanderer' meditation technique has advanced to the fourth level. Host has advanced to rank 4]
The A.I. Chip sounded out.
[Host's spiritual force has undergone a qualitative change. Data is inaccurate, recalculating…]
It was a long time for the new data to go up.
[Name: Tirus Van Elrod, Occupation: rank 4 magi; strength: ??, agility: ??, vitality: ??, spiritual force: 506, Soul Force: 58 (magic power is in sync with spiritual force) status: Healthy]
'Perfect'
[Beep! Host's body is being reconstructed…]
'Oh, right, I remember my body being dissolved in that fluid.'
To be continued…