One after another, I consume the red cores that Ember farmed for us and allow the red threads of energy to surge through my body, consolidating into a crystalline form in my chest.
The burning and tearing sensation consuming my being only intensifies. It feels as if every cell of my body has been destroyed and regrown countless times.
Hours pass, and the time between every red core consumed gets shorter each time.
While the red threads of light don't harm my physical body any less, every new fragment that I consume lets less and less of its essence escape.
The red aura that hardly enveloped my entire body on our way up the mountain has now transformed and grown into a large and vibrant crimson aura.
I'm unsure how many hours have really passed, but after about half a day's worth of time sitting on this shore in front of the endless ocean, my memories begin to fade as it feels like the only thing I'm concentrated on is absorbing the next red fragment.
Ember's red aura grows in radiance too, not too far away from me on the shore, and in the very distant portion of my mind, I feel the presence of the three teammates that came with me up this mountain, killing monsters and growing stronger.
I close my eyes and concentrate, but I can still see the world around me in perfect clarity.
The purple ethereal threads that weave the mountain into existence below me constantly give off a light ringing sound as the vibrations of the crimson light in my core get more and more intense. It fades away every time the energy from a fragment is consumed, but the whispers of intensity stay behind for longer and longer each time.
Eventually, the ringing gets louder and faster, and after dozens of fragments, I begin to lose count of how many I've consumed.
Ember's voice echoes in my mind as we increase the rate of absorption even further.
"We're almost there. No matter how you feel, don't stop healing your body. We're on the verge of awakening a red core."
I do as he says.
Even though every time I consume a red stone, there is an indescribable feeling to let its hot rush of clarity take over, I cling on to my body and heal it constantly, using hundreds of thousands of MP in the process.
Eventually, I come to a tipping point, and yell out into the endless ocean as I feel my mind waking from a slumber I didn't know I was trapped in. My dazed state after consuming fragments doesn't come like it usually does, and the feeling of clarity for the few seconds that I absorb a fragment stays with me indefinitely this time around.
I open my eyes and find myself floating above the shore by just a few centimeters, and a wide red aura of billions of red threads seeps out of my chest and wraps around the air surrounding me by about 20 to 30 meters in diameter.
My perception skills are working at full blast, but I don't sense any of the red light seeping away from my body.
It doesn't even feel like energy at all.
It just feels as if anything these red threads touch, I understand and have a far greater control over the reality near me.
I feel my heartbeat, I hear my every breath, the blood in my veins trickling throughout my body, and the constant crunching of my bones and muscles still being broken down and reformed by my skill.
The self-regeneration process is aided by the red threads permeating from my core, however, this is still a conscious effort.
For whatever reason, access to this power wants the limits of my physical body to be destroyed, but I don't plan on letting that happen. For now, it isn't much of a hassle to keep this skill activated like a passive buff, by now I've grown used to it.
I reach into my item storage and pull out my daggers, then send a few crescents of red lighting off across the ocean.
The mana output is exactly the same as it's always been, the attacks just feel far denser and weigh down on the fabric of this construct, making them many times more deadly than they would be without the red ethereal light coursing through them.
I send off dozens of attacks, in awe of the fact that the red aura around me doesn't dim at all.
A radiant red core glows in my chest, made up of what seems like an infinite amount of crimson threads.
Wherever I float in the air, it's like a weight of immovable mass bends the world around me.
Ember's voice finally breaks me from my enamored state.
"Congratulations. You've successfully awakened your red core. You can perceive and manipulate the most crude form of divine energy. How does it feel?"
I raise my gaze to Ember, he floats before me with a radiant red core as well.
The fabric of reality within this construct bends around his aura just the same.
My perception skill is still heightened to its highest degree, and our auras overlap, giving me a glimpse into his core once again. It is nearly identical to mine, having what seems like infinite threads of red light within it, however, I see the golden and silver sparks in its center for a fraction of a second before my gaze and mind are pushed away.
I nod and turn to the endless ocean and respond.
"It feels incredible. Like my eyes are finally open... The world around me bends to my wishes, it's like nothing I've ever felt..."
He smiles and points out into the great sea.
"Good. So you've grasped the basics. Let's climb higher so I can teach you how to properly use this power."
I turn back to the shore, opening a telepathy link with my teammates that are a few kilometers away hunting beasts to send them a quick and final farewell, then respond to Ember.
"Let's go."
Without waiting any longer, we both fly off together across the ocean, angling upward toward the direction in which all of the purple threads shimmer and flow.
Without having to hold back, we soar upward with speed far surpassing anything shown earlier in this construct.
Distance that took us days to cross before is now traveled over in mere hours.
Heavy wind currents try to push travelers around in the sky, but both of us slice through these obstacles with radiant red auras, bending through the construct while leaving traces of red threads behind in our wake.
We pass hundreds of lost scavenger birds in the skies, and they only grow stronger and stronger the higher up we travel.
Some of them possess powerful attacks rivaling that of a 1500-1600 hunter, similar to the strength shown by Trax when he consumed a red core and unleashed its raw fury.
These birds aimlessly travel the skies, and we hunt them down with ease, collecting storages full to the brim with red cores.
Ember never consumes any, and I ask why, as many of them glow bright with power.
He shrugs and responds with "You can eat them if you want, but at this stage in our progression, anything less than an orange core won't do much."
Out of curiosity, I eat a few as we travel higher, but just as he said, after hitting the tipping point on the shore earlier, any extra red essence does nothing but flow right through me. I get a small surge of clarity, and my aura grows just slightly, but it fades away and is left behind in the wind less than a minute later.
I've hit some kind of natural limit.
After about ten tries, I let out a sigh and stop attempting to absorb fragments, giving him a late reply while slicing through a slowly circling scavenger bird. "You were right... I guess they don't do much..."
At the same time, I pull the orange core from my storage that I managed to obtain from the last event back in the Apex Region.
"How about this?"
Ember slices through another bird of his own, about half a kilometer away and turns to me using our mind link to reply.
"You're probably ready. I'd advise against trying it in the sky. We should at least find somewhere solid to sit and rest before attempting one of those."
His gaze turns upward, and I feel his aura pulse outward to scan the surroundings.
I momentarily slow my momentum to take a moment and do the same, looking far off into the sky above the ocean and finally see something interesting.
I whisper under my breath, "Chains... So many chains..."
Reaching up high into the sky, I see countless heavy chains.
They're covered in vines and rust, all falling down into the endless sky we've flown up through for hours.
The wind currents make them sway back and forth, rattling in the air.
Some are pulled tight, while others are loose and dip down to curve for endless kilometers.
I can't see the bottoms of the chains as we're too far up, but I can only assume they plunge into the depths of the sea below.
I also cannot see the tops either. They stretch up into the sky, fading away out of my senses.
These impossibly large metal structures are also made up of purple ethereal strands. Whatever they are, they're native to this construct.
In the faint outer sense of my mind, I see pockets of orange light jumping from chain to chain, grabbing onto the vines, and using them to climb higher up into the sky.
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Author's Note:
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Thanks for reading:)
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