"Do you want to advance to the Foundation Stage?"
Yes/No
With a thought Horo selected yes.
Horo had never personally witnessed no one advanced to the foundation stage, but he learned much about what advancing should be like growing up, and he knew enough to know his advancement wasn't normal.
He felt himself immense pain, it was extreme but it wasn't unbearable for him, as his will very strong and his experience from silence being engrained in his soul, he naturally had very high pain resistance.
He sat down in the lotus position, and resisted the pain while feeling the changes and effect of advancing stages. Most of the change was happening his body and soul as he felt both being reinforced, well mostly his body because his soul was already extremely powerful, but he could feel the more of his soul being unsealed most importantly.
He could also feel a boost in all aspects of his being including stats and energy, even his negative energy was being reinforced and improving in quantity and quality. Every part of him was growing, and every special physical aspect like his traits, meridians, his third eye and even the Tree of Tragedy was progressing.
He could feel some parts of him progressing more than others, but he was still excited because the Tree of Tragedy had a weird state of existence and so did the Heaven's eye.
The Tree of Tragedy was kind of omnipresent on him. It had always existed on his soul and body as on existence. He couldn't even actively control it yet, and It was like it had a mind of its own, acted when it wanted to. It still had many secrets and was a secret in itself even to Alma who knew every single thing about him.
The Heaven's eye was now kind of the same way, but it existed as in two different forms on his soul and body but was essentially one entity. It was a slit made of golden runes on his body, but on his soul it actually looked like his special version of the Heaven's eye.
The amount of pain he was going through was highly abnormal because he was told people only went through slight uncomfortableness when advance not extreme pain.
Soon his special circumstances made his advancement totally different outside of the pain.
The Heaven's eye began to change.
The third eye on his soul looked like a vertical eye that didn't really have a lid since it opened from the middle. It normally looked like a slit but you could tell it was an eye, and It slightly bulged out but not to the point where it was noticeable. Now that slit looked like the brightest gold metal ever though it still looked skin like and not rail like, it made the eye look majestic even while closed.
Next the eye opened, still looking like his Heaven's eye giving the impression that it could peer into Heaven's secrets with its black sclera, and grayish white runes that made up the outline of the beautifully golden iris.
But then, it blinked, something it never did. Usually the eye was either open or closed,but it never blinked. When it blinked it changed to look like the Cyclops eye. It still had the unique transparent sclera, but now it had what looked like normal eyes vessels coming from towards the back. Instead of being reddish like normal eye vessels, these were more like emerald. The iris now looked like a pure white pearl with an emerald green outline and pupil.
It looked exactly like it was crafted from emerald, a pearl and the most transparent glass in the world.
As the eye kept blinking it alternated between the two eyes. It chose to stay open on his soul and constantly blink.
The next odd thing happened immediately after the eye's change, he felt his meridians pulse as they began to activate his energy cultivation technique. His meridians seemed capable of self thought, but they actually acted on instinct.
Advancing in stages normally offered a permanent boost to mana reserves and a small boost to the quality of your mana.
Horo's case was different though because he no longer had mana, he had spirit mana.
This world's power system which was bound to this world's rules was trying to do what it normally would do when its denizens advance, which is to boost the mana core and if said advancer didn't have one, help them naturally create one or come closer to.
With Horo it couldn't really do that, this world had no authority over spirit mana, but Horo's meridians instinctively felt the intentions of world's will which was part of its rules.
His meridians instinctively took in that ethereal information and tried to carry out that order. Since they were made of spirit mana they kind of had jurisdiction, yet another problem came up, they were acting on instinct.
The technique his meridians are utilizing is the technique they instinctively remember which is the meridian opening portion. As his meridians kept trying to form a core with the wrong part of his bright lightning technique something unexpected began to happen.