Northern’s scream tore through the crystalline prison—a sound so raw and primal it seemed to fracture the very fabric of the distorted space around him. The pain ignited as a searing blaze in his chest, like molten iron flooding directly into his heart.
Then it detonated outward.
Every nerve in his body erupted simultaneously. His bones began to crack—not breaking, but transforming. He felt each fracture as his skeletal structure remapped itself, vertebrae wrenching, ribs expanding and contracting in a rhythm that defied natural anatomy.
At first, Northern felt a flash of anger because this same thing had happened just moments ago... but the pain immediately overwhelmed him, forcing a grim conclusion through the haze of agony.
’This is... different. It’s like—’
His thought shattered as his muscles began to tear themselves apart and reweave. Fibers separated and reconnected in new patterns, growing denser, then lighter, then denser again. His body couldn’t decide what it was becoming because it was trying to become everything.
[Congratulations...]
[After 73 days, your internal body structures have been remodeled]
’Eh?’
Before he could think further, pain flooded his entire body.
His skin rippled like water, his flesh becoming translucent, then solid, then something between. He watched in horror as his hand became momentarily ethereal, then crystallized like ice, then returned to flesh before starting the cycle again.
Northern realized through gritted teeth:
’Omniform... it’s not just changing me. It’s integrating with everything I am—Tyranny of Change, Tyranny of Emulation, Endless, all of it. Forging something unified.’
His azure eyes burned in their sockets, tears of blood streaming down his face as his vision fractured into a thousand different spectrums.
The Infinite-Eyes attribute was being consumed, reconstructed into something far more terrifying. Layers of perception began to stack within his consciousness. The world suddenly became transparent before his eyes—he could see into the stones, their properties, the entire ground itself, even deep into the crust. But the sight was scorching, searing into his very being as the evolution progressed.
[Congratulations...]
[After 38 days, your external body structures have been successfully remodeled]
This time, the pain plunged deeper. His organs shifted position within his body cavity. His heart stopped, restarted with a different rhythm, and stopped again.
Each time it failed, panic seized him, but Endless wouldn’t let him die. It forced his body to adapt, to find new ways to sustain itself through endless cellular iteration—concepts being etched into his soul like commandments carved in stone.
His lungs collapsed and reformed with different structures. For several subjective months, he couldn’t breathe at all—his body sustained by pure essence circulation. Then suddenly, he could breathe again, but the air felt wrong, too thin, as if his lungs now required something more than mere oxygen.
Northern’s screams became hoarse, then silent as his vocal cords restructured themselves. He lay in a pool of his own sweat and blood, his body convulsing as reality itself seemed to warp around him.
The notifications kept coming, scrolling past his tear-blurred vision:
[Soul Rank Evolution: Initiating]
[Due to surplus amount of talent fragments, Evolution from Transient → Ephemeral → Evanescent in progress]
[This will break you twice as much as a normal Evolution]
[Omniform has absorbed Tyranny of Change and Tyranny of Emulation]
[Omniform’s evolution is nearing its end]
[Omniform’s Evolution is affecting your base race and changing its properties]
[Your internal body has been remodeled]
[Your external body has been remodeled]
[All conditions for the new race have been met]
[Your race is evolving...]
Then came a new horror—his nervous system was being rewritten. Every sensation became amplified a thousandfold. The mere touch of his clothing against his skin felt like razors. The faint vibration of air molecules became a cacophony. He could feel every atom of his body individually, each one screaming as it was forced to accommodate powers that were never meant to coexist in a single vessel.
’I wanted this...’
Northern reminded himself through the torment.
’I wanted to carve my own path. With blood and fire. With my own will.’
He groaned in pain again and clenched his teeth powerfully—the clenching itself was another torment on its own.
’This is so haaardd, arrgghhh...’
But knowing that didn’t make it hurt less.
His white hair fell out in clumps, only to regrow instantly—sometimes white, sometimes black, sometimes colors that had no name. His facial structure shifted subtly, his body unable to maintain a consistent form as Omniform repeatedly structured a race that optimized strength, then speed, then durability, then essence capacity, cycling through permutations faster than his conscious mind could track.
Months passed, perhaps. Subjective months of unending agony.
Northern lost track of time entirely. He existed in a perpetual state of transformation—his body became a battlefield where his attributes warred for dominance while trying to synthesize into something unified.
[Your race has evolved into a new race]
[The first of your kind]
[THE DAEMON OF FORM]
[Origin of Endless is establishing core principles of your new race]
[Warning: Soul structure approaching critical instability]
[Endless: Infinite Iteration stabilizing consciousness]
[Shingan - Demon Eye: Formation beginning]
The pain was less agonizing than the former ones, except that now there was a searing sensation in both of his eyes and he had permanently gone blind.
Northern did not know for how long he was blind, but he knew that at some point he grew accustomed to the burning sensation in his eyes. He couldn’t remember there being a time when his eyes did not burn on top of his blindness.
Then one fateful day, something clicked into place within his eyes.
[The First layer of the Demon Eye—Third Eye—has been locked permanently into your soul]
[Third Eye, the base form of Demon Eye, can see muscles, blood flow, and joints like a living blueprint. It predicts movements milliseconds before they happen.]
As the first layer of Shingan locked itself permanently into his soul, suddenly—even through the pain—he could see through things. He saw the internal structure of the crystalline prison, the flow of essence within his own mutating body, the very bones beneath his reforming flesh.
But the gift came with a price. The sensory overload nearly shattered his mind. He could see too much, perceive too much, understand too much all at once.
His only saving grace from not turning out brain-dead instantly was that, even though this was nothing compared, Northern was already accustomed to taking in vast amounts of information and diversifying his cognitive flow.
He overcame going brain dead and continued to live in his world of pain.