My heart began to absorb the pill, and I felt golden warmth spread from the organ into the surrounding tissue, and the Hollow Avatar’s framework registered the transformation’s intended architecture.
The pill’s design was clear now that it was inside me. It was meant to grow outward from the heart, replacing the seven primary channels with a new circulatory system for Anima, not seven channels but thousands, a lattice of conduits that would thread through every muscle, every bone, every organ.
Any other shell would require more material and change the body in a way that would shift them closer to becoming Achon, but the oldest shells were made to fit the body of their host and not the other way around.
The shell of antiquity did not distinguish between primary and secondary channels. It made everything primary.
I had judged that this was the most important upgrade that this body would ever get, and I believe it was the ultimate template of what a Magus strived to be.
The transformation would take time. Days, perhaps. The pill would dissolve slowly, releasing its geometric binding into the body’s substrate, and the new channels would grow like roots seeking water.
But my body did not have days.
The Hollow Avatar’s assessment was precise: approximately ninety seconds until structural failure.
My lungs were failing, heart beating on borrowed time, and the new blood, the only thing keeping the heart operational, was thinning as the body’s reserves depleted.
I would be stronger when I awakened, but at this time, I had ninety seconds, and this was not enough for the pill to do its work.
Standing up, it was time to go and fight with the time that I had left, then I paused.
The body’s right hand was still pressed to the closed wound on my chest. The golden warmth was spreading, but it had only reached the arteries around the heart.
The seven primary channels were still dark, and the thousands of new channels had not yet begun to form.
Ninety seconds, then the thought arrived, and it was not coming from the Hollow Avatar’s tactical framework, but from something deeper. Something that understood the loop.
Me... It was coming from me.
The transformation carries over.
The pill was not a temporary effect, as the geometric binding, once woven into the body’s substrate, would persist across the reset. The loop restored the body to its physical state, but the body’s architecture, the channels, the conduits, the lattice of Anima circulation, was part of the soul’s imprint on the flesh. And the soul persisted.
This should be impossible; time did not work in this manner, but I did not have access to the Stone Oracle, so I would follow my prime objectives.
I would use every available tool to kill demons. There was no higher calling.
If the pill began its work now, even if the body died in ninety seconds, the transformation would continue in the next loop. The new channels would still be there. The lattice would still be growing, and the shell of antiquity would not reset.
The Hollow Avatar’s framework recalculated, and an impossible conclusion began to arise from the impossible state that this body was experiencing.
The pill’s dissolution rate was the limiting factor. If the pill dissolved completely over days, and the body died in ninety seconds, only a fraction of the transformation would be complete before the reset. The new channels would be partial, and the lattice would be sparse.
This was the primary function of this shell; it would make the body stronger, but this would be underutilizing the tools that the loop gave me.
But if the pill’s dissolution could be accelerated, if the transformation could be concentrated into the time remaining, rather than spread across days, then the body could carry more of the new architecture across the reset.
Yet why was there a need to stop here, because I was thinking that the materials were finite?
One Narghul Sorcerer crystal. One shadow cube. One flame essence reservoir. If the pill were allowed to dissolve naturally, those materials would be spread thin across the entire body, producing a weak lattice.
However, what I was thinking as weak was the standard lattice for a shell, and for such a defective species like these Mages, it would give me an edge.
Still, as I peered at the massive pyramid and thought about the loop, I could not help but think that this process was not enough.
If the transformation was restricted... concentrated, then the same materials could be focused on a smaller area.
The heart, for example. Or the core channels. Or a single limb.
My purpose was clear: kill demons. The most powerful shell was not necessarily the largest shell. It was the shell that concentrated its resources where they would matter most.
A body with thousands of weak channels was still weak. A body with a single channel of impossible density, a channel that could carry lightning-state discharge without burning, that could regenerate Anima faster than any Adept’s reservoir, that could act as a seed for future growth, that was a body that could kill demons.
Now, what if every channel in the body could be reforged to become like this?
The material for this would be ridiculous. Narghul Sorcerers were very rare variants of demons, and to have access to the core of one of them that was so young, making his core extremely malleable, was beyond rare, and with the loop, I had a nearly infinite number of these materials.
The Avatar made the decision after a beat. The transformation would not spread; I would concentrate it.
I reached into my chest with the will that had once been the Avatar’s and now was simply mine; the hollow place and the soul were no longer separate; they had been burned together, and with this will, I restricted the pill’s dissolution zone.
The golden warmth that had been spreading toward the arteries halted, and the geometric binding that had been reaching for the seven primary channels withdrew. The pill, still mostly intact inside the heart, began to compress its remaining substance into a single point at the heart’s centre.
I should no longer call this a seed; a more fitting name would be a core.