I had done this three times already, and yet the fourth Earth Gate was not like the others. The first had been a door I stumbled through, barely aware of what I was doing. The second had been a wall I threw myself against until it cracked. The third had been a war, fought against the heavens themselves, won by refusing to give up.
The fourth was a rusted lock, clogged with the debris of eons of neglect and corruption. The Essence I had poured into it had gone beyond the limits for each gate, the Essence of a hundred and seventy-eight thousand demon deaths, and still the gate did not open.
"It needs force," the Hollow Avatar said. "Essence alone is not enough. You must push."
I reached into the title with my new soul, and I could grasp a portion of Demon Slayer, and I was able to see into the vast reservoir of stored Essence that I had packed into it across ten loops of killing.
The essence taken from the demons by Demon Slayer was strange, but I had no time to delve into why they were different from any sort of Essence that I recognized; for now, they were fuel.
Moving my mind past the vast Essence, I felt a barrier deeper inside Demon Slayer, where the weight of the ocean of Essence was pushing against, and I knew this was the fourth gate.
My consciousness could not see much of the gate; I was like a blind man reaching for it, but I knew that without having a liquified Creation-Anima, then there would have been no way for me to even glimpse this much from the Demon Slayer Title.
With my consciousness against the gate and the weight of the Essence behind me, I began to push with my will. It was a strange thing, but I was getting used to wielding this mystical force since this was what directed the spells that a mage cast, but it was not usually explored this deeply, at least not at the Adept level.
My will was the stubborn refusal to be stopped by a broken mechanism that should have been opened even after I paid my fees. The Heavens are blind, and the gates are fused shut, but what does that matter to me when I had the power to break it all down?
The Essence answered my will, and I could feel the pressure that was being exerted on the gate beginning to increase. I had intended to push through the gate, but the Essence behind me seemed to have been stained by my convictions, and they followed me to flood the gate, and I could feel cracks beginning to develop, and through those cracks, Essence began to flow into the other side.
"More," the Avatar urged.
I pushed harder, and I thought I heard the gate beginning to scream. I could not be sure since my senses were dulled here, but I did not let go of the pressure.
"More."
I gave everything that I had, and at this point, the loop had taught me what it meant to give everything, and with a piercing scream that was no longer a phantom of my imagination, the gate shattered.
For a moment, my consciousness was swept deeper into the gate, and I could not feel much, but I sensed a massive space around me that seemed to extend for infinity.
I thought that perhaps the Demon Slayer Title had connected me to a vast space, and every time I broke past a gate, I was heading deeper into this space.
The flood of essence rushed past me; everything that I had harvested over ten loops was gone, and for a moment there was silence... and then a flash of brilliant light that even in my blindness, I could see.
My consciousness could feel something vast rushing towards me from the distance, and I could barely grasp what I was feeling when it flooded past my consciousness and burnt it to ash.
[Fourth Earth Gate — Open]
[Bonus: +30 Anima Depth +60 Endurance]
-I have counted your kills, and I find your Path to be straight. Now drink from the ocean you have become.
I gasped in shock at the destruction of that piece of my consciousness and the words from the fourth gate, and then in the next moment, pure, undiluted Celestial Essence poured out of the broken gate and flooded my body, and I screamed.
Even when I was being taken apart by a demon, I did not scream, and during the moments when I was shattered again and again in body and soul by the Tribulation, I was able to hold part of my dignity, but what the Earth Gate gave me was too much... far more than my body could take.
Everything that usually caused me pain came from outside me, but this was different, because it was inside out. The essence was feeding me. Pouring into my channels, my depth, my bones, my blood. Overloading every part of me that had been built to hold it, and the pain from this transformation was not something I could run away from or hide from.
[Anima Depth: 84 → 89]
The number climbed, and I could feel my soul stretching, filling up with Anima so potent it was almost as if acid was being poured inside my Anima Depth, and when I reached the peak of the Adept level, about to cross the threshold, the numbers stopped rising, and my Anima Depth stopped expanding, yet the essence kept pouring into me.
I think my throat was bleeding as I screamed because this was one of the most peculiar pains that I had ever felt, my Anima Depth had been stretched to the limits, it had nowhere to grow towards, and yet there was still a flood of Anima left to fill it up.
I had 84 Anima Depth before this infusion, and I had been granted 30 Anima, and barely five of those had entered into my Anima Depth before it was taken to the limits, and the vast majority of it still remained outside, and they were forcing themselves into my Depth.
There was no way I could slow it or stop it, and I could only ride the pain as my Anima Depth, already overfull, was being compressed. The liquid Anima, dense as mercury, was being pressed down, condensed, forced into a smaller and smaller space.
Something formed at the center of my depth... A grain.