I now had sustained energy flow rather than discrete discharge, the cost paid not in single bursts but in continuous expenditure that the body had to be strong enough to bear.
But I think my body was now strong enough. Mortal Shell at forty-seven, Endurance at — I read further — forty-four, the channels reinforced by the previous loop’s damage and the reset’s rebuilding.
I now had a Discipline I could use without burning myself out in the use of it.
I mean, I could still burn myself out, but not before laying down a stupid amount of devastation.
I read the rest of the screen.
[Anima Depth: 53 (Acolyte)]
[Disciplines:]
Threadwork 47 (Acolyte)
Surge 50 (Acolyte)
Arc Lightning 52 (Acolyte)
Lightning Cascade 1 (Initiate — Rare)
[Attunement Skills:]
Staff Resonance 28 (Initiate — Rare)
Lightning Resonance 14 (Initiate — Rare)
[Auxiliary Skills:]
Concentration 47 (Acolyte)
Observation 45 (Acolyte)
Anima Sensitivity 32 (Acolyte)
Meditation 30 (Acolyte)
Endurance 44 (Acolyte)
Marksman 42 (Acolyte) — Uncommon
Cooking 16 (Initiate)
Inscription 19 (Initiate)
First Aid 14 (Initiate)
Cartography 6 (Initiate)
Demonology 39 (Acolyte) — Rare — Unregistered
[Celestial-tier skills:]
Mortal Shell 47 (Acolyte) — Broken-Celestial
[Stored Essence: One Hundred and Five Demons] [Demon Slayer — First Earth Gate: Threshold reached, evolution pending]
[Blessings: —]
[Soul Condition: Stable]
I sat with the screen for longer than I had sat with any previous screen, ignoring the sound of the morning outside my tent.
Anima Depth at fifty-three. Three ranks past the mid-Acolyte threshold I had crossed at the previous wake, on a curve that should have slowed. Surge at the upper Acolyte threshold. Arc Lightning past it, into the territory where each subsequent rank produced larger qualitative changes than rank growth alone could explain.
Lightning Resonance had jumped thirteen ranks in a single death, an unusual rate of growth even for a freshly bonded Attunement, then I thought that maybe it was justified by the channel-shredding hand-discharge that had used the skill at maximum commitment.
Anima Sensitivity had crossed thirty-two, the Acolyte threshold for that auxiliary, finally. I had been at the Initiate tier in Sensitivity for the entire expedition. The crossing was overdue.
I could feel the threshold’s effects already, sitting cross-legged on the cot. The morning around me was thicker. Not in the literal sense, the air had not changed. But the texture of the air, the way ambient Essence moved through the space of the camp, was now legible to me at a resolution it had not been before.
I could feel the essence of the cookfire’s small heat-and-light signature without seeing it. I could feel Bari at the cookfire, the bright, steady signature of an Acolyte with high Anima Sensitivity already engaging with his bowl of porridge. I could feel Dara’s signature, smaller, more focused, the kind of signature that sat in the center of itself rather than spreading.
Then I stopped myself from reaching out more with my senses, because that might trigger suspicion in those with high Anima Sensitivity, as I suspected Rex should have. I was not ready to die by their hands again.
No doubt being killed by Adepts was giving me a lot of growth, but I should be able to grow even more if I could stand and fight for more than a few seconds, so that I could actually learn, and not react and endure.
The only reason that I could even grow this much was due to Mortal Shell, which held my body far beyond its breaking point and gave me the opportunity to drag out my potential.
I began to think. What I had learned in the previous loop was substantial. Orath was the operator behind Rex, and what was behind this Scholar was an institutional authority rather than individual consent.
Rex was most likely a junior Conclave member assigned to the expedition as a designated vessel. The Council of Aldenmere had been compromised at some level since Orath’s appointment by Council order meant either the Council did not know what Orath was, or some Council members were Conclave themselves.
The Ascension Ritual involved opening the pyramid, which led to the release of demons, but I remembered my dreams and the sky pyramid at the back of my village that released creatures who ate the sun.
Did the Conclave want to unlock all the pyramids or just this one? And did they know that what they were doing would lead to a disaster that would sweep across the world?
From everything I had learned about the Conclave, they were arrogant pricks who wanted to rule the world. I did not think their plan was to destroy it. What world would remain to rule when it was filled with demons, and there was no longer a sun in the sky?
There were two terms I had learned about, Ascension Ritual and Harvest.
I thought about what these could mean in the context of this situation and the knowledge I had gathered as a mage.
Ascension was not a strange word for me; it was the term we used for mages who were about to break through the barriers that separated them from each major stage.
An Acolyte Ascends to an Adept, the Adept Ascends to an Arcanist, and an Arcanist Ascends to a Sovereign.
Scholar Orath had spoken about Harvest, and when I thought of Ascension Ritual, it all sounded to me like the sort of thing that would push someone to the next stage.
The Conclave of Ysmar magic system was mostly ritualistic if I remembered correctly, and so everything that was happening may be linked to this.
What sort of mage would need a ritual that crosses entire continents just to ascend? A Sovereign?
I shook my head because I felt I may be reaching, but I knew that the information I had, although sparse, came from sources who did not believe I would survive the encounter, so they had no reason to lie.
This thing was bigger than me, but I could not run. Scholar Orath wanted to kill everyone in this camp, and they would not let me escape.
Wait a moment, how old was Scholar Orath? The man looked old for a mage, and if he was still at the Adept Stage, then his lifespan may be running out, except he used some costly methods to extend his life, but those did not truly work as well as ascending.
An Arcanist, I believed, lived for a thousand years. A big leap from the two hundred years of an Adept lifespan, but the barrier between each stage for a Mage was very wide.
Would Scholar Orath be participating in the Ascension Ritual because he also hoped to ascend past the rank of Adept to become an Arcanist?