It was fascinating to Zarek, and of course it was a gamble. He didn't have enough of the Elixir to do it more than three times, and he obviously didn't want to test it out ahead of time in case Crux sensed something was off or the results were more shocking than expected.
Crux's physical stats were still far beyond Zarek's, and he also wasn't nearly as injured. Zarek couldn't afford to make any mistakes, so he had taken action before he even knew if things would work out in his favor.
Luckily… they had.
Well, it was an educated guess, all things considered.
It had to be remembered that part of becoming an extremely powerful S-Class warrior in the future would require forging your own Godsfall Pathways in your body. The importance of these Godsfall Pathways couldn't be understated.
Depending on the path someone took, they could optimize their "build" to the greatest extent, creating superhighways within their bodies to allow for the faster deployment of certain Skills and various abilities, or helping to tune themselves to more specific Godsfall Intents.
The usual human body was almost too holistic, capable of doing too many things, and it was only by specializing more and more that one could grow supremely powerful.
For someone like Priya, this was especially tricky because she could take so many paths herself. There wasn't a form of Godsfall Intent that she couldn't use. However, that didn't mean there weren't various methods she could use in the creation of her Godsfall Pathways to make herself more powerful.
For example, helping to facilitate faster absorption and quicker deployment of Godsfall. Or making her Godsfall Pathways wider than others because she had the control they didn't to stop it from combusting in her body. Or even making them super narrow in other regions to facilitate more speed because, once again, her control was just so much better than anyone else's.
Playing around with that, tweaking it, perfecting it… these were what would separate the true powerhouses from the weak ones in the future.
But what Zarek hadn't realized was that the blood vessels they were naturally born with… actually carried such secrets within them.
Zarek wasn't a doctor, so he had no way of knowing for sure. But there was no reason for him to believe that the same pattern that was within him now wouldn't be in someone else's body.
Could that mean that there were various Matrices hidden away in the body that could be used like this? Did they all need special Elixirs to trigger properly? What was the limit of something like this?
It wasn't that Zarek didn't know one's natural blood vessels had strength to them. After all, was he not circulating [Limit Break] and [Godsfall Eclipse Resonance] through them as well? Were these not called Circulation Methods?
The concept of blood vessels carrying secrets was new to Zarek.
However, Zarek had always separated Circulation Methods and other things. For one, Circulation Methods were incredibly rare. And, when it came to Talents and Skills, things of the sort, they had nothing to do with the blood vessels in his body.
Whether it was Talents or Skills, they were both triggered through the use of the system as a medium, interacting with the outside world and forcing the ambient Godsfall to react in ways conducive to your goals.
This was why creating your own Godsfall Pathways in the future was important. It was supposedly the only way to get the maximum amount of potential out of your Skills and Talents.
Only at that point could you begin tweaking Skills and forcing them to react in ways you wanted, or modifying your Talents so that you could use them in more unique ways instead of the exact way someone else with the same Talent might.
That was where the variability of the world really kicked it into high gear.
That was all to say that, to Zarek, the "small" things were always niche and needed unique Godsfall Pathways to tap into.
But here, this world seemed to be flipping that on its head. Was it because they were so obsessed with separating from the system that they had found all of this out? Were the people of Earth shortchanging themselves by relying too much on the system after all?
Zarek's eyes narrowed as he made it close to the statue. The wall of energy blocking his forward momentum finally vanished as he placed a palm on it.
The statue trembled and—
BANG!
Zarek was sent flying.
'Son of a bitch, this is going to hurt…'
He had managed to pull all the toxins out of his body with that last move against Crux. The good news was that circulating the Godsfall within his body was certainly far more potent than just drawing it on the body. The bad news was that his body was still in terrible shape, and he was standing with sheer willpower and determination right about now.
He hardly had anything left to give the world, but now he was about to—
BANG!
He crashed against the ground, knocking out rows of wooden seating arrangements as he groaned. He put a palm to his forehead, his head spinning and his mind on the verge of collapsing.
'Today really is a fucking terrible day…'
Zarek only had time to think about this for a short while before a searing pain etched itself into him. It came faster and faster, moving in waves that circulated through him as though lava was burning through the folds of his brain.
After everything he had been through today, Zarek had long proven that he had a level of pain tolerance most of the world couldn't fathom. And though he had yet to build it back up to the same level it had been in his past lives, it was more than enough to hold his own.
But right then…
He screamed.
He screamed as though his throat wasn't tearing itself apart beneath the bellow of his lungs and pulsing diaphragm.
He screamed as though there was all the air in the world in his body.
And then he lost consciousness.