Chapter 319 - 319: Origin
The three subjective years spent locked inside Syntheia's temporal isolation ward had fundamentally reshaped my relationship with my own soul. I didn't simply sit cross-legged in the dark. We fought, analyzed, and slowly unspooled the intricate layers of my mana foundation.
During the first subjective year, my physical training had transitioned entirely into spatial load-bearing. With Crys acting as an ever-present, terrifyingly fast aggressor, I forced myself to construct and hold massive internal partitions of conceptual mass while simultaneously defending against her temporal blitzes. We broke bones, shattered Null-crystal plates, and pushed our reserves until we literally collapsed onto the training field, exhausted and bleeding.
Through that shared agony, the aristocratic, intimidating mask Crys still wore sometimes around her mother naturally melted away. We spent countless 'evenings' sitting on the smooth balcony overlooking the timeless, endless lavender sky, trading quiet philosophies over shared flasks of heavily refined, starlight-distilled water. She told me about the crushing, lonely centuries of solitary cultivation. I told her about Ferra, about Anna's constant growth, Lucas' evolving leadership, and my deep, agonizing paranoia regarding the incoming integration war.
"You plan like a man holding back an avalanche with his bare arms," Crys had murmured one quiet cycle, floating lightly near my shoulder, her crystal structure reflecting a soft, warm amethyst. Her tone lacked the competitive snark, replaced by an unexpectedly gentle sincerity.
"When I realized the systemic powers at play," I'd replied, staring out at the timeless horizon, "I realized an important truth; you either prepare to be strong enough to hold up a million mountains, or you get crushed. The Prime System rewards empires by handing them fragile planets like ours. If the Cinder Throne bypasses the systemic limits holding their Ascendant back… or if Malacor isn't their only player on the board… or maybe, the other, unknown Factions have Ascendants of their own…"
Crys had softly placed her smooth, impossibly dense hand over my armored gauntlet, offering a subtle, deeply supportive squeeze. A soft hue of pink had swirled in her faceted skin. "Then we smash through them all. We can use this trial. If they try to claim your home with rule-breaking gods, we'll kill them together, Eren. You'll show them why your Primordial Hybrid resonance is terrifying enough to be banned in the first place."
That single, mutual determination had driven the rest of the dilated temporal cycle. The goal wasn't just surviving the incoming 'Great Crucible' conflict against Malacor. I wanted absolute superiority over whatever entity held his leash outside the Veil. I aimed for a profound mastery that treated Ascendants as targets, rather than impossibilities.
Now, at the absolute end of our designated training period, standing alone in the center of the intricately locked, rune-inscribed floor, those three years of theoretical groundwork crystallized.
I held Eliza's [Ascendant Reflux] pill — a jagged marble smelling violently of spatial vacuum and burnt iron — between my thumb and forefinger.
For a fraction of a second, I hesitated. The urge to activate [Glimpse of a Path] was instinctual. It was the absolute fail-safe.
I briefly pushed a thin sliver of mana into the soul-bound simulation tool, attempting to thread it over the five massive, looming Legendary skills currently resting at their apex within my core.
The simulated timeline cracked instantly, completely refusing to initiate.
A grim smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. The metaphysical density was too high. The sheer amount of existential weight produced by overlapping five apex-tier spatial laws fundamentally anchored my current presence. Predicting an action that actively rewrites my own fundamental blueprint would immediately shatter the simulated framework through sheer resource starvation.
I had to jump without the net.
I swallowed the pill dry.
The chaotic alchemy hit my empty stomach like a falling anvil, immediately blooming outward as a horrific, icy barrier clinging rigidly to the walls of my mana-veins.
I brought my hands together, closing my eyes, and forcefully slammed down the activation trigger on the [Harmonic Void-Catalyst]. I deliberately turned the infinite super-position engine inwards.
Inside my inner landscape, the structures of [Vault of the Void], [Void Walk], [Void-Lattice Perception], and [Apex Mana Authority] were forcibly shattered. I commanded them to disintegrate simultaneously, funneling the screaming, jagged remnants of concept and authority directly into the hungry maw of the [Harmonic Catalyst], anchoring the violent detonation firmly against my central [Void-Star].
Agony didn't even begin to describe it. It felt like attempting to fold a star in half while sitting inside its core. The skills violently rejected one another. Teleportation magic thrashed against physical stasis-authority; perception fields tore at conceptual vault geometry. My body spasmed, completely dropping to my knees against the cold stone, coughing a bright splash of silver, highly pressurized blood onto the containment runes.
But Leoric and Eliza's pill functioned perfectly. Instead of the chaotic conceptual shrapnel tearing my conceptual body to pieces, the frozen medicinal reflux rigidly helped me hold the boundaries of my mortal frame tight, giving the Zeroth-Tier [Symphony of the Animus Arch] the precious microsecond required to assert its gentle, melodic connective logic over the raw carnage.
It didn't demand obedience. It simply demonstrated how the torn fragments belonged together. How they strengthened one another.
I actively focused on the chaos. Perception mapped the infinite geometry. Authority commanded the spatial resistance to zero. Walk ignored the distance. Vault claimed ownership of the territory. The Catalyst spun them together, accelerating them until they completely unified into a blinding, featureless singularity.
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The months spent doing nothing but preparing for this moment have massively paid off.
The roaring silence ceased immediately. The icy pain gripping my chest evaporated, replaced by an expansive, profound quiet.
[Skill Synthesis Validated.]
[Processing Hierarchical Authority...]
[Warning: Resonance exceeds standard System parameters. Overriding conceptual nomenclature.]
[New Skill Acquired: Void Emperor's Omnipresence (Origin)]
My eyes opened.
The systemic interface text hovered there, flashing a chillingly vibrant violet against the gray crystal floor.
I didn't just acquire a tool. Standing back up, I flexed my fingers and noticed an immediate, profound biological paradigm shift. I no longer had to actively force mana out from my core into the environment, nor did I have to blanket my casting aggressively in the white-gold [Flame] to avoid spatial decay.
The Void essentially moved through me seamlessly, entirely without friction.
I mentally reached out, activating the new Origin skill. I did not focus on teleporting across the large arena.
Instead, I merely perceived the local Lattice fifty feet away, claimed absolute structural [Authority] over that specific patch of air, and casually asserted that my body existed exactly in that spot. I didn't step into a dimensional tunnel. I merely stood beside the central platform, then instantly, smoothly existed near the southern wall, completely ignoring physical distance and acceleration altogether, even within the Void itself.
While appearing, my thoughts snapped to my weapons. Four solid null-steel Void blades seamlessly rippled out of the air surrounding my shoulders. They weren't drawn from my Armory and then awkwardly manipulated; the air itself became my infinite Vault, pulling the mass straight into an overlapping matrix of controlled gravity that spun them lethally at a thousand revolutions a minute under sheer will alone.
It was perfect synergy. I saw the absolute intent of the world, owned its structure, commanded its mass, and traversed it instantly — all condensed into a single, cohesive pulse of absolute intent. I had genuinely stopped fighting the physical laws and had merely drafted my own.
"What was that?" Crys whispered loudly from the upper balcony, having eagerly witnessed my brutal ascension to my knees and my sudden spatial dominance.
Syntheia dropped to the arena floor in a soft blink of localized time dilation, her perfect expression looking completely haunted but distinctly unsurprised as she practically teleported to examine the displaced air I just inhabited.
"It does not resonate like a standard Mythic skill," Syntheia spoke carefully, scanning the surrounding void. "It vibrates against the very core architecture of reality. The energy... it doesn't follow the weave. It… creates its own. But how… what does it say?"
"It has an Origin rarity classification, whatever that means," I confirmed, casually letting the violently spinning void blades dissolve smoothly back into nothingness. "Void Emperor's Omnipresence."
Syntheia released a very long, very ungodly sigh. She rubbed her eyes with a crystalline thumb and forefinger.
"I should simply resign from my duties and follow you purely to document your violent dissection of cosmological standards," Syntheia deadpanned, shaking her head. The fanatical terror was essentially numb at this point. "There hasn't been an Origin skill in our family in two thousand System years... and our Souls' Affinity is most prominently Time... My Lord… The Void Emperors' Paths... They tend to bring along Floods of Consumption and endless death. The Architects might violently try to course-correct you. Please, be very careful."
Before I could answer, a massive, reverberating snap of sheer chronological density erupted off the balcony.
Crys was bathed entirely in a swirling tempest of deep blue and violet. Having sensed my ascension, the young sovereign apparently utilized the momentum, pulling all of the surrounding environmental mana from the dense training field directly into her meticulously accumulated core. For three years she'd hovered right below the peak, maintaining equilibrium.
The sound of shattering glass physically echoed across the silent dimension as she breached the ceiling entirely.
The storm faded abruptly. Crys floated over the railing, practically bouncing with unchecked, triumphant glee.
"My fifth Mythic!" Crys cackled, wrapping her hands in sheer, twisting spatial paradoxes just to demonstrate her complete control. "Chrono-Severance! The Five are complete, Eren! We're matching the threshold completely, on the very same day. When the System sweeps us for the Call, it should put us into the same integration group!"
"That'd be awesome," I smiled widely, feeling the true weight of isolation fully lift off my chest. I wasn't going to face the judgment of ancient dead things alone. We would crash their party perfectly aligned.
The sheer celebration was violently, immediately interrupted.
A sharp, ringing tone — different from the casual system notification trills — pierced straight through my temporal containment, violently vibrating in the marrow of my bones. It sounded like an iron church bell submerged deeply under black water.
A blinding blue holographic screen expanded aggressively directly in front of my face. Simultaneously, Crys stopped hovering, stumbling slightly as an identical blue screen flared sharply into existence beside her.
[IMPERATIVE DETECTED: MYTHIC QUALIFICATIONS MET.]
[Threshold Met: Entity 'Eren Kai' possesses 5 Unique Mythic Authority Nodes.]
[WARNING: Local Sector Stability is flagged as critical. Integrating entities require immediate calibration. Commencing forced transition into the Trials.]
[Phase Sequence: 7 Standard Days to Initialization.]
The text offered absolutely no further information. There were no friendly instruction manuals, no parameters detailing what an 'Initialization' was, and absolutely zero ability to decline.
"Seven days until forced deployment," Crys stated, reading the screen rapidly. She didn't look afraid; she looked incredibly predatory, rolling her shoulders. "Just enough time to actually memorize exactly how your new reality-breaking toy functions without snapping your non Crystal spine."
I slowly closed the holographic notification. I looked at the terrifying Origin skill pulsating calmly in the deep quiet behind my ribs, a vast weapon resting in its armory. I finally possessed the exact foundational sovereignty I desired, backed cleanly by an equally monstrous crystalline ally. Malacor was counting down to conquer my homeworld. I was going to use those next seven days meticulously understanding my evolution to conquer the game holding him.
"Guess it's more time to grind," I grinned, turning to the training arena. "Show me your severance. I want my control over the new [Omnipresence] flawless before the System pulls the floor."