Brent Stinebaker
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II-5 Shell of Masteries (I)
🕑 Added 2024-10-28 12:28:27 +0000 UTCWhat do you imagine the shape of your soul to take? What do you think your spirit resembles? I can give you an answer.
Your spirit is rawness at first. Just a shape—jagged with points toward different inclinations. Then life shears away at its edges, molding it into a proper form, your decisions honing it further, leading you toward masterpiece or ruin. For all that we master, all that we achieve, we become evermore ourselves—or at least the divine perfection we yearn to attain.
But understand that this divine realization of yourself, if given voice and animation, will learn to loathe you.
For as it is your triumph, so too will you be its failure.
Such is the price to pay, if one wishes to pursue dominance. To always hunger, to always want, and to never accept anything—especially yourself.
-Wei An Wei The Realmbreaker
II-5
Shell of Masteries (I)
Once more, the young master found himself kneeling at the center of a platform, eternally locked in a battle between brightness and dark. He couldn’t remember how he arrived here, only that his own Source had consumed him. But once more, he was in that great expanse of creation, awaiting the arrival of Asaru.
It didn’t take long.
A staggering blow lit the vastness of existence. A tide of power swept across Wei, its force enough to sheer continents clean from planets, to shatter stars, and twist the currents of the Fathoms. There, above him, Asaru swung their celestial hammer, forging a creation of impossible complexity.
Looking the construct the Antediluvian was hammering into shape, Wei’s vision doubled. It of a geometry unfathomable to a mortal’s mind, but if Wei had to describe its outline, it was akin to an inverted pyramid. Ciphers cascaded down its sides and formed a constellation trailing along its faces and edges before bleeding into the cosmos. And within, Wei felt something trapped. Veiled from sight. Asaru was building a blockade. Of this, he was sure on a fundamental level.
His focus turned from the construct to Asaru themselves. And horror grew within Wei as noticed the changes afflicting the Antediluvian. Patches of rot spread down the length of Asaru’s serpent-like body, with some limbs were outright nubs, decayed to the bone. Long stretches of ribs were exposed, bleeding strange whorls of ichor out of existence, and with each swing, the Antediluvian’s spirit trembled evermore.
Just what could have done this to an Antediluvian’s soul? What foulness could have befallen this ancient being?
With a final blow, the construct flared like a diamond caging a sun, and then dimmed to absolute darkness thereafter. Currents of Source washed over it, drowned it beneath layers and layers, and finally, Asaru coiled their body, turning even as more of their primordial flesh peeled free. “Ah. Keter. You return to me at least. Through the Second Gate you arrive. And beyond the precipice of your initial trials you have risen. Good. Good.”
Wei looked on, awe and disbelief consuming him. He waited for Asaru to speak their next words, but only silence followed.
“Well. Do you have no questions to ask? Do you have nothing you wish to know?”
That jolted Wei out of his stupor. He wasn’t actually expecting Asaru to speak with him. “You… you can see me?”
“Yes. And what a little creature you are. Human. Hm. Fitting. Suiting it is for the Originator of the Samsara to be its final judge as well.”
“What?” Questions exploded through Wei’s mind, but the sheer surprise he felt in the moment left him staggered. “I… what do you mean, Originator? And Samara?”
A low grumble sounded from the Antediluvian. “It appears far more of the first Excession has been lost to the world. Unsurprising. My kindred have long been afraid of the possibility of our iteration becoming reverted.”
More new terms. More new questions.
Another piece of flesh flaked away from Asaru’s body. Where once they were brimming with countless arms and gleaming of scales, they now stood a ruined visage of their prime, and question behind their ailment rose above all others. “What happened to you,” Wei asked.
“My kindred,” Asaru said. “We disagreed about the way things should be. And they sought to make our disagreements final.”
“The other Antediluvians tried to slay you?” Wei muttered.
“Yes. Is that not the way of things for your age? Those that can seek to deny others who might? Look upon my last work. The vault is finally made, is it not? A good creation for a dying dragon such as I.”
Two things became known to Wei then. The first was a confirmation that Asaru was a dragon. The second was the word “vault.” “This… This is the vault connected to Earth.”
“An iteration of Genesis Point. Correct. The origin of all realities that might become, and could become. The home of the first peoples.”
“First people—you claim that we are all descendants from this ‘Earth?’”
“Not the one that holds my vault.”
The Antedivulvean was speaking nonsense now.
“This is just an iteration of the original Earth. A branch of a branch recreated from simulated records and ancient histories. In truth, it is so far removed from First Genesis that it may be an entire deviant. But I am no longer sure. And no one can be certain. Such things were lost to those that came a million years before me, for so long did the first Iterant War last after our separation from the Broken Samsara.”
Asaru lifted one of their few remaining hands, and a swirling ball of Source fused upon their palmtop. Wei felt reality’s fabric twist on a level he couldn’t begin to conceive. But even so, he knew what the Antediluvian was doing didn’t count as creation. Rather, the composition of space was blending together with each twitch of their claws—the boundaries of different realms were becoming redefined.
When the working settled, Wei saw a sphere sprouting branches after branches, with a jungle growing from a single point. “This is the concept of genesis,” Asaru said. “A world at the beginning of all things. Or so our ancients theorized.”
“Your ancients,” Wei whispered.
“Everyone has ancients. Except the primordial, perhaps. But we only know them by who they were and the Archons they became. Not the divines during the Sequence of First Creation. Humans. Your like is among the earliest of the elder species. The progenitor to many. And it is from Earth that so many realms spawned. Simulated iterations forged concept and materialization from the merging of their cultures, the watering of their fantasies. Your lost realm was one such offshoot. A bastard merger between old cultures and new medias.”
It was too much for Wei to take in. The ideas were so nebulous he could scarcely grasp them. “Are you claiming that Evernest was borne of another culture’s delusions?”
“No more than a child is the delusion of their parent. Your realm is offspring. Nothing less. Nothing more. But even the Earth that spawned yours is an offspring, though a Nexus Point at that. The ones that came before us were called the Strayers—those that sought to flee the Broken Samsara that now consumes the First Iteration of all things. We hid ourselves among its many fragmented simulations of history, stealing away a restoration of old Earth and composing our own Systems from the God-Machine—the System of Systems.
“Thereafter did we hide ourselves in its many generations, masking our escape from its tyrannical cycle by hiding ourselves in branches we stacked within this iteration of Earth. And so, for long eons, we lived. We persisted. Surviving without fear of Fragmentation.”
Now Wei felt like he was suffering through one of those old literary exams his mother constantly forced him to take. “And, esteemed dragon, pray tell what is Fragmentation.”
Asaru drew in a breath. “The reason behind the ancient’s escape from the First Iteration. A metaphysical blight brought upon us by the Broken Samsara. Where once all were meant to reincarnate, where existence was meant to return after collapsing unto Desolation—entropy and oblivion—all would become all after countless eons lived, the God-Machine was damaged, and the cycle grew corrupted. Death was lost to those who fell, and drawn back into the wheel, their beings and minds would find themselves scattered—infested across reality as resources to process the unfolding horror of eternal collapse. Where once all beings were meant to be recycled through countless lives and gain ultimate enlightenment, now, they are trapped in the corpse of their highest divine, but not allowed to pass. The body decays, but the mind does not. And so it had been for as long as the ancients knew.”
The circumstances behind Asaru’s words were hard to imagine even with all the Antediluvian said. But from what Wei could grasp, a horror unparalleled rose inside him. “You mind… in a world—no, existence earlier than all others, everyone is trapped within existence. Without their bodies? Even beyond death?”
“Such is a reasonable interpretation. Such is why the Broken Samsara began the iterations. The generate an inoculating instance of Earth that would correct their failings—to reassume parts of the failing divine and for those with the potential to fill the Empty Crowns of the Archons and Administrators that were.”
This was all too much. “Why? What caused all this to fall?” Wei asked.
Asaru fell silent. “This, I know not. It was before my time, just as I was before yours. I came to dominance in a quiet age. Long after a war of our own. The ancients, freed from the cycle, knew peace for a time, and hide themselves in what you now call the Fathoms. But as one wants, so too must one war, and freed from the cage that is the cycle they fought using the powers they stole from the God-Machine—these Sub-Systems and Classifications—and many died. But they were not trapped as grains of awareness between the many collapsing dimensions of the First Iteration, with death comes only a neutral peace. A neutral peace I will soon greet myself with the completion of my decay.”
“Can’t you stop it?” Wei asked.
“Perhaps. But I no longer wish to. All I have is gone. All I possess is weariness. I have done enough. Seen enough. There are still things I do not know, but I know enough that I no longer care. I go now knowing that I will not be entrapped between life and death, used by the Great-System to serve as a processing resource in its mad question to attain final enlightenment. I will know nothing. I will be nothing. And I will suffer nothing. And that is best after a life of facing everything.”
Wei couldn’t understand the dragon. For all their power, they were choosing death. “Is the Fragmentation truly that hellish?”
Asaru placed their hammer upon the branching sphere. “I know not of this either. Only the tales. Only the old lores. We, the ones you call Antediluvian, are fading. We have destroyed ourselves for spats and control, just like our ancients. But in our absence, I have given unto our Systems the means to control and shape future hierarchies in hopes a great peace might begin after my end. And you are my final enforcer, the executor of my will.”
The colossal being—so powerful, yet so humbled by their final fate—snaked close to Wei. Their skull alone was the size of several words, or so it felt. Their hammer could shatter the very foundations of reality. But right now, it seemed resigned.
“My kindred… The most of who fled were dragons. We were divine beasts of strife, power, dominance, and creation. And we fled the cycle that birthed us for what it might inflict. Enlightenment. Lives lived as being weaker; lesser. Of the war that killed the Antediluvian, you need know little, for little matters now. It was a banal war. One about a simple choice—a choice as pertains to what I have just told you. Some wished to return to the Broken Samsara, believing enough time has passed, and enough power had been gained among us to claim the Empty Crowns. Others wished to hide eternally. And some were caught between. After the powers we wielded against each other, I fear only the young shall remain, and the last of the High Dragons will fade from this iteration.
“But not your creations,” Wei said.
“No,” Asaru chuckled. “You see my vanity. Working to my last. Ah. Perhaps this is a more worthwhile expression of immortality and eternity to me. Perhaps the Systems I’ve made, the architecture I leave means more than being here to see another sunrise, another world born, another hatching rise to legend. But it may all be hubris. I care little. Yet just enough to hide just a shard of my consciousness with you, Keter. To give you guidance and power.”
Wei stood a bit more upright at that final statement. This was what he was truly here for: power. The power to control his own fate. To defy the heavens. But even that felt twisted after what he just learned. With everything discovered, he felt like a frog crawling out from a well, only to find himself in an even larger well.
How far down did his ignorance lead?
“Of the scattered Systems, you alone stand apart from the blessings of creation. You alone hold dominion over absolute destruction. Originally, I created you in spite against the idea of the Broken Samsara. To destroy the cycle, even. But now… now stand in a unique position to perform righteousness. To decide what is righteous. To choose what my final legacy will be.”
Asaru brought his hammer high, and ciphers began swirling around its head, a dance of comets shivering before a final descent. “For with Earth’s Vault lies not only an archive of our Highest Arts, but the anchor to which we use to hold the Fathoms, and a System we made to deceive the God-Machine of this iteration’s status, preventing any chance of true iteration. A pity I was not able to fully instill your System with awareness and virtue, Keter, but such is a thing you can shape of your own accord—if that is your choice. For now, my charge remains. Guard against your kindred, as I have warred against mine. Protect those you deem weak and vulnerable against sin, bring peace and art if you can, and as for the vault and Earth…”
An entire portion of Asaru’s midsection turned to dust. “Guard it. Prevent anyone from prying those doors open. Of this, I beseech. It is one thing to kill your kindred. It is another to damn them and yourself to eternal torment and decay: an end without end. Promise me this. Promise me.”
The sheer pressure behind Asaru’s intent was choking. Wei let out a whimper as the shadow and light around him distorted, as if the weight of a mountain was crashing down on bands of stretching light. “Yes,” Wei choked out. “I swear…”
The weight faded. And Asaru’s hammer came down.
“Good.”
Though the Antediluvian’s tool was grand enough to shatter worlds, it did not break any part of Wei. Rather, it rang his tripartite being—mind, spirit, body—like each was a bell. The young master found himself overwhelmed, parted into three separate frequencies, and to his surprise, Asaru hummed as they used their enormous fingers to pluck at Wei’s shivering wavelengths.
“Ah. Still apart in matter, though, and spirit. To be so divided. I have long forgotten what it was to be so… mortal. And now, someday, so will you.”
Wei felt Asaru drew strings out from his body before swing their hammer once more. Wei shook, and felt himself come back together, his spirit and matter growing ever closer.
What are you doing to me? Wei wanted to scream. But he was without a mouth, and instead his Ambition carried his voice over.
The dragon let out a surprised rasp at that. “Ah. Already Ascended that Aspect prematurely. Hmm. Dangerous. It is fortunate you were not destroyed by this imbalance—a fault in your System I must have missed. Or perhaps it was the infectious ichor of your sister System that did this. But you remain, and so we continue.”
Another blow, and Wei felt his thoughts shudder. His Concept Cores snapped deeper inside him. System messages began to load.
System Ascension In Progress
[Gate] 2 Threshold Reached
SYSTEM FEATURE UNLOCKED — [Conceptual Modularity]: The Aspects and Concepts you break can be integrated in to your System. The specific Aspect and Concepts of an entity will now grant you Concept Shards. Shards can be assembled to Advance your Aspects or create/level your Concept Cores.
Conceptual > Axiomatic (ERROR — ASCENSION [UN]LOCKED AT GATE 4)
Aspects Advanced to Axiomatic Threshold (ERROR — ASCENSION [UN]LOCKED AT GATE 4)
Intent Ascended > Ambition
>How much one can materialize their own willpower and direct that against the world around them.
Updating System Architecture
Another blow fell, and Wei felt his Masteries breaking away from him.
“I cannot revert your Ambition without dealing severe damage your System,” Asaru hummed. “Troubling. But your Aspects are uneven, and leaving you in such a state will affect your System’s stability. It is time we consider some workarounds.”
The hammer came down again, and options loaded into Wei’s mind once more.
Generating [Antediluvian-Tier] Skill Paths for Aspect of (Ambition)
“You need something to draw away your excess Ambition. Something to temper your will. What a broken thing you are, little cultivator. But still so strong of heart. So deviant to the point of madness. Something in you is shattered, but you deny it. And you force the pieces of your spirit together out of spite and fury.”
Immediately, Wei felt a deluge of experiences spilled out from him. All he experienced in the Hearted Realm—facing the Inheritors, breaking Seever, his sprint to escape thereafter—the details there grew hazy and distant. As if he could only recollect parts of the whole affair. From him, his experience came to a fork in the road.
Concept Core of (Harvest)
Concept Core of (Augmentation)
Both possessed a few synergies, but Wei’s instincts knew what he lacked. He had been vulnerable during battles—breaking when struck and barely able to keep up with Seever physically. For all his offensive capacity, he had been on the back foot that entire battle. He should have died several times over, if not for his fortune and tenacity.
Right now, his Concept Core of Augmentation was devoid of anything. And Augmentation was exactly what his System required.
And so, Wei guided his experiences down the second path, causing options to be generated thusly.
Concept Core of (Augmentation)
>Titles (Antediluvean-Tier)
Integrating Aspect of (Ambition)
Aspect of (Ambition) has synergies with (ALL AVAILABLE MASTERY NODES)
Wei’s mind went blank. All available masteries?
“Indeed,” Asaru said. “These resources were meant to be the foundations for future Skills. A pity. This will reset your current mastery progress as well, but an Antediluvean-Tier Skill should be far more than you possess right now.”
Mastery Node Capacity [7/10]
>Proximal Acceleration
>Form of the Resonant
>Lesser Vessel of the Ruminator
>Lesser Manifestation
>Vector Chain
>Lesser Cast Possession
>Mark of Enmity
>Outsight
>Shiftstride
>Ruminator’s Languor
Generating Skill
At once, Wei felt his mastery nodes disappear in a building realm pulsating with growing force. Within its depths, his memories dissolved and the feats he performed were given shape once more through channeled Essence. And something built inside him. Like a suit of armor nested within his flesh.
[Antediluvian-Skill] Created
Shell of Masteries — Creates an idealized materialization of the host’s spirit shaped from the merger between their (Ambition) and devoted Mastery Nodes. The Shell of Masteries will constantly consume Source when materialized and its form gains new evolutions based on what Mastery Nodes are devoted to its design.
And with a final blow, Wei finally shattered—but did not break. Instead, he found his being parted into halves, and from the wretched husk that was his flesh, a manifestation of spiritual perfection rose free.
Comments
Cosmoros Subs
2 CHAPTERS????? Whos patreon is this? Did I finally kick the bucket?
Brent Stinebaker
Godclads in a bit
