Defiance of the Fall

"Sometimes you have to step into the belly of the beast if only to see if you can fight your way back out. Fate given can never compare to fate seized."

Zac glanced over to see Vilari had appeared by his side. "You're right, but it doesn't make me any less nervous."

"It shouldn't," Vilari said. "Your feelings are proof the sorrows of the world haven't suffocated your mortal heart. It's a gift."

"Teachings from your master?"

"Something like that," Vilari smiled. "I'm secluding myself too."

"Is there anything I can do? Do you want to use my cave?"

"There is no need," Vilari said. "I plan to activate the Temporal Chamber on Remembrance Plaza if that's okay with you."

Zac grimaced but nodded in agreement after some thought. "Just try not to disturb the visitors."

The plaza was located in New Washington but was something added after Zac took over. It was a huge square commemorating those who'd fallen during the integration. There were thousands of pillars covered with the names of those who died without a grave, and anyone could add the names of their loved ones.

Since the war, it had also been expanded to add huge mausoleums and a section dedicated to the soldiers of the Atwood Army. There were usually thousands of citizens visiting the square, putting flowers and candles by the pillars or steles. It had already become one of the most popular spots for pilgrimage among Earth's citizens. After all, who hadn't lost someone close during the integration?

Its special status and the constant stream of visitors had already left its mark on the square. It exuded a supernatural solemnity rife with something similar to Faith Power. It was like the mourning pilgrims had left a part of their suffering behind in the pillars before leaving. It was undoubtedly a very suitable spot for someone like Vilari to cultivate.

"Of course. They won't notice I'm there," Vilari assured.

"Then, good luck. I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll be able to accomplish as a Hegemon."

The Mentalist left soon after while Zac made his way toward the teleporter. His followers were forging ahead, and he needed to do the same. Thirteen days was nothing for a Hegemon, whose seclusions were often counted in decades. But it was a rare break after having pushed himself for months.

Zac's original plan had been to send one of his bodies to war while the other stayed behind and cultivated, working on the various aspects of his path. Reality had proven that was just a naive fantasy. He wouldn't have had any free time even if he had four bodies rather than two. His only windows of cultivation were the cooldown before the Battlefront Array opened up, and those were often occupied by meetings or enemy holdouts.

Swirling mists of densely packed energy greeted Zac as he entered his cultivation cave. His undead half was already waiting inside, surrounded by miasmic trees and teeming Death. The death-attuned forest of his Cultivation Cave had seen a noticeable upgrade after Zac swapped out the withered trees forcibly converted inside the Dead Zone to native death-attuned trees from Kavista.

Each added to Triv's natural formation, and they even helped purify the energy. As a bonus, they were easier on the eyes with their vibrant indigo trunks and white spotted leaves.

Zac had already planned out his schedule, so he walked directly to the life-attuned half of his cave. A prayer mat was placed in its center with the Statue of Yrial standing behind. There was much that needed to be done, and his soul was first on the docket.

Both bodies took out their respective Array Disks, and the first cycle of reincarnation began. The two spirals in his Soul Aperture hummed to life as dense streams of Mental Energy and Dao were dragged out of his cores. The Mental Energy was further bolstered by his Moss Gem and Dao Branches. Triv had also helped install Soul Nurturing Arrays to infuse his body with even more fuel for the process.

The arrays could transform some of the planet's inherent spirituality into something useful for one's Soul Cultivation, but they mostly relied on Soul Crystals. He'd planted some Natural Treasures to improve the surroundings, but he hadn't gotten his hands on any real top-tier materials for that purpose yet. Zac was even using his Cosmic Core to provide the Array Disks of the [Nine Reincarnations Manual] with huge amounts of attuned energy.

It wasn't just Zac wanting to speed up the process. He had crossed the first watershed for his Soul Cultivation, attaining Minor Sublimation. The demands on energy and environment drastically increased. Zac knew that his efficiency wasn't even half what it would be if he weren't limited by circumstance. And that was considered pretty good—the [Void Vajra Sublimation] was even worse off.

That was simply how things were on the frontier. Just reaching Hegemony was a fight against fate, considering the lacking resources and hollow Dao. Anything above was a struggle where you had to replace quality with quantity.

Zac sat unmoving in his cave, but the disks in his hands gained an increasingly oppressive aura. He was essentially holding two bombs in his hands, but the top-quality craftsmanship and materials let the Array Disk refine the raw energies into something greater. The process took two hours, at which point the crashing rivers came crashing back.

His Evolutionary Soul Core had generated a stream of immense Life, but it didn't all return to where it came from. Instead, Zac steered half into the golden shroud surrounding his Inexorable Core. Similarly, the Death-attuned Spiral surrounding his Evolutionary Core gained an infusion of Death, its gentle rotation turning into a forceful spin. Lastly, a small amount was dragged to the top, where the Void Mountain waited.

It wasn't like a thief siphoning some of the benefits, but rather an emperor demanding its due. However, the Void Mountain only fed on Void and Mental Energy. It filtered out some Mental Energy before rebuffing the Dao, letting it fall back into his Soul Aperture like a Dao-instilled rain.

His two cores were assailed by a sudden jump in pressure from the spinning shrouds, not only from their own spirals but from force radiated from the opposing side. The pressure let a sliver of external Mental Energy be added to the sun-like core in the middle. Even his Dao Molds benefitted, their channels being reinforced and expanded. The improvement wasn't big, but the session had just begun.

A second round of extraction began the moment the situation stabilized, with even more energy being added from outside sources. The hours passed as one cycle after another was completed, and the spirals released increasingly powerful radiance. The pressure was rapidly building, far beyond what the method originally called for—an unavoidable side effect of his choice to form two Soul Cores instead of one.

Thankfully, Zac's Soul Aperture was already incredibly resilient. The powerful Tribulation Lightning had swept through every inch of his body during his breakthrough. It almost killed him, but surviving meant the calamity had become an opportunity. The lightning had greatly reinforced his soul, just like his Cosmic Core.

His split existence came with benefits he only noticed after his soul had come under threat during one of the campaigns. His Technocrat Hidden Nodes had turned his Soul Aperture into a quantum space, which made it harder to target. A Soul-damaging curse had stopped with confusion the moment it entered the space, letting his Daos and [Immutability of Eoz] rip the curse apart before it could do anything.

The quantum space also made the aperture more durable. It was likely a natural consequence of the Technocrat Gates. They needed to create a sturdy barrier to isolate the quantum space with the normal dimensions bound by the Dao, just like his Specialty Core did. This also resulted in his aperture withstanding more abuse when practicing his [Nine Reincarnations Manual].

Even then, Zac only dared infuse his Dao into the first three cycles. Any more, and he'd damage his soul. The attuned dust looked like real galaxies by that stage, with millions of brightly shining stars holding large deposits of Life or Death. The train was running itself at that point, allowing Zac to focus on other matters.

At the fifth cycle, Zac made a small change. Motes of utter darkness were forced out of hiding and dragged into one of the Array Disks. Similarly, vibrant light of opalescent splendor appeared from the cells of his human body and entered the other. It was the refined energy from his Remnants, adding Creation and Oblivion to the process.

During the previous reincarnations, Zac had only turned to the Remnants when making the final breakthrough. A big reason for that was the limitations of the Array Disks—they couldn't withstand it without being damaged or twisted. However, the disks crafted for the fourth layer were different.

The materials were all D-grade and extremely precious, allowing them to take on small amounts of Creation- and Oblivion Energy without any major side effects. Zac only dared to use the energy for the second half of the method to avoid overdoing it, but it brought significant benefits to his soul. Not only that, but Zac had found the addition had another use.

Zac stabilized his thoughts before taking out a small metal token inscribed with seven intricate runes. It released a weak light containing the fundamental laws of the universe. The faint glimmer generated by seven seals was still not a match to the insights stored within the Lake Water of the Lost Plane, but it elevated Zac's mental state by almost 20%. More importantly, it opened Zac's mind to possibilities and ideas he was unlikely to reach on his own.

He turned his sights to a nearby easel. His hands were already full with the disk and token, but a brush rose through telekinesis, adding a few strokes to the intricate patchwork on the canvas. There was a similar easel by his undead side, but he only had the mental agility to work on one at a time. Even then, he only made a few additions before stopping, thoughtfully looking at the design for over twenty minutes without finding the answers he sought.

The blueprint resembled a mighty tree, with a large trunk taking up the painting's center. It was almost the only blank patch on the paper, with hundreds of patterned strings stretching out from its sides, forming a confusing web of branch-like fractals. It wasn't a schematic for his looming Cosmic Core upgrade—that thing was already finished inside the Perennial Vastness as part of the original schematics. It was a prototype for the broken energy highways on his shoulders.

Eventually, the refined energy from the Array Disk came crashing back, bringing with it the hints of Creation and Oblivion meshed with his own Daos. The energy entered his Soul Spirals, letting them go from drained to supercharged. Zac felt like he'd eaten stimulants and decisively added a few more strokes to the blueprint. The sixth cycle began after a minute, and his Mental Energy was siphoned off for another round of refinement. His inspiration went with it, and he found himself unable to progress any further.

The hours passed as Zac refined the fractal one burst at a time, relying on the ideas he'd had during the previous campaign, the [Court Cycle Token], and temporary brushes with Creation and Oblivion. Yet each cycle added less than the one before, and his progress slowed to a crawl by the eighth cycle.

Zac eventually shook his head and placed down the brush. He could tell that he wasn't getting any closer. His latest changes were just small improvements to efficiency without adding anything new. He was close to a solution, but an uncrossable barrier kept him from perfection.

Part of it was his lacking understanding of Creation and Oblivion. Much of his Daos of Life and Death was represented in the Remnant's refined energy, but an important distinction separated Life from Creation and Death from Oblivion. He could somewhat intuit the difference, but Zac wasn't confident fully grasping it when his Daos were at their current level.

Another reason he couldn't finish the blueprints was lacking inspiration. The token's weak light of comprehension indicated that an important piece was missing. However, Zac sensed it would take many sessions of trial and error or a stroke of inspiration to find it. For now, there wasn't much else to do. The Soul Strengthening Method was about to wrap up, and the energies involved required his full attention.

The nine-refined energy came roaring back, and even Zac's improved aperture shook from the immense force that had been gathered. It looked like the spiritual space had been cleanly delineated in two by the blinding light released by the soul spirals. One side was drowned in gold slightly flickering with the opalescent grandeur of Creation. It was like the corner of a vast, life-giving sun had squeezed into his mind.

The other side was gripped in utmost darkness, where the gloom of Death felt like a frozen tundra resisting the golden sun. Within its depths were spots of terrifying nothingness that could only be sensed but not seen.

The only exceptions were two islands of unyielding opposition—the Soul Cores ensconced in their opposing Daos. They were under intense duress and filled to the brim with refined energy.

The pressure let more and more energy and truth merge with the Cores, and their resistance tempered the spirals in turn. However, it wasn't enough. Zac had taken the risk to form two Soul Cores, and it would be a waste to not take advantage. The cores were almost out of his control, but Zac held onto his tenuous grasp, using it to drive the cores toward one another.

The scene was just like when he first created them back in the Perennial Vastness. Life and Death were the basis of the [Nine Reincarnations Manual], but Conflict was the catalyst for rebirth. The whole cultivation cave shook from an invisible force as Soul Cores collided, and two waves of violent Dao fought in the cave's center.

The cave had become a representation of his aperture, where the physical world followed the spirit. Zac's visions swam from the impact, but he roused his cores for a second clash. Erratic streaks of Life and Death burst from his head like sparks released when a hammer struck the anvil. The process repeated once, twice, three times. The shockwaves overlapped, creating a mysterious resonance that spread through his body and beyond. It was as though the Daos of Life and Death had been dragged down from the Heavens and displayed in their most primal form.

Zac couldn't contain the huge amounts of energy the collisions discharged, and his aperture couldn't withstand the upheavals. With every clash, large amounts of refined energy seeped out of his body, but they also forced the cores to condense and incorporate some more. The same was true for the spirals, whose innumerable miniature stars had grown slightly stronger. More collisions would have further improved the effect, but Zac knew his Soul Cores couldn't take it.

Hairline cracks already covered their surface. Any more, and the damage would go from growing pains to crippling wounds. Still, Zac was happy with the result. The crude clash wasn't even a step in the original method but something Zac had added because of his special situation. Yet it had added a whopping 30% to his gains from every cultivation session. By the time his Soul Cores could endure a full nine collisions, the efficiency should be double that of the original method.

Not only that, but he finished the whole cycle in half the time the method called for, thanks to channeling both Array Disks simultaneously. It shortened the time his cores were tempered every session, but the gains far outweighed the downsides.

His Soul Aperture gradually calmed down since enough energy had been expelled. The empty expanse of spiritual space temporarily took the form of two energy oceans, reminiscent of how it looked after his first reincarnation. Of course, the amount of energy and Dao locked within the seas was far beyond back then. Still, it wasn't a natural state, but it would solve itself soon enough.

Some would naturally seep out of his body or return to his Cosmic Core, while some were dragged toward the top of his mind. Where the Void Mountain waited. The hidden construct had grown increasingly agitated by the surging waves of energy over the past hours, especially considering it couldn't absorb most of it. Dao and Void didn't mix, leaving the illusory mountain in a wanting state.

But no rules were absolute, and the seas stirred as another gate opened in Zac's mind. It was time to make another trade.

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