The resulting influx of aether was immediate.
As soon as the elixir hit his stomach, Alex felt the condensed energy erupt through his body, shooting out into every extremity; limbs, toes and fingers, all filled like it was molten metal being dumped into a mold of his image.
He was already sitting on the floor, luckily, or he would have been knocked right on his ass. Instead, he grunted loudly, his chest bucking strongly as pain ripped through him in response to the fiery hot energy that bombarded his every cell.
Holy shit!
All the bullshit he had gone through with his Wyrm-heart constitution, the [Vita-Surge Cloak], forming his aether channels from his soulgate—and more—should have prepared him for whatever was going on his body now, it didn’t.
He slammed his jaw closed, teeth clenched tight as he forced himself not to scream like a god damn baby. Instead he grabbed on to his knees and turned his attention inward, to the energy rampaging through his body.
Obby pressed him on. “Keep it all contained in there, once a little bit escapes, it will become a cascade effect and it will come rushing out.”
I know. And he did, Alex could feel it, his body acting as an airlock on the energy inside him. One small misstep and the aether inside him would decompress, explosively.
He mentally wrestled with the energy from the elixir, taking control of it with his mind and trying to redirect its chaotic rampage into a more orderly affair. He began guiding the torrent, nudging it into a cycle inside his torso, down through his left leg, then back to the torso, into his right leg, before coming back again. He repeated the process with each arm, then started all over again, each time making sure to try siphoning a bit of the energy into his aether channels, through his next meridian, then back.
There were many methods he could try for this, but Alex didn’t have the patience, nor the focus to do something fancy. A simple cycle pattern was what he could manage. Torso, leg, torso, arm… in and out, bit, by bit, by bit. His body took it in like a rabbit nibbling at a vegetable far large than itself. It would take time, but the furry bastard would eat it all. Alex was that furry bastard.
“Weird flex, but okay flesh sack.”
Shut up, or at least try to help me.
Obby responded by snaking its sentience out of the bond in his soulspace and into his soul aperture before grabbing a small bite of the elixir’s aether for himself and retreating back again. It was barely a cup of water from a swimming pool, but Alex would take it.
He continued, each minute, another cycle, and another small bit of the energy being forced into the tissues of his existence. Of course his body refused to let this happen without a fight, as he could feel many small injuries begin to form internally, bones cracked, muscles tore, and veins burst. Alex’s body was basically being torn asunder, and yet he couldn’t help but smile.
It was working.
After an hour, Alex still sat against a wall in the cave, eyes closed tight, his teeth pressed together so hard he thought they would break. His posture remained deathly still except for the randomly occurring shudder that wracked his spine. Outside, he looked as though he was simply dealing with some serious stomach pain, or a monstrous fit of hiccups, but inside was a different story.
He was forced to down another healing potion, his third that hour, to keep up with the internal damage, but even that barely helped. Whenever he drank, the energy of the potion was quickly assaulted by the torrent of aether in his body before the potion could provide its hull healing effect. It made the potions even less effective than they already were from his cultivation level, and high energy demanding body.
“Looks like you’re a quarter of the way through. Still got it?”
He gave a bare mental nod, his focus remaining on the energy control, on the whirlpool of aether that was now swimming inside him. He had managed to get the massive amount of energy into a collective cycle, swirling in a directed manner at his center, around the second meridian of his aether channels, and then funneled through into his body again. As the energy returned, Alex specifically targeted where his tissue was most ready to absorb it.
It made the process slightly slower, but far safer. This way, there was perhaps only a ten percent change of sudden internal explosion.
By the second hour, he was half way through the energy and his processing speed went up from there. The third hour saw only a fifth of the energy remaining, and he could feel his [Aether Attuned Body] was already reaching the crest of the next threshold. It wouldn’t take all the remaining energy to finish, so he decided to refocus.
The next meridian, we should be able to handle, yes?
“Hmmm, I would say yes, most definitely. If you want to go for it, I’m with you. Meridian first, then the body attunement threshold?” Obby asked.
Yeah, let's do it.
Alex pulled the remains of the aether whirlpool from his center and funneled it all into his second meridian, the focus point of clustered aether channels near his T1 vertebrae, and began flooding it with everything he had left.
Like before, the meridian began to swell as it filled, slowly pushing back with increased force the more Alex sent into the channel-cluster. His mind formed aether braids at his gates as he worked, pulling in even more energy from the ambient aether around him, then he emptied the other two gems in his bracer, pulling even their contents into his body. All of it assaulted his second meridian in a focused tidal wave, overwhelming it until he felt the same small snap, as before. And then, the meridian bloomed open.
Finally… It felt like Alex had a kink in his neck for years, and had finally managed to pop his neck and gotten relief. The chaotic swirl of aether around the meridian was absorbed, and promptly used to harden and reinforce the channels around it.
“Everything is looking perfect, no aether strain on the channels, no residue blockage. Flawless, if I say so myself.”
Good, okay. Now... to finish the first task then.
Even though Alex could feel his body trembling slightly, he knew he couldn’t stop, not yet. Without even looking up from his work, Alex prepared some tea, the Seraph Dust sprinkled over the surface and shimmering slightly as it was absorbed. It was a needed step, as the next phase would force him into an Earthly Tribulation, and Alex didn’t want to lose a limb after so much hard work.
He drank the tea with shaky hands, set down his cup in its saucer, and got back to processing the aether still swirling about inside his torso.
He had a breakthrough to approach.
***
The Aether Convergence Elixir was what made this possible, otherwise Alex simply would not have had the amount of energy needed to push the ability so far. It was a major boon, what Alex considered his true ace in his sleeve when it came to walking down his personal path to power.
But that wasn’t everything he had accomplished.
As Alex had anticipated, just like with the lower tier “Refinement” abilities, the combined “Enduring” ability—earned through the System—subtly changed the quality of the ability’s boost. A sort of “greater than the sum of the parts”, kind of effect.
His muscles, tendons, and skeletal system just felt… newer, sturdier, more in tune with himself and the aether around him. When it came to sheer attributes, Alex knew he was far ahead of his peers, reaching to be on par with Arcane Beasts at his same cultivation level. Not that high yet, but he was closing the gap.
His swiped the screen away, bringing up his next prize.
Of course, all the old choices Alex had seen with his last imprint unlock were still present, but he did notice that the typical [Aether Resilience] was missing, and he had three other options in its place.
He didn’t take much time at all to read over what the System was offering him before he mentally made his decision. Alex felt a bit like a dirty cheat, but he knew he was going to min-max the shit out of his choices, Heavenly System be damned. With that in mind, he took a deep breath and accepted the final option on the screen in front of him, [Aether Strengthening].
The constant damage his body suffered from his abilities was still becoming an issue, so Alex’s plan was to shore up that problem as much as possible. If he could just ignore the backlash from his only Adept tier spell, that would be the ideal, but he doubted that was possible unless he got five or six meridian imprints all focused on that… which… Alex could see himself doing.
With that, he had no more choices to make, and instead brought up his stats to see just how effective his craziness had brought him.
With every single one of his attributes now hitting the threshold into the Earthly Tribulations, he seemed to have entered a rather impressive new realm. The sheer force of power he felt in his body was like nothing else he’d felt before, and it was just the beginning, as he knew that breaking into every tribulation threshold beyond would be a higher quality change once again.
Every step forward would be an even larger rise than the last one. So, even reaching up half-way along the staircase would be more power than Alex had ever imagined. But, he would have to survive long enough to reach that, and he wanted to. Like a child eyeing the coalmines, he yearned for it. He wanted that feeling of power.
He didn’t know whether that feeling was still residual effects of the System from his original elemental attunement, fire. Or if it was possible that the Wyrm-heart constitution was trickling in some of its draconic pride and greed. Maybe it was Obby, connected in his soulspace, influencing his thoughts without him noticing? Maybe all three?
Or maybe it was just Alex discovering a new part of himself?
Thinking about that now wasn’t a priority though, so he simply closed out his status screen and focused back on his surroundings. The rest of the party was doing their best to pretend they weren’t watching him. Everyone cleaning weapons, meditating or doing various menial tasks, but all side eyeing Alex, just waiting to see how he will react.
Eventually he just sighed and waved Allie over, even that small movement with his arm felt both heavy but powerful, all while still sending fiery lances of pain running up and down his body. He had overdone it, once again.
“How bad?” Allie asked.
Alex gave her an embarrassed grin. “Well, about that...”
“Fucking hell, Alex,” Allie balked once she placed a hand on his shoulder and ran a trickle of her light attuned aether through his body, and casting her version of a diagnostic check.
He assumed she could see all the stress he had put on; cracked bones, torn muscles, and every micro cut along his organs which still leaked blood inside him. It probably looked like a true mess in there.
“Healing you isn’t like healing everyone else you know,” she began pulling alchemical items from her pouch, her brow scrunching in frustration. “The sheer quantity of energy it takes to put this thing you call a body back together…”
“I know, I’m sorry, Allie,” he meant it too, he felt bad about putting this on her. Thanks to his body attunement and the sheer amount of aether saturation his tissues and flesh soaked up, it took much more to stitch him up than it did any of the others. Potions, and other healing items had a limited effect compared to his teammates, and that went for healing spells as well.
But despite him feeling genuinely sorry for it, Alex knew he would be putting her through the same thing again sooner or later. That was just the kind of person he was now, apparently.
“Let’s just get you back into fucking shape, humpty dumpty,” Allie said, her hands already beginning to glow with warm yellow light.
“Thanks, I owe you.”
“You already owe me, this will cost you a Dark attuned essence fragment later.”
Alex couldn’t help but grunt in agreement, then let her aether wash through him.
***
It took another hour to roll by before Allie had gotten Alex back up, then another thirty minutes for her to cultivate and refill her mage core. For her, it was a difficult and expensive prospect with a sheer lack of ambient light aether in the void-like cave, forcing her to use some natural treasures instead.
He’d have to pay her back for those as well. But, it was worth it.
They all gathered up after that, everyone thinking about what lay ahead of them in the pitch black of the caves. It was time to see what the lake biome was hiding, after all.
“So, we all agree this has to be it, right? The hidden objective’s somewhere down these tunnels.” Eric said.
No one disagreed, the logic was too solid. The lake had been too open, exposed, and there was no way they would have made it into the lake’s depths with all those chimera lurking in the water. And on top of that, it was far too large, even for an indoor lake, so it couldn’t be down there at the lake bottom. The System wouldn’t force them to scour endless water for a side objective. That left only the path behind the falls, the happenstance of its existence was far too convenient.
“But I don’t think it’s as simple as walking through... I’m betting on a maze. Something meant to drag us around in circles until the chimeras catch up?” Lance added.
“That’s optimistic,” Garret shook his head. He was still pale from the earlier fight but his grin was just as stubbornly plastered on his face as always. “Me, I say we get another altar boss. Like the bear in the forest. Big and mean.”
“Agreed,” Eric said. “The System seems as though it likes its symmetry. Biome, objective, boss. That altar out there in the forest wasn’t the only one, for sure.”
Alex sat a little straighter at that, every muscle in his body tightening. They were probably right, it would be another boss, another fight like the bear chimera. Except now that they were skulking through tunnels, the fight would be probably be in close quarters. He looked about the chamber they were resting in, water dripping, stone echoing with every move they made. His stomach churned at the thought of having to fight something the size of the bear-chimera in such a cramped tunnel.
He didn’t speak his thoughts out loud at first, only pressed the heel of his hand to his brow and massaged it in slow circles, trying to steady the gnawing worry in his mind. Another boss meant more pain and more risks. It meant having the System pit them against something designed to kill them as efficiently as possible.
And the worst part? He could already feel it in his bones; they hadn’t reached the hardest fight yet. Not even close.