23 ~ Godhood {Edited}

-"I could easily reproduce that too, when these new things keep happening in my body on their own it's like moving a limb for the first time after being paralyzed all your life. Like with the channel connecting the Divine Spirit Core, Soul Gateway and my eyes, once it happened on its own I was able to effortlessly do it afterwards."-

-"Advancing the Divine Rune in your core has many benefits, its been known that with time certain qualitative changes can occur upon evolution that might not reveal themselves to you right away. The runic lotus petals in the shell seem to tie directly to it, so I'd bet that with advancing you'll learn more about their function or they too might evolve."- Oberin explained with a speculative tone.

Jason instigated the runic petals they separated and began forcing world energy's into the rune, quickly depleting any energy inside the core. He felt a wave of fatigue wash over him from completely depleting the energy reserves, he wasn't anticipating the speed to which the runes would channel the world energy into the rune.

Sharing his memories of the experiment with Oberin, who reprimanded him for his recklessness, though he knew Jason had learned his lessons from the memories he shared.

The two parted ways again, Oberin was confident in him not making a similar mistake in the future, he was catching onto the idea of cultivation rather quickly. It could be said that Jason was naturally preforming it since birth though, but still, doing it as a wisp of light was much easier compared to the complexity and scale he was dealing with now.

Before he left, Oberin explained to Jason that he wouldn't be able to visit Earth for very long without destabilizing the dimensional sphere from the imbalance his presence causes the universe inside. So to compensate Oberin would keep an eye on Erog for him, while Jason decided to push through to his first realm breakthrough now that he got the hang of the process, and was exploring the fundamentals in depth freely with the infinity archive.

'Maybe I should work on studying for a bit, the Infinity Archive gathering speed seems to be close to a kilometer a second now.' After the two parted he entered the Infinity Archive to see how fast he could process the comprehensions and found it to be far faster, that wasn't all though.

The one thing he noticed different right away was fainter comprehension stars appeared connected to the already existent ones. He couldn't get a peek at their contents, but they obviously related to the already existent curiosity he expressed to create each one.

He started by asking questions about the fundamentals of runes, arcane arts, spiritual arts, soul arts, and martial arts. It seemed anything that related directly to him was a very expensive topic compared to exploring the general ideas.

Martial arts were rather simple, it was basically using his combination of different essences to cause reactions within his body, usually through mixing it with his blood flow first.

Doing some experiments he found it very easy to power the energy through the runes on his hearts. They seemed to attract energy whenever he tried using the standard method of just saturating the blood with energy, he came up with it after some tests and the knowledge he gained in using the Infinity Archive.

Executing a dashing art he came up with based off the foundational principles was far more effective using his hearts instead. Apparently a martial arts cultivator would usually manipulate their heart rate to speed up the infusion process before executing them, but that was also the limiter.

In practice a martial arts user would need time, barrowing world energy in each breath and taking differently timed breaths to execute different effects would take time for the heart to accelerate. If the strain is too high, such as too fast, or beyond the pressure to which their heart can handle it, their heart ran the risk of literally exploding.

Jason however didn't have such a limiter, his hearts barely beat at 20bpm when he was making a breakthrough. Usually they idled around 10bpm, but the pressure was so strong each beat would cause an entire half cycle of his blood each time. He liked the idea of borrowing world energy constantly though, it made the consumption rate of his base essence far less.

Also the energy he passed into each heart would gain a positive and negative effect like his blood, it caused a much more explosive build up rate at the desired destination when they meet.

One interesting thing he found while dashing back and forth, was if he pooled up one charge in a limb it would still be effective. But once he started adding the other it would it would cause a chain reaction like effect, the respective heart would compensate speeding up its bpm to accommodate the rapid explosion of the strength.

Once the energy was deposited in the muscles and bones he could hold it or release it at any rate or however he wished. At first messing with that caused him to face plant from misbalancing the strength of his muscles. It was something that would take a lot of both practice and skill, he determined after landing on his face more times than he'd care to admit.

As far as runes, he began to see some basic trends in each aspect, which lead him to study more of the universal runes. Beyond the control rune, the runes that affected each aspect were very similar. Though studying the universal runes in the Infinity Archive, he learned that the runes all had meaning. Writing them with infinity aspect caused an easier comprehension of their function and meaning.

Runes had a class, which seemed abstract, but affected by the density of energy in each stroke. They also had an energy flow direction that could connect to other runes, or be used to spell a sort of sentence. There were no conjunction words like 'is', 'and', 'for', and as such the meaning was open to what was imbued into it from the weavers intent, emotions, and physical connection points.

Control runes were all unique though, referring only to that specific aspect, each one was exclusive and extremely unique. For example there were a couple fire attribute energies around him, each one would have drastically different control runes.

But each rune also had some unique runes that could be divined from their persona, so to speak. they were mostly modified versions of the control rune. In arcane arts one would draw circles with generic runes in a circle around a central rune that preformed as a logical operator, that connected to another circle containing another control rune or a variant control rune.

These unique subsidiary main runes were the laws of an aspect, him using pure water aspect to create a fire control rune was directly breaking these laws going against their very nature.

Similar spiritual arts required understanding the laws of an aspect, directing them with thought rather than a 'written' instruction set. Using arcane runes with spiritual energy was supposed to be equally law breaking, but he had the idea that this was due to the omnipotent nature of his infinity aspect.

Even if it was true fire aspect, it still was produced from his base essence. In asking Oberin, apparently mortals and gods only had access to the base of each essence they cultivated in their spirit core similar to his true essence in the soul gateway. Creating seeds for each aspect under their control, expanding these seeds energy rapidly and recklessly would cause far greater power, but result in ones cultivation being damaged, physically damaged.

Soul arts are very abstract, it involves using one's soul force to project meaning and intent into the world. It also involves interacting with the soul force in any living being, it could be used to heal, strengthen, augment, or destroy or even directly destroy, consume, or alter another soul force. Along with many other complex uses like the soul link created between the Citadel and Jason, that he and Oberin used to communicate. This was binding ones true self to an artifact, which apparently was what the Citadel was.

Exploring more deeply into their use for cultivation rather than direct use, he found they mostly dealt with different methods to attract energy and then methods to refine the body using them.

They all had very unique interactions on the body when used, imbuing the body, mind, soul and spirit with properties based off a combined process of these composed a 'cultivation technique'.

Asking Oberin about different types of techniques they were apparently limitless, most lacked the knowledge to create their own so they would follow the path set and forged by others through generations and as they gained insights they would alter them bit by bit for their own wishes.

Most cultivation techniques were the result of thousands of people before them exploring the different paths one could walk. Many who reached the limit of their technique would be forced to explore blind, it was easy to make mistakes in the desire for power resulting in some very unfortunate consequences if they didn't understand what they were doing.

Anyone could learn to sense the world's energy, and eventually absorb it for cultivation. The problem came with the effect of just randomly letting energy refine your body. There were limitless possibilities for what you could do, and just letting energy refine your body without direction could equally cause unpredictable effects, sometimes a life ending one.

Those who were successful needed to be a balance of, brave, patient, reckless and sometimes a little screwy in the mind.

Oberin recounted to him many tales of those that ignorantly progressed without comprehending what they were doing. Sure, refining your body with fire energy would make it more attuned to it, but it could make one too attuned. Resulting in them having adverse reactions to being around water aspects or on contact with plain water itself.

You needed fluidity and adaptability to be truly successful in your pursuits but life was not a fair game. Many factors could mislead someone, make them rush, or justify trade-offs with their beliefs. Oberin made a note to signify that beliefs and science never mixed well.

Another issue is it could backfire if misused or directed, someone who progressed through a lightning aspect martial art could have loose control, letting their own energy rebound frying themselves from the inside out.

According to Oberin though, he had little to worry about on that front. His whole being was made to cultivate, and his infinity attribute gave him the benefit of perfect balance and adaptability to a heaven defying degree, as he demonstrated with the Fire Water and Water Flame. Plus, he had the benefit of if a major screw-up like what happened earlier occurred and he died It wasn't the end for him in the bigger picture of things so he could afford to be a little more than reckless at times. He just reminded him that he has to keep in mind his more absolute limitation that he would be sure to find with more time.

Jason's studies were bearing fruit quickly, and after a couple weeks he started cultivating again with some major changes. He had now laid out an array that would create 8 small pillars trapping in the energy. In each a Fire Water orb and a Water Flame orb would rotate around each other, the pillars around them allowed energy to flow in not out using the infinity aspect. By splitting world energy that entered into a positive and negative forced variant of each other like what his hearts did.

Two runes, the same as which were on his heart, rotated around mirror to one another, on the outside of the pillar inline with the orbs. They where the only entry point into the pillars he was controlling with the infinity aspect spirit energy. When the energy entered it was sucked into a whirl pool he was controlling again with pure spiritual energy. Recently, he had found he could grab onto the world energy with his pure spiritual energy to control the absorption rate so he could snuff out the orbs with a moment's notice.

When both the negative and positive energy's reached the orb it caused the orbs to be of a negative and positive polarity as well. Being burned or drained into the respective orb, then when the energy's mixed in the middle they didn't merge but caused the energy particles to form a revolving pair. This created a stable rather than conflicting third orb in-between the two in the center.

He would use the pressure inside to constantly press the orbs as densely as possible. Forming the dense cores that nearly killed him last time, only far more power lay in them than before. This process gave him complete control this way though.

Then forming a channel like what formed at the end of his breakthroughs between his eyes, Divine Spirit Core and Soul Gateway. He drew a beam of energy from the center balanced orbs out the top of the pillars into a pillars that surrounded him.

The channels would mix forming a thin almost 2D ring around the center pillar, the acceleration of the ring controlling the 8 external pillars. He mixed his base essence in the ring, changing the bonded pairs into a trio. A particle of his base essence would bond to the middle of them similar to what happened in his body.

The ring would bleed out energy into two points in front of him and behind him seated in the middle of the core pillar. The same runes on his hearts appeared again here on either entry point, this time applying a positive and negative charge to the base essence infinity aspect particles in the middle of the other two energy particles. he would not let them make contact until they absorbed through his whole body, letting them bond upon reaching. His meridian channels, which as a reminder ran parallel to his nervous system, would then bond to an opposite-charged energy molecule.

Only, in order to bond with the other energy molecule pairings, they had to have the opposite charged Fire Water and Water Flame particles. If both had a positive Fire Water and a negative Water Flame particle they could not bond and would not be attracted to one another, even if they had opposite charged base essence. One a successful bonding they formed parings that looked like this: '><' (Each point being a particle), but the actual bonds of the two trio particles appeared as a mirrored 'Σ'

On their bonding a large amount of energy would be emitted destroying, refining and then be absorbed by every part of his body. Upon reaching his Divine Spirit Core through the meridian channel connections at the bottom were being used to emit strands of his base essence at the same time he could now constantly keep an immense density inside both the Divine Rune and outer shell of his Divine Spirit Core. This allowed him to constantly refine and use the runic petals to refine his divine rune and his body at the same time.

He did all this because he realized his divine rune needed to be in balance with his body, he figured this out through his crisis last time that the divine rune needed to be kept in balance like his muscles when using martial arts.

This process required him to create an arcane array of 64 main runes with 384 logical runes. It would constantly absorb power to maintain itself, requiring little constant focus on his part other than to change its settings.

His original goal was to tie his use of arcane runes with spiritual energy. Instead, he would overlay the array with 64 spiritual runes that would constantly expand his excess base essence energy, causing resistance to the arcane array. Once they received more spiritual energy they would slow down the whirl pools and the whole process, slowed. This way if he ever exceeded what he could handle, the array wouldn't kill him or cause orbs to make direct contact and violently explode.

Four pillars would use negative Fire Water and positive Water Flame and vice versa. This kept the whole process in balance.

Like this his cultivation speed was modular and the longer it ran the more efficient the process the more dense the energy of the orbs.

Each breakthrough went the same, and his base essence density/purity would now grow 30x stronger with each. Thanks to the modular and accelerating efficiency nature of the array, it took around a week per breakthrough, even with growing energy demands.

Oberin was awestruck by his ingenuity and unrelenting progress, he provided him only backgrounds into the outside worlds methods that he asked about to save him time figuring out what to ask the Infinity Archive and comprehension collection. After seven weeks, he was at the 9th stage ready to progress to the 10th stage or a major realm breakthrough, Oberin was preparing him to face his first tribulation.