A Room at the Top

Stepping through the gateway of the Divine Ascension Tower was like stepping into another world. The chaotic, competitive energy of the Outer Court vanished, replaced by a profound, sacred silence. The air inside was not just thick with Prana; it was Prana, a dense, silvery mist that shimmered with latent power. It was so pure that every breath felt like drinking liquid moonlight, nourishing his body and soul simultaneously.

The interior of the tower was a single, vast, open space, spiraling upwards. A staircase carved from the same flawless white crystal as the tower itself wound its way up the inner wall. The tower was a hollow spire, and looking up, Amrit could see the distant peak, a point of brilliant white light where the ambient energy was most concentrated.

There were no individual rooms on the lower levels. Instead, there were tiered, circular platforms suspended in the air, each one glowing with a protective ward. These were the cultivation spots for the regular Core Disciples. Most were empty now, their occupants likely still in the labyrinth or recovering from it.

Amrit ignored the lower platforms and began his ascent. With each step he took on the crystal staircase, the density and purity of the Prana increased exponentially. By the time he was halfway up, the energy was so thick it had a tangible pressure, like walking through water. For a normal Spirit Sea cultivator, just climbing these stairs would be a form of intense training, their spiritual sea churning to resist the immense pressure.

For Amrit, it felt like coming home. His Divine Ocean, vast and boundless, eagerly absorbed the external pressure, its own silver tides rising in response. He felt no strain, only a growing sense of exhilaration. This was the environment he was made for.

He finally reached the top.

The room at the top of the Divine Ascension Tower was not a room at all. It was a circular platform, no more than twenty feet in diameter, seemingly floating in the heart of a captured star. The crystal walls of the tower became transparent here, offering a 360-degree, god's-eye view of the entire Sky-Piercing City and the mountain range beyond.

The platform itself was the nexus. The very core of the spiritual veins beneath the city converged here, a geyser of pure, untainted, primordial energy erupting from the center of the floor. The energy was so concentrated it was visible to the naked eye, a column of shimmering, liquid-white light that extended up to the tower's peak. This was the heart of the Academy, the source of its immense power. To cultivate here for an hour was a privilege that geniuses would kill for.

Amrit walked to the center of the platform and sat down, cross-legged, directly in the path of the energy geyser. The moment he did, the column of light enveloped him.

He closed his eyes and took his first true breath of cultivation since his breakthrough. He did not use the Lotus Breathing Compendium to draw energy in. That would be like using a teacup to empty an ocean. Instead, he simply opened the gates of his soul.

He let the barrier between his inner world and the outer world dissolve.

His Divine Ocean, the boundless spiritual sea within him, reached out and connected directly with the primordial energy geyser.

It was a meeting of two infinities.

[Host is cultivating in a 100x Divine-Grade energy nexus.]

[Host is directly absorbing primordial, source-level Prana.]

[Your Spirit-Tempered Body is being nourished. Your Divine Ocean is expanding beyond its conceptual limits.]

[Crit Chance detected… Certainty.]

[…Triggering a 500x Crit!]

The result was not an explosion. It was an implosion.

The geyser of primordial energy, which had been erupting upwards, suddenly reversed its flow. The entire, immense output of the Academy's spiritual nexus, amplified five hundred times by the system's crit, was being drawn, siphoned, devoured by the single, seated figure of Amrit.

He became a black hole for spiritual energy.

His Divine Ocean, already boundless, began to deepen, its silver waters churning as it absorbed the torrent of primordial power. The Dantian Sun at the heart of his inner world blazed brighter, growing in size and intensity. The Golden Lotus of Enlightenment bloomed with new, more intricate petals. The Conceptual Sword of Severance hanging in his mental sky grew sharper, its dark presence more absolute. The Constellation of Passage glittered with the light of a thousand new stars.

His cultivation base, which had been stable at the First Stage of the Spirit Sea Realm, began to skyrocket.

[Host is breaking through the Spirit Sea Realm.]

[Stage Two… Achieved.]

[Stage Three… Achieved.]

[Stage Four… Achieved.]

Outside the tower, the world began to react.

In the high council chamber in the central spire, the ten Academy Elders were in a heated discussion about the ramifications of Amrit's trial results. Suddenly, they all froze. The ambient Prana in their sacred chamber, usually as thick as honey, thinned dramatically.

"The spiritual veins!" an Elder cried out, his face paling. "The energy levels are dropping! It's a drain, a massive one, centered on the Divine Ascension Tower!"

Elder Shanti's ancient eyes widened in horror. She knew. There was only one person in that tower. "It's the boy," she whispered. "He's not just cultivating. He's… he's drinking the ocean dry."

Throughout the city, cultivators felt the change. Students in the lower-tier Mortal Tempering Towers found their cultivation sessions abruptly weakening, the 5x amplification dropping to 2x, then to nothing. The lights of the city's formations flickered. The floating platforms wobbled in the air. The entire city's power grid was being strained to its breaking point, all of its energy being redirected to a single point at the top of the central tower.

Prince Valerius was in a 50x Spirit Forging Tower, trying to meditate and recover from the labyrinth, his mind still filled with thoughts of Amrit. Suddenly, the rich Prana he was absorbing vanished. He opened his eyes, a look of fury and disbelief on his face. "What is this? Who dares interfere with my cultivation?!" His senses told him the truth a moment later. All the energy was flowing towards the one place he couldn't go.

Back in the room at the top, Amrit was oblivious to the chaos he was causing. He was lost in a state of pure, ecstatic growth.

[Stage Five… Achieved.]

[Stage Six… Achieved.]

[Stage Seven… Achieved.]

In less than thirty minutes, he had crossed six stages of the Spirit Sea Realm, a journey that would take a peerless genius like Vikramaditya decades of dedicated effort. His power level was now colossal, his Divine Ocean so deep and vast it was a cosmos unto itself.

He could have kept going. The spiritual nexus had more to give, and his potential was limitless. But he consciously stopped the process.

He knew that such a rapid, continuous rise was unstable. Power needed to be consolidated. Understood. Mastered. He had the raw energy; now he needed to let his soul and mind catch up. To push further would be reckless.

He gently severed the connection between his inner world and the energy geyser.

The moment he did, the pressure on the Academy's spiritual veins vanished. The geyser of light in the tower returned to its normal, upward flow. The lights in the city stabilized. The ambient Prana in the other towers returned to its normal level.

The entire event had lasted just over half an hour.

Amrit opened his eyes. The world looked… clearer. More real. His perception had deepened to a terrifying degree. He could not only sense the city, but he could feel the individual heartbeats of its million inhabitants, the flow of their thoughts, the threads of their emotions. It was a sensory overload he had to consciously filter out to maintain his sanity.

He stood up, his body feeling both light as a feather and dense as a neutron star. He had paid the price of a kingdom for one hour in this room. He had used less than half of that time to achieve a result that would shatter the worldview of the entire continent.

It was worth it.

He walked to the edge of the platform and looked down at the vast, sprawling Academy. The other students were his peers, his rivals. But he knew, with absolute certainty, that he was no longer playing the same game as them. They were all climbing a mountain, fighting for every inch.

He had just grown wings and flown directly to a higher peak.

His "one hour" was not yet up. He had time. He looked around the empty room at the top, the most sacred and sought-after space in the entire Academy.

A slow, mischievous smile touched his lips. He had the room. He had the view. It seemed a shame to waste it.

He walked back to the center of the platform, but he did not sit. He drew the Obsidian Kiss—now Soul-Sunder—from its void-sheath. The blade hummed, eager to test its new master's newfound power.

He began to practice his sword forms, his movements serene and perfect, alone in the room at the top of the world. He would spend the rest of his paid time not absorbing power, but mastering it, turning his new, colossal strength into a familiar, comfortable tool.

Down below, the ten Elders could only watch through their scrying mirrors, their faces a mixture of terror, awe, and a dawning sense of utter helplessness. They had tried to manage an anomaly, and had instead given it the one thing it needed to become a god. The rules of their Academy, and perhaps their world, were being rewritten before their very eyes.