A Novel Concept - A death a day, MC will live anyway!-Chapter 412 - 401: Mind Ennoblement - part 1

[Citizen of the Aether - Silver] is evolving…

System notifications weren't quite like a HUD. They manifested for Priam in a way that matched his senses—his vision foremost—but the words never fully eclipsed his view. Which is why he noticed that his surroundings had changed.

The charred forest, lit by wildfires and fractured by the howls of a necro-horde, was gone. In its place stretched a sunlit beach. Warm sand swallowed his bare feet as he drew a lungful of briny air, eyes tracking waves that shattered against the shore only a few strides away. His lips curved in a faint, wistful smile. The ocean's savage beauty was familiar. Indeed, these were the dunes of his childhood. The place where the Tutorial had ambushed him.

"I should be panicking right now," he murmured, searching himself for the emotion. He didn't find it.

"Without a touch of mind manipulation, you'd be flinging fireballs in every direction, desperate to break what you'd think was an illusion," said a voice beside him. The biped it belonged to dropped onto the sand next to him. "System experiments show that suppressing fear—and its many offshoots—makes for a far more effective conversation."

"Drawing a weapon does too, but that doesn't make it a good idea."

"Well said. Want me to turn this shit off?"

"Please," Priam replied, studying the being whose skin was blacker than the void between stars. It was so utterly dark his facial features were impossible to read; the perfect poker face. A few golden trinkets, a sword scabbard, and a faint aureate halo completed the Administrator's ensemble.

The mental equivalent of a dam breaking made Priam flinch as his bottled-up emotions came flooding back. The cocktail threatened to push him into panic, the way waking from bad anesthesia could.

"Hey, Priam. How's life been since last time?"

"Hey, Thaal. Not too well. I'm charbroiled, missing an eye, and there's a hole where my heart used to be," Priam managed, wrestling fear and suspicion into submission.

The Administrator groaned. "That was a polite question, you know? You're supposed to answer with 'I'm fine, and you?' not hand me your medical chart. It's awkward. Especially since I already know exactly how you are. I watch you all the time."

"Creepy."

"What's creepy is your romantic track record," Thaal shot back, jabbing a finger into Priam's empty eye socket for fun. "At your age, I already had a harem. But we're not here to talk about your failures, are we?"

"I don't know why I'm here. You tell me."

Thaal sighed. "Before I found you heating your ass in the hot sand, what were you doing?"

Priam narrowed his eyes, spotting the crack in the logic. "Far be it from me to call you a liar, but you just said you watch me constantly…"

Thaal rolled his eyes. "It was a rhetorical question to make you deduce the reason for my presence here. Paranoia's only useful in small doses, you know?"

"Suspicion's kept me alive," Priam shot back.

"There's a difference between suspicion and paranoia. Claire's little episode changed you more than you realize. Should you really give her that kind of power?" Thaal didn't wait for an answer. "And to borrow your phrasing: far be it from me to insult you, but you're far too weak to verify my identity."

"I'm a simple man: a custom notification could do the trick—"

"Bah! Some low-Tiers could scramble your brain by exploiting your senses to fake a System notification," Thaal cut in, holding up one finger. "Impersonating someone you trust." Another finger. "Turning your own intelligence against you to win your confidence." A third. "Cloud–swing–radiator."

Priam's eyes widened. That nonsense string of unrelated words slammed together was one he had invented as a child. A password, meant to verify the identity of a time traveler in case a future ally ever needed him. In his boundless imagination, and his need to be the protagonist of some grand tale, he had promised himself he would help anyone who knew those words.

While he had never gotten a Hogwarts letter, Priam had never abandoned the dream of living something extraordinary. It was that same dreamer's nature that had helped him bounce back so fast after the Tutorial's announcement.

"I hate mind mages."

"You fear them. As you should. But you don't need mind magic to be conned. Let's say you eventually upgrade [Illusion Resistance]." Thaal gestured toward the ocean. "A mid-Tier could recreate this landscape inside their internal world. Gravity, lighting, ocean currents, fauna, flora, and a thousand other parameters pulled from your memories wouldn't stop a determined Tier 6. Faced with such a display of power, you'd be surprised how many users assume the System's hand is behind it… and spill their faction's secrets to a stranger."

"I doubt I'm worth that kind of effort."

"Don't underestimate the lure of [He Who Eludes Death]. Many high-Tiers would be curious about a Talent shaped by Ḛ̸͍̌l̷̜̹̒̌e̶͎̟̼͔̣͍͚͗̅̑̆̿͝u̴̡̝͉̳̦̳̩͓̮̹̍̿̄̚̕͝t̸̢͓͙̠̪̰̣͓͇̦̬̓̐͋̉̃̆̈́̚—"

Priam gasped as his soul convulsed. Without his Patron's blessing, hearing their name would have erased his consciousness.

Moments later, he looked up to meet the being's mocking gaze. The fact that he could speak a Candidate's name without flinching lent weight to his claim. Either he was who he said he was… or he was so powerful resistance was pointless.

In the face of a Tier 8, reason dictated silence. Priam's curiosity wouldn't allow it.

"Let's say you are Thaal… Where exactly are we? Didn't know you could leave Elysium without the Laws throwing a fit," Priam said, noting the absence of aether in the air.

If this world wasn't an illusion, maybe there was a loophole in the spearhead world's Laws. One he could exploit to visit other places.

"You don't know much," Thaal replied. "But lucky you: I'm here to shed some light." He snagged a sand hopper, popped it into his mouth, and bit down. "Salty. So, this is Earth, though your body is still in Elysium. The System dilated time and transported your soul and mind into a clone so we could have this conversation without breaking half a dozen taboos." He leaned closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Mostly to save my own ass. I had zero desire to visit Elysium just for a chat. Perfect way to get marked by the spearhead world, which is the dumbest idea on the eve of a multiversal war. But since an admin had to be the one to ennoble your mind, I nobly volunteered. You should thank me."

"... Thanks," Priam said. "But then, why isn't Elysium's Administrator talking to me?"

Thaal's smile flashed teeth whiter than sunlit snow. "Because as the Champion of a civilization in my Hope Sector, and the face of one of my best brands, you're my protégé! Plus the fact that Elysium doesn't have an admin anymore. Don't ask why, it's the kind of thing you're better off not knowing until… well, never. Even I wish I could forget it."

The phrasing pricked Priam's curiosity, and he almost growled when he saw the sparkle in Thaal's eyes. The Tier 8 had baited him on purpose.

"Anyway," Thaal said, "ready to receive your crown?"

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"My crown?"

Thaal nodded as he stooped to pick up a stone flattened by erosion. He waited for the next wave to pass before flicking his wrist. Six skips later, the stone surrendered to the depths.

"All this deserves a bit of context," the admin said, selecting another stone. "Soul, mind, and body; most who climb toward the Zenith possess all three. Each is tied to a Supremacy: Mastery, Domain, and Micro, respectively. But what is a Supremacy?"

The question called for an answer. Priam weighed his words, gathering what he knew to offer the most precise and complete explanation he could.

"A Supremacy is a path to Tier 10. A way to elevate one facet of our being to the level of the Zenith."

"Partially true." Another throw, this time followed by seven skips. "In theory, there are infinite paths to the Zenith. But the difference between, say, the Faith Path or the Draconic Path and the Supremacies, is that no Pioneer forged the latter. They come to us directly from the aether itself. For that reason, they can be practiced in any universe, by anyone."

Priam opened his mouth, then shut it. He knew not all universes shared the same Concepts. A world without the Faith Concept, for example, couldn't sustain the Faith Path. At least, I suppose.

Then a thought struck him, and he frowned.

"You're going to give yourself wrinkles with all that scowling," Thaal observed. "Spit it out."

"Well, I get that anyone aiming for the Zenith has a soul and a mind, but I'm fairly certain some have no body. In that case, cultivating Micro would be a dead end, right?"

"Wrong. In fact, in your language, 'body' has an imperfect meaning. You need to broaden your perspective. Food for thought: in a video game, characters have bodies. Yet they're nothing but a handful of pixels, driven by code, which is itself carried by electrical currents in transistors."

The administrator had clearly done his homework on humanity.

Priam stared out at the ocean without seeing it. "So an artificial intelligence that creates an avatar inside a simulation… could practice Micro?"

"As long as it has meridians to temper its body, yes."

"Well…" Priam still found it hard to accept that aether could flow in a fabricated reality, but he also knew his grasp on the nature of the primordial fluid was laughable. "That seems convoluted."

"It is. I said Supremacies can always be practiced, not that it's easy. Likewise, it's just as hard for a human mind to establish authority over its environment compared to a specter or elemental… and yet you developed Domain just fine. Which makes for a perfect segue into the necessity of ennobling the mind."

Smiling like a boy with a secret, the Tier 8 stood up, then beckoned Priam to follow him near the water. He crouched at the tide line and began shaping the start of a bridge from wet sand.

"You can think of the three Supremacies as decks to the Zenith. To span far, they need supporting piers at regular intervals. Imagine this bridge is a soul, and this deck Mastery. Each pier is a Soul Baptism, required to strengthen the soul so it can bear the Supremacy's weight from the mundane to the Zenith. If you advance without solid foundations…" He swept away the last few supports until the bridge sagged, then collapsed under its own weight.

"The soul shatters," Priam murmured, thinking of Kazuki. His friend was a hair's breadth from Spear Mastery III without having endured a single High Tribulation. "And you die. Or worse, you piece it back together wrong, and become apocryphal."

"Exactly. Now, each Supremacy works differently. Every schoolchild knows there are ten Soul Tiers, but only five levels of Body Tempering." Thaal grinned, pointing first to Priam's right eye, then his head. "Two gates out of seven for your first tempering. You like to take your sweet time, don't you?"

With anyone else, Priam would have said, "Fuck you." He stayed silent.

"Mmh. Maybe we can make something of you after all. Anyway, you've probably guessed Mind Ennoblement supports Domain, the mind's Supremacy. Without it, the cubic growth of your authority's sphere would eventually fry your brain. Bad news, though: by all accounts, it's the hardest path. Any fool can dive into a lake of fire, swallow a treasure, and channel aether in a precise pattern to temper the body. The same fool can baptize their soul by enduring a High Tribulation. In both cases, it's survival. Reaction. Ennoblement is active. Worse, the mind isn't as tangible as the soul or the body, so you can't strengthen it directly. Which is why we use a symbol…"

Thaal let the words hang.

"A crown," offered Priam.

"Bingo!" The administrator's eyes lit up. Literally. "Ennoblement, Prince, crown—same lexical field. Anyone who's built a Myth knows symbolism matters when reaching for the Zenith." He locked eyes with Priam, as if trying to drive home a message. "A crown embodies authority, the very essence of a Domain. It's also a mark of prestige, the sign you have the right to produce aether."

"I thought that was the role of Soul Baptism."

"Common misconception… among children," taunted Thaal, before explaining. "A Tier 1 can access a deeper level of aether—or a higher quality, same thing—than a Tier 0 because they've baptized their soul once. Yes?"

"What's the point?"

Priam was determined to wring every drop of knowledge from the exchange. What was obvious to some was treasure to him, especially with his first High Tribulation drawing near.

"Well, the baptism lets you better perceive and interact with the aether. A Tier 1 can see Concepts of Tiers 0, 1, and 2—and thus unlock them. Not everyone can immolate their soul just to max out their affinity with Fire," the administrator teased.

Priam smirked, remembering that normal people didn't unlock Concepts at Tier 0. He and his rivals were one of the rare exceptions.

"In general, the deeper you go into the layers of aether, the closer you get to the truth," Thaal went on. "I know you like computer analogies, so here's one: Tier 0 aether is like Python—easy to write an algorithm with. Tier 1 is C++—less hand-holding than Python, with finer control over reality. And so on, until Tier 6, where you're coding in binary, right at the metal—reality."

"The lower the level, the harder to use, but the freer you are," Priam summarized. "You didn't mention the high Tiers. What's above binary?"

Thaal only smiled, offering no answer.

"Alright… so, the difference between Soul Baptism and Mind Ennoblement?"

"Baptizing the soul lets you wield the corresponding aether. Ennobling the mind grants you the clearance to create that aether. They complement each other."

"I'm not sure I see the use," Priam admitted.

Thaal grunted. "Take Valaryth: what stopped Hekthorn from entering? Not the feeble local Laws. No, it was the quality of the aether. A Tier 5 soul processes Tier 5 aether. In that fragment of a world, he'd have been bleeding energy every second until he died. If his mind were sufficiently ennobled, he could have elevated the local aether level to survive. For a Tier 0, that problem must seem laughable, but it's the main reason most powerhouses in our universe live in Elysium. It's the only place where Tier 9 aether is abundant. The only world where, on rare occasions, the Seven release a sliver of Tier 10 aether."

Upon hearing the end, Priam couldn't help but burst out laughing. So, the energy war was affecting everyone, great and small. One way or another, the Concepts have a monopoly on Tier 10 aether and thus on the last High Tribulation. They're gatekeeping the Zenith!

For this reason alone, the ennoblement of his mind was essential.

Status:

PHYSICAL:

Strength 1 253

Constitution 2 247

Agility 1 652

Vitality 2 163

Perception 994

MENTAL:

Vivacity (D) 666

Dexterity 985

Memory 1 208

Willpower 1 310

Charisma 1 010

META:

Meta-affinity (O) 1 446

Meta-focus 900

Meta-endurance 1 677

Meta-perception 871

Meta-chance 1 203

Meta-authority 927 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Potential: 33 825

Tier 0

[Tribulation]: Five Tribulations pending.

Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 1 200 / 3 attributes > 1 800 / 1 attribute > 2 400

Next arc already complete on Patreon (50+ chaps ahead) if you want to find out what happens next!

https://www.patreon.com/ANovelConcept