Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 162: Assessment

He shook his head. "No."

Refocusing on his status, he read line after line again, carefully ensuring he checked everything there was to check.

After noticing there wasn’t much else new to look at, Uriel finally closed his eyes and focused on the biggest change his body had undergone.

His True Core—or rather, his True Cores.

He had three of them now.

WHOOOSH!

His body shook, and from deep within him three cores spurred into action—one marble sphere of radiant gold and silver, another a deep hue of rose-crimson and amethyst, and the last a strange swirl of ivory and obsidian.

The three cores were large and beautiful to behold, each holding oceans upon oceans of energy entirely subservient to his will.

Uriel had already known that the more aether a person had within their core, the heavier their presence became, but apart from Thoryl, Godwyn, Enoch, and a couple others, he’d never truly seen it in action—especially not in himself.

BOOM!

Streams of rose-silver energy gathered around him, his presence becoming so heavy that the floors creaked and the walls shook for a moment before the Spiral House seamlessly adjusted.

Uriel opened his eyes, feeling out the flows of chaos, order, and neutral energy around him, letting his mind wander and experiment with it.

"This isn’t... atmospheric or natal aether."

The realization seemed idiotic on the surface, but Uriel’s understanding of aether was deeper than most.

In the desert, the aether in the air was atmospheric in nature, but it was simply unstable—and thus chaotic—which made it absolutely unusable and toxic to beings like him.

But the aether he currently wielded felt... different.

It didn’t simply feel chaotic, nor did it feel stable or bland. Instead, it almost felt like an element in and of itself.

"What if I..."

Uriel raised a finger, and a sliver of silver natal aether wrapped around it. With a push of his mind, it became chaotic in nature, and with yet another push of his will, the strand of aether became... elemental.

Elemental Chaos Sand Aether.

He frowned slightly.

The golden strand of energy around his finger trembled, then took on its true elemental form, manifesting as a slithering vine of sand that coiled around his finger.

"This is definitely leagues beyond normal natal, atmospheric, or elemental aether but... is that it?"

To birth his new three cores, he’d had to stretch his mind across time, awaken his dormant sparks, and use them to witness and partially comprehend the birth of an entire dimensional space.

To go through all that just to gain... stronger aether felt backwards to him.

There had to be more.

Suddenly, he remembered something.

"What did it call it again... resonance... dissonance and harmony?" His eyes suddenly glowed like burning stars.

In a blink, the Elemental Chaos Sand Aether was swapped out for Elemental Order Sand Aether, and in the next breath Uriel’s frame surged with every type of resonance he knew, tying it all beneath his resonant dominance.

And—

KAH! KAH! KAH!

—his body suddenly turned into a shifting mass of golden energy and large grains of sand, tongues of flame and tendrils of lightning hugging his body as his frame pressed against the very fabric of space itself.

The lightning and flames didn’t come from him though, but rather from space.

Collapsing space.

The aether in the room ignited on its own, turning into glowing currents of sand that eroded the very fabric of space and twisted light into a prism of madness.

For a split second, time seemed to wane and then—

"UGH!"

Uriel cancelled the strange form he had suddenly taken and gasped for air, his body drenched in sweat and his pupils trembling both in confusion and... interest.

"This power..."

He still didn’t understand much of the specialty of his cores and their truths, but the power he’d felt during that split moment was simply otherworldly.

He had felt that with the mere push of his hand all matter and laws would break apart and turn into endless sand at his command—he’d felt like a god.

"Maybe the Nihil Shop has guides for this? If not, I’ll have to ask Enoch."

As prideful as he wanted to be regarding his reliance on the regressors, this simply wasn’t a matter he could allow to stall.

Mastering his new cores and their abilities would most likely be the difference between life and death in the days to come.

...

Moments later, after gathering his wits once more, Uriel decided to move on.

Until he truly comprehended his core, he’d simply treat it as a massive qualitative and quantitative upgrade—as well as immunity to the chaos of the desert.

More would come later.

For now, before he carried out his evolution, there was one more subject he had to analyze.

"Sorry little guy, I didn’t mean to disturb you."

Somehow, even during his experiments, the fox hadn’t woken up nor had it been affected by his newfound elemental form. But the moment he reached out to caress it—

WHISH!

"Argh, f—"

Uriel quickly removed his hand, swallowing the rest of his words as the creature’s tail whipped his fingers away, the fox still comfortably nestled on his head.

"Did this little guy inherit my body’s sturdiness? That sucks..."

As he massaged his fingers, he couldn’t help but think back to their battle in the desert near the ruby wall.

He’d been stripped of most of his aether techniques, all his mage gear, and had been forced to entirely rely on the glaive, a weapon he knew absolutely nothing about.

And yet it had somehow panned out to be...

"...decent?" He sucked on his index finger while deep in thought.

"I’m definitely more comfortable while in full mage mode, though... but I’m not sure the comparison is even fair."

He was already familiar with magic and even had a mage tool for it, while on the other hand martial arts were entirely novel to him. The comparison felt almost asinine.

"Assuming that from now on my arcane prowess becomes more rooted in my elements and their raw use—which will definitely make me stronger, especially after I reform my circles—adding the glaive to my repertoire will be useful."

"It can act as a sort of buffer between sequences and be a way for me to remain mobile. I’m almost always rotating between short, mid, and long distance anyway, so adding a weapon to my repertoire will always be useful."

"Especially if it’s an enchanted weapon like the fang."

His mind drifted back to what Enoch had bought him when he and Ayah had gone to the Nihil Shops.

"For mid distance I have the glaive, for long distance I have the chain gears and for short distance..."

He paused slightly.

"I don’t know... maybe gauntlets like Ayah uses? Or maybe short daggers? Or maybe floating mini turrets? That’d be cool."

"I’ll also have to lay down a martial foundation and then..."

He let his mind wander for much longer than he had originally planned, going through the long laundry list of things he had to study, master, research, and dissect.

His plate was quite full, as he was quickly finding out.

Long moments later, however, he refocused.

"Alright."

It was time he evolved back to the peak of the G-Rank.

And beyond even that.