Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 165: Status
The tunic Uriel had been wearing burst to ashes just as his shell cracked and then crumbled, leaving him seated cross-legged like a bleeding mannequin of exposed flesh.
The aether in the room thickened, turning into a fog of dark silver and deep shades of red that infused into the very essence and fabric of his flesh, filament by filament.
The silver essence sank into his flesh, then into his organs, and all the way down to his bones as the gems in his belly exploded with power, remodeling him from the inside out while the reverse happened externally.
SHAH! PAH! PAH! PAH!
In a blink, his skin returned, his shells clamping over his flesh one after another in quick succession as his blood rushed through his veins so rapidly he seemed like a steam engine, his body radiating terrifying heat.
RUMBLE!
His hair returned, flowing with blends of ivory and dark silver radiance as his head tilted upward, his maw unhinging to release a guttural roar just as crimson lines appeared all over his flesh, lining every part of his sculpted body.
His roar violently shook the room, aether imploding and sparking into flames from the mere aftereffects.
The crimson lines etched across his body faded just slightly, sinking into his flesh and body to become a system spread across his entire frame.
Just as his evolution came to an end and his momentum slowed, his minor evolutions kicked in and he rapidly began shattering the limits of the G-Rank, entering the double-letter ranks, then surging into the triple-letter ranks.
HUM!
His cores widened, ballooning to sizes so impossibly large they should not have even been able to fit inside his body—yet they did anyway—before suddenly compressing into tiny grain-sized marble cores.
Then the cycle repeated, again and again, hundreds and dozens of times before his core finally settled as structures the size of pebbles, tiny yet ridiculous in power, both in terms of quality and sheer quantity.
He wasn’t sure if saying his aether was comparable to Jade Grade S-Rank aether did it justice anymore.
As his cores cycled between expansion and compression and his pool grew, two loud whip-like cracks echoed deep within his body, the effects of his Pioneer Path blooming as secondary and tertiary sets of evolutions occurred.
His body broke down and rebuilt itself once more, over and over again, deepening his power further and further.
As a Pioneer, every step he took might as well count for thousands of a regular awakened ascendant’s advancements.
His presence—and the weight his cores applied to the world—was such that space and light bent around him, forming a field of pressure that forced all things into subservience.
"...ah..."
Uriel released a deep, foggy breath as his mind came down from the high of his evolution and he settled into his newfound power.
A smile bloomed across his charming features.
[Evolution Successful!] 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚
[You have achieved a Sublime Evolution!]
[Minor Evolution Successful!]
[Minor Evolution Successful!]
[Minor Evolution Successful!]
[Minor Evolution Suc...!]
’Finally.’
...
As Godwyn had told Uriel, the sequence of events that led him to the cave—and later the events themselves that transpired within it—went on to affect the entirety of the Legacy Space.
It had made the Gods furious and nearly sentenced him to death, among many other consequences.
One of those things was the birth of Pioneer Beasts.
If Pioneers were rare, then Pioneer Beasts were utterly and absolutely legendary, on par with the most ancient mythical creatures; from Krakens to Phoenixes and ancient World Serpents.
Pioneer Beasts existed in a tier of their own.
And evidently, the little fox was one of such legendary creatures.
But it wasn’t just any Pioneer Beast.
It was a Pioneer Beast that had devoured and assimilated the blood of the most Primordial Pioneer of a world, and a Pioneer Beast with a tri-core foundation.
It was utterly unmatched.
And so would its evolutions be.
As Uriel evolved, it used the momentum of his ascension to evolve alongside him.
WHOOOSH!
Upon Uriel’s head, its small body shook and its long, silky white-silver fur suddenly became tendrils of energy, like flares of a radiant star.
Its tails rippled and slowly began to fuse into one another, going from five, to three, then eventually returning to a single tail.
The fox’s blood boiled, its eye barely prying open to unleash an aura of pure and unbridled savagery just as Uriel roared to the skies.
The image of a gigantic, blood-soaked hound appeared behind Uriel, ruling over heaven, hell, and void alike.
Simultaneously, the image of a gigantic elemental creature of lightning—winged and horned, seemingly the size of a world—loomed behind the little fox.
The two images overlapped as if harmonised, empowering the two, both Pioneer and Pioneer Beast, far beyond what a regular evolution would have granted them individually.
TAH! TAH!
The fox’s long tail shook and then began to divide once more just as its aura settled down and it fell back to sleep.
Unlike before, it didn’t return to five tails. It simply settled at two.
Yet its aura, though shadowed by Uriel’s own, was utterly terrifying.
"Kih."
The little fox went back to sleep, entirely ignoring the flashing notifications of its weave.
...
[Minor Evolution Successful!]
’Finally.’
Uriel took a breath.
He let the aether in the room settle into a calm flow on its own, and he closed his eyes, feeling the thundering echoes of his heart slow into a terrifyingly slothful cadence.
His blood, however, kept rushing through his veins at breakneck speeds.
Yet rather than heating his body as it had previously been doing, it cooled him down instead, making him feel incredibly comfortable.
He slowly reopened his eyes, then brought a palm to his face.
His marble-like skin was still there, reflecting all light and as smooth as the skies.
Yet now it felt... heavier.
If before his body had seemed like a hollow structure, now it was filled to the brim with renewed flesh, overflowing with such power that even he found himself stumped.
’I wonder what I’d be able to do back on Ithuril... maybe run as fast as planes fly? Uproot forests?’
Recently, he had only been thrown into particularly hostile and powerful environments, so it had become nearly impossible to gauge how strong he had become.
’I’m a double-evolved peak G-Rank Pioneer with my Pioneer Scale maximised for the G-Rank and a tri-core foundation... that means I should definitely be stronger than any non-Pioneer within the First Step.’
He paused.
’If I don’t count their Sparks, that is—as well as their Talents, Gear, and extra foundations like mages and martial artists.’
’I also don’t doubt some people walk strange evolutionary paths like Enoch told me about.’
’I wonder how I’d fare against a Spark Hunter or a Weapon Evolver.’
He sighed and lightly tapped his cheeks to refocus.
’Status.’
