He once again reached within himself, plunging into the depths of his soul space, and retrieved a sphere of pure, condensed existential energy.
This was the largest transaction of energy he had ever attempted.
Even stabilizing it demanded absolute concentration.
Unlike before, he did not immediately begin carving runes into it.
Instead, he waited.
Axiros closed his metaphysical senses inward and began gathering soul energy, not just from this life, but traces carried across every existence he had ever lived. Along with it came the energy signatures of those lives: fragments of laws, instincts, affinities, and existential impressions etched into his being over countless reincarnations.
They were incompatible.
Contradictory.
Violent.
Using the remaining existential energy as an anchor, he began engraving those signatures onto the sphere itself.
One by one.
Some overlapped.
Some resisted.
Some tried to annihilate each other.
He forced them together regardless.
Time lost all meaning within his soul space. Years passed as he refined, reinforced, erased, and re-etched the patterns again and again. Outside, only a few hours slipped by, barely enough for the world to notice his absence.
When it was finally complete, Axiros exhaled deeply, the tension he hadn't realized he was holding finally releasing.
The sphere hovered before him, no longer pure.
It was a conglomerate.
He guided the amassed soul energy into motion, threading it carefully through every engraved imprint. The process was slow, agonizingly precise. Each circulation threatened collapse if mishandled by even the smallest margin.
Pain flared through his consciousness, but he ignored it.
The reward was worth far more than the cost.
This process took far longer than his previous attempt, yet still—no meaningful time was lost in the outside world.
At last, it was finished.
The sphere now shone with terrifying brilliance: a writhing mass composed of decillions of layered energy signatures, bound together by vast quantities of soul and existential energy.
Axiros raised his hand.
With a single thought, the sphere began to flicker, violently destabilizing, before shattering into nothingness.
The energy dispersed.
And in that instant, his consciousness snapped back into the real world.
His body reformed again and again.
It was a brutal, unrelenting process. Every cell was torn apart, nourished, reforged, and reconstructed from the most fundamental level. Flesh, bone, blood, nothing was spared. It was not healing; it was recreation.
Hours passed as the process ground on, each moment stretched thin by agony and resistance.
But Axiros endured.
He always did.
When it finally ended, he drew a sharp breath and opened his eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he extended his arm, focusing inward, testing sensation, circulation, balance, every feedback loop his body could provide.
Everything responded.
Perfectly.
And that was the problem.
His body didn't feel stronger.
Not even slightly.
There was no surge of power, no heightened density, no instinctive awareness of growth. Only faint, lingering impressions, residual laws, fragmented energy patterns, clinging to his flesh like echoes rather than substance.
Nothing had taken root.
"What the fuck is going on?" Axiros cursed aloud.
He had invested far too much for this to amount to nothing.
His heart pulsed violently within his chest. It had absorbed its share, perhaps more than any other organ, and now reverberated with alien laws and energies that did not belong to this realm. Yet even that resonance remained… muted.
There was no significant increase.
Not even a subtle one.
His breath slowed, thoughts tightening into a sharp, dangerous focus.
"…Is there something wrong with my body?" he muttered.
Then the thought surfaced, cold, unwelcome, impossible to ignore.
'Was something interfering?
An imprint?
A suppression?
Something left behind?'
His mind churned violently as realization began to take shape, not certainty, not yet, but suspicion.
And for the first time since the process began, Axiros felt something far worse than pain.
Unease.
He had never experienced anything like this before.
Never, not across any of his lives, had such a massive investment of energy resulted in absolute nothingness. No amplification. No refinement. Not even a marginal deviation in baseline strength.
It defied precedent.
Axiros scanned his body again, slower this time, more meticulously. He dissected himself layer by layer, flesh, blood, bone, meridians, soul lattice, conceptual anchors, searching for anything that could have halted or diverted the process.
He found nothing.
No obstruction.
No corruption.
No visible suppression.
The energy hadn't vanished either. He could feel its afterimage, faint but undeniable, clinging to his existence like residue left after a storm.
That was what unsettled him the most.
His agitation sharpened into something colder.
"It couldn't have just… disappeared," he muttered.
Then he froze.
A thought surfaced, slow, heavy, and unpleasant.
"…Wait."
Two possibilities.
Only two.
Either his potential was so absurdly vast, so deep and unbounded, that even this amount of energy was insignificant, unable to cause the slightest measurable change…
Or-
His potential was doomed.
Utterly capped. Fundamentally flawed. A vessel incapable of growth.
Axiros clenched his jaw.
With his luck, his fate, it would be the latter. It always was. He had never been favored by destiny, only tolerated by it.
But that raised a far more disturbing question.
If his potential truly was nil…
Then why hadn't there been even the slightest increase?
Even a defective vessel showed some reaction when flooded with power. Distortion. Rejection. Collapse.
But he had felt none of that.
Only silence.
And silence, in this case, was far more terrifying than failure.
"Shit… something is utterly wrong with my body."
Panic clawed at Axiros's thoughts.
For now, there was nothing he could do.
He had techniques, many of them, but all of those required a new vessel. A reconstruction. Something far beyond what he could accomplish at his current stage.
Not yet.
"Hah…" He let out a long, tired breath. "Only time will reveal the truth. Either my potential is a blessing… or it's a dead end."
The thought left a bitter taste.
A day passed since he returned to the house.
Axiros rose from his place and stretched, joints popping softly. His stomach growled in protest, sharp and insistent.
Right. A mortal body.
He bolted towards the house, hunger overriding everything else.
The moment he entered the hall, he froze.
His mother was standing there, arms crossed.
"Well, well, well," she said, lips curled into a smile that was far too sharp to be genuine. "Look who finally decided to come back home."
Axiros swallowed.
That smile… yeah. She was furious.
And he was definitely in trouble.
"Ma, I lost myself. I was meditating.' He lied sheepishly.
"Alright... Just this once okay. I am going to let you off." She said, sighing.
She knew he was lying.
But she didn't question it.
The scent of freshly cooked food hit Axiros like a speeding truck, overwhelming and irresistible. His stomach twisted violently in response.
In the next instant, he was at the dining table, moving like a starved beast unleashed. He devoured everything in sight, shoveling food into his mouth with terrifying efficiency.
Each bite was bliss.
Warmth spread through his body as his taste buds screamed in delight, his stomach finally calming after a long, agonizing wait.
"This is heavenly…" he mumbled between mouthfuls.
'God of food, thank you.'
He kept eating. His mother in the back smiled at this.
--
Weeks passed in quiet anticipation. His father still hadn't appeared.
Axiros had heard fragments of the man's life, half-stories, vague mentions, names without faces, but nothing concrete. It was as if his existence hovered just out of reach, deliberately obscured.
So Axiros trained.
Relentlessly.
Better to suffer now than regret it later. His body was still young, malleable, capable of growth that would be impossible once time solidified his limits. Every day was pushed to its edge.
In a week, he would turn eight.
He had grown a few inches taller, his frame tightening, refining itself under constant strain. The changes were subtle, but undeniable.
Yet no matter how much he trained, one thing remained unchanged.
The same prompt hovered before his eyes, unwavering and silent:
[Prerequisites to be met for activation: Rite of Revelation]
[Status: Not completed]
[System Status: LOCKED]
It watched him.
Axiros didn't know whether the System was truly his salvation, or merely another carefully disguised spy, a silent observer planted by the very entity that had already violated his existence. The thought gnawed at him relentlessly. That being had torn through his soul space once, leaving scars he could still feel if he focused too long. Trust did not come easily after that.
Every prompt, every line of cold, mechanical text felt suspect. Was it a safeguard… or a leash? A guide meant to nurture him, or a set of invisible chains designed to monitor, limit, and eventually harvest him when the time was right?
He couldn't tell.
And that uncertainty was far more dangerous than any open enemy.
His Awakening would reveal the truth.
Only then would he know whether the System was an ally born from fate, or a parasite patiently waiting for the right moment to tighten its grip. Until that day arrived, all he could do was endure, observe, and prepare. He would not place his trust in anything so easily again, not after everything he had lived through.
Life, however, did not wait for answers.
Days flowed into weeks, weeks into months, carrying with them a deceptive sense of normalcy. He trained, ate, slept, and smiled when required. To the world, Axiros was merely growing, another gifted child steadily approaching his Awakening. But beneath that calm surface, his mind was constantly moving, sharpening itself like a blade in the dark.
If the System was a friend, he would use it to carve his path through destiny.
If it was an enemy,
Then his Awakening would be the moment it realized it had chosen the wrong host.