I stood before the quivering Fragment and knelt before it, Fenric knelt beside me and carving away at the floor.

I kept my silence, not wanting to disturb him from his work. He was, after all, doing his best to keep me alive in spite of my poor decision-making skills.

Instead, I stared into the Fragment, trying to cow it into submission with my gaze. On Earth, I would’ve just looked constipated, but here? I was a lich who could be considered nigh-omnipotent within his own domain. That added some weight to my actions.

The fact that I didn’t currently have skin or eyes also probably helped.

I’d built up a few hundred extra, improved bodies for what I was doing now. My standard design just had a ton of energy packed into the shape of a skeleton, but that had some limits. The more Forbodum I packed into a small space, the less potent it all seemed, eventually capping off like there was some sort of asymptote– a value that it would always approach, but never quite reach.

I could just pack tons and tons of power into a skeleton, and it would work, but it was more efficient to create a twelve-foot hunk of muscle and focus on increasing its durability as much as possible.

What I’d read in Kelemnion said that Tribulations got progressively worse each time you brought one upon yourself. It also cleansed impurities. I didn’t think my bodies had any of those, so my best guess was that it had simply directed the Mana to the location of my consciousness, and then it had used the channel between my body and my Repository to fulfill its task there, causing incidental damage as it rushed through. In other words, my suspicion was that having a body might slow down the Mana as it tried to get at my Repository, allowing me time to adjust and preventing me from instantly shattering and dying.

Fenrir soon finished his work and gave me a slight nod, so I tore open a portal for him to get back to his floor.

He’d asked if he could stay, but I’d refused. He, Uban, and Carnic were all independent enough to survive my death, and I felt that there was at least a chance that the Librarian, who I had yet to grant an actual name, might outlast my death as well. If they got exposed to Mana, though, then there was no doubt in my mind that they’d die instantly.

I had to do this alone.

I took a moment to admire my immaculate and utterly unearned musculature, then reached out and grabbed the Fragment of Divinity.

It let out a shriek made of energy rather than sound, and I got a message.

You have incurred the wrath of the Heavens. Tribulation+ incoming.

As soon as I finished reading the message, I felt a zap from the Fragment, forcing my hand to release its grip. Immediately after, a dual-impact came from above, the first annihilating Fenric’s shield and the second slamming through with enough force to knock me a foot into the stone floor beneath me.

The cave around me was crumbling, with the ceiling having been completely vaporized by the first attack. Immediately following it, however, was the true fear: a channel of pure Mana entering my body from above.

This new body lasted for a couple seconds, which was an incredible improvement over my prior design, but not enough.

My Repository quaked at the immense amount of power that was streaming into it, and that was before I even ran out of bodies. Even through the pain, though, I knew that things were going to get much worse unless I did something right now.

Pouring out Mentum as rapidly as I could, I generated influence for my Occult Sovereignty around my Repository, simultaneously sucking in almost all of what I’d already made. While it severely weakened my control over my tower, it was a temporary change and was needed to help me survive the onslaught of power raining down on me.

With my Sovereignty, I reinforced my Repository and packed on Conceptium, instructing it to keep me alive.

I ran out of bodies far too quickly. I knew that, in reality, it had been at least a few minutes since the Tribulation had begun, but it had felt like mere seconds through the pain and panic.

When all of my bodies had been torn through, I found myself back in my Repository, bracing for even more pain.

As expected, the bolts of Mana found me, acting like my ceiling didn’t exist and rushing straight for my core.

There was a brief moment of resistance as the Mana met Conceptium, but the power was simply overwhelming, and all my intent could do was slightly divert the Mana, siphoning off a tiny amount of it to aid in my defense.

Even the small fraction of Mana that I’d stolen was felt as a noticeable reduction in pain as it worked to help counter the rest of the heavenly energy flooding into me.

Too soon, however, the Conceptium ran dry, and the pain gradually returned.

I felt like I was going crazy. Every second started to expand more and more, the pain simply too much to fully process in a single instant.

My mind reached for something, anything, but there was nothing.

There was no clever solution to be found, nothing to stop the power that was chipping away at my Repository, tearing away chunk after chunk of my being.

I was out of options.

At that realization, I felt my mind sharpen, and a warmth encompassed the very center of my being.

There were only two ways this Tribulation would end: either I would die, losing everything and abandoning all I’d created and called mine, or I would survive, rise above this challenge, and gain the power to protect everything I loved.

What little Mentum I had flowed directly into my Repository, and it solidified. I poured every ounce of my Willpower into myself, and utilized all of my command to send out a single message:

I WILL LIVE.

Reality warped and bent as an amount of the Mana in my surroundings seemed to lose its identity, falling into me as though I were a black hole.

My core started to reconstitute itself on a molecular level, building and building. It wasn’t enough to outpace the damage that was accruing across my form, but it was something.

Each bolt of Tribulation felt like a world-ending attack, reducing my being more and more, but the tiny cracks in me were restoring themselves, preventing my core from shattering, something I knew would have immediately split my core from whatever particles remained.

After what felt like centuries of agony, one last strike found my Repository, fracturing what was left of me, and then everything became nothing.

It was dark and quiet for a long, long moment. Then there was a small, almost imperceptible fooshh sound, only audible because of the oppressive silence.

I turned to look at the sound, finding a familiar figure sitting behind me in a pool of inky darkness, leg swishing back and forth.

I felt myself approach and sit beside him, looking him over like a reflection.

He returned my gaze with a slight smile, one that I’d seen in the mirror oh so many times.

It was me. The old me, the me that I’d been back on Earth. That weak, impotent shadow who’d never managed to amount to anything, and never could have.

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“You know,” he said in a slow, considerate tone, turning back to look at his own reflection, “It was never a matter of opportunity.”

I nodded, looking at my own reflection and seeing the same face that the being beside me wore, but with gray, purplish skin and eyes the color of the abyss.

“We were just weak,” I agreed, “Too weak to reach out and take what we wanted.”

My old self’s smile turned sad. “It’s just me now, though. Hiding away, deep inside you.” He turned his eyes to me reluctantly. “You know what has to happen now, right?”

I smiled back. “I do.”

His eyes turned back to the black water and he breathed deeply, fearfully, closing his eyes and rapidly shaking his head. His voice trembled, “I’m ready.”

My gaze landed on him once more, and I remembered quiet dinners with my parents, playing video games with my friends, curling up in bed with a good book, and what it felt like to ace a hard test. I remembered sitting at a table, narrating a story that my friends and I had carefully woven together over the course of months.

More than any of that, though, I remembered my weakness. I remembered the sting of rejection that I’d felt the first time I’d asked a girl out, and the fear that had gripped my heart every other time I’d been around someone I’d liked. I recalled the pain of being rejected from every job I’d applied to because they “couldn’t find a place” for me.

My old life had been good in a lot of ways, but it had all been underscored by fear. The fear of rejection. The fear of pain. The fear of what other people thought.

But I wasn’t that man anymore. I hadn’t been for a while.

Seif had always been a coward.

Ambrose would be a legend.

I reached out and gripped the coward by the back of the head, forcing him beneath the water and stepping in beside him. He fought for leverage, but it was to no avail.

He was weak.

I was strong.

I held him beneath the water for what felt like hours, watching the life slowly drain out of him.

The flailing and thrashing died down, then completely stopped.

His body started slowly melting into ink, and I held him gently until I no longer could.

“Thank you,” I whispered softly.

There was no sickness without health, no light without darkness.

Seif had been weak so that Ambrose could know strength.

The ink began to rise around me, slowly consuming me, but unlike my old self, I felt no fear.

I closed my eyes and allowed the darkness to overcome me, and when I opened my eyes I was back on the top floor of my tower, staring down at a tiny chunk of crystal.

I reached down and pulled the fragment of my Repository into my body, looking around at the destruction that had been caused by the Tribulation.

The top floor of my tower had been utterly obliterated, with nothing left of it other than rubble. In addition, a large chunk of my influence was just gone, having been pulled in by my attempts to survive and obliterated by the ongoing Mana strikes.

I pushed out power to replace what had been taken and checked my legend.

Ambrose

Ancient Seeker 5

Repository 6

* Infomorph 9

* Loci Server 9

* Firewall 10

* Multithreading 5

* Mental Rapidity 6

* Devour Mind 0

* Available Boon (Soul Flood, Inner Clone)

Forbodum Manipulation 6

* Esoteric Sight 9

* Conceptual Control 12

* Energetic Intent 7

* Concept Mimicry 2

* Intent Isolation 5

* Conceptium Dominion 4

* Available Boon (Simplicity, Agnostic Manipulation)

Occult Sovereignty 5

* Encompassing Knowledge 7

* Abstractive Influence 8

* Physical Influence 7

* Intelligent Influence 4

* Clear Intentions 4

* Available Boon (Domain Expansion, Immortal Concept)

Kelemnion’s Gate 4

* Library Pass 5

* Librarian’s Favor 10

* Omnipotent Reader 2

* Command Whispers 3

* Maddening Knowledge 1

Dark Whispers 3

* Ancient Mutterings 4

* Inspiration 5

* Tutoring 0

* Available Boon (Mentorship, Experience)

Enhancements: Willpower x7, Reinforcement x2, Purity x2

Named Belongings: Antigo, Drachma’Uban, Fenrir, Caerbalope, Carnic, Arachnomicon

I ignored my Available Boons for a moment, focusing instead on fixing up my surroundings. New walls formed to replace the ones that had been broken down, and a ceiling soon grew out of them to protect me.

Once I felt safe, I pulled the remains of my Repository back out of my body through my hand, pouring Mentum into it to slowly, slowly heal it.

Only then did I look through my options.

The first thing I did was take Mentorship, since Experience would have effectively acted like a longer Inspiration and forced me to live through entire segments of crazy people’s lives, whereas Mentoring let me intentionally get some Whispers to help me out, and even gave me an amount of control over which ones I heard from.

From there, I went up the list, looking over the “capstone” ability I got from Occult Sovereignty hitting level five.

The first option was Domain Expansion, which was both a bit funny and confusing. I’d figured out by now that the names for my abilities were most likely created by my subconscious, using words that only I knew to match the way I understood the world, hence Boon names like Firewall, Library Pass, and so on. It was a bit weird, though, since I could already expand my domain by just touching stuff with my Encompassing Knowledge.

After reviewing it more closely, I grinned a little bit. It was kinda similar to Devour Mind in that it used the appearance of my Loci Server as a base, but where Devour Mind created a mental space, Domain Expansion created a physical one. The ability would effectively displace me and anything within a controllable radius from reality, forming a space that would look similar to my mind palace.

Since the world Domain Expansion created would be formed entirely out of my Occult Sovereignty, my influence would be literally integral to it. The laws of reality would be entirely mine to control and decide upon. I’d practically be a god.

Immortal Concept, the alternative, would let me subtly infuse a Concept into a creature’s Soul, slightly altering the way it thought. Permanently.

That felt… distasteful, so Domain Expansion was the correct answer for me.

Simplicity was centered on helping me mass produce Conceptium, but that wasn’t really something I struggled with. Between Concept Mimicry, the rats running around in my brain, and Abstractive Influence, I was in no way struggling to get a lot of similar intent. The main benefit Simplicity had was that all the intent produced would be exactly the same, untouched by the user’s mental state or environmental conditions, but I had pretty decent control over all of that stuff.

Agnostic Manipulation would basically ignore whatever passive desires magic had, and would supposedly provide a bonus to overriding Conceptium that was already present within energy. Seeing that it would mesh well with Clear Intentions and my plans to become immune to hostile spells, I slotted it in.

The last was between Inner Clone and Soul Flood. The former promised to let me have an amount of control over myself whenever I used Devour Mind, whereas the latter was another way to directly attack a person’s Soul, simply using Mentum as a battering ram to shake them and briefly shatter their control over their own Mentum and body. It was sorta like the Manic Divide that had previously been offered to me, but a lot less potent, only lasting a second or two before the target started to recover.

I felt that Inner Clone was a lot better for me, since it actually required precision instead of just being a rough bludgeoning instrument. Of course, I had the energy and Willpower to bash someone else’s Mentum around, but efficiency was the name of the game for me.

With all my new Boons locked in, I slowly rose to my feet, sighing and examining my domain with a critical eye.

Luckily, it seemed like nothing and no one had died from the Mana Tribulation, but everyone was hiding indoors. I didn’t particularly feel like trying to force them out, though, so I just left them to calm down on their own. Azrael might have handled it better, but I just wasn’t her.

I also spotted a caravan a ways off that had come to a complete stop, but after inspecting I found that they were carrying a bunch of stuff to set up camp and possibly trade with the people of my small town.

One young man poked his head out of his carriage with curiosity and wonder in his eyes, but an older woman, likely his mother, yanked him back inside and started scolding him.

I chuckled a bit at that, but moved my eyes along to where the Fragment of Divinity had been.

I was slightly shocked to find that it was still there, considering what had gone down, but I decided that I’d leave it alone for the time being.

If a Tribulation+ had almost completely obliterated me and forced me to face the demons of my old self like that, I didn’t want to know what a Tribulation++ would do.

After confirming that there was no other damage that I needed to worry about, I allowed myself to fall back onto the floor and ignore everything except the steady flow of Mentum that I was using to slowly heal my Repository.