A terrifying pressure welled forth from the stairwell leading to what Alan currently presumed was the island's core, engulfing him in an ominous embrace. It was as if a dormant volcano sought to reawaken, the tower's crumbling foundation spewing forth the faintest breath of its latent power. Devastation brewed below ground, ready to reshape the Tutorial Realm with its unchecked, cataclysmic force.
Notifications appeared one after another, only to be dismissed as fast as they were arriving. A dull roar filled Alan’s head, echoing with a jarring resonance that stirred dormant memories. His awareness was consumed by a ballad of overwhelming power that resonated deep within his soul. The air crackled with visible sparks of electricity, each sporadic jolt sending goosebumps down his spine. Although it was overbearing and downright terrifying, hidden within the furious pressure was an eerie familiarity. It was simultaneously exhilarating and unnerving.
Alan felt as if he stood on the precipice of unlocking long-lost secrets. Every fiber of his being urged him to press forward, to embrace the unknown and discover what lay beyond his current limits. He gnashed his teeth.
I… He breathed out through his nose. I can do this. I've made it through worse… I think.
Doubt gnawed at Alan's mind as he began to second-guess the wisdom of gazing into such a blinding light. He clenched them shut, but the damage was already done. Flickering spots danced in his vision, each one shifting into different hues at random, lighting up the darkness with mesmerizing patterns that spun in place like a kaleidoscope. The dazzling display played tricks on his senses, distorting his perception of reality. Colors merged and clashed amidst a pitch-black backdrop, forming surreal landscapes that materialized and promptly disappeared before he could make sense of them.
It was a disorienting experience, leaving him questioning his own sanity. Yet, amidst the chaos, a hidden message hidden in the wind seemed to whisper to him, and him alone. A cryptic riddle was waiting to be deciphered.
Right as he felt things couldn't get any more confusing, another maddening pang of danger reverberated through Alan's mind, freezing him in his tracks. He could feel the reaper's scythe looming ever closer, a chilling reminder of impending calamity. The weight of the moment bore down upon him, threatening to crush his spirit beneath its callused heel. Doubts clawed at his heart. The very fabric of his being trembled with uncertainty, and he questioned whether the remnants of his resilience and fading determination would be enough to weather the tempest gathering around him.
Fear whispered sweet nothings in his ear, but hidden amidst his uncertainties, a flicker of determination burned bright, a tiny flame that refused to be extinguished.
Alan's brain teetered on the precipice of shutting down, overwhelmed by the immense strain being placed upon it. A sickening squelch reverberated through his navel. He turned his sight inward just in time to witness the cracks on his Core opening up, becoming gaping crystalline wounds, exposing the insatiable rift that fueled the nucleus of his infantile inner sanctum. It felt as if his very soul was being manhandled, stretched in all directions and pulled apart.
As pain in its purest form ripped through his torso, a powerful suction ignited within his ruptured Core. His internal structure began to sag inwards, relenting to the pull of an abyssal rift. His mind began to wander, unable to come to terms with the chaotic forces threatening to devour him from the inside out. Yet, in the face of his internal turmoil, that glimmer of hope still flickered. Within the depths of this maelstrom, a new path could be forged.
Surely Erasmus hadn't set him on this course intending that he would fail. There had to be a way to turn this to his advantage. What the hell am I supposed to do here?! His mind kept spinning back to the same conclusion. Locate that Celestial Essence. Like, yesterday.
Wheezing breaths filled with barely restrained sobs escaped from Alan's chapped lips as his Core finally shattered. It fragmented into a nebula of jagged shards that floated amidst iridescent clouds of sparkling dust. Unable to resist the intractable pull, these crystalline particles began revolving around a miniature metallic twister that ceaselessly spun in the center of his navel.
Piece by piece, the fragments of his Core were drawn through the unstable rift, feeding the growth his Realm Seed. The rift seemed to expand before his eyes, transformed from a slight tear to an ominous, eye-shaped hole. The suction increased to unprecedented heights.
Alan's focus on his internal perils abruptly shifted as the towering pillar of energy looming above him gradually dispersed into glittering points of light. Although the intense discharge had finally ceased, the island beneath him redoubled its tantrum and began rippling like waves. Long fissures snaked across the ground. Gaping fractures marred the once-pristine mirror, a visual testament to the cataclysmic forces being unleashed.
Alan feared for Su'ong's safety yet could do little more than trust her resourcefulness as he bore witness to the aftermath of the destruction he had unwittingly set into motion.
The churning vortices surrounding Alan had expanded to an unimaginable scale, their insatiable pull devouring everything. Even the crackling storm clouds were unable to escape their desire. Massive waves crashed over the island but were futile against the relentless force of the gyrating vortices. Reality seemed to warp and twist as larger fragments of the Safe Zone's barriers broke free and rained down from above, rainbow hued shards that glittered like stained glass. They were mercilessly devoured by the translucent, category 5 tornadoes that writhed and twisted around Alan, their ferocious hunger leaving only emptiness in their wake. These ethereal dragons, born of wind and water and chaos, took voracious bites out of anything in their path, obliterating all traces of the barrier.
Water gushed from within cracks segmenting the stone floor, defying gravity as it formed melon shaped orbs that levitated into the air. They merged with the accumulating lake water, forming rafts that floated along the ethereal rivers sparkling and shimmering in the false moonlight. Streams of liquid spiraled around Alan, their surprising beauty an unexpected, and very much welcome distraction. But their fate was sealed, as they too were swiftly consumed by the insatiable vortices, slurped down like spaghetti noodles and drawn into Alan's body.
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The raw essence of the elements surged through him. Water, Earth, Lightning, and others he couldn't even discern waged war within his motionless form, providing him with a front row seat to an unfiltered display of their conflicting natures. He was reduced to little more than a misshapen vessel, a grotesquely malformed instrument into which primal forces were discarded. The mind was willing, but his flesh was unable to contain such a timeless battle.
Alan writhed and twisted as his body swelled up like an inflated balloon. He feared that even if he survived long enough to reach the exposed—and now flooded—stairwell, he would quite likely be far too fat and bloated to fit through the narrow and winding passage. The pulsating energy surging within him had no apparent cares for the shape of its container. His lack of functioning Tributaries and Deltas swiftly led to unmanageable amounts of energy accumulating within every inch of his form, stretching the limits of what mortal skin could withstand.
The pain was constant, an old friend come home to visit. Every raw nerve within Alan's body was stretched tighter than guitar strings, twangs of torment creating a disturbing tune that reverberated within his soul. However, buried amidst the agonizing melody, an ember of refusal persisted. He clung to the belief that this—quite possibly his most profound fuck up—would lead him to newfound strength rather than an early grave. Like a Phoenix reborn from its own ashes, all he had to do was endure the unending suffering to be remade. At least he really hoped so.
Alan's perception underwent a startling transformation, his awareness pressing out beyond the physical boundaries of his body. The lines of who and what he was became blurred as his body lost all semblance of humanity. He no longer had arms or legs; only amorphous blobs swollen with unmeasurable amounts of volatile energy. The once-familiar sensations of pain and touch gave way to an otherworldly experience of hollow nothingness as his nerves ceased to function properly.
Bodily signals faded, lost to the storm gathering within him. Alan wasn't sure what to make of it. His bones were suddenly turning soft and rubbery, organs liquefying. Muscles unraveled, deteriorated skeleton cracking and crumbling, folding inward as everything that made him who he was succumbed to the irresistible pull emanating from the unstable rift in his navel. He felt himself fading, being broken down and devoured by the unhoused portal within him.
Amidst the dissolution of his physical form, Alan's awareness remained intact. He had been reduced to an observer in his own metamorphosis. The sole witness to the restructuring of his entire being. The physical constraints that once defined him lost meaning. Alan suddenly found himself caught between alternating states of existence. The very fabric of his spirit seemed to disintegrate, but his consciousness endured, suspended in the desolate space between what was and what would be. What could be. He was the caterpillar, helpless in his engorged cocoon.
Alan's massive, bloated limbs hung heavily, almost lifeless, as he slowly floated above the ground. The tips of his boneless big toes lifted off the floor, the release of pressure on the island seemingly triggering a cataclysmic explosion that opened up a bottomless chasm beneath him. A volley of stone and earth rocketed towards the open sky. Through it all, Alan remained untouched. The vortices swallowed everything in their path, increasing their own incessantly swirling energy.
Heedless of the untenable pressure threatening to pop him like a soap bubble, the vortices continued to force feed him more. Alan's body broke away from conventional understanding, becoming a surreal oddity that defied logic. Sight was reduced to a sliver amidst the swollen features of his face, his narrow field of vision clouded by the overwhelming girth that continued to amass. He strained to make sense of his surroundings, but the obstructed lenses of his perception rendered everything hazy and fragmented.
The last remnants of the clouds gathered, combining into a furious tornado that touched down upon the island. Sensing a challenge to their dominance, the vortices around Alan expanded and contracted in unison, their impossible suction too great for even the ambient storm to resist. The very rules of physics seemed to warp and bend to their will. Alan was caught in the midst of a hurricane, his massive, bloated form a mere speck bobbing in the eye of the storm. The vortices became his guide, drawing him ever deeper into the fury that enveloped him.
Time seemed to slow, losing all meaning as each second stretched on for eternity. Minutes blurred into hours, days into weeks, as he spiraled in place, lost in hallucinogenic thoughts, descending into the depths of mental overload. He felt as if he was swimming within a bottomless pool of his own consciousness, backstroking carelessly through the abyss. Gone were his fears and aspirations.
The uncontrollable vortices surrounding Alan began to condense, shrinking in size but intensifying in power as they reduced metric tons of physical material into fundamental elemental energy. This potent energy coursed through Alan's body, filling him with an additional burst of raw, unfocused power. Rather than exploding, Alan's bulbous form began to shrink.
Without warning, Alan found himself sinking, descending into the deep, dark chasm where the tower once stood. The descent was both exhilarating and terrifying, a journey into inky blackness. And then, amidst the impenetrable darkness, a glimmer of pale blue light emerged.
Something below him was shimmering like a distant star. It beckoned him forward, igniting within him a furious desire to consume. Alan burped out a colossal plume of colorful radiation that reduced his waistline by at least twenty sizes and simultaneously lit up the surroundings. The strange light exposed smooth gray stone walls.
Alan's descent through the seemingly endless chasm eventually brought him before the object of his fears and desires. The object the System bid him to collect before leaving the Sandstone Palace Dungeon. Hovering in the center of the gloomy chasm, Alan finally located a copper alter housing the pitted and marred remains of Erasmus Lotus's Celestial Essence. The ancient cultivator's features were obscured, the statue-like form bearing unmistakable signs of the passage of countless ages.
He looked like a weather-beaten Buddha.
As Alan contemplated his next move, a barely perceptible wisp of Erasmus materialized. Although he could see Erasmus, the ghostly entity wavered in and out of focus like a reflection displayed on a dirty puddle. Erasmus offered a whispered wish of luck. Although nearly inaudible, his voice nonetheless carried a palpable weight. Erasmus's gaze fixated upon Alan, measuring and assessing him with a depth that defied words. As Erasmus's seemingly satisfied wisp faded away, a shimmering mirage of Kuldar briefly materialized beside his grandfather's Essence. He fixed Alan in his hawkish gaze, and nodded once before dispersing.
The condensed vortices around Alan continued to consume the walls and floor. Their desire to feed unveiled a concealed space hidden beneath him. The island, it seemed, still had another secret to reveal. First things first…What the Hells am I supposed to do with this Essence? Eat it?
Unlike literally everything else, the Celestial Essence seemed to be impervious to the vortices hunger.