I knew that spiritual pain differed from physical pain. Physical pain could be resisted by forcible suppression of the pain receptors. The physical pain from breaking through was probably gone within a decade or two, but the spiritual pain would not subside until I fixed it. I would have to redraw my pathways. However, the system, at level 150, as a god who had ascended to being a system, saved skills, so I just had to redraw pathways, instead of redrawing pathways and skills. They were so complex that if I destroyed Timesight, I'd probably need the emperor or someone to fix it. I checked what skills still worked. Luckily, mana manipulation worked, so I could fix it. It would be hard, but I wouldn't need the simulacrum or someone to fix some pathways.

I started fixing the pathways. The pain was insane, but I would not be stopped. Mana would not be enough to fix the pathways. I knew that the only that would allow me to redraw pathways was essence. Essence didn't appear on the skill screen, but everyone only survived based on essence. Essence was the true fundamental building block of everything, instead of atoms or whatever scientists from Earth said it was. Essence allowed mana, stamina, and health, the three basic resources, to flow. Essence also contained those resources, and their regeneration. Each stat was a type of raw essence.

The way energy pathways worked, they were pathways built of essence, for the user to manipulate. They were made of the purest form of essence, so all three resources could flow in it. The cores were simply that resource's aspected essence. Nothing would exist without essence. Sure, it was possible to make something without essence, but that thing couldn't hold mana, stamina, or health. Essence couldn't be put into something after it was built without essence.

The core of a planet had essence in it. It was a special type of essence, spatial essence, which no person could make. If it was activated with enough mana, the planet would gain mana aspected essence, and therefore, the planet would gain levels. However, anything that had been built without essence would be instantly vaporized. If the planet started making essence, some would be forced into all objects, thus destroying them.

Exp also worked based on essence. When someone killed another being, most of the being's essence was absorbed into the planet. However, the being that died would also give some essence to the being that killed it, because essence attracted essence. I still had the essence that made my pathways, but it was scattered throughout my body. I needed to fix it into those pathways. However, essence in pathways counted towards leveling, so I could make the essence part of my pathways, so my pathways would be harder to break.

I started fixing my pathways. I would make them thicker, and thus harder to break, but I would use the same configuration. The standard one for an Arbiter of War. I knew that the cores were contained in the heart, so I would have to fix the pathways in the upper body. Sure, the explosion had exploded the heart, but that grew back. The way it worked, burning health allowed people to grow back body parts they were missing, organically, instead of with the fakes the people of Earth used. Growing back the heart and lungs only cost a million or so health each, so it was no big deal. Health could also be burned to expand lifespans if people's lifespan was ending due to illness, disease, or almost anything besides old age. It could also do things like expel tumors.

So, basically, I only lost a few million health, but I took a ton of spiritual damage, which only essence, not health, could fix. I knew that since the cores were indestructible, I had to fix the pathways around them first. I focused on my cores. The world went black.

I was inside my own body. I was staring at the cores. I condensed all the former pathway essence into a single ball, then I added quite a bit more essence into it. I took some of that essence, and put it into stumps blocking the cores. The difference between what I had done and what happened in the transcendence was that essence was malleable, whereas that thing blocking me (it was called Coreblock) wasn't. I moved out the center of them, and moved the golden essence (yes, with inner sight, essence looked gold) out, to form pathways. That's when the agony began.

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It was extreme agony. It was okay to draw the pathways once, but doing it after that altered the shape of the soul. Yes, essence was kept in the soul. And so were resources. Attributes. Warhammers (well, for me, it was warhammers, because of my truth). However, changing your pathways after they had been drawn was essentially, in a physical sense, moving your blood vessels around inside your body. So each one made a nerve feel extreme pain, until the nerve got used to the pain.

I pressed the pain down. It caused me to hesitate, and then jitter. I drew a pathway incorrectly. I still had time to act. I forced the incorrectly made part back into the ball. Rinse. Repeat. After an hour, I had roughly 10 feet of pathways drawn. A body of my size needed about 120,000 miles of pathways in the upper body, and twice that in total. This was going to take forever. Considering that the pain would probably only allow me to draw 50 feet per day, it would take roughly 12672000 days to redraw the upper body alone. SInce I was only redrawing the upper body, it would take me about 34,718 years. That speed was unacceptable. I forced myself to draw faster. A century passed. I left my body. I had gained strength, but I was nowhere near peak form.

After a few days, and a quick trip to Earth, where I didn't really do much except make a quick speech, and find that the former president of the USA, the large country, was at level 49 and struggling to break into gold-section. The general who got lucky was at the same spot, except a few million people had sworn their loyalty as a soldier to the president. I anointed both of them as nobles, then went off on the journey to Mars. I had said I'd take a break from fixing the pathways, and go to Earth, every thousand years.

Nothing major happened on Earth or Mars until the sixth trip back. The former leaders of the former countries England, France, India, and Japan had reached level 49. I anointed them as nobles. On the sixteenth trip, another gamer reached level 49. I anointed him as a noble. I kept doing things that way, but I set a limit at ten noble houses. I had seven so far. I'd increase the standard to level 55. No new nobles under level 55 would be anointed, but the level 49 houses could stay noble houses.

By the twentieth trip to Earth, I had become accustomed to the pain. I thought I could finish fixing my pathways quickly, by the twenty-fourth trip. At that point, I had basically been living in my soul. Sleeping every eighteen years, like was dictated by my level. Eating every six years. I was doing all that stuff easily. By the twenty-second trip, though I was worried. As a king, I had to stay a higher level then all nobles. A king was higher than nobles. The general and former president had broken through to gold-section. I couldn't fight anything that would even give me a trillion exp, because of the state of my pathways. I went back to Mars and then worked on my pathways some more. An average day went like this:

0:00 AM:

Work on pathways.

10:00 AM:

Fix pathways that weren't redrawn perfectly.

2:00 PM:

Practice drawing pathways (for the more delicate parts that would come later).

5:00 PM:

Get more essence for pathways.

7:00 PM:

Test the pathways that have been drawn in the last 24 hours (with all 3 resources)

7:30 PM:

Draw more pathways.

11:00 PM:

Practice pain tolerance.

11:15 PM:

Train, work out, do all that stuff (in the soul).

11:45 PM:

Give myself a quick rest before repeating the next day.

After the twenty-fourth milenia, I was finally done. I did a few years of getting back into shape, made an announcement on Earth, then got back to the grind. The first thing I'd do would be conquer more planets for the Sasomac Empire, as I had decided to call my kingdom I'd get some commoners to set up a capital city of the empire on Mars while I was away, with my castle being there. I'd move my private planet to what commoners called Venus, as commoners would be melted by the weather on Venus. I'd conquer this solar system, then grind to diamond-section.