Nathan stared dumbly at his Interface,
Interface
Personal:
Name: Nathan Holbrich
Age: Nineteen years, five months
Height: 5’10
Species: Sapiens
Genus: Homo
Physical State:
Strength: Great
Endurance: Excellent
Perception: Great
Reflex: Excellent
Willpower: Peak
Condition(s): Soul wound (healing)
Existential Tier:
Awakened Mortal: You have awakened and have gained an Ability. You have gained one rank in all attributes.
Ability:
Prodigy: If you activate this Ability during an action, you experience yourself doing the action twice. This allows you to grasp the principles behind actions much faster. If you activate this Ability while doing an action that gathers knowledge, you experience two fold time dilation. This allows you to comprehend knowledge twice as quickly as you would have otherwise. This Ability can not be activated during combat.
Type: Master
Secondary Types: Knowledge, Mind, Time
“SPRENFATHER FUCKING DAMNIT!” Nathan hollered at the ceiling. Four years. That was how long it had been since he had begun trying to ascend and escape his prison. Four years and two months if you counted the time when he hadn't actually been trying. Since then the only change in his Interface had been attribute increases in strength, endurance and reflex.
Over the last four Nathan had tried everything he could possibly conceive of to ascend.
At first he had been optimistic. The library had tens of thousands of books. Surely the answer was there somewhere, right?
It wasn't.
The closest thing that he had found had been in an autobiographical book called ‘In a Tyrant’s Shadow: A Record of Life as the Son of Asaj Bihanacavand. It was a fascinating book about the life of a man Named Shiron Bihanacavand.
Shiron Bihanacacvand had grown up in an empire that spanned three universes that his father, Asaj Bihanacavand, had created and ruled with an iron fist for three hundred years before Shiron Bihanacacvand’s birth. As Nathan had already known, once a person awakened they could live for anywhere from five hundred to nine thousand years. What Nathan hadn’t known was that once a person ascended, their lifespan range would be extended up to ten thousand to, in one case, nearly a million years.
The common people of Asaj Bihanacavand’s empire hated him because he leveled ridiculous taxes. The rulers of his vassal nations hated him because he had a policy where if one of his vassal nations failed to meet his quota for resources, he would have the ruling family and aristocrats killed, after which he would assume direct control of the territory.
Shiron Bihanacavand detested his father because of his mother’s death. Shiron Bihanacacvand's mother had died of a magical wasting plague that even their most powerful healers could heal. When a teary, seven year old Shiron Bihanacavand had asked his father why he wasn’t crying, his father had answered that there were some things that weren't worth crying over.
Ninety eight years later, Shiron Bihanacavand was leading a revolution that eventually succeeded in dethroning, and deheading his father. In the final battle it was Shiron Bihanacavand who struck the final blow.
The part of the story that was important to Nathan, was that before the battle took place, Shiron Bihanacavand had ascended.
Shiron Bihanacavand retreated to a secluded cave in the countryside on a planet that was in a neighboring solar system to the last planet that his father controlled.
“There I sat,” Nathan recited, attempting to glean some further information from the passage, “ For ten days and ten nights. On the final night before the battle, when I had almost lost all hope of ascending, I reached deep within myself. Then I perfected it.”
Nathan sighed in a weary way that he would have expected from a man three times his age. “Then I perfected it.” Nathan repeated the last sentence. “What the hell is ‘it’? Did he accept and remove his mental flaws or something?”
“In the therapy session I sat for ten days and ten nights, unloading onto some poor idiot who had agreed to be my therapist.” Nathan mockingly parodied. “Then, on the last night I realized something. I had daddy issues.”
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“Fuck this!” Nathan threw his arms up in a surrendering gesture. “I guess I'm gonna be stuck here for the rest of my life! Is this what you wanted, Knowledge?” Nathan spat on the ground. “Fuck you!”
Once Nathan had finished shouting at the ceiling, he trudged over to the pull up bar that he had made from a bookshelf three and a half years ago. Nathan slipped his feet into the wood weights. He shook his arms out and began his pull ups.
Once he was finished with that, Nathan picked up his comically large wood dumbbells and began his arm workout.
Nathan looked at his wood creations, pride pushing away some of his misery. The project that he was most proud of was what he called the ‘Bad Kitty’. It was a wooden four legged statue, about the same size and shape as the manticore. You know, I think I did pretty damn well for a guy with nothing but his fists and the nails that I managed to pry out of the bookshelves.
Nathan picked up two forearm length splinters of wood that he had smoothed into the shape of manticore spikes. Back when he had still thought that he was going to escape the library, Nathan had decided that he needed to develop a way of fighting so that he wouldn’t die to the manticore again.
Nathan was under no impression that he could fight it barehanded, so he decided to use a weapon. The only things that he could think of in the grassland that he could use as weapons were the manticore's own spikes, so he developed a fighting style that used one spike in each hand. The fighting style was focused on evading attacks and attacking weak points like the eyes, neck, and stomach, but also incorporated kicks to stun and divert attention away from his spikes.
“Crunch!” Nathan delivered a downwards roadhouse kick to the Bad Kitty’s face. For the first time ever, on Prodigy’s second repetition of the action, his foot, reinforced with an excellent endurance attribute, caved in the Bad Kitty’s muzzle.
“Damn.” Nathan panted, impressed with himself. “I guess I finally got that second strength increase. Pretty sweet.” With a thought, Nathan opened his Interface, ignoring everything except the physical state section.
Physical State:
Strength: Excellent
“Let's go!” Nathan pumped his fist after reading the second line, his success banishing the remnants of his depressed resignation. On a whim he decided to read through the rest of his attributes.
Endurance: Excellent
Perception: Great
Reflex: Excellent
Willpower: Peak
Condition(s): Soul wound (healing)
“Urkh.” Nathan made a small noise like the wind had gotten knocked out of him when he read the second part of the last line. Soul wound. Soul. Nathan's eyes slowly widened as he realized that there was one last thing that he hadn't tried.
“It has something to do with my soul! I probably didn't think of it earlier because I was never any good at soul manipulation as a kid!” Nathan facepalmed. “But that was before Knowledge messed with my soul and awakened me!” Excitement bubbled up inside of Nathan.
“Fuck I’m an idiot!” Nathan shouted as he raced towards the platform. Shoving the book he had been reading off of the edge, Nathan sat down and attempted to meditate.
It took Nathan a little while to concentrate deeply enough to activate his soul perception because he kept having stray thoughts. Am I really going to get out of this hellhole? Although Nathan had only verbally admitted it recently, he had had the feeling that he wasn’t ever going to escape for months.
Focus. Nathan chided himself, letting out a final nervous breath before he opened his soul perception for the first time in four years.
In his soul perception Nathan saw his soul, Like a statue of himself made of a shimmering, colorless material. For a while, Nanthan just stared at his soul. Then he began inspecting it to see if anything had changed. There was nothing. Nothing except the healing soul wound had changed.
The spren! Maybe the spren has something to do with it? Nathan frowned, eyes still closed, his meditation broken. What do I know about spren?
Nathan thought back to the lessons he had taken more than seven years ago. There was that one teacher that actually taught us something about spren. What was it that she said?
Nathan's eyes shot open as he remembered. “The closer to the shape of the spren a spren cradle is, the more powerful the ability is! Maybe if I get my soul wound to be the exact shape of the spren, that is, a perfect sphere, I’ll ascend!”
It took Nathan even longer than before to open his soul perception this time. After about twenty minutes Nathan perceived his soul once more. He immediately focused his perception on the area inside of his soul wound.
While most of his soul was solid, the area around Nathan’s spren was filled with tiny empty pockets because it had been filled with soul splinters by Knowledge. As a result only two thirds of the surface area of the spren was touching his soul.
Tentatively, Nathan reached out with his soul manipulation and shifted one of the soul shards into a slightly different position from the one it had started in.
“Urgh!” Nathan grunted and lost his focus as a wave of searing pain washed through him. It was painful, but it had worked!
Let's get this started.
////
Nathan gazed through his soul perception at the area around his spren. All but one tiny patch of the spren was in contact with his soul. It had taken him days to get here, maybe even weeks, only stopping to occasionally crunch down on a sustenance pill.
Oh Sprenfather, please, please let this work. Nathan reached out with his soul manipulation, his body jittery with excitement. Nathan’s manipulation froze as he took a deep, calming breath.
“This will work.” Nathan muttered with conviction. He felt his soul manipulation settle around the last shard. Then he twisted. All of the breath was knocked out of him as a wave of pain washed over him again. Nathan waited for it to pass, but as soon as it did he felt another wave. This one was slightly worse than the first
The pain pulsing out from his chest grew greater and greater. Nathan collapsed on the marble floor, screaming, as the pain reached a blinding crescendo. Then, after what felt like an eternity, it vanished, replaced with a feeling of power. Nathan felt strong enough to rip a mountain out of the ground and enduring enough to have that same mountain dropped on him.
Alert
Congratulations: You have ascended!
Congratulations: All of your attributes have increased by one rank!
Strength has been upgraded one rank. Strength: Excellent >> Strength: Peak
Endurance has been upgraded one rank. Endurance: Excellent >> Endurance: Peak
Perception has been upgraded one rank. Perception: Great >> Perception: Excellent
Reflex has been upgraded one rank. Reflex: Excellent >> Reflex: Peak
Willpower has failed to upgrade. Willpower has reached maximum for your Existential Tier. Willpower: Peak >> Willpower: Peak
All of your attributes have been adjusted to your new existential tier!
Strength has been adjusted five ranks. Strength: Peak >> Strength: Mediocre
Endurance has been adjusted five ranks. Endurance: Peak >> Endurance: Mediocre
Perception has been adjusted five ranks. Perception: Excellent >> Perception: Poor
Reflex has been adjusted five ranks. Reflex: Excellent >> Reflex: Mediocre
Willpower has been adjusted two ranks. Willpower: Peak >> Willpower: Great
You will shortly begin expelling your body’s impurities.
“FUCH YEAH!” Nathan pumped his fist in the air once he had stood up from his prone position on the floor. “I did it. I fucking did it.”
Nathan coughed, a mock severe expression crossing his face. “There I sat. For ten days and ten nights. On the final night before the battle, when I had almost lost all hope of ascending, I reached deep within myself. Then I perfected it.”
“Huh. I guess that was a pretty accurate description, Even if it was very light on details.” Nathan smiled. “If I was the guy writing that book I would’ve said ‘inside my soul’ not ‘inside myself’. Maybe it was translated from a language that doesn’t have a word for-Ughhk!” Nathnan doubled over, as black gunk shot out of his mouth.
Nathan chuckled weakly from his position on the ground. That was some projectile vomit. Wonder what I ate that put that many impurities in my body? Oh right, the pills from Knowledge. He probably poisoned me. I wouldn't put it past him to do something like that. “Fugh you…” Nathan trailed off as his eyes slowly shut. He passed out.