Chapter 274
Liz stared into the blood in her cauldron, taking in everything she possibly could through sight, then studied it with ever-more esoteric senses. She needed to experience it as thoroughly as possible, all the better to properly understand her Phrase.
Blood is the Cauldron of Life.
In many ways, it had fallen into place after she’d properly gotten her Image. The visualization of blood being a carrier had been the ultimate breakthrough in that. Blood carried nutrients to all parts of the body, and even brought mana to the spirit if one thought of it in a certain way. And that was just the start. Blood carried power in sacrifices, it carried diseases, it carried bloodlines. It brought death to her enemies and life to her allies. More practically, her Image was everything which blood held dissolved within itself, but as it had materialized, she realized for her Domain to be properly complete, her Phrase needed to involve both her alchemy… and her heritage.
A wave of her hand instantly set her blood boiling. She had learned a lot about blood through her unstructured magic, and while her combat usage was still limited, she could fairly easily coax a bloodline to act. She could make her blood boil, Aster’s blood freeze, a Cloud Sheep’s blood dissolve into mist, and a Radiant Spider’s ichor glow. Luna’s blood was too valuable for her to experiment with while on the Path, but she expected a Void bloodline to instantly annihilate itself. Those experiments had been instrumental for the development of her Image and served her well, even now.
Fire was in her blood. Fire was her blood, and it was an aspect of power she couldn’t neglect, not for this. But it fit her perfectly. Somewhere, deep, deep down inside of her was still that little girl who saw fire with nothing but wonder, seeing the fire itself as a living thing and all the life it brought. How it shaped civilization, how it warmed homes and provided nourishing food.
For good measure, she flexed her Concept and summoned blood-flames under her cauldron. It glowed with power, and Liz began her work. Blood carried the ingredients she added in every possible manner, ensuring they’d mix in the right way at the right time, and her three clones passed her everything she needed precisely when she needed it.
Because while fire was life, and so too was blood, in truth neither was sufficient. As an alchemist, she knew that well enough. Nothing was simple, and while it wasn’t a traditional combination for homunculi, she’d done the work. Fire and Blood could indeed make alchemically-complete life.
Her cauldron bubbled, and she carried on undeterred.
Blood is the Cauldron of Life.
Blood.
She knew oh so much about that word. It was already an entire third of her Intent, and she knew everything it could do. Family, love, life, death, anger, sacrifice, pain, healing, protection, and more. It was her weapon and tool, her arms and armor. Her potions and power, the manifestation of her determination and of her inner fire and her entire life.
Blood was Elizabeth Moore. She was it, and it was her. There was no start to one and stop to the other.
That word was the foundation of everything else, and her foundations, after over a century of immersion with the element and decades of focused study, were completely and utterly solid.
Is.
Intermediary words could sometimes be ignored when truly developing a Phrase, but Liz was of the opinion that they still served an important role in properly taking ownership of the entire Domain. Particularly here and now, it was vital for her to establish the causal link between her blood and everything else. Is was just as important as Blood itself in that chain.
The.
The was both easy and difficult to properly nail down. She couldn’t make it perfectly rigid, because she knew there were other ways to make life and her Domain wouldn’t allow her understanding to contradict its truth. She got there in the end, though.
Cauldron.
Blood was not the only thing needed for life to form, but it was an utterly essential catalyst, a backdrop and channel for other forces to truly come together to make wonders. It was the foundation and conduit, yes, but it was also the environment. It was the right confluence of factors needed to bring a potion together to make wonders… or to bring forth a mighty warrior from the cauldron of war. The associations that cauldrons carried with fire only made it better, finally giving her bloodline a place to properly manifest. She had faint plans to one day change her bloodline to blood, but that drastic of a change was intense, and she didn’t want to completely abandon fire… a place in her Intent was a suitable legacy for it, at least.
Of.
Another transitionary word. As a whole, they were tricky to grasp, like blood pouring out from a clenched fist, but Liz had spent a lot of time perfecting her phrasing, and she refused to let it go.
Life.
At first, claiming the final word felt like seeing the top of the mountain, and all the accumulated stress and burdens of creating her Phrase seemed to double in weight. Smiling, Liz pushed. A final sprint to finish a race strong.
Being tired was no excuse to give up in the past, and it wouldn’t be one here.
Life.
Life was everything because the alternative was a return to nothingness. A return to the essence cycle. Death. And she rejected death. It could not claim her with her mother's heritage. Through that power, it would not claim her family.
Life was the only acceptable path because Liz refused to bow to death.
Life was only possible through blood. Liz was blood. Liz was life.
She’d timed it perfectly, her experiment resolving as her Phrase was beginning to spark. In front of her, her cauldron erupted into golden flames, washing over Liz and her clones and leaving them untouched. With her spiritual sense, she watched as the mana and essence involved coalesced with the final reaction, spiraling together and collapsing into the bottom of the enclosure.
The steam cleared, and Liz was able to see that her blood had lost all coloration, becoming perfectly clear and revealing a tiny, fish-like homunculus shaking imaginary dust off itself, then swimming up to explore its new world.
It didn’t have a spirit, being unawakened, but Liz felt her Intent crystallize perfectly around her spirit at the sight of the true life that she had created.
Blood is the Cauldron of Life.
The world shattered around her, unveiling a clarity to reality she’d never seen. It was like she’d lived her entire life behind smoked glass, or without color, but now she could see. Her body felt lighter and more substantial simultaneously, and a sense of exuberance permeated her very spirit as her Talent and Skills eagerly shivered with newfound potential.
She was about to send a message to Matt when she froze upon seeing Luna in cat form, watching her from a shelf. The woman hadn’t been there before, and Liz had to wonder if their manager was watching out for their safety. Once that thought crossed her mind, she had to wonder how long Luna had been watching her. She was tempted to ask, but the blank look Luna gave her screamed that she didn’t want to be disturbed. And Liz, even with her power increase, wasn’t able to quash the feeling that she shouldn’t cross her manager.
Suddenly, her parents' attitude to Luna made a lot more sense. Sure, the duo of idiots hammed it up, but they genuinely respected Luna and feared her. If they didn’t, her mother wouldn’t have acted like a heat lamp for more than five seconds before incinerating the person who suggested it.
Liz wasn’t sure she could strike out at her manager even if she was confident in winning. There was just too much history between them, and Luna’s cat eyes threatened a rough time if she ever tried.
Awkwardly half waving, half nodding at Luna, Liz hopped out of the cauldron to meet up with Matt and Aster, who were there to congratulate her.
She was just about to talk about Luna watching her when the manager entered with Kurt and April from their front door. The glare her now-human manager sent her way stopped Liz from speaking out, but she stuck her tongue out, wanting to rebel at least a little.
If Luna was watching them while they made their Intents, it made sense as to why she hadn’t mentioned it.
Still, Liz just couldn’t get over how she felt. A Tier 23 with an Intent. A little less impressive than Aster had been, but she was proud as a hen with a clutch of eggs and wanted to preen.
Decades of hard work had paid off, and she was ready to break through to Tier 25 and finish The Path at any time.
***
Matt twisted in the air as the Tier 27 monster slipped by him.
As fresh Tier 24s, they were pushing themselves to the limit to delve up so many Tiers.
Or rather, they were struggling because he wasn’t at their level yet.
Without his Phrase, Matt was a burden to his team.
If he had his Intent, he was sure they could have pushed into Tier 28 rifts by now.
But with his lack of Phrase, they were struggling.
Their current rift was an odd one with a breed of super massive cats. Standing close to ten feet tall at the shoulders, the cats dwarfed the three of them and had the speed and agility of their smaller counterparts. Matt couldn't help but wonder if Luna had chosen this rift for them just to see them get slapped around by another set of cats.
Probably not, but he couldn't help but feel that she was growing impatient with his lack of Intent. There were no signs of that, and she repeatedly cautioned him to relax and let things come to him naturally. But under the ever-growing pressure of his Intent and its clash with his Concept, he hadn’t even been able to sleep in the last five years.
When he was in combat, Matt felt closer to his Intent than at any other time, and that drove them forward. Tier 24 at 163 years old wasn’t a record, but it was close. Without downtime relegated to recharging mana or recovering from wounds, they were able to schedule a rift every month, which was a feat few others could claim. They rarely fully cleared a rift, often just going straight for the boss and then killing everything near the exit until it was time to go into the next rift. But that just allowed them to delve faster, and therefore progress faster. It cost an arm and a leg to buy out so many rift slots, but that was fine. With their current power, they didn’t need any money, and were simply trying to reach the peak of Tier 24 so they could complete The Path.
Or, Liz and Aster were. If Matt couldn't figure out his Phrase in the next forty years, he would screw Liz and Aster over.
What made it all the more frustrating was that he felt like he was close to his Phrase and just needed that little push.
It was why they were pushing at such a frantic pace.
Brandishing his new sword, Matt simply threw himself at the cat in front of them. He still missed the heft of his growth sword, but they hadn’t managed to upgrade most of their growth items to even Tier 25, let alone Tier 27. And at this point, he just needed the stronger metal that came with Tier over his fancy enchantments.
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He caught a claw covered in mana on his blade before slipping under the paw as he lowered his weapon and let the claw slide off.
He set himself and drove his blade forward, but the cat was already leaping back, slashing out a dozen times in rapid succession. Matt cast [Bulwark] to take the initial hits of the [Reaving Claws]-[Fulminous Rend] combo, but they only lost half their power. The swipes cut through the shield and he growled as the mana sliced through [Cracked Phantom Armor] and his physical armor. The wounds weren’t bad, but Matt could feel the blood running down his shoulders from the already closing wounds.
While he hadn’t been able to upgrade [Regeneration], the Tier 26 skill was incredibly effective at healing wounds. The cat must have thought that he was seriously injured, as it darted back in to try and finish him off. Matt kept his arms down low to feed into that belief, but the moment the maw of the cat opened, he lifted his blade and drove it up and into the roof of the cat's mouth.
Even as he felt the rush of essence flood into him, he spat on the cat's muzzle. The damn thing had driven one of its canine teeth through his bicep.
Ripping his arm free, he didn’t care for the torn flesh and let [Regeneration] quickly stitch the wound closed. If only the spell could work on the mental strain he was feeling. Luna hadn’t been exaggerating when she said forming a polar opposite Domain was incredibly difficult. That wouldn’t have changed his mind about it, but he would have waited to start forming the Intent until he had all the pieces.
Clenching his fist before letting go, Matt mentally smacked himself.
There was no way he would have waited to form his Image or claim his Anchor, even if he knew the pain he would put himself through by doing so early.
It just wasn’t in his nature.
There was a tremor in his spirit as he felt like he had come close to a realization, and for a moment, it felt like his Concept and Intent were able to exist without fighting, but when it faded, the pain came back a dozen times over, and he wanted to scream.
Instead, he punched the monster's head in front of him, letting spikes grow on [Cracked Phantom Armor]. The head caving in only made him wish he could do the same to himself without actually dying.
A Liz clone walked over to him, and he forced out a smile.
“Are you o—”
Matt interrupted her with a raised hand. It was rude and curt, but he really didn’t want to talk at the moment.
“I’m fine. Really. Let's move on to the boss.”
He hugged Liz to show he wasn’t mad at her, but he needed to fight. Energy filled him, and he needed to let it out. It was not an uncommon occurrence in the last few decades since reaching Tier 23, but it had only grown stronger as a Tier 24, and it felt like his blood was filled with Tier 50 caffeine, which only contributed to the problem.
Liz thankfully understood, and after rubbing his shoulder, they took off in the air and flew to meet up with the other two clones of Liz, the real Liz, and Aster.
Liz nodded to them as they caught back up. “We scouted the boss. W—” Matt mentally grit his teeth as Liz paused and looked at him. “Are you ok? You said you needed to fight alone, but you are covered in blood.”
Matt cursed and cast [Cleanse] on himself to purge the blood that stained his clothes. He shouldn't have made such an amateur mistake. His wife was a blood mage, and after forming her Intent, could feel any fresh blood from miles away.
“I’m fine.” Knowing that wasn’t enough, as both Liz and Aster opened their mouths, Matt continued. “I feel like I just need to poke my finger through a barrier and I can figure it out.”
Liz opened her mouth, but Aster put a hand on her shoulder, and Matt sent her a mental hug.
The silence was awkward as they went into the fight, but Matt pushed through that feeling.
He needed to fight.
He needed to push through.
He couldn't stop.
He was Endless, after all.
He had already tried to repeat his Concept’s Phrase as his Intent's Phrase, but it hadn’t worked. That said, it was at least tangentially related.
He felt like he was just a step away, and in a way, he was. He knew that his Phrase was going to keep the same phrasing of ‘I Am…’ As for what that final word was, he hadn’t been able to figure it out despite trying a dozen things.
Actualizing those two words had been risky, but he hadn’t mentioned that to anyone but Luna. She had told him it would only make the pain worse, but Matt trusted his gut.
He needed to be like a black hole and grind himself and the enemies away under unending pressure.
To finish his Intent, he needed to push forward.
The boss was close to fifteen feet tall, and Matt didn’t hesitate to throw himself at it.
Armor flared and sword gleamed as he parried one claw and cut down hard at its wrist, but his blow barely did more than surface damage as it bounced off the bone.
Liz and two of her clones moved in and stabbed out at the monster, but Matt didn’t move in sync with them. Instead, he threw himself forward and let out a burst of [Cracked Mana Spear]. That caught the monster's attention, and Matt stood there, ready to block as the boss spun to hit him, his Intent feeling strong as he locked down the space and his position in it.
His hubris sent him flying into a nearby mountain, and as he climbed out of the rubble, he had to wonder if he was biting off too much, and if he needed to drop everything and only start forming his Intent when he figured out his Phrase.
But the mere idea of giving in like that screamed at him.
That was unacceptable.
As Matt stood there, he watched as Liz, the real Liz, was about to take a swipe on her shield, and he hated his inability to stand up to a simple monster.
That was a failure.
But as Luna was fond of drilling into him, failure only occurred when one gave up. And he refused to give up.
He was dauntless.
Activating the rings that had bound his and Liz’s destinies together, he swapped places with her.
Round two with the paw would not go the same way.
He smirked as he saw the paw approach.
It didn’t take more than a fraction of a fraction of a second as Matt said his Phrase for the first time, and his entire Intent fell into place.
I.
Himself. He was the center of his own abilities.
Am.
Liz and Aster thought of words like that as intermediary words, which was the common belief, but he didn’t agree. There was no such thing as an intermediary part of one's Phrase. It was all connected. His Phrase wasn’t a collection of words, but an idea given form. Even if the language changed, it wouldn’t change his Phrase’s meaning. He was sure there was a language that could encompass even the most complicated paragraphs in a single word or syllable, but there was a reason no one used anything but the language they thought in. It wasn’t necessary.
Dauntless.
By definition, it was simple. Showing fearlessness and determination. But to Matt, Dauntless was so much more. It was his relentless determination to push forward. To accept the pressure no matter what. His determination to help the realm no matter what while still remaining a free man. It was his willingness to intercept a hit for his team, knowing he could take it. It was his rage at his parents death. It was his gratefulness that he grew up under the Emperor’s aegis and could remain uncaged. It was his desire to not hide away forever. It was his power. He wasn’t the strongest. He wasn’t the fastest. He wasn’t the smartest. But where others would give up through execution or lack of mana, Matt wouldn’t.
He was Endless.
He was Dauntless.
As the paw slammed into his upraised left hand, Matt blinked at it.
He was frozen in place.
The rift itself could crumble around him, but he would never move unless he allowed it.
He was a fixture of the realm itself, and no oversized cat could change that.
His Willpower burned, and his armor turned black. More than black, even, as he couldn’t properly see what it looked like. Instead, it absorbed attempts to divine how much mana was involved, only giving off turbulence in the space around it. He was clothed in an event horizon, and his concentration had increased to match.
His Anchor manifested at the same time, hovering just in front of his heart. The Heart of the Black Hole, the singularity which served as the connection point between his Domain and reality, his white hole and his black hole. It responded effortlessly to his thoughts, and swung to meet his longsword in his hand. As it did so, his sword too turned completely black, but limned in mana reminiscent of a black hole’s gravitational refraction.
Strength flooded his limbs as his self-buffs experienced the same wave of power, and he unlocked his position in the Realm to bring down a potent blow upon the monster’s head. The strike cleaved it practically in half, and the simple shockwave it generated carried on, crashing into the mountain behind it and triggering a landslide from where the earth wasn’t sliced through.
With the boss dead, Matt took the opportunity to look into his cultivation cores. One was bright and vibrant, while the other looked lifeless, but he delved deeper.
Entering, he paused as he only saw his black hole sitting there where his Concept usually sat.
He frowned. That was… annoying. About a third of the time when Domain portions stood in opposition to one another, it was only possible to actively use one at a time. Theoretically, that limitation could be overcome in time, but people didn’t always manage it. Matt was reasonably certain he’d get there eventually, and just to test his new limitations he dropped the active use of his Intent.
The black hole was instantly replaced with a naked singularity, his Heart of the Black Hole that was his Anchor. A bit of pushing with his Willpower showed that from that mode, he could either compress the Heart and activate his Intent, or expand it and utilize his Concept, with the full breadth of powers he’d developed with that. But he couldn’t figure out how to activate both simultaneously.
He did get a blast of dust to the face in his experimentation, as trying to utilize his Concept’s repulsion while his Domain was in black hole mode resulted in things being pulled towards him instead. That certainly had potential.
Ah well. He’d figure it out eventually, and it wasn’t like he was worse off. After all, he was in far too good a mood to be dour.
He had his Intent.
Who cared about the small details?
He sure didn’t.
Matt started laughing and turned to Liz and Aster, who, despite being dust-covered, were smiling.
The group hug was a little crowded with the three extra Lizes, but Matt flared his Intent a little to pull everyone into a tighter hug.
Aster laughed, but the Liz’s pulled him into a long, drawn-out kiss one by one.
“So what was the final Phrase?” One of the Liz’s asked while waiting for her own kiss.
Matt, finally free of the blinding headache he had been dealing with for the last few years, laughed. “I Am Dauntless. I am both unending and unstoppable. Really, I impress myself. I—”
Liz poked him hard in the ribs, him having dropped [Cracked Phantom Armor] to kiss her. “Ok mister ego.”
Aster smiled even as she pulled herself free. “We are fucking awesome. It looked so cool as your mana turned black. Did it increase your mana concentration? It seemed to. It was also kinda hard to see. Like my eyes slipped off the mana.”
Matt hadn’t realized that and triggered his concentration effect while activating [Cracked Phantom Armor]. He found nothing wrong, but it was also his power. Liz confirmed that she had trouble actually sensing the mana involved, and had to rely on the turbulence around it to estimate how much mana he was putting into it. Still, spiritual sense wasn’t that hard to block, all things considered, and if his mana had a side effect of being a little sneaky, he needed to learn just what its limits were.
To that end, he had Liz and Aster try to kill him.
A bit of very basic testing determined that basic testing was completely inadequate. His magic was substantially stronger, but the degree to which they’d been strengthened varied wildly, but mostly focused on his spells that were targeted at himself. They also couldn’t tell if his mana actually concentrated, or just enhanced its effects with his willpower, but it didn’t really matter.
[Cracked Phantom Armor] stopped massive attacks in their tracks, [Mage’s Retreat] let him punch through a Tier 27’s body in a single blow, and his Tier 24 sword reinforced with [Sword Twin] sliced through Tier 27 metal like butter.
He couldn’t use it on ranged attacks, not really, as the effect only extended to about an arms-length past him, but the black lightning that [Lightning Torrent] now spawned was almost worth it on its own, as it was unstoppable by any of the Tier 27 monsters.
The only issue they ran into with their testing was how his now much more concentrated mana interacted with items. He almost burnt out the mana conduits in his flying sword when he did more than send a little mana into it.
He couldn’t even make a talisman out of the mana, as it immediately burned through the parchment he had on hand, but he knew it would make for potent single-use attacks when he got better materials.
Even his [AI] ran better with the empowered mana, it had processing power to rival planetary AI.
He had finally done it.
He had an Intent.
He could finish the Path of Ascension with Aster and Liz.
He wanted to test more, but he was already feeling the strain of Willpower overuse. Minkalla didn’t affect Intents, and his Intent seemed as greedy as a real black hole. If he ever completely bottomed out, it could take actual years before he was back to full power, and he couldn’t afford that.
Wanting to make a statement, Matt exited the rift with enough Willpower to use his Intent for a few moments, as he wanted to surprise Luna, but almost tripped over her in cat form as they stepped out of the rift.
Looking down at her, he was going to say something, but Luna walked through the door of the secure room and nodded. “You got your Intent. Well done.”
Matt shook himself free of his confusion about Luna sitting so close to a rift and nodded.
Flaring his Intent, he showed her his black mana and smiled. “It's everything we wanted and more.”
He could even feel his mana ever so slightly condensing itself. Checking with his [AI], he could see his maximum mana ever so slowly decrease, a tiny fraction of a point of mana at a time, using up a bare trickle of his newly energized will to improve his mana. For anyone else, that would be a bad thing, but he would be able to re-expand his mana pool before he Tiered up.
It was perfect.
Luna smiled as she nodded. “Good. Now let us start working on Intent training.” With a decidedly wicked grin, she added, “Let’s hope you didn’t spend too much time playing around. There’s a lot of ground for us to cover.” With a wave of her hand, they were back at her house and in the training room.
Matt wanted to protest and go take a nap for the first time in decades, but knew that wasn’t possible.
There was always another hurdle to overcome, and this was no different.
With that thought bolstered by his Intent, Matt got ready to train.
He was Endless.
He was Dauntless.
***
Emmanuel was in the middle of a meeting with his generals and Rusty when he got a high-priority alert from Luna.
Even with his power and experience, he couldn't help but smile, the expression seeming to take on a life of its own.
Rusty raised an eyebrow, but Emmanuel just nodded to the projection that told of Light and Shadow’s recent battles.
Understanding flashed across Rusty’s face and his smile almost outshone Emmanuel’s own.
Millennia of work and effort from his Father and Grandmother was paying off in spades just when they needed it most.
Turning back to projections of the war and his borders that were being pushed in almost everywhere, Emmanuel knew the turning point was approaching.
They just needed to not overplay their hand.