In the midst of this madness, I felt torn between two different worlds.

The first was the world of mages, which held everything I had come to know, love, and hate. Scholar Orath, the Conclave of Ysmar, and all the Academy politics that I was slowly discovering.

And then there was this other world, of demons, Achons, and Celestials... a world so unknown and yet so massive, I did not think I had any reason to know of this world because it was just too big.

It was like looking at the stars at night; they were beautiful, but they were too far away to ever matter.

No matter how you yearned for them, there was a gap that could not be crossed, and somehow, I had found myself in this world, and the mental dissonance was tearing at the edge of my sanity.

The only choice we will ever have in this life, son, is if we choose to stand.

I had once asked my father what I would do if everything became too much, and I think he gave me the only advice that really mattered.

Everything was too big for me; I could either bury my head or I could stand. My actions may not matter at the end of the day, but I will not run from them.

With my mind a bit clear, I glanced at the last of the three Broken-Celestial skills that I just acquired.

[New Skill Acquired]

[Lightning Incarnate 0 → 1 (Initiate) — Broken-Celestial]

[Acquired by: complete transition of the practitioner’s body into lightning-state through controlled discharge release]

[Effects:]

— Permits the body to become lightning for a duration scaled to rank and body tolerance

— Current capacity: approximately five seconds per deployment

— Current limit: one deployment per twenty-four hours, due to channel-burn recovery

[Note:] Currently operating in Broken-Celestial mode pending Celestial Origin unlock.

Damn, I can become lightning.

This was an initiate rank 1 skill, and I could already become lightning for five seconds. What would I become if I push this skill to Adept tier, plus all my new spells, from Lightning Dominion to Lightning Cascade?

What was I becoming?

I was now carrying five Broken-Celestial skills. Mortal Shell, Hollow Avatar, Abyssal Direction, Soul-Forge, and Lightning Incarnate.

The magus tradition would not recognise any of them. The Academy had no instructors who could teach them.

Somehow, it felt as if these skills were not meant for me, as if I was taking something that was never mine to receive, and I could not shake this feeling.

I had to tell myself that whatever I had was what I had paid for, in sweat, blood, and deaths.

And if I was not mistaken, I was about to go through one of my greatest sacrifices I had made for power.

The Anima Depth entry was next.

[Anima Depth: 59 (Acolyte) — Reservoir Damage: 55%]

[Effective Operating Capacity: 33 / 59]

[Status: Reservoir cracks have widened from the prior loop. Self-repair capacity exhausted. Reforged Shell Core provides partial supplementation. Without supplementation, effective capacity would be 27 / 60.]

[Note: Conditions met for Adept Tier Anima Depth, Reservoir too damaged for transformation.]

As ridiculous as it sounds, I had enough skills and spells at the Adept Tier that I should have been able to become an Adept at this time, but my soul had become too damaged.

Did I regret the actions I did in the last loop? No, I did not; I gained three powerful skills that exceeded anything I would have gained as an Adept.

I had to be more careful and give myself time to heal, but I was not regretting the things I did.

My Anima Depth was far more injured than I thought it should be, and I figured that maybe the welded state of my soul and the new glowing Anima that was filling up a third of it was the cause.

As I suspected, the new Anima I gained was replacing my old one, and my core could not hold it.

My situation would have been worse, but the changes the hollow state made to my body were already bearing fruit.

The core in my heart was supplementing my Anima Storage; somehow, a mere channel was acting as a core.

What would it mean for me if the entirety of my channels shared this same feature, and if the memories of the hollow state were right, and there was no reason to doubt it, my channels would be more effective for storing Anima.

I did not want to think about what that would mean for me.

The Reforged Shell core was now the most important task I should pursue, and I agree wholeheartedly with my hollow state. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

The construction of this core was no longer a strategy. It was survival.

If my Anima Depth were destroyed, I would no longer be a mage, and my survival would be pure torture because without the soul, I would not live for more than a few minutes before I perish.

With the nature of the loop, I would return only to die, again and again, an endless loop of death without any hope for relief or growth.

This was a fate I would not wish on my greatest enemy.

Beneath the Anima Depth entry, a new section appeared.

[Reforged Shell — Cor Telluris]

[Status: Initiated]

[Geometry: Ancient Shell]

[Channels Grown: 1/10,008]

[Current Anima Depth Supplementation: +6 effective capacity]

My mind grabbed onto the name of the shell, Cor Telluris. It was a strange name, and still, it sounded strong and dependable.

Then I looked at the section for channels grown, and I went mute with shock.

As it turned out, I did not just have hundreds of channels in my body, I had ten thousand of them.

We were taught about Primary and Secondary channels in the Academy.

As Acolytes, we had seven Primary Channels for the majority of us, with Fe special cases having eight, and the maximum primary channels were nine.

At the Adept Tier, these Primary Channels doubled to fourteen; at the Arcanist Stage, the channels doubled again to twenty-eight. I don’t know anything about the Sovereign Tier, but I could surmise that the Primary Channels may double or even quadruple... these were mages closer to gods after all.

However, the secondary channels were all related to resonance and the discipline we pursued for the rest of our lives, and from all the academic texts, the number of secondary channels in our bodies was 720.

This was a rigorous study done over the ten thousand years of Magus Civilization, and of these 720 secondary channels, only Sovereigns could use them all.

My lightning Resonance barely used fifty of my secondary channels, and I never really thought about the hundreds of channels left inside me.

By all the light in heaven, we were all so wrong. Our bodies were filled with so much potential.

My heart chose the time to beat at this moment, and it was louder than normal, and anyone a few feet near me would have heard it.

Lubdubdub

[Channels Grown: 6/10,008]

[Current Anima Depth Supplementation: +7 effective capacity]