MAGUS INFINITE

The words burned themselves into my consciousness, and I felt the world shift beneath me. I blinked my eyes, but this did not push away the words flashing across my vision.

I could see that the arm of the Pale Matron was struggling to escape, but it was being pulled into the structure, the celestial stone flowing over it like water, sealing it, while she screamed in what I thought was pure fear.

There was no way for me to mistake this sound, as I had heard it many times from both my enemies and my friends. Something had changed, and I could not even think about it because the damned status screen wanted to push its way through my eyeballs and into my brain, and I could barely understand what Archangel, Status, or what it meant to bind with the Caelith.

”What is happening?” I whispered.

The pyramid was the one that answered me, as a pulse of energy, vast and ancient, rippled through the structure, and I felt it connect to me, a thread of will that was not my own... it was the Caelith.

This Celestial structure was alive, in a way I had not understood before, and the three notifications burning their way into my skull were only the door. What came through it put me on the ground... literally.

My knees drove craters into the burned soil, as a vast and seemingly disjointed wave of information filled my soul. This was knowledge, raw, unfiltered and endless, flooding down into my soul without any care.

And across my vision, faster than I could read them, the notifications came.

∞

[ Cor Telluris — Channels: 10,008 / 10,008 — LIMIT EXCEEDED ]

[ Foundation integrity: recalculating... ]

[ Stone Shell → Stone Origin Shell — Evolution Complete ]

[ Soul-Vessel reclassified: MORTAL → CELESTIAL-ORIGIN ]

They scrolled up my vision like a ledger being balanced by something that did not care whether I could keep up. I caught what I could. Like the information about my channels, and the fact that the evolution that had taken so long had led to these unexpected changes.

That was all I could gather as the flood of information kept going, and it got worse because it was becoming larger, and out of ten thousand streams of text flashing past my vision, I could barely grab a few of them.

[ Verifying Celestial rank... ]

[ Candidate: Elric Voss ]

[ Rank assessment: ARCHANGEL ]

[ Cross-referencing planetary Celestial authority... ]

[ Authority: Jade Oracle — STATUS: DECEASED ]

[ Authority: — none found — ]

[ Re-scanning... ]

[ Authority: — none found — ]

[ Highest extant Celestial (planetary): Elric Voss — ARCHANGEL ]

Okay, I think I was beginning tounderstand a bit of what was going on here, primarily because I was being fed more information, and even if I was grabbing a few, the entire picture was opening up before me, and what I had just realized was that I had been given something that I had not decided to collect, and I did not have any choice to refuse.

∞

The energy from the Caelith that had linked to my soul suddenly multiplied, as if the initial link was to fully confirm if I was the right candidate, and now it began to bestow its authority.

I had burned my feet badly as a child when I stepped on a branding iron; only the ability of a mage, where we healed without scars, ensured that I had no scars on me, and that same feeling was what I was feeling now as the Caelith seemed to be branding itself to my soul.

It hurt, but it was something that I had come to expect, and it was not as if I had the power or the desire to stop this from happening.

[ Applying designation... ]

[ ARCHANGEL — #Error# ]

[ Promotion requires: Whole Celestial State ]

[ Current state: BROKEN CELESTIAL (Earth Gates: 5/7) ]

[ Promotion HALTED ]

[ Provisional designation branded: ARCHANGEL (Broken) ]

The brand seared itself across the top of my status and stayed... ARCHANGEL, and beside it that word that follows me everywhere, Broken Celestial.

Damn... I was no longer human, or a Magus; if what I was seeing was correct, the end path of Cor Telluris that the Hollow Avatar took me, when paired with the Earth Gates, had made me... an Archangel?

∞

Still, there was no time to think, as my status was constantly flashing, updating so fast with countless words, and I settled my mind and attempted to grab as much as I could, because I had no one to go to for answers.

[ Class 6 Celestial Structure — ”Caelith Fragment (243^235)” — located ]

[ Structural integrity: 4% → recovering... ]

[ Prisoner (partial): Khazarahn, the Pale Matron — Class 6 — containment: RE-ESTABLISHING ]

[ Unauthorized Celestial action detected — logging... ]

[ Unauthorized Celestial action detected — logging... ]

[ Unauthorized Celestial action detected — logging... ]

[ Demon Slayer (Title) — held by non-authorized entity — flagged ]

[ Ascendant Earth Gate progression — held by non-authorized entity — flagged ]

[ Soul-Forge — held by non-authorized entity — flagged ]

[ Hollow Avatar — held by non-authorized entity — flagged ]

[ Lightning Incarnate — held by non-authorized entity — flagged ]

[ Mortal Shell — held by non-authorized entity — flagged ]

[ Cross-referencing all Celestial-tier assets against authorization registry... ]

[ Result: NO AUTHORIZATION ON RECORD ]

[ Entity status: BREACH ]

[ Recommended action: BIND ]

I frowned when I noted that one after another, every Celestial skill I had bled a hundred deaths to forge was flagged, and it was a bitter pill to swallow that not one of my powers was permitted.

I had built myself, piece by piece, entirely out of things I had no right to hold, and the heavens were only now finishing the inventory, and the inventory ended in a single word... BIND.

Did it mean that even after I was found unauthorised, my status as an Archangel, even though it was broken, meant I still had authority to bind the Caelith?

The thread of energy or essence that connected me to the Caelith tightened, and I felt the structure begin to pull something deep inside of me that went beyond my Anima Depth. This process was both familiar and strange, as it had happened to me three times, and this would make it the fourth.

My soul was being woven into the pyramid’s architecture, the same way the Hollow Avatar, the Lightning Shards, and the Moon Fox had been woven into my soul. The Caelith was binding me to itself, making me a part of its and its existence.

[Binding in progress...]

[Authority transfer: Caelith Fragment (243^235) → Elric Voss]

[Operational parameters: Warden status — PROVISIONAL]

[Containment: Class 6 Entity (Partial) — STABILIZING]