MAGUS INFINITE

The orb went into me, and I braced for any unexpected changes, anticipating pain, but there was no pain; instead, a feeling of relaxation filled my body, as if my entire soul was being massaged. Even my vision became clearer, and I could see more of this place.

Then the beach of bones let go of me, and I came up through my own soul faster than I had gone down, past the shore and the field and the forest where the howl of a gigantic Moon Fox followed me and my eyes blinked open over open water.

My body had returned to six feet, and my right arm was still red hot; it may seem that I spent a long time inside my soul, but from all indicators, barely ten seconds had passed.

The ocean below was boiling with the massive remnants of the dragon that was sinking to its depths, and I looked at the distance where war still raged. I did not hurry towards the war; instead, I thought about what the demon had said in its final moments, and the massive machine in my soul that resembled a heart made of cogs and gears.

I laughed self-deprecatingly when I thought about the metrics that I used in assessing my own situation. This loop, this insane ability for me to return to a fixed point over and over again, was a great mystery, one that I thought I understood when the shadow of the Sovereign of the Stars came to me and said I was a world’s last argument.

At that moment, I had believed that this loop must be a power given to me by this world, to stop the madness of the Conclave from ending it... But what did I know? Even this damned world was not even complete; half of it was just... gone, and I wondered if I turned my back on this battle and kept going, whether I would be able to reach the edge of the world.

In these moments, the war between the Sovereigns felt laughable, because I know more than any of them it seems that this game was bigger than any of their petty conflicts, and we should be working together against the Sovereign of the Stars.

I closed my eyes and looked inside my soul, hoping that I would be able to find the memories of the Soul Flayer, but I could not find anything. Whatever it gave me seemed to have made my soul stronger in a manner, but I did not have its memories.

It had said that I held a Pivot inside my soul, shortly before it died, and not even a Maker could hold a Pivot.

I do not know what a Pivot is. I do not know what a Maker is either, and that is the part that made my teeth itch, because it is not a new word to me.

”You have the body of a Nascent Archon, you fight like a Maker, when you should fight like a Daemon.”

A demon said that to me while I battled the horde, a hundred loops ago, before I knew what a gate was. I did not understand a syllable of it, and I had just placed that memory aside, and now it had returned.

Sometimes it seemed that I was straddling two worlds that seemed disconnected from one another, and yet, both were affecting my life and the world around me in ways that I could not entirely understand.

You know I was getting tired of these mysteries, but I also knew that I was nearing the threshold of Sovereignty, and that was why I had the capability to even think about things like this, before now, I was purely in survival mode... nearly anything could kill me, but the tide was slowly shifting, and everything was depending on the fact that I was getting stronger.

I did not know who attacked me, but I figured that they did not expect that I could survive it. Anything that could shatter my Adamantium defense without any indicator could not be joked with.

Except I switched to Death Consort, I no longer had any way to escape from death if I was attacked in that manner a second time... hmm, but was that the truth?

I called up a small part of my Status Screen; there were many notifications, but I usually kept them silent in order not to be distracted and because I never lived long anyway, but I was thinking it was time I changed this.

[ Adamantium Titan 122 ➡ 130 (Sovereign)]

Immediately, I felt my body beginning to heat up for a moment, and I nearly gasped aloud in both pain and pleasure before it subsided as this new strength was added to me. I had gained nearly eight levels from being disintegrated, and it almost made me want to go back for seconds.

It had been a while since I last felt this new strength pouring into my body. Usually when I die and was reborn, these changes happened in the interval between death and rebirth, and even when I read through my status screen, I was just being informed of these changes... now I could feel all of it happening in real time.

If I did not change this process before, then I may freeze in the middle of a battle when I receive new strengths, and I may not survive that mistake, and the strength being added to me at that point may not make any difference at that moment.

Now, my survivability was different from before, and every growth I had in my stats carried a lot of weight. It was a good tradeoff to receive such an intense boost in strength even if it came with discomfort.

I wondered if I would be able to survive a blow like the one that just killed me, and now that I was durable enough to survive what this world was throwing at me, I could change the way I chose to receive notifications from my status screen.

With this thought in mind I made a mental change in my status screen, and a flood of notification poured past my eyes, just as surging strength began to fill me as the growth I had experienced in this loop began to manifest itself.

Lightning Edict: 99 → 103 (Legendary)

Loom of Lightning: 102 → 117 (Legendary) — Broken-Celestial

Lightning Tribunal: 100 → 106 (Legendary) — Broken-Celestial

Heaven’s Verdict: 89 → 95 (Epic →Legendary) — Broken-Celestial

Stormstep: 87 → 93 (Legendary) — Broken-Celestial

New weight was added to my soul, and I felt it stretch and accept these new changes inside me.

I no longer had any spells in the Adept Tier any longer, they had all crossed into the Arcanist level, and if I kept pushing forward like I was doing, it would not be too hard for me to reach the peak of the Arcanist Tier with all these spells, but the changes did not stop here.

Lightning Resonance: 120 →125(Sovereign) — Epic → Legendary

Force Resonance: 94 → 96 (Arcanist) — Epic

Darkness Resonance: 74 → 89 (Adept) — Rare

Death Resonance: 56 → 60 (Adept) — Unique

Fire Resonance: 61 → 63 (Acolyte → Adept) — Rare

Water Resonance: 27 (Initiate)

Earth Resonance: 49 (Acolyte)

Air Resonance: 40 (Acolyte)

Space Resonance: 9 → 10 (Initiate) — Epic

Staff Resonance: 70 (Adept) — Rare

While Adamantium Titan may have given me new foundations, the Resonances that rippled through my body made me feel as if I was being reforged in fire.