Chapter 505 Lightning Form (Bonus GT)

The third time, I refined the foundation of the two crystallisations of his soul, because I had discovered that they were central to the knot tying his previous framework together.

Every layer of that core had been laid down in the middle of something trying to kill him, and something like that usually leaves a permanent mark. A record of pain, dying and death... he would still have all those memories, but the markers they left behind would not remain in his soul.

I dissolved it with Celestial essence and allowed the soul to form again.

[ Third Refinement: Complete ]

[ Soul Purity: 85% → 91% ]

[ Stability: Stable ]

Not good enough.

The fourth refinement produced geometry I have only ever seen in specification. The crystallisation front ran ahead of the anima feeding it, which is not supposed to be possible at this depth, and the soul began to organise itself in a direction I had not instructed.

At this moment the earth rumbled, and I knew that the Pale Matron was fighting against her sealing. Oddly, I felt something turning inside the core of Elric’s soul, but I could not track it, so I filed the oddity and continued.

[ Fourth Refinement: Complete ]

[ Soul Purity: 91% → 95% ]

The fifth cost more Celestial essence than the first four together. The soul could now hold that essence comfortably, and this was still not perfection.

[ Fifth Refinement: Complete ]

[ Soul Purity: 95% → 97% ]

The sixth is the one worth recording. I shattered the soul into pieces so small they were barely recognisable. I scattered them across the channels, and then I rebuilt them the way they should have been.

I took each fragment and I examined it. I found the imperfections, the traces of mortality, weaknesses, flaws, and I removed them. If Elric were awake he might have stopped me. His memories are buried in the darkness of the Hollow, which is to say they are buried in me, which is to say I have read them. He requires perfection, and that was what I needed to give him.

It needed to be something that could withstand the Seventh Earth Gate and the transformation that would follow.

I have accessed the records of the Bearer of the Demon Slayer Title, and the amount of Celestial essence they gained from each gate they opened was pitiful compared to Elric.

Perhaps it was because his foundations were too robust, or perhaps the Earth Gates were sealed away for too long and this led to an over-accumulation of power, but I suspected that the seventh Earth Gate would lead to a transformation beyond anything that had ever been seen before.

[ Sixth Refinement: Complete ]

[ Soul Purity: 97% → 99% ]

The seventh pass was spent entirely on the last point.

[ Seventh Refinement: Complete ]

[ Soul Purity: 99% → 100% ]

[ Integrity: Absolute ]

[ Anima Depth: 119 (Arcanist) ]

∞

The soul could now hold Celestial essence inside itself. There was a massive amount of it left, and it sat in the centre of the soul, and there was no risk any longer that it would vanish.

In fact there was no longer any barrier for Elric if he wanted to become a Sovereign. His soul was perfect enough to make that crossing. But the child sought perfection as a mage, and I should not break that path for him, so I left it untouched. This path would be for him to walk.

However, I was not yet done. The System may deem this soul to have reached absolute purity, but it still had a boundary.

A soul is a volume with edges. Those edges are where it stops being him and starts being everything else, and in every mortal they are made of the same material as the soul itself, which means they are the softest part of the strongest thing he owns... It is why souls can be bound.

There was a secret to the power of Achons, as their souls have no known boundary. Elric needs perfection, and the heavens are not present, and there is no one to stop me from making these changes, so I decided to go for the real perfection.

I took five Unattuned Law Fragments and began to weave them into his soul. A fragment is pure potential, and this was the best tool for the job.

I wrote one into the face where his soul meets his flesh. One where it meets the Anima. One where it meets the world. One where it meets death, which in his case is wider than it is in anyone else’s... Elric’s closeness with Death is concerning.

The fifth face is where the soul meets the engine, and I do not go there. I set the fragment at the limit of my permitted approach and let it close the boundary from the outside. It will hold, although slightly less well than the other four, and that asymmetry is now a permanent feature of his soul.

However, this asymmetry is uniquely Elric’s. If he ever faces a being who understands the true perfection of the soul, his soul will not be easily unravelled, because it is unique.

[ Soul State: Crystallised — Third Stage ]

[ Note: Third Stage crystallisation is not available to mortal practitioners. No entry exists describing how it is reached. ]

[ Boundary: Lawbound — 5/5 ]

[ Unattuned Law Fragments: 13 → 8 ]

∞

I had a perfect soul, and I could feel it straining to touch the world and change everything around it, and I held it back. Perfection requires perfect tools, and I still had Celestial essence and law fragments to work with.

I began with lightning, selecting Lightning Incarnate and Stormstep.

Through his memories I have watched him use them in all manner of ways, and there was a hitch in their operation. A seam between his mental command and their activation, measurable in the hundredths of a second.

In a duel against anything slower than him the seam is invisible. Against the demon currently pressing on the underside of my containment, the seam is where he dies.

They are also very similar, and such redundancy is a waste. His soul could hold both of them comfortably, and there was no reason for him to keep them apart.

One fragment was the glue I needed, and I began to unravel both abilities and merge them as one.

[ Lightning Incarnate (109) + Stormstep (99) — merging. ]

[ ... ]

[ Lightning Form: 109 (Arcanist) — Broken Celestial, Mythic ]

[ Unattuned Law Fragments: 8 → 7 ]

I could feel the changes within this new ability. With it, Elric has become continuous. There is no longer a moment in which Elric Voss is a man who intends to be lightning. Within his domain, intention and arrival are one event, and the distance between where he is and where he wants to be has stopped being a quantity.

I ran it. The body vanished and reappeared four hundred and eighty metres away at the edge of the Stillness before the space he had occupied registered that it had been vacated. There was no activation.

However, the space Elric had crossed through began to bleed. The bleed ran, and set, and what it set into was an image, badly stretched across a frame that did not fit it, showing nine figures and a tenth that was not a figure, standing among weapons that belonged to a god. The tenth was made of lightning, and it had no face, as though whoever had painted it had never seen a man at all.

I discarded it. The merger leaves residue, and this residue is not mine to read.

What was worthy of note was that Elric’s body had begun to tear through the material of this realm. It would not be soon, but he would need to ascend beyond this world, or find a way to reverse its degradation and bring it to the state it had been in the past.

True Transcendence would be denied on a world that would shatter if Elric ever unveiled the whole of his power.

[ Temporary Containment: 00:14:02.3391 ]