Instead of returning ho, Adrian made a beeline to the Stone District.
"Damien," Adrian called out the mont he spotted him.
The Dwarven Lord looked up with a broad, welcoming smile on his face. "King Adrian. Back so soon? Have you co to see the first of the foundation stones being laid?"
"Sothing more important," Adrian replied, getting straight to the point. "I am preparing for my own breakthrough to the Transcendent realm. You are the only other Transcendent Knight I know. Tell what to expect. What is the path for a warrior?"
Damien’s grin faded, replaced by a look of seriousness. He set down the tools in his hands and gave Adrian his full, undivided attention.
"So, the ti has co," he rumbled. "The path for a Knight is not like that of a Mage. A Mage looks outward; they seek to harmonize their soul with the great elents of the world. A Knight looks inward. Our journey is like one of forging."
He held up his massive, calloused hands. "A Mage communes with the world; a Knight must beco his own world. You must look deep inside yourself, past the muscle and the mana, and find the unshakeable concept that defines your very being. For , it’s my hamr. For you, it’s your body. It is your Heart. Once you find it, you must hamr your soul, your will, and every last drop of your mana into that single concept, over and over, until they are no longer separate things. You must forge them together until they beco one and the sa."
Adrian listened intently, absorbing every word. It was a perfect, elegant explanation that resonated with him.
He spent another hour with Damien, asking detailed questions and gaining a deep, theoretical understanding of the process before he finally departed. His next stop was his private office, where Charles was waiting for him, summoned by a prior ssage.
"Charles, I am going into a period of secluded cultivation. I do not know how long it will take... days, perhaps weeks. By the ti I erge, I expect the matter of the other human kingdoms to be resolved. Your mission to have them join the Alliance is no longer a suggestion; it is your top priority. Use any resources necessary."
"Understood, boss," Charles said, already making notes.
"Furthermore," Adrian continued, "schedule a Grand Summit of the Alliance. I want every leader present when I call for them. Every mber of our council, the High Elves, Damien... and the two forr kings of Lorvain and Valtheim, when you’re done convincing them of course. It will be the first official eting of our new, unified world."
"Alright. You can count on , I’ll work with Varyn to see what I can do."
With his affairs in order, Adrian dismissed Charles and walked to his private chambers. He took one last look out at the bustling, hopeful city he had built, then uttered the familiar command. "Visit Factory."
Right imdiately, Adrian appeared in the vast expanse of his personal dinsion. He didn’t go to the workshop. Instead, using his [Creator’s Space] ability, he willed a new structure into existence: a simple, silent, and completely isolated ditation chamber, a featureless white room designed for absolute focus. He entered and sealed the door. The ti for building things was over. Now, he had to build himself.
Adrian sat cross-legged in the center of the silent room and began by setting up a high-grade cultivation formation on the white floor.
He placed a dozen 8-Star magic crystals at key points in the array, their pure energy making the air dense with mana.
Before anything else, Adrian had to cultivate and to fill his dantian to its absolute, bursting limit. He closed his eyes and began to draw in the energy around him.
A massive, visible vortex of pure mana imdiately ford around him. The energy from the twelve crystals was pulled into shimring streams of light, converging on his body.
For days, this was Adrian’s entire existence. He beca a machine of pure absorption, his mind focused on the single task of drawing in, compressing, and storing every last particle of mana his body could possibly hold.
The dantian of a 9-Star Knight was already a vast sea of power, but Adrian was close before, so it didn’t prove too difficult to fill it.
He still lost track of ti. It could have been three days or a week. Finally, as he felt the very fabric of his dantian straining at the seams, the System rang with a long-awaited notification.
[Alert: Dantian mana capacity has reached 100%. Saturation limit achieved. Proceeding to the next stage is now possible.]
The vortex of mana around him subsided. The ti for gathering power was over. Now, the forging would begin.
Adrian cald his mind, his thoughts turning to Damien’s words. A Knight must beco his own world.
Find the unshakeable concept. Your Heart. He looked inward, past the swirling sea of mana in his dantian, past the strength of his muscles, searching for that core concept.
For Damien, it was his hamr. For a warrior like Von, it was the perfection of his body. And that was the sa with Adrian’s.
Adrian focused inward, visualizing his physical form as the ’Heart’ to be forged. He used his imnse willpower as the hamr like Damien said, and the raging sea of mana in his dantian as the fire, and he began the process of hamring his soul into his own flesh and bone.
He struck.
The result was a jarring, painful rejection. It felt like trying to hamr a piece of steel that was already perfectly tempered.
His soul and his body were already in perfect sync, thanks to the boons he’s been receiving. There was nothing left to forge.
For several hours, he tried again and again, attempting to force a deeper integration, but each attempt was t with a stubborn, unyielding resistance that left him ntally exhausted and his mana in a chaotic state.
Frustrated, Adrian finally stopped. ’This isn’t working.’
He let his mind go quiet, analyzing the failure. ’Why did it resist?’
The answer, when it ca, was so simple and obvious that he almost laughed at his own foolishness. He had been trying to upgrade a single component of a complex, integrated system. Of course it failed.
He and the Tech Core were already one.
His soul was not a separate entity to be forged into the System. His soul was already intertwined with it. He couldn’t just upgrade the "flesh" without upgrading the "code." The only path forward was not to forge, but to evolve. He had to upgrade the entire integrated system at once.
With this new, clear understanding, he tried again. This ti, he didn’t focus on his body. He sank his consciousness deep into the conceptual space of the System, reaching for the central, pulsating nexus of the Tech Core. He wasn’t there to hamr it into submission. He was there to demand an upgrade.
As he approached, a final trial presented itself. A firewall of pure, conceptual energy blocked his path.
It presented him with a multi-dinsional engineering problem: to design a stable, self-sustaining system from a set of fundantally incompatible physical and magical laws.
It was a test of his core identity. He had to prove he was a creator, a true sovereign of his power, not just a user.
Ti beca aningless as his mind worked, designing, simulating, and innovating at a speed beyond thought.
He finally devised a solution, a system of elegant, beautiful logic that harmonized the impossible. As he presented his answer, the firewall dissolved. The path was open. He had gained approval.
The evolution began.
It was an agony and an ecstasy. Mana flooded every cell of his body.
His physical form, his mana pathways, his very soul, and the core itself were all being systematically deconstructed and rebuilt, rewritten and optimized into a single, perfect whole.
He didn’t know how long the process took. But when he finally opened his eyes, the silent white room was the sa, but he was fundantally different.
A series of notifications, the likes of which he had never seen before, scrolled through his vision.
[9-Star Rank cap has been broken.]
[Evolution Initiated... Body, Mana, and Soul have been successfully upgraded.]
[Evolution Complete!]
[You have reached the Transcendent Realm!]
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