Ascender 3

Rubbing his temple, which had been struck, James huffed, “Wha— did it just ignore me?! Really?! What’s with the rush?!”

Although the ache was just a small price to pay for him to regain his sanity, it still hurt.

As the last of his euphoric high faded, a memory surfaced in his mind. He was caressing the haze and calling it “my precious” like that certain goblin.

Even as a soul-projection, he could feel his face burning up.

‘Crazy. So when the buff says overall, it really means it, even brain chemistry…’

The memory made him wince; perhaps it’s better not to use it in such a high stack anymore in the future.

This time, he could just pass it off as a necessity to create his core. But next time? He didn’t know if he had the balls to go that far again.

Sure, the increase in strength was incredible, and it felt good— almost addictive even.

But what if he used it when he didn’t have any initial goal? This time, he still thought about core creation and acted under his main purpose.

What if he tried to use it to confront an enemy? What then? Would he fight like a crazed madman? Would he still fight even when the enemy is already down?

‘Ah, whatever,’ he thought, shaking his head. He did his best to stop thinking about his cringe moment and turned his attention somewhere else.

To a much more immediate problem.

‘I remembered that teacher said whatever I thought of here would happen, right? Let’s try this then.’

He put his hand on the trail of fire left behind by his mentor, trying to connect to it.

“Teacher! What do you mean by construct? Do you mean like the tesseract you sleep in?”

“Oh, you’re not that dumb. Yeah, construct, create anything with the N-Energy there! Don’t call me for now! I’m busy!”

Surely, it was just his imagination that he could hear the usual series of beeping sounds, similar to how his campus hung up on him when he asked for an extension.

‘Right? That was just my imagination, right?’

He brought both hands to his head and vigorously ruffled his black hair.

“You know what!? Fuck it! You're telling me to create whatever?! Then, oh haze! Gather and create a magnificent castle!”

The haze didn’t even respond to his command, let alone change shape.

“Wha— was teacher wrong? Why didn’t it change?”

Not giving up, he pulled a handful of the floating haze around him. This time, when he commanded the haze to turn into a brick, it changed shape almost immediately.

“Oh… Wow. Now I even have to do manual labor inside my soul?”

Despite his comments and complaints, he continued to create bricks from the surrounding haze.

A handful by a handful, he was moving so fast that nearly half of the cool-colored haze had already turned into brick and stacked neatly in the shape of a pyramid just beside the pond.

‘I see, so even if I can’t force this haze to turn into a magnificent castle instantly, I could still have my projection move at high speed.’

Bored with the cool-colored bricks, James moved over to the area predominantly filled with warm-colored haze. He decided to start with red-aligned colors.

“Hmm~ I won’t even sugarcoat it, these warm colors really do suck. Well, no time to complain, Teacher seemed to be in a hurry. Time to pick up the pace.”

As his proficiency increased, he could feel himself moving faster and faster.

While he continued to stack bricks, he remembered what his teacher told him.

They said that the core was similar to a converter, an electrical component. Not only that, it also functions as a battery.

So why did James suddenly think about the core’s nature? Of course, it was because he was currently building said core.

“But still… a converter and a battery, huh? What kind of construct would represent both at the same time properly?”

So far, he had unintentionally created two pyramids, one full of bluish colors and the other with reddish hues.

As he was about to start on the third, yellow-aligned pyramid, a deep, suffocating silence washed over him.

It was a sensation he had never known before, but who was he to judge? He never even experienced most of the things that happened today.

He looked down at the handful of yellow haze in his hand. It was still there, but it felt inert, lifeless.

When he tried to command it, to shape it into another brick, nothing happened.

Then, without warning, the whole world turned gray— of course, this place was his core’s plot of land, but even then, whatever happened had actually managed to influence the most private area a person could have.

For a moment, everything felt thin and brittle, like everything would crumble to nothingness with just a touch.

The moment passed, and James didn’t even get to comment on it before color snapped back into existence as if someone flipped a switch in the heart of reality.

Not wasting any time, James hurriedly flew towards the flicker of flame trail left behind by his mentor, “Teacher! What was that? Did something happen?”

The originally small flicker of fire flared violently, and the scroll’s voice boomed in his mind.

“It’s nothing! Just a small help in fixing some things. What about the construct? Have you finished it yet? Hurry up! I’m almost done calibrating your body!”

“What do you mean, hurry up?! I haven’t even started yet! Oh shit!”

James quickly forgot about the blackout accident and moved to turn more haze into bricks.

‘Hurry up?! What am I even going to construct?! There’s still so much of this haze! Why the fuck did I even take so much of it in?’

Then, he looked at the neatly stacked red, blue, and yellow.

Finally, his gaze fell upon the monochrome, uncolored bricks he was currently stacking.

Each color created a pyramid in a cardinal direction with the pond at the center.

‘Teacher never told me that there has to be a specific construct, so what if?’

Creating more bricks as he went, he connected each pyramid to the others.

He couldn’t care less whether this will work, but since his mentor had told him to hurry up and he had no inspiration, perhaps this was for the best.

“Teacher, the construct is done, I don’t really know whether this fulfills the criteria of a core, but I’m finished.”

After making that call, his teacher seemed to move as quickly as he had before their voice resounded through his mind.

“Alright, all you have to do now is come back to your body. Just like before, jump into the pond and let yourself sink into it. The moment you return to your body, the evolution process begins.”

When James heard his mentor’s instruction, he quickly followed it.

“Okay then, thank you, teacher, and sorry for bothering your sleep because of my idea.” his voice was sincere as he apologized.

The scroll merely brushed him off and said, “Anyway, you will have to lie once the moment your evolution is done since your UA will automatically rebuff yourself, and you need to stop it before it completes its own calibration to your evolved body.”

Hearing his mentor’s words, as he could feel his consciousness slowly meld back to his physical body, James stirred back up. But it’s too late, he was already on his way to wake up.

The next moment, he was back on the plains. When he looked around, he could see that something was missing from the gigantic tesseract in the distance; its inner-inner cube was gone.

Turning around to the floating scroll beside him, "Teacher, shouldn’t something be happening? I don’t feel anything yet." He asked, completely forgetting that his teacher planned for him to tell a lie after his evolution.

There was something different about his teacher; it seemed like his teacher had more substance now, like they were a real, floating scroll. Not just an energy projection.

"Bleh, just wait. Here's the final piece." Right after the scroll said that, it pulled back its feeler.

The moment it did so, James could feel something changing inside him.

A low hum seemed to vibrate his whole existence; he could feel it, the construct he had painstakingly built, starting to come to life.

The first one was the blue pyramid, which pulsed with cold light, followed by the fiery ignition of the red pyramid.

Next, the yellow pyramid glows with a gentle light, pacifying the intensifying red pyramid and soothing the blue one.

Finally, when the monochrome pyramid lit up, all four of his interconnected pyramids turned into one whole construct and roared as it began its first cycle.

The new construct immediately drew an enormous amount of N-Energy outside, refining it and converting it before finally pouring it directly into his body.

If the previous process was a low hum of an engine turning on, the one happening in his body right after was the true definition of destroying and rebuilding in the same sentence.

The refined energy wasn’t gentle; it quickly rushed straight to every corner of his body before furiously destroying every single cell it could touch.

Agony was the first and only thing he knew. It felt like his bones melted, mixed with metals, and remolded into the proper shape.

His muscles and organs were all forcibly torn before they got re-woven into something better, something much stronger.

He fell to the ground, thrashing around.

He tried to scream, but alas, even his vocal chords were in the process of being rebuilt.

At the corner of his head, he swore that this was probably what Wolverine felt when he was getting his bone replaced with metal.

And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over, leaving an unknown, profound void in his originally overloaded sense of pain.

Everything was silent, and he took a deep breath. Even while he was lying on his back, he didn’t even have to try to move.

He could feel it. A quiet hum of strength resonated from his very bones. Unlike the euphoric, erratic strength from his Unique Ability, this strength was calm, controlled. Waiting to be unleashed by its master.

Before he could get used to the feeling of his new body, his master quietly floated above his head.

“Congratulations, you have officially started your journey as an Ascender. But, you do know that you have to invalidate all your buffs now, right? I don’t know how long it will take before your unique ability finishes recalibrating itself.”

When James heard his teacher’s warning, he quickly stood up and… grumbled.

“Recalibrating recalibrating recalibrating, don’t you know it’s scary that I will literally explode?”

He grumbled, but before he could hear his mentor’s answer, he could feel with his newly enhanced senses that his buff was already activated, about 1% of it already activated.

“?! Oh shit! It’s already finished calibrating!”

When the scroll heard James’ remark, they quickly interjected, “You dumb shit! Why are you stating facts instead?! Don’t worry about exploding! I will heal you!”

“I’m sorry, okay?! That wasn’t deliberate! Oh fuck! I said it again! AHHH WHATEVER! THE GRASS IS BLACK!”

Right after he uttered those words, the familiar feeling of something rushing out from his inside came.

He could gauge that his buff was already about 50% reactivated at this moment, so his penalty shouldn’t be that bad.

But even so, a splitting headache bashed his head relentlessly. Holding on to the last straws of his consciousness, he could hear the scroll mutter something.

“I... rea… bu… he… ed… learn…”