CHAPTER 216: TRANSCENDENCE (2)

Instead of returning home, Adrian made a beeline to the Stone District.

"Damien," Adrian called out the moment he spotted him.

The Dwarven Lord looked up with a broad, welcoming smile on his face. "King Adrian. Back so soon? Have you come to see the first of the foundation stones being laid?"

"Something 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 me 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 time has come," 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 elements 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 become 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 me, it’s my hammer. For you, it’s your body. It is your Heart. Once you find it, you must hammer 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 become one and the same."

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 message.

"Charles, I am going into a period of secluded cultivation. I do not know how long it will take... days, perhaps weeks. By the time I emerge, 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 member of our council, the High Elves, Damien... and the two former kings of Lorvain and Valtheim, when you’re done convincing them of course. It will be the first official meeting of our new, unified world."

"Alright. You can count on me, 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 immediately, Adrian appeared in the vast expanse of his personal dimension. 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 meditation chamber, a featureless white room designed for absolute focus. He entered and sealed the door. The time 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 immediately formed around him. The energy from the twelve crystals was pulled into shimmering streams of light, converging on his body.

For days, this was Adrian’s entire existence. He became 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 time. 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 time for gathering power was over. Now, the forging would begin.

Adrian calmed his mind, his thoughts turning to Damien’s words. A Knight must become 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 hammer. For a warrior like Von, it was the perfection of his body. And that was the same with Adrian’s.

Adrian focused inward, visualizing his physical form as the ’Heart’ to be forged. He used his immense willpower as the hammer like Damien said, and the raging sea of mana in his dantian as the fire, and he began the process of hammering his soul into his own flesh and bone.

He struck.

The result was a jarring, painful rejection. It felt like trying to hammer 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 met with a stubborn, unyielding resistance that left him mentally 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 came, 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 time, 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 hammer 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-dimensional engineering problem: to design a stable, self-sustaining system from a set of fundamentally 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.

Time became meaningless 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 same, but he was fundamentally 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!]