Chapter 290 - 291: Parallel Paths

Chapter 290: Chapter 291: Parallel Paths

Runar opened his eyes.

The golden-white light within them remained restrained by the trial’s absolute suppression, yet it carried a much sharper edge than before. Several additional minor rings had formed around his heart since he first ignited the Bootstrap Circulation Method. Each one had doubled his physical and mental parameters.

His spiritual sense, which had been reduced to little more than ordinary mortal awareness just hours ago, now stretched outward in a wide, clear radius around the massive tree. Every leaf rustling in the wind, every shift of air, every distant, heavy footstep within that range registered in his mind with quiet precision. He could even feel a large beetle crawling on a branch thirty feet below.

He looked at Wukong, who was still staring intently into the jungle, gripping his ordinary wooden staff.

"There is no longer any point in you keeping watch," Runar said. His voice was calm, almost casual. "My spiritual sense covers enough of the surrounding area. Nothing can approach without my knowing."

Wukong blinked and turned his head. "That fast? My neck was just getting into the groove of being a mortal sentry."

"I am a genius, after all," Runar said, his tone completely deadpan.

Wukong snorted, rolling his eyes. "Tch. Show off. Oh, absolutely. A humble, modest genius who definitely doesn’t practice saying that in the mirror. Next you’ll tell me you invented breathing."

Runar ignored the sarcasm. "Sitting here while only one of us cultivates is inefficient. I will teach you the perfected Bootstrap Circulation Method. Once you grasp it, we both progress. Two people watching is better than one."

Wukong set his staff aside and turned to face him fully. "I’m listening. But if the first step involves eating tree bark, I’m throwing myself off this branch."

"Did you see me eating bark? Stop being dramatic and bring your forehead here"

Runar did not waste words on theory. He reached out and tapped Wukong’s forehead, transmitting the complete system in a single, dense package of comprehension.

He passed over the precise runic visualization that generated spirit force from pure mental exertion, the live surgical editing of collapsed channels, the adaptive frequency attunement of the Infinite Circulation Method, the matter-to-energy conversion that turned microscopic waste into fuel, and the ring-formation process that compressed that energy into successive doubling stages.

Because Wukong had also stood at the Multiversal level, his comprehension was heaven-defying in its own right. A mortal would have taken years to understand the first sentence of the theory. Wukong’s brain simply recognized the finished blueprint. It settled into place almost instantly, as if the knowledge had simply been waiting for the correct key to unlock it.

This is insane, Wukong thought, his eyes widening slightly. He took a theoretical mortal startup concept and optimized it to a level that would make ancient sect elders weep blood. The man is an absolute monster. Well, it’s not that I couldn’t have done the same. It’s just that I wouldn’t have been as fast as him. It would have just taken me several more minutes to finish it.

"Got it," Wukong said. A short, fierce grin crossed his face. "You really don’t do anything the slow way, do you?"

He crossed his legs opposite Runar, closed his eyes, and began.

Spirit force ignited behind his forehead—a clean, controlled bloom, slightly less refined than Runar’s but still far beyond what any native of this suppressed state should have been able to produce. The same sequence unfolded: channels reopening under precise mental guidance, attunement locking into place, the first faint draw of ambient energy, and the beginning of matter-to-energy conversion.

The platform now held two furnaces instead of one.

High above, the Ancient Will noted the change with cold interest. Two vessels accelerating in parallel was an unexpected variable. It filed the information away and continued watching.

---

Elsewhere in the safe zone, Vark sat beneath the massive arch of a root that could have sheltered a small house.

He didn’t care about runes. He didn’t care about visualizations or borrowing techniques from the environment. He was Vark the Annihilator.

They think they need to gather energy from the outside, Vark thought, his dark eyes staring blankly at the dirt. Fools. Energy is just matter waiting to be unmade.

His method required no borrowed tricks. He simply turned his understaning of Annihilation inward.

With clinical precision, he identified structures inside his own mortal body that he deemed unnecessary under the current conditions. Excess fat, weak muscle fibers, residual cellular impurities left by the suppression—anything that did not contribute directly to immediate combat efficiency.

And he annihilated them on a microscopic scale using his intent.

The erased mass converted directly into usable energy through a brutal application of his core principle: matter into chaos, and from that chaos, power.

The process was fast. It was also merciless. Each cycle left his body leaner, colder, and more severe. Pain was constant, a searing, agonizing tax that he paid without a single change in his facial expression. To Vark, the body was just another object. It could be erased and rebuilt stronger.

By the time the light under the canopy had shifted, he had forced open a set of crude but highly functional channels and begun compressing the harvested energy into his first annihilation-forged rings. The method was ugly and self-destructive. But it worked. Good.

---

In a dense thicket far from the others, Sylphy knelt with her spine straight and her eyes closed.

Her usual methods were crippled. Without external energy to draw upon, her bloodline circulation remained locked. She made the calculation without a shred of sentiment.

I have twenty days. I will not be prey, she thought.

She took a tiny, carefully measured portion of her silver bloodline essence—the very core of her future potential—and burned it. She sacrificed it as pure startup fuel.

Silver markings across her arms and throat flared once, bright and agonizingly painful, then dimmed again as the raw energy flooded her system. She seized it immediately, forcing the violent surge into a compressed circulation technique. Pathways that had been sealed tightly tore open under the sheer pressure.

The cost was permanent. It was a fractional loss of her bloodline potential that she would never recover, even after leaving the Reliquary. She accepted it without hesitation. Survival first. Peak potential later. When the first faint silver glow returned to her markings under her own power, her breathing was steady and her expression coldly satisfied.

---

Lyra Solenne sat in the high fork of another tree, her posture perfect even in a fragile mortal body.

Her method was closest to Runar’s, but she didn’t have his cheating Eye of Myriad Truths to guide her. She turned her mind into a furnace, using disciplined visualization and pure mental exertion to generate spirit force from the brain itself.

The process was slower and much less efficient than the perfected Bootstrap system. It felt like trying to start a fire with damp wood. But her will was iron. Spirit force ignited. She began the careful, agonizing work of reopening channels and establishing a basic circulation, one precise step at a time.

No dramatic surges. No visible breakthroughs. Only quiet, relentless progress. Her face never changed. She simply refused to fail.

---

Darius and Finn moved together through the thick undergrowth, still presenting the appearance of cooperation.

Finn paused to examine a cluster of dark, purple berries hanging from a thorny vine. He tested one cautiously between his fingers, sniffing it.

Darius watched the back of his neck for a long moment. He looked at the berries. He looked at his own empty hands. He did the math.

’The rest are probably trying self-cannibalism ways to generate startup energy’ Darius thought, his face completely blank. But I have Finn.

Darius quietly picked up a heavy, jagged rock from the soil.

"Hey Darius, do these look poisonous to you?" Finn asked, turning around with the berry in his hand.

"Only one way to find out," Darius said.

He stepped forward and brought the rock down on the back of Finn’s skull.

The kill was quick, quiet, and final. In their current mortal state, there were no defensive barriers, no regenerative buffers, no second chances. A precise strike, a controlled fall, and Finn Harlan was gone. Darius felt no guilt—only the cold arithmetic of survival. One less competitor. One usable resource.

He worked efficiently. Fresh blood and residual life force became the fuel for a crude, bloody sacrificial method. Startup energy flooded his system, hot and metallic. He sat down beside the body and began forcing open his own channels, already circulating what he had taken. By the time he stood again, the body had been dragged into a deep bush and the first threads of a new foundation were in place.

---

Soren Vale had found a relatively clear patch of ground and seated himself in a formal posture that would have looked natural in any scholarly hall.

He possessed neither a bloodline nor an annihilation principle, nor the kind of heaven-defying visualization that Runar and Wukong commanded. Instead, he turned to the root of his path: Confucian aura.

Through pure mental discipline, he began to recite the core principles of his philosophy in silence, imposing absolute, rigid order upon his own chaotic mortal thoughts. Intent, refined and structured, slowly took on subtle substance.

A faint, scholarly aura gathered around him. It wasn’t energy in the conventional sense, but moral force and disciplined will given physical form. He used that aura as a seed, gently prying open his first collapsed channels and guiding a slow, methodical circulation into existence.

Progress was the slowest among the major survivors, yet it carried almost no self-destructive cost. Soren’s expression remained calm, almost content. This ground was familiar. He was a scholar, and this was just another text to master.

---

Time passed under the heavy, humid canopy.

On the high platform, Runar and Wukong both sat in deep circulation. Minor rings continued to form. The Bootstrap method accelerated with every completed loop. Their spiritual senses expanded further, overlapping and covering a massive chunk of the safe zone. The mortal bodies they inhabited grew steadily sharper, denser, and more responsive.

Elsewhere, Vark’s frame grew colder and more refined through deliberate self-annihilation. Sylphy’s silver markings glowed with a faint, reclaimed light. Lyra’s mental furnace burned without pause. Darius circulated the stolen energy taken from betrayal. Soren’s scholarly aura thickened by slow, steady degrees.

The jungle remained calm. The twenty-day safe zone still held. No Galaxy-level monster had yet crossed the boundary. No external threat had yet appeared.

High above, the Ancient Will observed all six paths at once. Its attention lingered longest on the two figures seated side by side in the high branches, then shifted with cold interest to Vark’s brutal efficiency and the quiet ruthlessness of Darius’s choice.

Six different methods.

Six different costs.

One shared clock.

The quiet race had begun.