Chapter 88

I could bend reality to my [Will].

I could form the [Flow] Aspect today.

The [Foundation] Aspect too.

Given another hour, I could probably reconstruct enough principles from my research on [Serenity] to imitate most of what I needed from it without ever forming the Aspect.

Then my [Will] Aspect shifted.

And nothing I did mattered anymore.

My Path led nowhere.

Every decision I had made merely delayed discovering whatever fatal mistake invalidated everything.

Then it shifted again.

I could accomplish anything.

Then nothing had [Purpose].

Then everything did.

For what felt like months, my perspective vacillated between absurd extremes while my [Will] Aspect advanced.

In reality, less than two weeks passed.

I journeyed back to the Pulse Tower, slept when [Guided] decided sleeping was appropriate, kept my Essence development within its ever reasonable bounds, and even maintained my assignment schedule by taking one within the same peripheral district.

Through it all, I treated whatever outlook the advancement disorder inflicted upon me as temporary information rather than something requiring action.

And eventually...

Aspect Advanced: [Will] (Tier 3) ➞ [Will] (Tier 4)

Just like that, the advancement disorder disappeared.

My thoughts settled.

My [Will] didn't.

It had become more.

Tier 4.

My first Aspect to reach it, in fact.

Had my Path developed differently, another one of my Aspects, or maybe even more than one, would have surely reached Tier 4 much earlier.

But advancing my Aspects had long been something my Path had left to the wayside as I endeavored to plan my development by looking decades and centuries ahead.

Aspect formations.

Aspect syntheses.

Interlocking concepts.

Long-term compatibility.

The constant restrictions imposed by my overdevelopment disorder...

Where I should have been freely pushing every one of my Aspects, I had been forced to narrow my [Cultivation] into increasingly precise practices.

Develop this.

Not that.

Stop here.

Resume later.

Advance what mattered most.

Avoid development that produced less value than the safety margin it consumed.

My Path had consequently broadened and deepened far more than the Aspects making it up had climbed in Tier.

And for a Path that had been deprived of years' worth of Essence development, the result of my planning came to me with searing [Clarity].

[Guided] (Origin)

[Cultivation] (Tier 2)

[Comprehension] (Tier 1)

[Awareness] (Tier 3)

[Secrecy] (Tier 0)

[Will] (Tier 4)

[Clarity] (Tier 1)

[Harmony] (Tier 1)

[Ambition] (Tier 1)

[Purity] (Tier 1)

[Mastery] (Tier 1)

[Vitality] (Tier 0)

Twelve Aspects.

One now at Tier 4.

And step by step, I would strive to deepen my [Foundation] within the shackles that had come to constrain my Path.

For even if [Perfection] remained impossible to attain in practice, that didn't make aspiring toward it irrational.

And that wouldn't stop me from conceptually seeking it as the highest probability Aspect synthesis for my [Mastery] Aspect

My Path had no reason to hold onto the concept of [Mastery] forever, after all.

What's more, if I could synthesize it into a higher Order concept that embodied everything I needed while integrating more of what could better it.

The same applied almost everywhere.

My [Comprehension] Aspect already possessed potential synthesis directions toward concepts such as [Truth] and [Knowledge].

My [Awareness] Aspect could conceivably progress toward the formation of my [Domain] if I found how to supplement all the thousands of missing parts and properties.

My [Secrecy] Aspect now possessed the extremely distant possibility of touching upon [Nonexistence], pulling me out from the web of [Fate] that so many must be playing with.

My [Clarity] Aspect had potential synthesis routes toward concepts such as [Trance].

My [Harmony] Aspect had synthesis routes eventually touching upon concepts such as [Order].

My [Purity] Aspect...

Well, that one remained yet less defined.

I had ideas.

But nothing substantial enough to treat as a synthesis direction.

Not that I considered my uncertainty regarding my [Purity] Aspect equivalent to what surrounded my [Cultivation], [Will], [Ambition], and [Vitality] Aspects.

Those four sat too deeply within what my Path presently was for me to casually strive toward something supposedly superior to them.

Maybe one day I would discover a concept better than [Cultivation] at embodying the fundamental [Truth] of [Exertion] that had so far built so much of the [Foundation] of my Path.

Maybe one day I would sublimate both my [Will] and my [Will] Aspect into something no book I had yet encountered had even told me existed.

Maybe I would eventually discover a concept that dwelled beyond even my [Ambition]—whatever "beyond" could even mean when applied to the concept driving me to perpetually seek more.

And my [Vitality] was newer still.

For all I knew, tomorrow I would learn about a higher Order synthesis so perfectly compatible with the concept I had spent more than a year personally constructing that refusing to pursue it would feel like my worst mistake yet.

Such was the present Essence of my Path.

An ever-deepening [Foundation] whose sole [Purpose] was to allow me to grow endlessly within the bounds that shackled my Path.

Internalizing those thoughts about the conceptual direction of my Path, I turned my [Focus] back to my [Will] Aspect.

I really wanted to know what my [Will] Aspect could allow me to achieve now that it had advanced to Tier 4.

And I had a perfect idea for where to execute this want in the most pragmatic way...

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The fitness center hadn't changed.

Five floors dedicated to strengthening, exhausting, damaging, testing, and recovering physical vessels, just like when I once requested assignments here whenever they became available because watching others strain their [Physicality] had helped me refine my [Vitality] concept.

Today, I wasn't here to heal anyone, though.

I was here to find the limit of my Tier 4 [Will] Aspect.

I rented a resistance chamber capable of adapting its equipment to fairy-sized morphologies, changed out of my Pulse uniform, and extended my [Awareness] through my body.

Muscles. Tendons. Joints. Bones. Wings. Circulation.

Everything was ready.

And I started by ending the physiological [Cultivation] [Cycle] that had sustained my body for years by circulating everything it needed through increasingly refined biological processes.

The familiar [Flow]s of nutrients, air, and waste vanished, and in their place, pulsing gold began coursing through my vessels as I established a pure [Vitality] [Cultivation] [Cycle].

My body no longer needed to consume more oxygen when demand increased.

It didn't need to digest more nutrients.

It didn't even need to rely upon blood alone to move what every tissue required.

So long as I possessed enough energy, my [Vitality] Aspect could sustain the processes necessary for my body to continue functioning while I forced it far beyond anything its natural physiology had been designed to accomplish.

Perfect.

Now I only needed to discover how far my [Will] could force it.

I started with one of the chamber's resistance frames.

Both hands beneath it, feet braced against the reinforced floor, I increased its resistance until ordinary strength stopped being relevant.

Then I [Will]ed my body to be stronger through thousands of ways I had long attained consummate [Comprehension] of.

The frame rose.

I increased the resistance.

It rose again.

More resistance forced my shoulders, arms, back, and legs to strain together, until my muscles should have lacked both the leverage and physical structure to continue.

My [Will] disagreed.

The frame kept rising.

There and then, I truly appreciated the first difference about what my Tier 4 [Will] Aspect now allowed me to do.

It wasn't merely about my being able to [Will] greater things into being; my intention imposed itself more completely upon what my body was capable of doing.

Muscles contracted beyond their ordinary output.

Joints held against loads that should have destabilized them.

Tendons transmitted forces that would ordinarily have damaged them faster than they could function.

Whenever my physical vessel approached one limitation, I [Will]ed it beyond it, and the golden [Vitality] [Cycle] running through me supplied the biological processes needed to keep the whole thing operating at the minimum and more efficient energy cost.

I moved through the chamber without rest.

Climbing resistance several times greater than my weight.

Catching my entire body through one arm when my momentum should have ripped the shoulder apart.

Jumping high enough that I needed my wings to prevent myself from striking the ceiling.

Sprinting against escalating resistance until the force of each step became absurd for a fairy of my size.

Flying through the open portion of the chamber with wingbeats violent enough that my own acceleration became harder to endure than the air opposing me.

I didn't care about refining any one of those [Exertion]s.

They were only different ways of asking the same question.

How much [Strength] could I [Will] into my body?

How much [Speed]?

How much [Force]?

How far could I push before my newly advanced Aspect finally became the limiting factor?

So I kept increasing the demand.

My [Mastery] Aspect eliminated wasted effort wherever I noticed it.

My [Awareness] Aspect tracked every consequence throughout my body.

My [Vitality] [Cultivation] [Cycle] prevented oxygen, nutrients, circulation, and accumulating physical strain from becoming the first thing that forced me to stop.

Eventually, my body ceased being the meaningful constraint.

That was when the test truly began.

I returned to the full-body resistance apparatus and configured every available surface.

Hands.

Feet.

Wings.

Back.

The machine enclosed me within opposing forces from every direction, and I raised its resistance until no portion of my physical vessel could contribute more without [Will].

Then I pushed.

My arms extended.

My legs drove against the lower plates.

My wings pressed outward against their restraints.

The apparatus resisted.

I [Will]ed more strength through my entire body.

Metal moved.

The resistance climbed.

I kept pushing.

As my Tier 4 [Will] Aspect consumed energy to impose physical capability beyond what my body naturally possessed, while my [Vitality] [Cultivation] [Cycle] consumed more to keep that same body functioning under a demand it had no natural means of sustaining, my energy reserves disappeared with remarkable speed.

Soon, my ordinary reserves were no longer enough.

I ignited my [Ambition] without hesitation.

Energy surged through my Essence.

My [Vitality] caught part of it and flooded my physical vessel with everything it needed to continue.

The rest went into manifesting my [Will].

The apparatus moved.

Not slowly anymore.

The opposing plates separated under a burst of strength that my body could never have generated by itself.

I demanded more resistance.

Then more.

My arms and legs strained hard enough for their structures to begin failing beneath my [Awareness], only for [Vitality] to keep them supplied, functioning, and capable of answering my next demand.

I pushed harder.

My [Ambition] supplied more energy.

My [Will] turned that energy into imposed reality.

My [Vitality] kept the vessel carrying that reality alive and functional.

More.

The machine resisted until its structure began transmitting faint vibrations through the floor, as if it wasn't a fairy using it but instead, one of those ripped giants with bulging muscles.

I [Will]ed my body yet stronger.

My muscles answered.

More.

I [Will]ed them stronger still.

They answered again.

My [Vitality] [Cultivation] [Cycle] accelerated until pulsing gold suffused nearly every part of my body within my [Awareness], constantly compensating for a physical output that should have required more air, more nutrients, more circulation, and more biological capacity than my body possessed.

None of that mattered.

Energy did.

And my [Ambition] continued providing it.

So I kept pushing.

Until something finally stopped scaling with everything else.

My body still answered.

My [Vitality] still sustained it.

My [Ambition] still provided energy.

My [Will] itself...

Still demanded more.

But the force imposed upon reality no longer rose proportionally with it.

There.

I pushed harder.

The resistance plates moved another fraction.

I increased my [Will] far more than the resulting increase in strength justified.

The discrepancy became impossible to miss.

So I pushed everything into it.

Every fragment of [Will] I could consciously bring to bear.

Every demand I had ever learned to place upon myself.

Move.

Endure.

Continue.

Overcome.

My Tier 4 [Will] Aspect strained beneath it.

The apparatus shuddered as my body trembled within its restraints.

Gold surged through every one of my muscles as my [Vitality] [Cultivation] [Cycle] struggled to keep physical consequences from becoming relevant.

My [Ambition] burned harder.

And still...

I possessed more [Will].

More than the Aspect could manifest.

That was the limit.

Not mine.

My [Will] Aspect's.

Even at Tier 4, the Aspect formed around manifesting my [Will] into reality remained incapable of carrying everything I had forged throughout my life into reality at once.

I pressed against that boundary until there could be no ambiguity left.

The plates moved.

Slowly.

Painfully.

But the amount of force I gained became smaller and smaller compared to the [Will] I poured into achieving it.

My intention continued climbing.

Its manifestation didn't.

Eventually, [Guided] directed me to stop.

So it was that I did.

The resistance vanished.

I extinguished my [Ambition], cutting off the impossible supply of energy I had been forcing through myself, while my [Vitality] [Cultivation] [Cycle] continued just long enough to settle everything I had done to my body before I restored my ordinary physiological one.

This [Cultivation] session had achieved its [Purpose].

My Tier 4 [Will] Aspect was vastly beyond what it had been.

But it was still not enough.

A conclusion that arguably only made what I had just experienced more aggravating.

Because this...

Replacing my ordinary physiological [Cultivation] [Cycle] with [Vitality].

Igniting my [Ambition].

Pushing my body until its limits became irrelevant before the limits of my [Will].

Recovering.

Learning.

Then doing it again.

And again.

As much as I wanted.

This was the sort of physical [Cultivation] I wanted to carry out whenever I felt like it, and not one I could solely afford to when my overdevelopment safety margin happened to allow it.

And what I just did was truly but a glimpse of the real thing.

Only now, after experiencing this glimpse of how much farther I could elevate my physical [Cultivation]...

My [Will] to break the shackles of my overdevelopment burned hotter than ever.