Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 1086: Origins

A gentle chime indicated it was about time, and Zac slowly opened his eyes. The medicinal haze around him was incredibly dense, having found nothing to fix since yesterday and left accumulating inside the sacred tree.He was ready.

The work on his Pathways finished two days ago. The general circuit was fully upgraded already, both as Human and Draugr. Most cultivators wouldn't believe their ears upon hearing a Mortal finishing everything in under a week. Then again, Zac wasn't a Mortal in the conventional sense.

The only parts that didn't quite match his Classes were a few small sections surrounding some of his skills and empty skill slots. He hadn't figured out all the details yet on how he wanted to move forward with his skills, so he had left those snippets in an open-ended state to easier adapt later on. Those small sections wouldn't affect his fighting ability, at least not while the skills remained E-grade.

Zac had accrued dozens of skills between his classes, and not all were as straightforward to deal with as [Deathmark]. First, there were his ancillary skills, such as [Cosmic Gaze] and [Spiritual Anchor]. Both were useful, but neither was tuned to his path. After matching his pathways to his classes, they barely worked anymore. He had similar issues with some of his active skills, such as [Innate Ward], [Undying Mark], and [Abyssal Phase].

Then, there were the ones he no longer used. For example, there were [Conformation of Supremacy] and [Gorehew]. Over the years, he'd picked up many of these skills to shore up his weaknesses, but it was high time he did something about it.

Having outdated and unsuitable skills wasn't a huge problem in the lower grades since the energy levels or Daos involved weren't enough to cause a disturbance. But the problem would become increasingly noticeable as time passed.

A chain was only as strong as its weakest link, and these unsuitable Skill Fractals were currently weaknesses in his pathways. They were like cholesterol clogging up his spiritual arteries, lowering his already unimpressive energy transmission. It slowed down activation times and weakened persistent skills such as [Primal Edict] since the fractal didn't get as much energy as it should.

The Skill Fractals even created disharmony within your body, like a few instruments playing out of tune in an orchestra. For cultivators, it was like having a fly buzzing in their ears while trying to meditate on their Daos. That wasn't really a problem for Zac, who didn't meditate, but that didn't mean he could ignore the skills.

The whole point of a Class was that it attuned your body to your path—the System handing out Skills was just an added bonus. The real magic was the pathways themselves and how they transformed normal energy into something uniquely suited to activating your skills. Before the System, cultivators had to manually refine their energy before launching spells, which was obviously way harder.

Unrelated skills were based on concepts that had nothing to do with your path, yet they were connected to your pathways. In other words, they distorted the signal, which became increasingly noticeable as you progressed through the grades. The added detail to fractals at each grade was a consequence of higher-grade skills requiring more specific energy, and having an Arcane Class magnified that.

That was why cultivators generally avoided filling their skill slots with random abilities even after reaching a bottleneck—some even closed their empty skill slots permanently to improve their energy flow. Zac had always followed this way of doing things, though he only found out why later.

Right now, the downside wasn't too bad. The power he'd gained from entering Hegemony more than made up for the reduced efficiency, and the disharmony they created wasn't to the point they'd make skills randomly fail. Still, it was a problem that needed to be solved, and the sooner, the better. Some skills would be upgraded and altered to suit his path, while others would be replaced or discarded entirely.

Luckily, not all his skills were this troublesome to deal with. For example, he still didn't know how to evolve [Pillar of Desolation], but the skill was perfectly attuned to him. The only downside of letting it stay in E-grade was that his ultimate skill wouldn't be strong enough to deal with troublesome enemies. With other skills, he had already come up with a solution, and he'd taken the opportunity to upgrade a few more while waiting for the Abyssal Pond to be readied.

[D] Evolutionary Edge - Proficiency: Early. The struggle of the wild hones the sharpest edge. Upgradeable.

[D] Indomitable - Proficiency: Early. The will of the underworld is intractable, undeterred by the screams of the bound. Upgradeable.

The Soul Defense skill on his Undead side barely required any adjustment. He'd simply made some alterations that would let him bolster its effect with both Daos of his Inexorable Path. Before, it only gained durability from his Branch of the Pale Seal. Now, it would also push back with the help of the Branch of the War Axe, which would strengthen the defenses further while having the chance of eliciting a backlash on spiritual attacks.

[Nature's Edge] had seen a larger overhaul, even more so than [Deathmark]. Over the past years, Zac had thought long and hard about what role his old staple skill should have. [Chop] had added lethality, reach, and durability during a time when his equipment was low-quality, and he dealt with enemies a few at a time. Today, he barely used [Nature's Edge] to empower his weapon, mostly because of the huge strides he'd made with his technique.

There was no point in forming a fractal blade when infighting any longer. If anything, a meter-long blade placed in front of your weapon made infighting more cumbersome. Not only that, but [Verun's Bite] was already so sharp and durable it was better to let the axe itself strike the enemies than to use an intangible blade. That was doubly true now that Verun had become a D-grade Spirit Tool.

Meanwhile, releasing fractal blades at ranged targets was only somewhat effective. It was easier for Zac to just flash into melee range and unleash [Nature's Edge]'s area blast instead. As a result, his staple skill had been reduced to an omnidirectional burst attack he used to deal with weaker targets, while occasionally becoming the activation vehicle for [Rapturous Divide].

Zac had cross-referenced his old skills, multiple skill crystals, and books on patterns to find a solution. He wanted the skill to regain its usefulness as a repeatable attack he could use to empower his combat style. Hopefully, the alterations had let him accomplish just that.

There were a few more skills that Zac was ready to fix right away, but there was no way he'd split his attention when entering the Abyssal Pond. He even let his human side enter a Void State as his Draugr half exited the Cultivation Chamber. A graceful woman already waited outside, and Zac was surprised to see she was a Late-stage Hegemon.

"Young master, I'm Selesa Kavriel. I'm here to lead you to the Abyssal Pond," Selesa said with a graceful curtsy. "If you please."

"Thank you," Zac said, and the two made their way to the closest teleporter.

Zac had expected the Abyssal Pond to be nearby, but Selesa led him through a relay of almost a dozen arrays before they reached their destination. Judging by the closed-off chambers and the mounting pressure, Zac guessed they were moving underground. Far underground, toward the source of the immense energies that fueled Kavista and the Kavriel Clan's ancestral home. Even he found it slightly difficult to bear the pressure, and he realized why they hadn't sent someone from the younger generation to guide him this time.

The depth of C-grade continents was innumerable times greater than planets, but that didn't necessarily mean they held sprawling underworlds like the one on Earth. Certainly, there were undoubtedly subterranean biotopes the size of whole worlds and cave systems you could spend decades traversing. However, the deeper regions of continents were rarely visited because of how dangerous it was in the depths.

For one, the pressure would mount until even Monarchs found it difficult to endure. But long before that, there were incredibly dangerous energy pulses that could rip cultivators to shreds. These currents moved too fast to dodge, and they contained such vast amounts of energy that it was impossible to set up man-made protections. They were the source of the rich environment above, but also what kept cultivators from

Zac could feel it with every fiber of his being, and his eyes instinctively honed in on the source of the feeling; the gateway to the Abyss.