Chapter 426

The decision to draw upon the darker sides of human nature wasn’t made lightly. Nick was familiar with tapping into these emotions, but he was very aware of the dangers of exposing his soul to ideas that so closely reflected the corruption he was trying to eliminate.Yet, looking at the golden ziggurat of the First Tower, he knew that a sanitized version of humanity could never be strong enough to hold back the Abyss.

Pure ideals could be powerful in certain situations, but without a solid foundation, they were fragile and would shatter under pressure. To create something that could reach the heavens and withstand the storms of centuries, humanity had always relied on a much denser, sturdier mortar.

Tightening his metaphysical hold on the tether connecting his mind to the genius loci he reached into the depths of his own psyche for the part of himself that was kept away from the public.

From there, he pulled out Dissatisfaction, the primal itch that drove the first humans out of the caves. A satisfied species built nothing, after all, nor did it look at the sky and wonder what it felt like to touch the stars.

Dissatisfaction was the engine of progress, the constant refusal to accept the world as it was. Nick directed his endless frustration with his limitations into the pursuit of mastering the Occultist path, pouring it into the golden bricks.

Next came Pride. Not the superficial vanity of nobles in their silks, but the profound, fundamental arrogance needed to look at the laws of nature and decide to bend them. It was the unwavering belief that a mortal hand could shape reality that allowed him to craft and ruin the Tidemaster’s Blessing despite the vast difference in power between them.

Nick infused his own defiance into the connection, the raw audacity that allowed him to stand against entities who saw themselves as gods.

Finally, he offered Regret. It was the heaviest of the three emotions, a cold, suffocating weight that could not really be viewed in any positive way.

It was the awareness of mortality, the desperate, gnawing need to leave a legacy so that one’s brief existence would not be completely erased by time. The First Tower had been built by men and women who knew they would die long before it was finished, driven by the hope that their descendants would remember their names or, at the very least, use what they left behind to keep the flame alive.

As these concepts flowed through the Shard and into the mindscape, the golden ziggurat responded. The light of the bricks shifted, adopting a deeper, more grounded hue. The structure stopped being just an ideal and became a monument to realistic, flawed, and unbreakable human effort.

SYSTEM NOTIFICATION

Trait has repelled an Abyssal Invocation.

Trait has repelled an Abyssal Invocation.

Trait has repelled an Abyssal Invocation.

The notifications flooded in quickly as the new concepts clicked into place in Nick's mind, and the boundaries of his self expanded to include the entire Tower's concept.

The abyssal sludge, which had been actively consuming the structure, suddenly found itself shut out. It slid off the golden bricks, unable to gain a foothold on a soul fortified by such grounded ambition and protected by the complete rejection of .

For a moment, it seemed like he had succeeded. The Tower was safe. The corruption was isolated, cut off from its host, pooling uselessly at the base of the ziggurat.

Nick prepared to gather his mana and burn away the remaining sludge, but the conceptual space suddenly went eerily quiet.

The constant gnawing of the sludge had almost become background noise as he worked to expand more and more, but in its absence, he realized something else had started to take its place.

The temperature in the desert dropped sharply, freezing the sands into silence, while Nick’s instincts warned him he was in greater danger than he realized.

A moment later, the sky, already bleeding from the fissures, ripped open completely.

He nearly expected to see something looking back, but there was no physical body on the other side of the breach.

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That was not due to its absence, but because the entity that focused on Nick’s mindscape defied normal description. It was a manifestation of pure Domination and Hunger, and looking at it was like standing at the bottom of an ocean, feeling pressure that could turn carbon into diamonds, entirely centered on a single point.

The Greater Demon had noticed the broken connection, and its eyes turned to Nick.

Immediately, his soul began to crack under the strain. The representation of his body in the mindscape flickered, his skin fracturing like dry clay. Even , an anomaly that had withstood the wrath of a Feral God, struggled to process the sheer mass of the entity’s attention, given how far his soul was stretched.

After all, Nick was a level eighty-one Occultist, and the pressure weighing on him functioned on a scale that surpassed mortal limits entirely.

His mana coils screamed in protest as he tried his best to stabilize his soul with more power. The Shard of Human Ambition grew searingly hot in his hand, trying to act as a lightning rod for the pressure, but it was barely enough. Nick felt his sanity beginning to fray at the edges, his thoughts slowing down as the crushing gravity of the Greater Demon attempted to flatten his consciousness into nothingness.

Just as he was about to wonder if he would have to pull back and let the abomination continue devouring the Tower lest his soul be lost in the process, he felt something from within the ziggurat respond.

What Nick had done was not just tether the Tower to his soul, but integrate it. He had accepted its history, purpose, and flaws. In that moment of existential crisis, the ancient spirit recognized him not as an invader or simply an ally, but as part of its core. Despite lacking the administrative access an Archmage would have, it finally opened up to him.

A million dormant runic matrices unlocked in Nick’s mind all at once, almost overwhelming him, but luckily, he didn't need to understand the theory behind them.

The knowledge passed through the Shard, giving him momentary, instinctual access to the ancient defense protocols of the First Tower, a structure built by early humanity's united strength to wage war against the heavens themselves.

Nick didn’t waste time, knowing it would be moments before he had to retreat, and he activated all the defenses that would respond to his call.

The genius loci's retaliation defied the laws of magic Nick was used to, being both deeper and completely at odds with cause and effect, and the conceptual space was violently reshaped simply because it decided it should be.

Planes of reality folded inward. Nick observed, deeply awed, as the fundamental geometry of reality shifted to push the foreign presence out. Esoteric mathematical constructs, glowing with a vivid blue light, expanded outward from the ziggurat like shockwaves. They split the heavy weight of the Greater Demon’s gaze, piercing through the void in ways his mind couldn’t grasp.

It was a clash on a scale beyond Nick's understanding. He saw concepts of light and rejection act like physical blades, slicing through the fabric of the mindscape to isolate the abyssal presence. He felt the sheer, awe-inspiring power of the Tower's true strength, a testament to the heights of magical engineering reached in a forgotten age, combined with the powers granted by thousands of Archmages who had served it over the millennia.

he realized. Even that very shallow understanding was just a guess, but from what little he knew of the most powerful abominations, death wasn’t really an option. All he could hope for was to eject them from reality and eliminate whatever taint they’d spread in the meantime.

Nick wished he could help the Tower. He could feel the World humming through his veins, ready to lend its power, but he was very aware that interfering in the battle might just as easily cause harm as help. So, he limited himself to watching, imprinting on his mind the powers he would one day possess.

Eventually, the defenses succeeded in shifting the coordinates of the conceptual space so that the Greater Demon could no longer exist within it, and the connection was broken completely.

The breach in the sky slammed shut with a booming echo that vibrated through Nick’s very bones, leaving only the isolated abyssal sludge at the base of the ziggurat as evidence of the monstruosity’s will, completely severed from its patron. A moment later, it flashed once and burned away into fine white ash, scattered by a sudden wind sweeping across the desert.

Despite everything that happened and the damage inflicted upon it, the golden ziggurat once again stood pristine and uncorrupted under a restored azure sky, and Nick couldn't help but rejoice.

That didn’t last long, as now that the First Tower was once again whole, his soul simply couldn’t contain all it was. The risk of tearing himself apart was too high, and so he was forced to pull back.

With a strange feeling of being gently pushed, Nick was pulled out of the trance.

His physical body slammed onto the white marble dais of the Wardroom. He gasped, his lungs burning as they desperately pulled in the stagnant air of the physical world. Blood dripped steadily from his nose, and the edges of his vision were blurred by the fractured blood vessels in his eyes. His head throbbed with a migraine so intense it made his teeth ache, and he knew it was the lingering toll of channeling forces vastly beyond his capacity.

He rolled onto his side, using the Shard to slowly pull himself up.

A cracking sound echoed through the chamber above him, distracting him from his miserable state.

The central pedestal, once black and covered with corrupted veins, shattered its outer shell. The dark glass scattered onto the marble, dissolving into smoke before hitting the ground. From the core of the pillar, a pure blue light burst forth, illuminating the vast circular room.

The light burst outward, traveling along the spell-lines carved into the floor and walls. The dozens of floating runic matrices orbiting the dais ignited, their sickly purple shades fading, replaced by the clear blue of the Tower’s true wards. The heavy, oppressive atmosphere that had suffocated the sub-levels disappeared, replaced by the hum of pure mana.

It felt almost absurd how much that had changed. Suddenly, Nick could breathe easily again and stand on his own without relying on his staff.

He took a moment to assess his condition and found it to be fairly okay. Oh, he’d caused some damage to his body with his stunt, and his soul would be very tender for quite a while.

There would be no more messing with it until it had fully recovered from being stretched that far.

But at the same time, he could tell it had become stronger from the experience. Withstanding the rage of a Greater Demon was something that far surpassed the abilities of a mortal mage, and yet he had done so, for quite some time, until the Tower had finally pulled its weight.

That’s why he wasn’t surprised when a flood of notifications struck him as soon as he focused on the System.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” he croaked, fishing out a lesser healing potion and drinking it in one gulp. It would have to be the last one for the day, or the alchemical toxicity building up in his blood would need to be purged, and Ogden was not there to do it for him.

Once he didn’t feel like an overfilled water balloon about to burst, he squared his shoulders and called for his status.