"Let's see if I can pull that off."
Noah roared and unleashed all of his power. The Void Energy that resided in the deepest part of his being erupted from his body in an explosion that distorted the very fabric of reality around him. The Spirit World began to flow. The stars in the sky traced elongated arcs of light, the floating mountains drifted like ships caught in an invisible current, and the dust on the ground rose in spirals that spun at incredible speed.
Time accelerated. Sixty years. Sixty-four. Seventy. The decades passed in the blink of an eye, compressed into a span of mere seconds. For Noah and the two spirits trapped in their chakra spheres, the outside world became a blurred smear of light and color. When the temporal flow stopped and reality resumed its normal pace, the Tree of Time reappeared in the same place it had occupied before. But it was no longer the same place. The sky above their heads was chaotic, scored by lightning that fell in every direction and clouds that whirled in spirals.
"It is time," Noah said, his eyes shining with renewed intensity. "Here I will not merely transcend Rank One. I will become a Rank Four being!"
From the north a pillar of golden energy rose toward the sky. It was a column of pure light that pierced the clouds and vanished into infinity, vibrating at a unique frequency. Simultaneously, from the south another identical pillar rose toward the firmament. Both formed a perfect arc, two arms of light that curved toward each other with the intention of converging at a single central point.
"Now!"
Noah struck the ground with the Staff of Sonum. The Tree of Time vanished from its position and teleported precisely into the exact center between the two pillars of light.
The Harmonic Convergence was a phenomenon that occurred every ten thousand years. When the planets and the sun aligned, the Southern Portal and the Northern Portal of the Spirit World joined, forming an arc of light that connected the two ends of existence.
Noah did not intend merely to absorb Raava and Vaatu. His goal was far more ambitious. What he sought was to undo the bond that made both of them conscious beings, reduce them to their primordial essence, and use the Harmonic Convergence as a gigantic refining ritual.
When the Convergence reached its peak, the two portals ceased to be simple doorways between worlds and revealed their true nature: they were the two ends of the primordial flow that connected all spiritual and material existence. The energy of the North represented the origin; that of the South, the return. By placing the Tree of Time exactly between them, Noah turned the tree into the axis of the phenomenon, transforming it into an immense cosmic catalyst.
The combined power of the two portals surged through the Tree of Time and generated a perfect stream of primordial energy. Noah directed that stream into the prisons of Raava and Vaatu. Instead of destroying their spiritual bodies, the ritual disintegrated only that which made them individuals: their memories, their will, and their consciousnesses. The identities that had defined the spirit of light and the spirit of darkness for countless millennia separated from the pure energy that constituted their existence. What remained was no longer the Spirit of Light nor the Spirit of Darkness, but two masses of completely purified primordial force, incapable of resisting or corrupting whoever absorbed them.
Noah did not stop. He extended his own spiritual power and fused it with the power released from the Tree of Time and with the infinite current that joined both portals. The four sources of power—the refined essence of Raava, that of Vaatu, the cosmic energy of the Tree of Time, and the primordial flow of the Harmonic Convergence—converged inside his body and soul as if the entire universe were being compressed into a single vessel.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
Noah threw his head back and laughed as he felt the infusion of the primordial essences. His spiritual power, which had already surpassed two hundred points, shot toward unimaginable figures. He was on the verge of crossing the threshold of Rank Two. His soul began to form the innate spell matrix of Rank Two.
But suddenly the essences of Vaatu and Raava, which were pouring into his soul, seized control of the half-formed matrix.
"Huh?"
Noah frowned. He was about to halt the process, yet something made him hesitate. He felt no danger. On the contrary: the spell matrix was not being corrupted—it was being improved. The primordial essences were not destroying it; they were reconstructing it from its foundations. The diagram that had been about to complete transformed into an entirely new pattern, a perfect yin-yang that rotated slowly at the center of his soul. The symbol fused with the spiritual crystal that constituted the core of his existence as a Magus, overlaying the Rank Zero and Rank One spell matrices he already possessed.
Crack. Crack.
Noah's body groaned. Fissures appeared across his skin, cracking it like dry clay, and beneath the cracks a dazzling multicolored light shone. Then the skin shattered completely and fell away in fragments that dissolved into the air, revealing a new layer of skin beneath. It was the completed state of metamorphosis: his physical body had transcended its former limitations and had been rebuilt from scratch.
His sea of consciousness expanded to twice its original size. The octagonal crystal that formed the foundation of his essence as a Magus now displayed a new layer formed over the previous one, like the rings of a tree recording each stage of its growth.
After a Magus reached Rank Two, he could extract his spiritual force directly from his sea of consciousness into the real world and materialize it into the most basic particle of energy. It was the ability to manifest spiritual force—invisible and intangible—into a tangible energy particle that any being, even an ordinary person, could see and touch.
"It's a pity," Noah murmured to himself, his voice barely audible above the roar of energy. "I had something planned for the remaining twenty percent of my body's elementalization. But now it's impossible. There's no use crying over spilled milk."
His eyes refocused.
Because the process was not finished. Advancing to Rank Two was only the beginning, considering the enormous and vast quantity of energy that continued to pour into his soul. The Harmonic Convergence had not yet reached its climax, and the four sources of power kept flooding into him like rivers feeding a bottomless ocean.