Outside the world tree. In floating clouds.
Mysterious person: Thinking, "I hope they are both convinced with my words. I can't tell them everything. They're still naive."
Inside the world tree.
Light filtered through the walls was golden, warm,and ancient. It fell across three figures seated in a small circular chamber. Roots curled around them like protective arms, as if the tree itself was listening.
The Omniranker sat cross-legged, his face calm but his eyes ancient. Before him, seven wooden tablets rested on the table, each carved with symbols that seemed to shift when stared at too long.
Kent sat to his right, shoulders straight, jaw set, ready.
Ruo sat to his left, smaller, trembling slightly, but present. Still present.
Omniranker: "Seven paths. There are seven ways to become something more than you are." He gestured to the tablets. "Choose. And know that once you choose, there is no return. No undo. No second chance at the choice itself."
Ruo's hand trembled as he reached toward the tablets.
Omniranker: "Wait."
Ruo froze.
Omniranker: "Before you touch them, understand this: The path doesn't care if you're ready. It doesn't care if you're afraid. It only cares that you choose. Fear and readiness are yours to carry. The path simply is."
Ruo swallowed. Nodded.
He reached out again.
His fingers brushed the tablet, cut to black.
The world snapped back. Ruo sat in the chamber, the tablet cold beneath his
fingers. He pulled it toward him, reading slowly.
Tablet One: Inheritance
Power flows through blood. Those born to awakened lines may claim what their ancestors left behind. For those outside the blood, this path is closed.
Ruo set it down. His family had no powers. Thirty three generations of nothing. Closed.
Tablet Two: Consumption
To consume the flesh of an awakened being is to take their power into yourself. The body remembers. The core does not forget. But the act is forbidden by all civilized worlds. Those who walk this path are hunted.
Ruo's stomach turned. He pushed the tablet away quickly.
Tablet Three: Transmigration
When a soul leaves a body, sometimes another soul may enter. If that soul was awakened in a past life, the new body may awaken with it. This path depends entirely on luck. It cannot be forced. It cannot be earned.
Ruo shook his head. He couldn't wait for luck. The false gods wouldn't wait.
Tablet Four: Blessing or Curse
The rulers of worlds may grant power. So may the false ones. A blessing lifts. A curse twists. Both change the recipient forever. Both come with chains.
No. He wouldn't owe the false gods anything.
Tablet Five: Beast Core
Beasts who consume the awakened may develop cores of their own or something else. These cores can be harvested and used to awaken a human. But such beasts are rare. Dangerous. And the process of integration can kill.
Too rare. Too slow. Too uncertain.
Tablet Six: Core Theft
Take another's core while they are alive, and it becomes yours. Similar to tablet two. But the donor may die.
Ruo: whispered "No. never."
Six tablets. Six paths. All wrong.
Only one remained.
Omniranker: nervously "I forgot to tell you the main thing. These tablets just make you capable to hold cores in your body, not make cores itself."
Ruo: "Master..." with little sadness, " You should focus on remembering your memory. Otherwise it will kill us."
Kent laughed
.
Omniranker: embarrassing, " Yeah. I'll try to give my best."
Tablet Seven: Sacrifice
It was almost blank. Just that single word carved into the wood.
Sacrifice.
Ruo: "What does this mean? Sacrifice what?"
The Omniranker's eyes were heavy.
Omniranker: "Something you cannot get back. Something precious. Something that is you, in exchange for power."
Ruo: "Like what? My arm? My memory? My..."
Omniranker: "Your future. your peace. Your right to be ordinary. your humanity. Anything belongs to you." He leaned forward. "Those who walk on this path give up the life they might have lived. They become something else. Something more. Something that can never go back to being just human. Something beyond humanity."
Silence.
Ruo: "The Mysterious person. He walked on this path. Didn't he?
The Omniranker didn't answer. But his silence was enough.
Ruo: "What did he sacrifice?"
Omniranker: "Everything."
Ruo looked at the tablet. At the single word. At the weight of it.
Ruo: "If I choose this... will I become like him?
Omniranker: "No one become like him. He is unique. Even fate bow before him. But you'll become like yourself. A version of you that chose sacrifice over safety. By the way he doesn't belong to this world. He is from the world with an omniranked two. In his world there is a different power system. And that makes that world stand at number two in the entire omniverse." admiring and sad,"This is incredible but also a shame on his world that they never understood him."
Omniranker: "Back to the topic. for this path he fought with the previous ruler of this world. And he won. My master and I are the only ones who witnessed the battle of two humans of different universes."
Kent: "So master, you're saying that he is the weakest in the omniverse but still he won against our previous ruler? And who is he?
Omniranker: heavy tone,"You're not eligible to know at this time. But at that time when we saw him defeated we both were shocked. And the other thing is we don't know what he did with this path." looking at Ruo,"But we know that you'll see a location when you fully control it."
Ruo's hand hovered over the tablet.
Kent watched. Said nothing. But his presence... solid, steady... was enough.
Ruo touched the tablet.
Ruo: "I'm choosing this. The seventh path. Sacrifice."
The tablet glowed. Just briefly. Just long enough for Ruo to feel something shift inside him... like a door opening somewhere deep in the soul. Darkness is covering his soul.
Omniranker: "it's done. The choice is made. The path awaits."
Ruo looked at his hands. They looked the same. But somehow, they felt different.
Heavier.
Somewhere outside the World Tree. A floating palace above the clouds.
Golden light streamed through crystal windows. Clouds drifted below. The palace moved slowly through the sky,pulled by nothing visible... just will. Just power.
Inside, in a room furnished with silk cushions and a low table of polished obsidian, five figures sat in a circle.
The mysterious person poured tea with steady hands.
Across from him sat two beings of light... a golden god and a silver goddess of The Illimitable Court. Their radiance filled the room, yet somehow the shadows in the corners seemed deeper than before.
To the Mysterious Person's left sat a third figure.
This one was massive. Not in height... though he was tall... but in presence. His skin was the color of aged bronze, and his eyes held the weight of worlds. Upon his head sat a crown of intertwined roots and stars, and when he breathed, the air itself seemed to bend toward him.
The Ruler of Omnirank World Three.
To the Mysterious Person's right sat the fourth figure.
An old man.
So old that age had folded him into himself. His back was curved. His hands, resting on his knees, were spotted and thin. His eyes were half-closed, cloudy, as if he was looking at something far away that no one else could see. He wore simple robes, frayed at the edges, and held no crown, no weapon, no symbol of power.
He looked like he would blow away in a strong wind.
But when the goddess saw him, her silver light went out entirely for half a second.
Goddess: "You."
Her voice was no longer music and knives. It was just... afraid.
God: "What? Who is..." He looked at the old man.Really looked. And his golden form dimmed. "No. That's not possible. You died. We watched you die."
The old man sipped his tea.
Old Man: "You watched someone die.Doesn't mean it was me."
Goddess: "We burned your body. We scattered your ashes across seven realms."
Old Man: "I can't die with such a small thing. Or I say you're kind of too weak to kill me."
The Ruler of World three almost smiled.
The Mysterious Person poured more tea.
Inside the World Tree. The circular chamber.
Ruo set back, his choice made. The seventh tablet glowed faintly in his hands before fading to ordinary wood.
Now it was Kent's turn.
Kent: "Second awakening." He reached for the tablet describing it. "I've always known this might be my path."
Omniraker: "Knowing and choosing are different."
Kent read.
Second Awakening.
Those already awakened may attempt to awaken again. success allows the body to hold multiple cores... each core grants new abilities, new power, new weight. Failure results in death. The body can only be pushed so far before it breaks. Kent: "I could die."
Omniranker: "Yes."
Kent: "More weight."
The Omniranker was silent for a long moment.
Omniranker: "That's the question, isn't it? How much can one dragon carry?"
Kent looked at Ruo. Ruo, who had chosen sacrifice. Ruo, who had nothing and risked everything.
kent: "if he can do it, so can I."
Omniranker: "No.
The word is sharp. Final.
Kent: "What?"
Omniranker: "This is not him. This is about you. Do not carry his choice as your own. Do not measure yourself by his courage or his path." His eyes were ancient, fierce. "If you choose a second awakening, choose it because you can bear the weight. Not because someone else chose something harder."
Kent stared at him.
Omniranker: "You asked me once why the strongest are always lonely. This is because you carry what others cannot. And if you carry their choices too..." he shook his head, "you will break. not in battle. But in here."
Kent closed his eyes.
Minute passed.
When he opened them, they were clear.
Kent: "I'm choosing a second awakening." He met the Omniranker's gaze. "Not because of him. Because I have spent my whole life carrying everyone else's weight. Now I need to carry more... not for them. For us. For this fight."
Omniranker: "And if you die?"
Kent: "Then at least I choose it."
He touched the tablet.
It glowed brighter than Ruo's tablet had, golden instead of white, light spilling between his fingers.
Omniranker: "It's done. The choice is made. The path awaits."
Kent set the tablet down. His hands were steady.
But something behind his eyes had shifted. Something deeper. Older.
Omniranker: "You feel it already. The hunger for more cores."
Kent: "Is that what this is? Hunger?"
Omniranker: "Yes. Your body knows it can hold more now. It will crave power the way a starving man craves food. You must control that craving, or it will control you."
Kent nodded.
He understood weight. He'd carried it his whole life.
This was just more of the same.
Inside the Illimitable court. At tea party.
The air changed.
The temperature dropped. The golden light in the room flickered. And from a door that had not been there a moment ago, a figure emerged.
He was massive. Not a way the Ruler was massive... not with presence and weight. This was physical. two meters and a hundred centimeters tall. Build like a mountain. His skin was the color of ash, and his eyes burned with a low, constant fire. Armour of black metal covered his body, and at his side hung a blade that seemed to drink the light around it.
The Third General of The Illimitable Court.
He did not sit.
He stood behind the god and goddess, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the Mysterious Person.
Third General: "You have overstayed your welcome."
His voice was like grinding stones.
The Mysterious Person looked at him. then at the gods.
Mysterious Person: "You brought military escort to a tea party?"
Goddess: "We didn't bring him. He came on his own." She glanced back. "General. We did not summon you."
Third General: "You did not need to. I sensed... wrongness. Here, in our territory." His burning eyes moved to the old man. "And I was right."
The old man looked up at him. Those cloudy eyes. That frail body.
Old man: "You're taller than I expected."
Third General: "And you're deader than I remember."
Old Man: "Memory is unreliable." He sipped his tea. "Especially for people who weren't there."
Third General: "I was there. At the final battle. I saw your body fall."
Old Man: "You saw a dead body fall. There were many that day."
Third General drew his blade halfway.
The sound was like reality tearing.
Third General: "Shall I test if this one bleeds?"