Chapter 9

"Is this really necessary?" Rex shifted on the stone floor, trying to find a comfortable way to hold the statuette. It was heavier than it looked—dense like it was made of lead instead of whatever mystical material composed it. The carved squirrels dug into his palms, and the tree's branches kept poking his stomach no matter how he adjusted it.

"Yes." Riasha's tone brooked no argument. "Because you're mortal, you can only benefit from direct contact. Nothing in the greater universe is designed for mortal benefit. Once you advance, you'll understand why." She pulled out one of the essence orbs, rolling it between her fingers. "I'm going to insert the first orb. What we're attempting is similar to the dao vision—sit, focus on taking in the essence, and saturate your body with the energies. Once you get a feel for it, we'll dump in the rest. Ready?"

Rex nodded, bracing himself. Riasha tossed the orb into the wall's mouth-like opening.

Essence poured into the sealed room like invisible honey, thick and sweet. Rex felt it immediately—different from the tainted essence in the reservoir below. This was pure, untouched by earth or dominance dao. Just raw potential waiting to be shaped. He breathed it in, feeling it flow into his lungs and spread outward like cool water through parched earth.

The essence moved through him differently than before. Where his first attempts at cultivation had been like forcing water through clogged pipes, this felt natural, almost eager. The essence wanted to fill him, strengthen him. It seeped into his muscles, making them denser. It reinforced his bones, adding layers of metaphysical calcium. It energized his organs, each heartbeat pushing essence-rich blood through his system.

His parents' statuette grew cool against his skin, almost alive with its own energy. A pleasant sensation spread from the points of contact—his palms, his lap where it rested. It felt like approval, like encouragement. Like his parents were somehow still watching, still supporting him even in this form.

The essence in the air thinned, then vanished entirely. Rex opened his eyes, surprised to find himself disappointed it was over.

"This is incredible." His voice came out stronger, clearer. "Much easier than the first time. I actually wanted more."

"That's why people build special cultivation chambers." Riasha pulled out a large pouch from somewhere—Rex still wasn't sure where she kept things. "Any advantage can be the difference between success and failure. Environmental essence, emotional resonance, proper tools—they all matter."

She hefted the pouch, and Rex heard the distinctive rattle of dozens of orbs inside. "We collected a couple more while you were unconscious. Various grades and purities." Her smile turned manic, the expression of someone about to do something wonderfully terrible. "Time for the whole batch."

She upended the sack into the wall's opening. It took far longer than it should have—the pouch couldn't have held more than twenty orbs by Rex's estimation, but at least sixty poured out. They clinked and rattled as they fell, each one dissolving as it touched the device's interior.

Before Rex could process the impossible physics of the bag, the air became soup.

His first breath felt like drowning in reverse. Essence flooded his lungs so thick he could barely separate it from oxygen. His vision blurred, the edges going white as power pressed against his eyeballs from inside and out. He slammed his eyes shut and focused on his breathing technique, the rhythm Riasha had taught him.

Four counts in—essence rushed into him like a dam breaking. Hold for four—his body scrambled to process the influx. Four counts out—impurities and waste essence expelled. Repeat.

His body began to tingle, then burn, then ache with the deepest soreness he'd ever experienced. It felt like every muscle fiber was being torn apart and rebuilt simultaneously. Like his bones were being dissolved and reforged. Like his organs were being upgraded while still running.

Sweat poured off him in sheets. Not normal sweat—this was black and viscous, carrying impurities his mortal body had accumulated over twenty-five years of life. It reeked of rot and metal. His old self, being expelled to make room for something new.

The statuette in his lap grew colder, its pleasant sensation becoming a lifeline. When the essence threatened to overwhelm him, the statuette seemed to regulate the flow. When his consciousness wavered, it anchored him. His parents, still protecting him even now.

Hours passed. Rex lost track of time, lost track of everything except breath and essence and the rhythm of reconstruction. His muscles cramped and released. His bones creaked and settled. His skin split and healed and split again.

Finally, mercifully, the essence ran out.

Rex opened his eyes to find Riasha's face inches from his own, her covered gaze intense with interest.

"How do you feel?"

Rex took inventory. "Tired. Sore. But... I don't feel different. Shouldn't I feel different?"

"You look different. Check it out."

Rex frowned and looked down at himself. He hadn't bothered to check his appearance since this madness started—survival had taken precedence over hygiene. The sight that greeted him was horrifying. His clothes were more suggestion than fabric, held together by dried blood and unidentifiable fluids. Dark stains covered every visible inch of skin. The smell—how had he not noticed the smell? A week without bathing, multiple battles, the black impurities from cultivation—he reeked like a corpse that had crawled out of a sewer.

"Well, yes, you're disgusting," Riasha said with obvious amusement. "But that's clearly not what I meant. Look properly."

Rex engaged his spiritual sight, turning it inward, and gasped.

The transformation was complete. Where before he'd been a void with spots of color, now he glowed with inner light. Not the unified tapestry of Riasha's cultivation, but no longer the broken emptiness of a mortal. Energy flowed through channels he hadn't known existed. His meridians, once blocked and atrophied, now pulsed with power.

The red of his anger dao had spread throughout his body, no longer confined to a single node but integrated into his entire being. The yellow of demolition was scattered like stars, each point connected by threads of power. And underneath it all, a foundation of pure essence that made everything else possible.

"What does this mean?" Rex flexed his hand, watching energy flow through it in his spiritual vision. "What more can be done?"

"Plenty more. First, you're not full yet—maybe sixty percent capacity at best. Your body can hold much more essence, but it needs time to adjust. Second, you need to remake your body with essence, not just imbue it. The difference between painting a house and rebuilding it from the foundation up."

She knelt beside him, her expression serious. "Lucky for you, you're remarkably adaptable. Most people need specific techniques or months of preparation to breakthrough properly. You can just force your body to change through will and accumulated essence. It's crude, dangerous, and painful—but it works."

She patted the stone floor. "Time to crack this open. The reservoir essence will be harder to process, but you need the challenge to breakthrough."

"Right now?" Rex's voice came out as a whine. He wiped sweat from his forehead, his hand coming away black with expelled impurities. "Can't I rest for a minute?"

Riasha just looked at him, lips pursed, head cocked to one side. Then she nodded at the floor.

Rex sighed and placed his hand on the floor, pushing demolition energy into the stone. He found the weak points quickly now—hairline fractures that ran through the floor like a spider web. A few precise strikes opened a hole the size of his fist. Essence immediately began seeping up, thick and tainted with earth dao.

He quickly fashioned a crude cover from wall stone, something he could remove and replace to control the flow. The essence from the reservoir felt fundamentally different from the pure orbs. Where the orb essence had been clean water, this was mud. It tasted of dirt and deep places. It carried weight, authority, the desire to control.

Rex began pulling it into his body, but progress was immediately difficult. His body rejected the tainted essence, fighting its integration. The earth dao tried to settle in his bones, make them heavy and solid. The dominance dao tried to wrap around his mind, establishing control.

His anger rose sharply in response, violent and sudden.

In his spiritual vision, Rex watched war break out inside his own body. The anger node—no, it was more than that now, an entire network of rage—went berserk. It didn't just fight the incoming dominance dao; it consumed it. Every strand of control that tried to establish itself was met with pure, unrestrained fury.

The battlefield was his body. Anger and dominance clashed in his muscles, his organs becoming contested territory. His bones rang like bells as different daos fought for supremacy. The dominance dao tried to establish order, create structure, impose its will. His anger tore through those attempts like a wildfire through paper chains.

Rex got lost in the conflict. He wasn't guiding it anymore, just experiencing it. Hours passed in a haze of internal violence. He breathed in more essence from the reservoir, feeding both sides of the war. His anger grew stronger with each victory, integrating the defeated dominance dao into itself, transforming control into controlled fury.

Blood began seeping from his pores—not red but an extremely dark green, thick with destroyed essence and rejected dao. He was breathing out grey mist, the remnants of dominance that his anger had thoroughly demolished. His body was rejecting one path to forge another.

Only when the reservoir essence ran out did the battle end.

There was a pop in Rex's mind, like a bubble bursting in his skull, and then—

Power flooded him. Real power, not the trickling stream of before but a torrent. His body began to change, not gradually but all at once. Bones lengthened and thickened. Muscles swelled and condensed. His skin took on a reddish tinge, like rust mixed with bronze.

The remaining scraps of his clothes sloughed off like shed snakeskin. He felt himself growing—not just taller but broader, more substantial. His frame expanded to accommodate the power flowing through it. His hands became larger, fingers thicker. His chest broadened, shoulders widened.

The pain was excruciating and ecstatic simultaneously. Every cell in his body was being rebuilt from the atomic level up. He was dying and being reborn in the same moment, his mortal form unable to contain what he was becoming.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it ended.

"You have got to be kidding me." Riasha's voice was filled with genuine shock. "Again, you surprise me, child. Congratulations—you're a real person now."

She circled him, examining his transformed body with professional interest. "I wish you understood what you just did." She shook her head in disbelief, one hand covering her mouth. "Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable."

Rex tried to take a step forward and immediately launched himself into the wall. His legs had pushed with the force he was used to, but his new body responded with ten times the power. He hit the stone hard enough to crack it but felt no pain, just mild surprise at the sudden movement.

He looked down at himself properly for the first time. The transformation was dramatic. He'd grown at least six inches taller, now standing close to six and a half feet. His musculature had completely reformed—not bulky like a bodybuilder but dense, compressed, like steel cables wrapped in skin. His brown skin had taken on that reddish undertone, making him look perpetually flushed with barely contained energy.

He tested his body with small movements. A tiny hop nearly sent his head into the ceiling. A casual swing of his bone weapons created wind pressure that made Riasha's dress flutter. He was completely out of sync with his new form, like a toddler learning to walk in an adult's body.

"I didn't think entering the next stage would change my body so much," Rex said, grinning despite himself. The raw power flowing through him was intoxicating.

"It doesn't." Riasha's tone turned serious. "Normal advancement from mortal to foundation increases your capabilities maybe three to five times. You've increased by at least fifteen, maybe twenty times. You've attained something special. Something called a constitution."

Rex frowned. "Constitution?"

"A fundamental change to your body's nature. Not just stronger or faster, but different on a conceptual level. They're rare—maybe one in ten thousand cultivators develops one naturally. But yours..." She paused, seeming to choose her words carefully. "Yours is special. And problematic."

She gestured for him to examine himself with spiritual sight. Rex complied, turning his perception inward.

What he saw made him gasp. His anger dao hadn't just spread through his body—it had integrated completely. Red energy was braided into his muscle fibers, wrapped around his organs like armor, reinforced his bones from within. He wasn't just using anger as a tool anymore; he had become anger given form.

"It's called the Berserker's Constitution," Riasha explained. "And before you get excited about the name, you should know it was outlawed in most civilized sectors hundreds of thousands of years ago."

Rex's excitement dimmed. "Outlawed? I've broken some cosmic law?"

"The universe doesn't care about laws, and neither do most dominion lords. But many sects and empires banned its practice. The Berserker's Constitution was the bane of entire sectors for millennia. It's not just anger that can be infused directly into the body—all emotional daos can create constitutions. Sorrow, joy, fear, love—each creates a different result."

She began pacing, her teaching mode fully engaged. "The constitution was originally developed to help manage the side effects of emotional dao cultivation. Without it, emotional cultivators often went insane or burned out. But anger is different. It creates bodies built for one purpose: killing. Every fiber of your being has been optimized for destruction."

"How could I have known?" Rex protested. "I was just doing what you said, and now I've broken laws I didn't know existed?"

"It is great," Riasha said sharply. "It's already grown you a pair. Talk to me like that again, and I'll remove them." Her tone softened slightly. "Besides, the ban happened hundreds of thousands of years ago. The technique was thought lost. No records remain of how to achieve it or what its full capabilities are. You've resurrected something both ancient and terrible."

Rex was lost in thought when a cool breeze crossed his face—impossible in the sealed room. He heard rustling leaves and chittering animals. The source became obvious: the statuette, still lying where he'd dropped it during his transformation.

With his enhanced perception, he could see it properly now. Emerald green energy wafted from it like morning mist. The carved squirrels weren't just decorations—they moved in his spiritual sight, scampering around the tree's branches. The tree itself swayed in an unfelt wind. It had always been moving, he realized. He just hadn't had the eyes to see it.

"You were right," he said softly. "Nothing is made with mortals in mind. We really are blind to the real world."

"Mortals live unfortunate lives of desperation and ignorance," Riasha agreed. "But you're not mortal anymore."

Rex noticed the shredded remains of his clothes on the floor but found himself unconcerned with his nudity. His new body demanded testing. He jumped—controlled this time—and landed perfectly. He ran the length of the small room in two strides. His weapons felt like toothpicks in his enlarged hands, but when he swung them, the air cracked with the speed of their passage.

His balance was perfect once he adjusted to it. His strength was beyond anything he could have imagined. And underneath it all, his anger dao purred like a satisfied cat, integrated so thoroughly that rage had become his resting state. Not uncontrolled fury, but a constant readiness for violence.

"I'm starting to see why you pitied me," Rex said, examining his transformed hands. Each finger was a weapon now, capable of crushing stone.

"Careful." Riasha's warning was sharp. "You're more powerful than most new foundation cultivators, but you're still a child in the greater universe. Hubris has killed talents far greater than you. Test your dao properly."

Rex looked inward, searching for his anger node. It wasn't there anymore—not as a single point. Instead, he found what looked like a vast mine shaft running through his spiritual body. A chasm filled with veins of red ore, each one pulsing with barely contained fury. When he touched it mentally, waves of anger flowed out, but unlike before, they went directly into his enhanced body. No loss of control, no berserker rage. Just pure, purposeful power.

When he channeled it into his weapons, they blazed with red light in both normal and spiritual vision. The bones drank deeply, and for a moment, Rex couldn't tell where he ended and the weapons began. They were one system, one purpose.

That's when he heard them.

Footsteps in the corridor outside. Multiple sets, moving carefully but quickly. They'd heard something—the crack of stone when Rex hit the wall, or maybe the sound of his transformation.

In his excitement to test his new power, Rex leaped toward the stone slab he'd used to seal the door. His enhanced legs propelled him forward with such force that the floor cracked beneath his feet. The sound echoed through the catacombs.

The footsteps outside broke into a run, converging on their location.

_"Use your new senses,"_ Riasha's voice spoke directly into his mind, calm and instructive. _"You're not limited to physical perception anymore. See what waits beyond the door."_

Rex gave her a thumbs up, grinning with anticipation. His anger dao surged with joy at the prospect of violence. He stepped back, aimed at the center of the stone slab, and—

Crashed through it like it was paper, his bone weapons already swinging.