Anya's horrified whisper, "What in the name of creation are you doing to yourself up there?" hung in the quiet, charged air of Aerion's Rest. It was a question born not of scientific curiosity, but of a raw, human shock that momentarily stripped away her clinical detachment.
Ren simply looked down at the fresh, angry red tracery of Lichtenberg scars that covered his arms like a morbid lacework, then back at her. His eyes, though shadowed with a universe of pain and exhaustion, held a core of unbreakable, granite-like resolve.
"It is the price," he said, his voice a low rasp, raw from the effort of his ordeal. "The Anvil is a forge. This is the tempering."
"This isn't tempering, Ren, it's a methodical form of self-mutilation!" she retorted, her voice regaining its sharp, analytical edge as she stepped forward. A blue light washed over him from the medical scanner on her wrist bracer. "Your Raijin biology might be able to withstand this, but the human part of you has limits. I need to assess the long-term effects on your channel integrity."
Ren did not resist. He stood perfectly still, a silent agreement in their strange partnership. She needed data. He needed to ensure his vessel wasn't being damaged beyond repair on this brutal path to power.
She watched the results stream onto the data slate she held, her expression shifting rapidly from horror to stunned disbelief, and finally to a look of fearful awe. "Impossible," she murmured, her voice barely a whisper. She traced a finger over a complex graph showing his Aetheric channels at a microscopic level. "There's significant micro-tearing and Aetheric scorching across every primary and secondary channel, yes… but the channels are healing. At a rate that's… that's regenerating stronger than before. The scar tissue isn't weak; it's a new, more resilient spiritual alloy. You're not just enduring the damage; your body is using the trauma as a blueprint for reconstruction. You're weaving the very scars into a kind of internal armor."
She looked up at him, her eyes wide with a new, terrifying level of understanding. His cultivation wasn't just about absorbing power. It was a constant, violent cycle of destruction and rebirth at a spiritual, cellular level. It was a heretical art that defied every known principle of safe and stable cultivation taught by GAMA or the Pagoda.
"You cannot sustain this," she stated, her voice now filled with a genuine, almost pleading concern that felt alien coming from her. "Your body may heal, but your spirit, your will… there is a limit to how much pain one person can endure before they break."
"I have not found my limit yet," Ren replied simply, his tone leaving no room for argument. It was not a boast; it was a statement of fact. His entire life had been a testament to his capacity to endure.
Knowing he needed time for his physical body to recover from the ordeal, Ren spent the next two days in the relative comfort of the Nautilus. He did not cultivate. His channels were too raw. Instead, he joined Anya in her laboratory, and for the first time since their alliance began, they started to work as true, collaborative partners.
Their target was the stolen Pagoda data, specifically the complex schematics for their Hunter-Killer automata, like the Reaper drone Ren had destroyed at the Northern Ridge Academy.
"Their logic is flawless, but it's linear," Anya explained, pointing to a complex holographic schematic of a drone's command-and-control system. "Every action is based on a pre-determined threat assessment protocol. If 'X', then 'Y'. There is no room for intuition, no capacity for true chaos. Their obsession with order is their greatest strength and their most exploitable weakness."
"But they learn," Ren countered, recalling his duel with Joric. "He adapted to my Flash."
"He adapted to a pattern," Anya corrected, her passion for the subject overriding the tension between them. "His combat programming identified your teleportation as a recurring tactic and implemented a counter-protocol designed to limit your options. But it cannot adapt to an action that has no logical precedent. It is a brilliant reactive system, but it cannot be proactive. It can be out-thought."
Ren focused on the schematic, his mind entering the same state it did when he listened for the song of Aether. He wasn't reading the lines of code; he was feeling its shape, its rhythm, its inherent flaws. He was searching for the dissonant note in the Pagoda's perfectly ordered symphony.
"Look there," Zephyrion's voice directed him, the spirit's own curiosity piqued by the puzzle of his ancient enemy's modern progeny. "The power core. It is shielded by a Class-4 Null-Field, yes, but its energy must be distributed to the limbs and weapon systems. See those conduits? An energy regulation node. It is the heart of the machine's movements, the part that translates digital commands into physical action. The heart is always the most vulnerable point."
Ren pointed to a small, seemingly insignificant node on the schematic, a nexus of dozens of power-distribution pathways. "There. That is the weak point. It regulates power distribution to the primary weapon systems. It is the most complex, and therefore the most fragile, component."
He looked at Anya. "If you could send a disruptive resonant frequency into that specific node—not an attack, but a specific, flawed command—you wouldn't need to break the machine's shields. You could simply… give it a heart attack."
Anya's eyes widened. She ran a simulation, her fingers flying across her console, inputting the parameters Ren had described. The holographic model of the drone seized up, its weapon systems going dark as the targeted node failed catastrophically. She had spent a week trying to find a flaw in the armor. He had found a way to stop the heart.
"Your insight is… illogical," she whispered, staring at the results of the simulation. "You see systems in a way I can't comprehend. It's like you're listening to a conversation I can't hear."
"The Elder told me to study our enemy," Ren said, his gaze distant. "The ghost on my wrist agrees. He says the surest way to defeat a swordsman is to understand the mind of the smith who forged his blade."
The breakthrough was a pivotal moment. Ren provided the impossible, intuitive insight of a Raijin. Anya provided the technological framework to analyze and weaponize that insight. Together, in the quiet, sterile lab of a submarine hidden in a mythical land, they were crafting a new form of warfare, a fusion of ancient art and modern science.
On the third day, his body fully recovered from the first brutal session on the Anvil, Ren knew it was time to return. His Aetheric core was still only fractionally closer to Rank 27. The path was long, and his work was not done.
He stood on the beach of crystalline grass, looking up at the storm-wreathed peak of the Anvil of the Firmament, a place of both his greatest torment and his greatest hope.
"Be careful, Ren," Anya said from behind him, her voice lacking its usual clinical detachment. It held a note of genuine concern.
He gave a slight nod, and without another word, he summoned his Phantom Wings and launched himself back into the sky, a lone, determined figure flying willingly back into the heart of the storm and its agonizing, necessary pain.