Chapter 5: Mysterious powers
[Albedo's POV]
Albedo stared at Prisoner 777, now suspended in a translucent stasis pod filled with a luminescent green liquid –a highly effective regenerative compound found only on Galvan Prime–. His large black eyes were calm on the surface yet they hid a flicker of unexplainable, fervent excitement.
The test subject was truly miraculous. Not divine and not in the way the gods and Nobel creatures were but still miraculous enough to be considered a genuine anomaly.
A statistical impossibility.
As all humans were, really. Even though Nobel creatures, such as the Galvans and every other non-human race were meticulously crafted by the mighty gods, humans still remained the most bizarre and unique organisms in all the realms second only to the gods themselves, of course.
It made a twisted sort of sense. No matter how powerful or intellectually superior Nobel creatures were, there was one undeniable, infuriating truth: humans, like the gods, were born from the primordial flames of desire and potential.
They were raw, unrefined chaos. As such, the normal, logical rules of reality did not apply to them in the same, predictable way they did for Nobel creatures. It was a fact that made most Galvans, Albedo especially, simmer with a deep, academic fury.
After all, these creatures were inferior in discipline and structure, yet they held such pristine, untapped potential... all of it squandered by their own rampant arrogance and endless infighting, especially those from the War God's realm.
And that statement was not blatant racism for human but merely pure fact from, for example every test subject they had taken was a vile criminal from across the realms, their atrocities knowing no bounds with most of them being humans. This was why the Galvans felt no ethical quandary about experimenting on them; in fact, being a test subject was a far more merciful fate than the alternative: the Null Void.
Albedo shivered slightly, a full-body tremor as he thought of that harrowing place.
Despite its name, the Null Void had no relation to the vile, all-consuming Primordial Void. Yet that did not mean it was not a place of profound horror in its own right.
It was a partitioned, savage segment of Beast God's divine realm, the patron deity of the Galvans. And It was also the most harrowing part of the god's realm, in fact it could even be labeled as a miniature realm of untamed chaos and primal fury within the divine domain.
The most harrowing of beasts, untouched by external corruption yet monstrous by their very nature, roamed its endless wastes. Any prisoner sent there would suffer a lifetime of hard labor, mining for unstable resources under constant threat of being torn apart.
'What a regretful fate...' Albedo thought, a strange, unwelcome emotion tugging at his core. He quickly suppressed it.
'No. They deserved it. Order must be maintained.'
Turning his attention back to Prisoner 777, he tried to find a coherent way to explain how the subject's body—no, his entire existence—was so fundamentally... strange.
"This doesn't make any sense!" Albedo shouted, his small hands slapping the surface of the data screen in uncharacteristic frustration.
By all accounts, he should have been ecstatic and to an extent he was as They had found a subject capable of bonding with "it"
Yet, his happiness and excitement were drowned by his scientific mind that was offended by the sheer, illogical strangeness of this vessel.
"How?! Just how could It awaken an Aspect without even becoming Awakened first!" Albedo exclaimed, his tiny hands gripping the screen's edge until his knuckles turned white.
The subject was confirmed to possess an Aspect, a defining supernatural principle. Yet, the foundational truth was that the subject was, in fact, not an Awakened. He did not possess a soul core, the fundamental engine that allowed for such a thing. It was like finding a star burning without nuclear fusion.
"Just what are you..." Albedo gritted his teeth, staring at the floating human.
Their test subjects were neatly divided into two categories: Awakened criminals and Dormant criminals. The former obviously gave better, more stable results due to their developed nature. On the other hand, The latter were often disappointing but held a certain potential due to the ripeness and malleability of their dormant souls.
But Subject 777 made absolutely no sense. He was an ontological paradox.
The subject possessed no soul core whatsoever, yet he possessed an Aspect—which preliminary scans confirmed was related to a fundamental, existential mutation, granting him the unique cohesion he possessed.
It was already bizarre enough that the subject had endured the first experiment with unprecedented stability, his body, soul, spirt and shadow not only resisting the foreign essence and DNA samples but actively and hungrily integrating them into their own. But also the fact that he had an Aspect without his soul forming a core was astonishing, a contradiction that threatened to upend basic metaphysical law of the world, breaking every reliable truth they had on the nature of the path of ascension.
"If only Lord Azmuth was here... I should contact him to inform him about this unexpected development," Albedo mumbled to himself, the weight of the discovery feeling both thrilling and burdensome.
Yet, some time later, when he tried to open a channel through the long-range communication device, he found no results. The console returned only static, a faint, persistent hiss that felt like the universe itself was refusing his inquiry. Thqt silence from the other end was deeply, profoundly strange that did not come from the machine itself but more of the world instead.
As if nothing beyond galvan prime existed...
Before he could peruso this matter, albedo found himself standing before the communication device with a blank expression on his face.
"what was I going to do again?" he mumbled to himself in confusion as he returned to studying subject 777 data
---
[Hugo's POV]
Hugo woke up once again within the black onyx cell. To his profound horror, he was still in the Nightmare, on that wretched, unyielding stone bed. He stared at the ceiling with a blank, hollow expression, the memory of the events that transpired within the laboratory seared into his mind.
His body was fine. In fact, it felt better than before—stronger, more resilient, humming with a latent energy he hadn't felt even before entering this hell.
Yet, he was not fine. The psychological and spiritual pain of the experience he had endured was utterly terrifying, a trauma so vivid he could still feel the ghost of the needles penetrating his body.
That should have been impossible, a mercy of fading memory granted to all humans to prevent strain on the mind but his attribute [Extraordinary Memory] thought otherwise, forcing him to remember every excruciating minute of the torment in perfect, agonizing detail.
What hurt him the most, however, was not the l pain but instead it was the crushing hopelessness and his absolute lack of power to do anything. He had been reduced to a thing, a piece of meat that could do nothing but beg, and his pleas had been met with indifferent, clinical interest.
'Damn it...' he thought, biting his lower lip so hard he tasted the sharp, metallic tang of blood.
What happened next made Hugo sober up from his blank state instantly.
The small, self-inflicted wound on his lip simply vanished. Not slowly, not with a scab—it sealed itself shut in the span of a heartbeat, the skin smoothing over as if it had never been broken.
Confused, his heart hammering against his ribs, Hugo summoned the Spell's runes.
Name: Hugo
True Name:—
Rank:Aspirant.
Soul Core:Dormant.
Memories:—
Echoes:—
Attributes:[Mutant], [Mark of Divinity], [Extraordinary Memory], [Anatomica], [Shadow-Rend], [Spirit Core]
Aspect:[Unique Being]
Hugo's eyes narrowed as he recalled the cold, dispassionate voice of the Spell that had echoed through the agony of the experiment.
[You have gained an attribute.]
[You have gained an attribute.]
[You have gained an attribute.]
It seemed the experiment had indeed done something to him, forcibly changing his being on a fundamental level. Or perhaps, the extreme circumstances and the foreign substances had triggered his Aspect, catalyzing the change and forcing the emergence of these new Attributes.
Not wanting to stall further, Hugo summoned the descriptions of the new runes, his face a mask of blank resignation.
[Anatomica] Attribute Description: [Due to a mysterious power, your flesh, blood, and bones have reached a state of perfect harmony, granting you harrowing powers]
[Shadow-Rend] Attribute Description: [Due to a mysterious power, your shadow has grown impossibly vast and malleable, granting you tenebrous powers]
[Spirit Core] Attribute Description: [Due to a mysterious power, your spirit has been condensed and solidified into a spirit core, granting you extraordinary powers]
Hugo read the runes carefully, his expression neutral, absorbing the information. Then, he laughed. It was a bitter, agonizing sound that grated in the silent cell.
"Ohhh, how wonderful," he whispered, the words dripping with venomous sarcasm. "It seems one of the conditions for me to gain power is to be experimented on like a fucking rat."
The truth of it drove deep into his heart, a fresh wound alongside the others.
Exhaling a shaky breath, Hugo tried to calm the storm within himself. Despite the shock and the trauma, he couldn't afford to give up. Not yet. Not until he had truly given it his all.
He had finally been given a tangible opportunity to achieve his dream and so he could not give up.
But still, his first nightmare has been constantly throwing impossible challenges towards him.
Even the boon it bestows upon him were vague and mysterious.
'Again, the Spell didn't specify the exact nature of these "harrowing" or "tenebrous" powers...' he noted with frustration.
More importantly, he observed how these new Attributes were fundamentally different from [Extraordinary Memory] despite coming from the same origin, his aspect. They all shared the "due to a mysterious power" phrase, implying they were granted by his Aspect reacting to an external catalyst which is the alien fluid injected into him.
[Extraordinary Memory], in contrast, seemed to have been drawn out from within himself after mastering his mind to an extent. So Hugo had reached the conclusion that there were two pathways functions of his aspect: internal mastery and external, violent integration of foreign substances.
'Is there a limit, though? On how many Attributes I can get?' he wondered. 'If I master my shadow through my own efforts, could I get a second, purer shadow Attribute? Or are these mutations only granted once per category, no matter the method?'
'No. Focus, Hugo,' he chastised himself. 'That's a problem for the long run, if I survive. What matters is what's happening now.'
First, he needed to assess his newfound abilities.
'So, my blood, bone, and flesh have reached a state of harmony...' He had seen the first evidence of this with his instant regeneration. It meant his physical body had undergone a thorough metamorphosis, reaching a new impossible height for an Aspirant. That was the practical application of [Anatomica] of at least a part of it.
The other two were more cryptic, abstract concepts that Hugo did not fully understand.
'My shadow is impossibly large?' Hugo was sure there was a dirty joke somewhere in there, but he was in no mood to articulate it.
Looking at the ground, he couldn't visually confirm any change as the chamber had no directed light source to cast a clear shadow. But when he focused, when he thought about the concept of his own shadow, he felt something. A faint, almost imperceptible presence at the edge of his perception appeared. It was a vast, cool expanse that felt both like a part of him and a separate, slumbering entity although He could not control it nor could he grasp it but he could feel it now.
Sadly, It was a dead end for now, but a tangible one promising potential.
Going over his last Attribute, [Spirit Core], Hugo closed his eyes and turned his focus inward once more, trying to find the mysterious core the Spell had mentioned.
To his surprise, this time he was not met with a dead end. Quite the opposite actually as Hugo felt a presence within him—a flame, but not of fire.
It was a concentration of self, a nexus of will and identity and at same time, it was a representation of the world itself and how it interacted with his spirt.
The feeling was contradictory for multiple reasons, the second was the fact that the spirit core felt simultaneously gigantic, a sun contained within his soul and yet at the same time it felt infinitesimally small, a single dense point of power.
He frowned at the impossible sensation, trying to peer deeper into its nature, but his understanding slipped away each time he tried to grasp it.
'Could it be because I'm still an Aspirant?' he thought. That seemed the most likely answer, a limitation imposed by his dormant soul.
It made sense but some part of Hugo, the part that had been violated and changed, refused to fully accept that reasoning.
Eventually, a new thought struck him.
'Wait... Flesh, blood, and bone fused together into one Attribute. Then there's shadow and spirit... but where is the soul?'
Wasn't a spirit innately tied to the soul? So how could a Spirit Core exist and be solidified if his soul was still dormant, according to the runes? And more importantly, why hadn't his soul been changed by the mysterious power injected during the experiment?
'Could it be because of the Nightmare's rules?' he pondered, a chilling thought forming in his head, If his soul was affected directly, wouldn't that fundamentally clash with the Spell's prescribed method of Awakening?
'Is it even possible to truly awaken within a Nightmare?'
All of these questions swirled in his mind, a heavy unresolved weight. No clear answers were to be found in the oppressive silence of the cell.
And then, the ground beneath him shook.
The vibration was sudden and violent, causing him to tumble from his meditative posture onto the cold, hard floor.
"What the hell?" he muttered, his voice instantly drowned out by the roar of a distant explosion, followed by the frantic, echoing sound of running footsteps and alarms that suddenly screamed to life.