The Scribe examination was a breeze.
One primary subject, one secondary subject, and one tertiary subject, all totally unrelated to my Path Aspects, all easily handled according to the examiners' whims, and I barely had to ask [Guided] for answers.
Honestly, partaking in this eight-hour-long examination more resembled an occasion to let my Essence idly settle while I earned a Seeker rank that did not have great utility beyond its fanciness.
As for the final interview, all I got out of it, really, was to get acquainted with another individual I suspected of belonging to the secret third Path of the Faith Of The Aspects.
Then I was back to my [Exertion] routine as not a mere Acolyte anymore, but a proud Scribe.
When it came to the next rank, Archivist, however, I didn't get my hopes up that I would get anywhere qualified to undergo its examination before I departed for the Everweel Sector.
It wasn't a question of knowledge, which I could be [Guided] to ignore out of intrinsic advantage, but rather a question of being willing to dedicate thousands of hours towards researching and writing things, which I had absolutely no intention to follow through with.
Even reading entertainment-minded books would be a better use of my time than to dissect, combine, and rewrite knowledge that was already accessible, but that I would be pointlessly—for me, not for others, that obviously enjoyed increased learning through such acts—required to write in a new form.
Better yet, I could pursue the Sentinel Path, more specifically the Warrior rank, which would provide me with actual opportunities in terms of Sentinel assignments and heightened recognition on the Sentinel training grounds.
In the end, however, my best pick would be to simply ignore everything and stick to my Path, repetitive and exhaustive as it might be.
Even counting my unknown birth date, I wasn't two years old yet, after all.
I should have barely begun to walk and run steadily while stringing two to eight words to form simple sentences, but instead, there I was, well on my Path to synthesizing a high order Aspect like [Cultivation].
There was purely and simply no reason to change anything.
I just had to persevere through self-afflicted [Exertion]s and steadily develop my Essence.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
Day after day, week after week, I pushed the complexity and integration of my [Cycle] to my body to new heights I would have never suspected were attainable if books and [Guided] alike did not keep on insisting they actually were.
Then I reached new heights of complexity and body integration, and was told to drive it further.
Further.
Further.
Until my view on what could be achieved with a "mere" fundamental Aspect like the [Cycle] Aspect was forcibly broadened.
I did not remember how I ultimately formed my [Cycle] Aspect, as I already had it from my earliest memories, as if I was born with it, just like my [Exertion] and [Insight] Aspects.
What I knew for sure, though, was that I owed my existence to it, and discovering how much potential it still had, contemplating what it could turn into if I opted not to allow it to be assimilated into the [Cultivation] Aspect and instead advanced it to lofty Tiers...
It momentarily made me reconsider my decision to go through with a convergent synthesis.
Then I dismissed the matter as emotional ripples from my past and forgot all about it as I endeavored to pursue my [Exertion] routine like the ceiling could collapse at any moment.
Nevertheless, the past had a way of slithering its way into my mind and intruding upon my [Harmony], which eventually prompted [Guided] to force me to sit down and reflect on what my thoughts really hid.
Introspection, that was called.
It hardly took me more than an hour to find the one line of thought that had been slowly eroding away at my [Harmony].
The fear of hunger.
The possibility that once I lost my [Cycle], my Tier 0 [Cultivation] Aspect wouldn't be able to sustain me.
An irrational fear for a high order Aspect like the [Cultivation] Aspect...
But it was there, occupying a corner of my mind, and busying itself with pointless concerns that were not relevant anymore to my present circumstances.
I was part of the Faith now.
The paste supply troubles had alleviated since the expedition ended.
I could fly into one of the refectories and ask for paste without even being asked for coins in exchange.
I always had paste on me as an emergency source of energy in case I needed it.
Yet, the fear was still there.
Maybe, probably, certainly, because hunger was an integral part of my worst memories.
Because I came to associate hunger with something of an eternal opponent that could only be kept at bay, much like Essence corruption in a sense, except hunger was one I was battling even now, as I was thinking about.
And my [Cycle] was the one doing the battling.
I was so insistently [Guided] to unravel my own psyche once I uncovered my budding irrational fear of hunger that it took my [Focus] being briefly shattered by a surge of my own Essence for me to notice something had happened in the meantime.
A succinct communion gave me the answer—or rather the confirmation, as my [Focus] being shattered in such a way couldn't be caused by many things—as to what caused this uncalled-for interruption.
[Guided] (Origin)[Exertion] (Tier 2)[Cycle] (Tier 2)[Insight] (Tier 2)[Awareness] (Tier 0)[Tempering] (Tier 2)[Darkness] (Tier 1)[Will] (Tier 2)[Focus] (Tier 1)
My [Focus] Aspect was advancing to Tier 2.
I had been so [Focus]ed on myself that I ended up wholly ignoring my Essence's entry into a state of Aspect advancement.
What's more, that my [Focus] Aspect ended up advancing to Tier 2 prior to my [Darkness] Aspect as a direct consequence of my own decision to not prioritize it...
It was contrastingly proving of both the effectiveness of following through with my Essence development priorities, thus resulting in my [Focus] Aspect, whose related second-highest priority [Clarity]-synthesis [Exertion]s could hardly be separated, advancing...
And of the troubling consequences born of facing stunting Essence overdevelopment difficulties.
Priorities.
How practical.
As with all my Aspect advancements since I learned about the unique disorder they caused, I stopped dwelling on my unfounded fear of hunger and [Focus]ed on communing with my Essence to more distinctly take in the rare stirring rippling through my Essence.
All in the hope of acquiring [Insight]s on its unfathomable mysteries.
That this long communion also served as some manner of idle time that would subsequently allow me to more fervently develop my Essence once this advancement disorder resolved itself was just another justification.
Aspect Advanced: [Focus] (Tier 1) ➞ [Focus] (Tier 2)
Once the advancement concluded and I delved—quite literally—into the newfound depths of my state of utter [Focus], I immediately got back to working on my top priority [Exertion]s.
And as unbelievable as it always seemed, those same [Exertion]s, now carried out with the help of an elevated state of [Focus], now resulted in greater Essence development over a shorter period of time.
I accomplished more.
I made fewer mistakes.
I understood more.
Mentally bidding goodbye to the possibilities of performing any form of my second-highest priority [Exertion]s except for whenever I acquired singular [Insight]s on the concepts they embodied, I let [Guided] rearrange my life such that my [Exertion] routine transformed into something that did not really warrant its name anymore.
Apart from [Cultivation]-synthesis and [Will] [Exertion]s, a third of my days were now spent idling by, wait-seeking for [Insight]s that I could not even extend my hands to reach for, as it would only cause excess Essence overdevelopment.
At least it gave me ample time to work out my irrational fear of hunger by voluntarily subjecting myself to it.
That it achieved the triple purpose of also slowing down my energy recovery to not find myself manifesting my [Will] every six to eight hours while priming my body for various [Cultivation]-synthesis [Exertion]s...
That was just another expected benefit from leaving my schedule to [Guided]'s preternatural planning.
Nothing was ever without purpose.
Ideally, that was.
Overlooking impromptu [Insight]s that arose at the most random of moments, idleness [Exertion]s translating into a practical higher Essence development efficiency for the actual [Exertion]s that came after wasn't a thing I demonstrated to [Guided] was possible yet.
With how much of my time I increasingly spent being idle, however, I intended to remedy that.
Be it through flying around aimlessly, acquainting myself with new people from outside the Faith, chatting with more or less purpose, enjoying various sceneries, or immersing myself in nonsensical worlds that existed solely inside entertainment books...
One day, I would have provided [Guided] with enough different ways of idling and how they influenced my subsequent Essence developments for correlations to be made.
And the day this fantasy proved to be a reality, everything, even idle time, would find a use as part of my Path.
Not that I hoped it ever came down to that, as I would largely prefer to find a solution to my Essence overdevelopment that didn't involve actual idle times intended to be purposeless.
Still, it was idle time that inspired me to imagine idleness [Exertion]s becoming worthwhile in a warped Essence-overdevelopment-inexorability kind of way...
It was, quite literally, an [Insight] originating from the unlikeliest of sources.
A factuality I couldn't help but remember finding allusions to in books about sayings—strange sentences apparently meant to guide those who had yet to face what others from the past had already endured toward better endings than they met.
I never put much credibility on them, their recurrent crypticness not lending itself well to being taken seriously, but maybe they deserved dedicating some of my idle time to.
Like that, ultimately, everything circled back to the obscure ideal of everything possessing its own purpose in a bizarre display of [Harmony], and day after day, one [Exertion] at a time, I grasped more of the concept of [Cultivation].
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
When I stirred awake, my mind fully rested, if suffering from some minor morning haziness, [Guided] didn't lose any time and urged me to establish my [Cycle] again.
Not just any [Cycle], though.
This one, I suspected, no books within the confines of the Prime Temple could scarcely approach its entailed complexity.
And I did not think that out of arrogantly believing myself the local peak of biological knowledge, or from any misconstrued belief in my [Cycle] mastery having reached heights never before seen.
No.
It was for a much simpler reason that few would dare to refute, as they themselves subconsciously believed the same thing for their own extremely personal applications of Aspects.
It was because I created it.
I created this [Cycle].
From the ground up, assisted by my [Awareness] turned inward.
I traced every one of my arteries, veins, and capillaries as they carried blood from my heart through branching vessels into every organ and tissue before returning in a ceaseless circulation.
I followed each of my muscle fibers, from deep anchoring bands to fine strands, as they contracted, relaxed, and layered together in coordinated groups to procure endlessly complex motion.
I perceived the fascia that wove through it all, binding structures, separating systems, and transmitting tension across my entire form.
I outlined every organ in turn—my heart’s chambers and steady rhythm, my brain’s bizarre architecture, my lungs’ measured expansion, the continuous work of my liver and kidneys sustaining my internal balance...
I charted the full structure of my skeleton, from dense outer bone to intricate inner lattice, supporting and protecting bone marrow.
My every limb, every tissue, everything that biologically defined me as a single, unified whole...
I mapped everything.
And through it, I wove and forged a [Cycle] that could not have been further tailored to my physical vessel, one that I kept on refining with my every iteration, making it grow incessantly closer to imitating an actual [Cultivation] [Cycle].
First came the structure.
I started my [Cycle] from my heart, its location and function perfect for serving as my anchor.
First, I completely wove through my heart while accommodating its rhythmic pulses, before departing towards using my pulmonary trunk, integrating my lungs.
As I still hadn’t succeeded in dividing my [Cycle], when I finished with my lungs and returned to my heart, I followed my aorta toward the branching arterial tree and forced my [Cycle] to stretch rather than split, dragging a single continuous current in one chosen direction of every bifurcation.
My blood vessels served as roads, warding away mind-twisting itinerary that could only end in [Cycle]-collapsing complexity.
Through this blood vessel journey that kept on making me backtrack or loop around to explore every bifurcation, I slowly assimilated everything, muscles, bones, fascia, organs, and bound my [Cycle] to the very structure that held everything together.
By the time the extremities of my four limbs and my head had been integrated, and I brought my [Cycle] back to my heart, the [Exertion] I had to endure had already grown to an unsustainable extent.
What's more, my every heartbeat kept on provoking slowly unfolding ripples of changes I could do nothing against except relentlessly adapt.
It wasn't over, though.
With the proto-[Cultivation] [Cycle] structure done, it was the turn of the functions and principles to be acted upon.
For a [Cultivation] [Cycle] wasn't just a regular [Cycle] bringing beneficial elements from the air inside my body anymore/
A [Cultivation] [Cycle] was the physical embodiment of a higher order concept for which its physical properties only represented a small part of the whole.
As such, I expanded my inner [Harmony] to also encompass immaterial practices.
I opened myself to the Essence permeating the foundation of reality
I perceived myself and the world becoming one, no longer separate.
No notion of domination, simply alignment.
I believed in my endless innate potential, and [Will]ed it to be unleashed through, even if only an insignificant shard of it.
I envisioned surpassing my limits, my flaws, my fears, my past, all while preserving my [Harmony] and [Purity]...
Only after I went through all that was [Guided] finally satisfied and authorized me to stand-
My world lit up with a thousand sparks of brilliance.
In an instant, all my senses, my [Awareness], my sight, my smell, my hearing, my touch, my taste, indiscriminately filled with the sensation of having touched upon something new.
Then those sparks began to flow, drawing what I could only perceive as an invisible web underlying reality itself.
It flowed through me, through my bodysuit, through my bedding, through air itself, drifting in ways that defied my three-dimensional [Comprehension] of the world.
There was one exception, however...
My heart.
It was nearly nonexistent.
Inconsequential in the grand scheme of what I was allowed to glimpse.
But it was there.
A minor pull synchronized to its every beat.
And once every couple of beats, over as many trivial tugs, a spark was drawn from reality's flow.
The moment my heart and this spark made contact, it felt akin to receiving an ephemeral glimpse of what could be.
Then the dazzling spark faded into nothingness.
One time.
Two times.
Ten times.
My [Focus] naturally turned into what felt like [Clarity], or maybe even [Trance], the burden of maintaining my [Cycle] gradually vanishing from my mind as I raptfully took to this new reality...
Until my Essence acknowledged the conspicuous impending development and forced me to split a sliver of my elevated [Focus] to commune with it.
A world of billowing and roiling currents and concepts was what welcomed my entry into a state of communion.
Everything was shifting as three of my Aspects, three Tier 2 Aspects, were being ripped apart by the manifestation of hundreds of new concepts I couldn't have been more familiar with.
The disorder was so fierce that all I felt from it was entirely new, [Guided] barely succeeding at digging up related pieces of knowledge connected to everything that was transpiring.
In what I discerned as mere seconds, I brought my whole elevated [Focus] to bear on taking in everything that was taking place both to my Essence and in the outside world.
The price I paid to achieve that was to become but an external observer incapable of thoughts, incapable of remembering anything I was sensing, seeing, feeling...
I gladly paid this absurd price, putting my entire belief in my Origin Aspect to compensate for my inability to perfectly [Focus] on what was actually important out of ignorance and later make the absolute most of it.
It was an instinctive response for me to do that, really.
Diligently, I [Will]ed my [Awareness]'s [Clarity] to the utmost limits I could endure and let everything flow through me like the spark of brilliance.
I beheld something of incomprehensible meaning, then forgot about it just as soon.
I communed a sensation of [Unity] mixed with [Balance] and [Detachment] from my Essence, then allowed it to leave me without putting up a fight.
Time lost its meaning out of forgetting about the events that occurred throughout, leaving me to feel like I was captive to an eternity of being in this [Trance]-like state.
I persevered.
I did not even contemplate the idea of observing the state of my [Cultivation] Aspect formation.
It would be a waste of time.
Once I decided on something, I saw it through to its end.
That's how I had always lived.
And I was always eventually proved right for doing so.
Thus, I observed.
Till everything blazed up in a magnitude-defining event that reshaped my Essence, effortlessly collapsed my [Cycle], and the sparks of brilliance suffusing reality were as if erased from existence in one wave of pure force.
Aspect Lost: [Exertion] (Tier 2)Aspect Lost: [Cycle] (Tier 2)Aspect Lost: [Tempering] (Tier 2)Aspect Formed: [Cultivation] (Tier 0)
Despite having prepared myself for it for months, feeling the loss of my [Cycle] Aspect as it was used in a convergent synthesis to form my long-awaited [Cultivation] Aspect, above my [Exertion] Aspect, felt akin to losing an irreplaceable piece of my past.
It wasn't.
I knew it wasn't.
It was simply incorporated into a high order Aspect, becoming an integral part of it.
I could even form it again if I really wished to, as nothing apart from lots of [Exertion]s—or a sustained [Cultivation], I guessed it was now—prevented me from forming it again.
Nevertheless, I would not let irrational fear dictate my Essence development.
If I failed to nourish myself sufficiently through my [Cultivation], I would simply push it further and manifest my [Will] to make it do so.
Hunger was nothing but a tool to further my [Cultivation].
In a short amount of time, my Essence settled into its new state of [Harmony], and my deepened communion with it as the external world held nothing of interest anymore, provided me with a clear picture of the massive changes that transpired.
[Guided] (Origin)[Cultivation] (Tier 0)[Insight] (Tier 2)[Awareness] (Tier 0)[Darkness] (Tier 1)[Will] (Tier 2)[Focus] (Tier 2)
It hadn't become denser in the way that Essence overdevelopment caused.
It was simply... more whole.
More... structured.
Most important of all, it was readier to welcome new Aspects than it had been for more than a year now.
And I strongly suspected that a minor rearrangement of my Essence development priorities and the exploration of the intricacies of the fundamental truth of [Cultovation] would make for a perfect opportunity to do just that.
Times more exciting than ever were upon me.