As Rael read through the painful memories he had chosen to remember, a more vivid transformation was taking place around him though invisible to the naked eye. Tiny, fog-like, microscopic tendrils of wind ,no, not wind, but aether—were slowly coiling around his kneeling figure. Each tendril began to gather above his stabbed palm before forcefully sinking into it, causing Rael extreme pain. Yet his expression didn't change it was as if he were asleep, save for the faint twitching of his face.
Body Tempering at 29%- 31%
A transformation began deep within Rael—on a microscopic level.
Within his body, the tendrils at first moved gently through his bloodstream, avoiding each blood cell before reaching what could be described as a bluish pipe that stretched far and wide, his veins.
Boom.
The aether tendrils attacked the veins, easily piercing through and destroying them from within.
Rael groaned in pain as he snapped out of his memories. His eyes widened in shock at the small maelstrom of what he could only identify as fog, swirling around him and digging into his wounded palm.
Body Tempering at 35%... 38%... 41%
"What the hell is happening?" he exclaimed. He never expected such an outcome—no phenomenon like this had ever been mentioned in any manuscript he'd heard.
"Damn it," Rael cursed, bearing through the burning pain coursing through his arm as he moved his right hand to free the knife from his palm.
But no matter how he pulled, it wouldn't budge—not even the stool beneath it.
Body Tempering at 45%... 49%... 53%... 57%
"Shit... come on!" he growled, yanking harder, but it still wouldn't move. Then he felt it the burning sensation crawling from his stabbed hand up to his shoulder.
"Ahhh!" he roared in agony as his veins glowed a pure, searing red. He could feel them tearing and healing at the same time in an unnatural rhythm crawling it way to his heart.
Boom!
Before he could process it all, he screamed in pain as the maelstrom of aether engulfed him completely, forming a meter-high tornado of pure energy.
---
Boom
A short distance away, a spike-filled ear perked up at the loud noise. The creature turned its large head towards the sound and sniffed the air, its reddish eyes glowing brighter as it growled with hunger. It lifted its abnormally large body like that of a wolf, but covered in sharp, gleaming spikes instead of fur.
Raising its head, it howled to the sky.
"Awuuuu!"
Then it began moving toward the source of the sound ,the scent of pure Aether thick in the air as many other howls answered in the distance.
….
A few minutes afterwards, as the Aether tornado dispersed, Rael could be seen in the tattered tent lying still on the ground, his left palm still stuck with the knife on the stool, except on a closer look, the knife was now bent in an odd shape as if unprofessionally melted.
Rael gasped for air as his eyes fluttered open, taking in the scene around him. The entire camp was in shambles. Groaning, as his mind still played memories of the hellish pain he'd gone through moments before, he pushed himself to sit up, feeling awkward. It felt like he was drunk and at the same time perfectly sober too sober.
Taking a deep breath, as he subconsciously yanked his left hand free of the stool, he flinched a normal reaction when one was meant to feel pain but Rael was surprised he didn't feel pain, just a warm sensation. Bringing his left hand to his eye level, he watched as his open flesh squirmed around the steel lodged into it. Using his right hand, he slowly pulled at the knife as it easily and slowly slipped off the hole it had caused in his palm.
Rael widened his eyes as he watched his open flesh injury close slowly but surely.
"Hahh, thi...s has to be a dream, right?" He knew it wasn't, as he could feel a tingling sensation from the spot as it closed, leaving only a tattoo-like scar behind that surprisingly looked like a skull.
Rael squinted his eyes as the weird sensation of drunkenness started to make sense, and he came to a joyful conclusion.
"Aether... Aether user. I'm an Aether user now," he smiled before calming down to fully assess the changes in his body. On closer observation, he could feel a certain heat coursing through his veins, all converging at his heart.
"That's strange," Rael murmured as he pinched his skin. It felt no different at all from before not hard like steel as it was meant to be after stepping into the first rank of an Aether warrior.
"What the hell," Rael muttered in confusion. "System, my interface,show me my interface!" Rael shouted to himself in a manner that would make him seem mad to anyone that could have seen him, but he definitely didn't care, as he was anxious that it might have failed or was just a scam. He was ready to lay everlasting curses on the system if it had made him go through that kind of pain for nothing.
---
[Host Interface]
[Name: Rael Drakul]
[Age: 22]
[Gender: Male]
[Race: Human]
[Rank: (Tier I) Iron Fighter Rank]
[Aether capacity:9%]
[Aether limit:13%]
[Strength: 8–11]
[Agility: 6–9]
[Endurance: 10–14]
[Will: 14–17]
[Intelligence: 8–8.5]
[Aether Reserves:9%]
[Aether Manuscript: Warmaster Scripture I (Phase: Iron Path Initiated)]
[Aether Techniques: Non-existent]
[Aether Spells: Non-existent]
[Congratulations to the host on taking the first step towards supreme dominion. For each path tread and conquered, there is its own reward.]
[Reward allocated.]
---
Seeing the huge changes to his interface eased Rael's nerves as he took in the big changes to his stats except for one. The intelligence stat had only moved up by 0.5 percent. He chose to ignore that as he layed down and decided to relish this first big achievement of his.
"Finally, power is mine. Haha. Although just the start of a long ladder, it feels good to take the first step. But come to think of it, it seems the Warmaster Scripture has a completely different view on the Iron Fighter rank," Rael concluded, realizing that all the internal pain and chaos earlier had been his veins being refined to allow Aether to pass through them. Though he had no way of using that yet he'll have to learn it the hard way but that made this manuscript entirely different from others, as most refined and tempered the flesh first before the veins. He couldn't help but curse the vagueness of the system.
Pushing himself off the ground as he used the stool as a foothold—
Crack.
He staggered as the stool legs broke from his little exerted strength. Seeing this, Rael smiled to himself before frowning just as fast.
"What a mess," he muttered, looking at the wrecked tents around him. He sighed. "Well, I was planning on rebuilding it with wood."
But first, he chose to claim the reward from the system.
[Would host like to claim the reward?]
[Yes] [No]
"Yes."