Power of Runes Chapter 416: Finally Completed (3)
Previously on Power of Runes...
Ash's awareness surged back into his physical form, and the very moment that link reformed, a faint tremor ran through his soul from the abrupt flood of sensations entering his mind.
Having been severed from his body for so long, the sudden reconnection to his physical senses proved intensely invigorating, but his thoughts rapidly steadied, handling the influx with astonishing sharpness.
His mind was far too formidable to buckle under such an assault. Rather than disorientation, he experienced a fleeting jolt of astonishment at the vast enhancement in his sensory capabilities.
This held true especially since the perceptions now assaulting him transcended anything a mere mortal could comprehend.
Though his eyes remained shut, a complete 360-degree view of his surroundings filled his mind, as if all directions unfolded simultaneously within his consciousness, while his other senses sharpened beyond prior recollection.
The slightest ripple in his vicinity registered vividly, and even the delicate shifts in the space encasing his form came into sharp focus, rendering the world around him strikingly lifelike and intricate.
It resembled how sleep confined him to just two eyes for viewing reality, but now countless eyes seemed to open at once, with his remaining senses elevated to heights his mind had never navigated.
Ash methodically absorbed the data from his heightened senses. Eyes still closed, he discerned myriad rocky fragments floating nearby, all caught in the gentle tug of a close planet's gravity.
Without delay, Ash willed his hands and limbs to stir. Before, only the tiniest twitch of his fingers had been possible, so feeble it never disrupted the mold-like cocoon formed during his extended metamorphosis.
Yet this time, as he commanded movement anew, the outcome shifted dramatically.
The instant his form exerted true motion, powerful tremors rippled through the rigid casing enveloping him, spawning hairline fractures as internal pressure mounted swiftly.
These fissures crept outward across the shell that had imprisoned him for years, widening further as Ash experimentally flexed, adapting to his reclaimed bodily command.
Once the strain exceeded its tolerance, the cocoon shattered vertically into halves, the fortified exterior yielding at last to the overwhelming force.
The shell burst apart.
And Ash unveiled his eyes.
"This....feeling is somehow addicting...."
In a resonant baritone, Ash murmured those words, a faint grin curving his lips. As they escaped, he halted briefly, struck by how his voice reverberated through the void encircling him.
That marked the initial stark alteration beyond his senses. His timbre had deepened noticeably, infused with an innate gravitas, each syllable laced with subtle allure and unspoken command absent in his past.
He hadn't aimed for any specific inflection, yet the emitted sound diverged sharply from memory.
How had he detected it so swiftly?
His instincts revealed it.
This newfound acuity felt alien, for previously his instincts offered only hazy intuitions during pivotal choices.
Now they pulsed with vivid immediacy, alive and alert. Any notion sparking in his thoughts drew instant instinctive feedback, granting intuitive insight into his state sans laborious scrutiny.
Ash methodically examined his hands, then his frame, and at last his groin to verify his full physique. Surveying these transformations, a touch of surprise stirred within him.
Employing his panoramic vision, he scrutinized his whole exterior. Encircling his form from all angles, he beheld a humanoid silhouette—two arms, two legs—but utterly alien in every other aspect.
The most captivating shift gleamed in his eyes.
They were mesmerizing.
Foregoing the typical sclera of common folk, his eyes swirled with myriad hues that flowed like molten liquids, in perpetual flux.
Even stranger, no iris graced them.
At each eye's core sat a minuscule black pupil, an abyss devouring ambient colors instead of mirroring them. Radiating from this void in wheel-like spokes stretched slender lines.
Precisely ten such lines.
Yet closer inspection unveiled more.
A minute eleventh line sprouted tentatively from the pupil's heart, nascent and incomplete, as though still evolving.
With mounting intrigue, Ash pondered his eyes' bizarre configuration.
And peering deeper into that abyssal core, an observer might spy something profoundly odder.
Buried in those shadows lurked a lone glyph.
It morphed ceaselessly, defying stasis, yet its golden brilliance endured, radiating ethereally from the depths beyond mortal ken.
As Ash strained to scrutinize this emblem, his mind quaked, a piercing vertigo washing over his psyche.
His intellect recoiled instinctively from such intense observation.
Focus shattered, compelling his gaze elsewhere.
This glyph defied simple scrutiny, evoking not mere ink or etching but a profound abyss harboring vast profundity.
It evoked the distilled quintessence of all runes he commanded.
Ash's thoughts raced wildly, hypotheses cascading forth. Only then did another evolution register: cognition now flowed with unprecedented lucidity. Mental processes accelerated with pinpoint accuracy, concepts crystallizing effortlessly, akin to perpetual Omni Thought.
Deliberations once demanding toil now ignited spontaneously.
Swiftly, Ash alighted on a hypothesis that furrowed his brow contemplatively. Should his runes embody reality's primal facets, perhaps they weren't discrete entities.
All 25 reality runes might converge into one ultimate form.
And his ocular emblem could mirror that ultimate rune in nascent state.
No proof validated this, yet it resonated intuitively.
His instincts affirmed its truth.
Pressing onward, Ash cataloged further bodily shifts.
His hair next seized focus: immaculate white, purer than ever, yet iridescent rainbows and gold flecked its strands under light. Eyebrows and lashes mirrored this splendor.
Robust yet ethereal white, they danced with golden-rainbow glimmers, bordering on the unreal in beauty.
Skin, sinew, and innards deviated wildly from the norm.
Rejecting mundane flesh, his physique evoked a cosmic tapestry akin to a starlit cosmos. A violet-black hue cloaked him, punctuated by myriad pinpoint luminosities twinkling over his dermis.
Initially resembling remote constellations.
But no true stars.
Rather, minuscule runic sigils masquerading as stellar flickers, strewn through skin, blood, and vessels.
His veins evoked cosmic filaments—potent, profound, exquisite.
Ash appraised his build meticulously. Slender contours belied scant overt musculature, yet radiated innate athleticism.
Simultaneously, a fragile refinement lent him androgynous grace, evoking a pampered royal untouched by toil.
Such delicacy proved mere veneer.
Musculature defied convention.
Forgoing bulky fibers, his muscles layered like folded dimensions. Thus, future might amplified inward density sans visible hypertrophy.
They'd densify as spatial strata, fortifying unseen.
Another hallmark escaped initial notice: across his entirety, infinitesimal runic sparks mimicked constellations in skin, blood, veins. Yet larger glyphs adorned select zones.
Fewer than the myriads, yet discernible upon inspection. These graced finger backs, shoulders, spine, leg expanses. Stable unlike the twinkles, they glowed softly golden, harmonizing with his stellar dermis.
They exuded antiquity, might, innate unity, as if birthed with him.
And crucially.....
Quiet contentment lit Ash's smile upon verifying his masculinity, enhanced modestly beyond prior measure.
Internals diverged starkly.
Absent entirely.
No standard viscera occupied him.
Merely one heart, from which vascular webs radiated, linking his form comprehensively.
Even this heart was anomalous.
Duplicitous in nature.
One facet pulsed conventionally, circulating blood via venous lattice. Modest in scale, yet flawlessly rhythmic.
The counterpart utterly diverged.
Enshrined therein sprawled a cosmic vacuum.
An infinite ebony expanse plunging eternally.
His essence.
Power's origin.
Presently barren void, hushed and pristine.
Ash knew innately he'd populate this abyss personally, forging strength from void.
Further oddity nagged.
No heartbeat pulsed.
Nor breath stirred.
Despite human visage and nostrils, respiration proved superfluous. Air sustained him not.
Blood too transformed: golden-violet, viscous near solidity, yet supple for seamless venous transit, unhindered.
As he surveyed silently, Ash voiced authentic awe. This potency rang no delusion or hype-fueled fancy. The gulf between transformed self and former incarnation loomed immense.
Should past Ash stand present, annihilation awaited via idle flick.
Such might his instincts proclaimed.
"Now lets try something....."
Softly Ash intoned, intrigue sparking in his gaze. By reflex, he summoned the longstanding status interface.
Void responded.
Absolute silence.
"Looks like the status window has vanished.....hmm...."
He whispered to the emptiness ahead, yet disappointment eluded him; instead, a subtle grin bloomed.
The system's absence stirred less regret than formerly.
Dismissing rumination, Ash invoked Eye of Omniscience, turning it inward for self-analysis.
***