CHAPTER 606: RYUN

The Exalted Empire vessel blotted out the sun, covering the battlefield with its large wedge-shaped body. Turrets and other weapon platforms lined its surface.

Ryun focused his perception on it the moment it appeared and discovered, to his surprise, that he couldn’t pierce through its protections. As he applied effort, he felt like he was getting closer, then suddenly his effort seemed as if washed away. It didn’t take him long to realize that part of its protections seemed to oscillate, change in order to protect from powers such as his. His perception skill was based on reading Space itself, and somehow the vessel was interfering with that. It was as if the vessel was its own independent Space, cut off from the rest of it, or at least with a boundary that was interrupted. He could pierce through it with enough will, he was sure, or simply by expanding his being through it. But he saw an opportunity.

Not even a second had passed since it had arrived, and Ryun had already come up with a plan. Conflict was a place where he had always thrived, where he had pushed himself the most.

He was strong, but there were still ways for him to grow, power that he was yet to advance.

A Skill was a way to force the world to bow down to an action, to a force a person was demonstrating. His skills had always been a big part of who he was, even if he didn’t have many of them.

Before he could focus and start to work on his skills, a thrum of power rippled through the large ship, then it opened fire. A cacophony of fire rained down on the ground, lances of light flashing in repeating patterns. It happened so fast that it made him just stare.

The attack landed straight on top of his vessel, destroying it completely in an instant and carving a crater in the process. Everywhere the lances of light passed, they burned his being, invisible to eye and probably most perceptions, it was still there. He existed as a spherical cloud of authority that stretched over the sects side of the battlefield.

The enemy attack destroyed more than just the physical Essences, as proven by them being able to touch his being which spread over the foundational Essence of the Real Realm, they impacted the Space itself.

There was pain, but that was a distant thing to him now. He had moved past it long ago. On the grand scale, the damage he had suffered was small, barely an injury, his being was large, and his vessel didn’t contain that much of his density, the authority he spread into the air around the battlefield was thinner still.

His regeneration kicked in, restoring the damage, but he could tell that it was slower than it used to be. Though slower didn’t mean actually slow, he was whole within moments.

The turrets on the vessel shifted, targeting his second vessel on the other side of the battle, preparing to take it out as Ryun used it to throw javelins bombs at the enemy positions across the territory.

Ryun focused his attention inward, on his |Enduring Trained Body| skill. He leveraged his will to help his mind think faster with |Velocity|

, and in the moments before the enemy ship fired, he pressed with his willpower.

In preparation for evolving his skills, he had picked up a few new ones. Some he bought tomes and learned simple skills that might not be the most powerful but could be evolved in broad ways. He wasn’t someone just starting one the path of advancement, someone who would struggle. He had reached the end and had it delayed, he was just catching up.

One of the skills he picked up was a simple toughness skill that he evolved to tier 4 |Damage Reduction| back in the sect. His reasons for it were all carefully thought out with Selia and Erdania. His nature made it harder for him to create, to restore, he wasn’t certain if his capability would eventually go away completely, but he had to mitigate that. If he couldn’t heal the damage, preventing it seemed like the next best thing.

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Evolving Skills was a matter of will and scars. There were many ideas and thoughts about how best to evolve them. Ryun, like most people who had advanced far, had his own way of thinking about it.

He looked through his life, to the memories of events that impacted him in the way that resonated with the nature of the skill he was trying to evolve the most. Or rather his interpretation of it.

For |Damage Reduction| he remembered the moments when he had suffered physical damage, when his body was pierced, burned, battered, destroyed. He focused on his desire to continue, despite those injuries, to stand. The skill pulsed within him, each pulse growing it a tier. With every step he gathered the Essence ideas he needed. Toughness from the defenses around him, Reliability pulled from Erdania through Scorn, and he layered the meaning behind them in his skill. |Damage Reduction||Perfect Aegis||Perfect Aegis: Harm Is Dust| then he focused on his other skill |Perfect Enduring Existence| |Perfect Enduring Existence: My Body and Soul, Enduring| finally he brought the two skills together.

|Of Unbreakable Body and Soul|

And with another push raised it further.

|I Diminished All Harm|

I felt my regeneration taking a large hit, the price for the skill, but my healing was monstrous already. Even diminished, he would be capable enough.

The enemy ship fired, the lances of light reached the edge of his being, and faltered. Chassis already adapted to the attack reducing it, his skill reduced it further. To the people in the territory watching the attack, it would appear as if it sputtered and diminished the further away from the ship it went. In truth, the more it penetrated Ryun’s being, the more he resisted it.

He gained no skill perks, but he could feel something happening. Something that from the information he had read felt almost like an Image. Though he wouldn’t gain that peak of Skill, he felt like he was contributing to something. It felt similar to the way the weight of a core felt to other cultivators, how it could be used as a physical intent. He had reached the pinnacle, Image was already a part of him, of his being. His manifestation of the End. Every focus was meant to guide to the same thing, of course it would all tie in together. Perhaps, once he had finished evolving skills he would be able to do more with just the weight of his presence.

Bays opened in the side of the ship and smaller attack craft flew out, while large metal doors slid wide and revealed banks filled with missiles that fired nearly instantly.

Ryun focused again on his skills, this time pushing |Velocity| alongside |Divided Mind|. Evolutions pinged inside his mind, then he merged the skills before pushing the newly created Skill to the end he desired.

|I Split My Mind|

The speed of my mind increased as I triggered the skill, and I felt the price, I lost my perception skill along with the rest of my passive skills. The only way that I could see anything was through my authority or my eyes. I turned my vessels and my main body, looking at the ship as I expanded my being to envelop the coming attack.

With my mind split and thinking at much faster speeds, I tracked each of the thousands of missiles and hundreds of attack ships. I gathered End Qi, shaped techniques within my being. Thousands of orbs of pure black of True Death, surrounded by flickers of all the colors of the Essences of Destruction, of Journey, of Death, of the End.

All of it happened in a split moment, and as soon as the orbs manifested, by his will they were fired.

Flickers of light, as thin as a finger, blazed across the sky for just a moment, and everything they touched vanished, collapsing into that final state of their Essence, reaching their End.

There was a silence, a quiet that spread across the battlefield that just a moment ago had a sky filled with weapons and attack craft and now had only the giant ship looming over everything.

Ryun pulled his split mind skill back, and his perception returned, just in time for him to sense a shaking of space around the ship. It was trying something, a response to his demonstration.

He didn’t plan on letting it finish.