Exploring the Ark had been a profoundly complex experience for Lyriel. More than a physical challenge, it was a mental ordeal, with her thoughts swinging from one extreme to another. Her past as the last leader of her planet, witnessing the ultimate sacrifice of her family, friends, and subjects, all to ensure her survival weighed heavily on her consciousness. The Ark had always represented the last sliver of hope in an otherwise unforgiving universe, but even that had been taken away, leaving her practically rudderless.

After millennia had passed, she still clearly remembered the final days of her civilization’s collapse, replaying them over and over so that she could never forget, whether she wished to or not. The images always came back to her when her thoughts were idle, when she was stressed, or when she was exhausted, repeating the worst experience of her long life ad infinitum.

The smell of sulphur, the scorching embers in the air, and the stinging atmosphere that ate at their wispy souls were fresh in her mind. That’s why she had so much trouble standing up to the first demons in the tower, why she lacked any confidence in opposing an Icon, and why she still wanted to oppose the forces of mana so badly.

She was already mentally broken, unable to heal from the unimaginable damage she had previously taken as she reopened the scars time and time again. Her memories dominated her thoughts and reduced her to a panicked coward that would keel over rather than fight when faced with the living embodiment of her losses.

Back during the fall of her kingdom, the assimilation had already reduced her planet to a single settlement. They were hidden within their most ancient of forests before the Eradication Protocol even began. That final city had developed into an incredible stronghold of gleaming marble and living wood, one that should have lasted into the ages.

It was the fiery stone and blood demons that successfully tore it down. They were the same demons that sought to permanently remove her from the Ark. They were the demons that occupied the false sanctuary of the Exiles where her hope had completely died. She detested them and all the other forces of mana.

The civilization shard stood at the foot of their world tree, with her palace embedded in its crown, and an entire city winding on shimmering roads toward the base. Thousands of years of harmonious peace barely prepared them for the competition promoted by the assimilation, but in the end they had rallied with a greater population than nearly any other integrating species could boast. If not for the Eradication Protocol, they would have entered the galactic community like a dazzling gemstone with nearly a million survivors united in the glory of overcoming a true ordeal with unprecedented success.

Her people spent more than a century systematically power leveling her and her queen mother, funneling levels and hope into their leader with Lyriel at her side. When the time came to face the forces of mana, the people were still the ones who manned the front lines, understanding that their efforts had been for naught.

They recognized the unwinnable nature of the Eradication Protocol, and placed their last bit of faith in Lyriel specifically, shielding her alone, promoting her to their ultimate treasure. In the same way she had placed her hope in the Ark, they had looked to her for the future salvation of their spirits.

It only took 33 days for the demonic armies to annihilate them all, the corruption sweeping through their territory and burning the people from the inside out before their Monolithic Destiny revealed itself to deliver the final blow to their brave queen. Lyriel would have died as well had she not been hidden away by the efforts of her subjects, allowing her to survive an extra few days by herself in the corrupting atmosphere as it fully engulfed their planet.

Had it not been for the Exile that had warned them of the Eradication Protocol just a year before the end fulfilling their vague promise and evacuating her from the planet as soon as the failed integration completed, she would have perished as well. Though her body lived, her soul died with her people.

Ultimately it was thanks to their sacrifices that she lived long enough to be pulled from the carnage, but she existed with an incredible burden forever more. It was only bearable as long as she clung to her dream of completely destroying mana. She had to do it, for her sake, for her mother’s vengeance, for the sacrifice of her people, and for the memory of her previously peaceful planet. It was mana that had destroyed their harmony, its activation ruining everything, and its existence the root of all evil.

She told herself revenge was still possible even after they learned the Ark was actually the harbinger of doom itself. She would have Coop turn its power against the very force it represented, tearing it down from the inside just as the corrupted mana eliminated its victims. There was still a chance. She couldn’t let it go.

Coop kept her from falling apart, encouraging her in simple ways. He kindly supported her without overtly butting in, not knowing the full extent of her mission, but recognizing that she needed the motivation to keep going. He had a better emotional intelligence than he let on.

It wasn’t just grief that she felt, she had a profound, pathologically intense survivor’s guilt. Every second she still breathed and every thought she pondered represented the lives that had been extinguished for her sake alone. There was no other meaning to her existence.

Lyriel truly believed that her life no longer belonged to her. She was merely a vessel carrying the unfulfilled vengeance of her people. Whether it was provided on behalf of the system, as the Avatar, through the Ark, or the Exiles mattered little. Her essence was a simple extension of the sacrifice made by her people. It was all for them.

She had been shaped by her lust for revenge. It was a cold, relentless drive, empowered by the staggering price her life had demanded. Mana was the singular, tangible target for all of the accumulated desperation to find a proper meaning for the demise of her planet. The only cracks in her shell had been made by Coop himself, his indifferent nonchalance to his own struggle providing a stark contrast to her quiet fervor.

It wasn’t that he was unaware of what could come, it was that he recognized his limits and quietly worked to push them a little further with every action. Whenever she expressed her desire to have him save the universe, he clearly enunciated his goals were much simpler. She respected his stance, but she couldn’t afford the same perspective for herself.

The revelations found inside the Ark that essentially assigned blame for her past on the system’s misuse of mana, was devastating to her world view. It shattered the entire framework for understanding her past and for her purpose. Revenge against mana was her sole reason for living, a buoy in a violent sea of grief. The existential crisis she felt coming was put on pause as she followed him into combat, where she barely had time to really contemplate things. She was lost in that sea of grief, but through his actions he declared he wouldn’t let her drown.

She didn’t know who she was or if there really was any meaning to her life anymore. The Ark, which had been a source of hope that she could take vengeance, became a vast symbol of confusion. But she fought on, following the complete recklessness of the Champion of Ghost Reef as he demonstrated a clear purpose without all the ancillary thoughts complicating matters. The simple human creature took things one step at a time, without fail.

The appearance of the exact set of demons who had set her on the path of revenge became the target of her bitter resentment. She redirected her silent fury at the universe into excising the individual representatives that fought to stop them from taking control of the Ark.

It took her an excessively long time to truly redefine her goals. The turmoil, and desperation all played out as they climbed the initial floors of the tower. The destruction of mana could still be her aim, but the reason for it had to shift. It was no longer purely about vengeance, instead focused on the exaggerated vow to prevent future acts of injustice. The catastrophe of her home, the same one that was occurring on Earth, would never happen again if mana ceased to exist. They would reset the universe and hopefully allow life to begin a new iteration without the corrupting power looming like a shadow on their souls.

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But even as she regained her clear motivation, it started to feel impossible. One hundred levels up the tower and she could already go no further. The accumulated pool of experience that she represented, generated from an entire planet’s worth of effort, was already exhausted. The Ark Tower was too much and the forces of mana too powerful.

Palisteon did his best to support her, infusing her with his own ancient mana, but it was only enough to leap to the next platforms. She could barely contribute in the fights, taking on one or two demons at most, and even then, requiring several levels to recuperate enough to participate in the next bout.

The fact that she could defeat even one of the fully formed forces of mana was a major feat of strength. She had killed hundreds, but there were so many more. Lyriel had no idea what to think. Each of the demons was a world conqueror, and she was the hope of only one world. How could anyone expect more from her? They were equally matched in terms of raw power, but their absolute numbers weighed heavily on the scales.

She had observed Coop before the protocol began, gauging his potential and concluding that he was little more than a simple but highly motivated creature. Without the system, she couldn’t hope for him to be more than a naive ringbearer to help carry out her purpose. The Eradication Protocol was initiating far too soon for him to be her equal, even if his potential could see him there at some point in time. However, once they were inside the Ark battling creatures so far beyond his ability he should have collapsed beneath the weight of their auras, something extremely strange seemed to be happening.

He kept getting stronger.

It shouldn’t have been possible. This individual human was clearly progressing without the system. She could see it with her own mana sight. He completely disregarded the lack of levels and accumulated mana on his own, robbing it from his victims like it was his due. Every conquest paid dividends, no matter how it was accomplished. He demanded growth, forcing it upon himself with every kill. It was absurd.

By the time Lyriel was weakened to the point of surrender, this fragile human behaved as if he was her rival in terms of levels, cleaving through crowds that should have vaporized him with their passive existence. She always had trouble measuring his worth, gauging his mana with all of her experience, and even with the system gone, when stagnation should have captured him, he was still in flux to her eyes.

The demons stood no chance as he broke the recognized hierarchy of the universe and overpowered the forces of mana, accomplishing the impossible with every attack. Then he manifested gods, exposing the universe to the power embedded within the hearts of humanity as a united collective.

She was horrified by the upheavals, but they took place when she could no longer contribute. Coop took over, filling the gaps with the sponsorships of his entire species. Lyriel was more than his equivalent, a globally recognized leader before mana activated on her planet, but she could not wield more than her own power. He was something different and maybe all humans were.

From what she could tell, his ‘Inheritance’ was complete nonsense. Where her people had faith in her family line, humanity believed in everything and nothing all at the same time. Somehow he wielded that insanity like a torch, exposing the weakness of the forces of mana. It wasn’t his power at all, though he forged himself a body and soul that could barely withstand the strain.

That also meant that he was not the only individual human that could tap into their collective strength. Lyriel came to the conclusion that humans were truly terrifying creatures and thought that maybe, in this case, the Eradication Protocol had a point.

As she struggled to comprehend what humans even were, she watched as Coop further developed right before her eyes. He experimented with physical manifestations of his aura, splitting it into layers to focus on them one at a time. He was inefficient as he drew from his own essence, practically lighting his existence on fire just to damage his enemies with its heat, but from fight to fight she saw his potential expanding. His body was bathed in the weakest empowerments, manifesting like red smoke, crystalline dust, or icy wisps, gaseous shadows, and vaporous convictions. Then, he started to condense it enough for it to drip like liquid, a feat that required guidance from the system in every other recognized example.

Skills were just the user imitating the system. The patterns of mana were assigned to them, but he was inventing his own.

By her eye, he was recreating her most powerful skills with sheer will, pioneering on a path entirely his own. Finally, in moments where he drew upon all of his mental fortitude, focused on a specific attack with every fiber of his being, she witnessed the true solidification of his aura. For a split second, the edge of his manifested weapons exceeded anything Lyriel had ever witnessed. It might have been possible to defeat an Icon of Mana with those strikes, but there was only so much one individual could do.

After more than a thousand levels, the forces of mana shifted and she was shocked by how he suddenly struggled once again. It was like he had forgotten all the power he accumulated for the demons when contending with the parasites.

She was forced to burn through her own energy lest they both be killed, but once again, he progressed himself in impossible ways, this time even faster than with the demons. He took control of every fight as she tapped into her own lifeforce for the last few attacks, reclaiming his domineering position before they hit fifty levels of parasites.

Then, after another three thousand levels, the process repeated. After only twenty platforms of the dragons, Coop was fully in control of the fights. Another three thousand levels and Lyriel was sure he was stronger than she had ever been, his blade aura so refined it actually hurt to look at for the split second it appeared in his attacks, as if it was so sharp it threatened to cut her mind. It transcended regular skills just as his ‘Inheritance’ did, but as something completely unique to his own experience. He represented himself with his aura, his people’s history through phantasms, and their collective imagination with the Inheritance.

She only had to help for five floors of the angels before he took over again, and it was a good thing, because she could no longer tear through the imagined scar tissue to access her mana pool. Palisteon was equally exhausted. It seemed like they wouldn’t go much further.

The enemies changed, but before they escaped the second wave of demons, she stopped him during one particular lull, caused by his manifestation of a god clearing out the forces of mana with a tidal wave of power.

“Coop… we need to talk.” Lyriel called out, voice unusually hoarse as she leaned on her own ruined knees.

Coop was glancing at his hands as they vibrated with residual energy from the manifestation, but he closed them into fists as he turned, sensing something in her demeanor. “What’s wrong?” He asked. “Are you hurt?” He continued as he stepped closer, genuinely concerned in a way that always made her think he was a bit too simple.

“This is my limit.” She declared. “I can’t jump any more, my mana is exhausted, and my body is breaking down.”

Coop’s eyes widened, shocked for a split second before he shook his head. “We don’t need to jump. It’s been getting more dangerous anyway.” He squinted at the ramps ahead. “I think our progression would be smoother if we started taking it more steady.”

Lyriel frowned. “Do you not understand the gravity of this mission? Leave us behind. It must be done. There is no room for sentimentality.”

She was getting ready to explain what he needed to do with the Ark, and how it would be up to him to destroy mana. Instead, he interrupted her.

“Nah. This is fine, maybe even better.” He declared with a shake of his head, bending over to rub Palisteon’s head like the ancient being was a pet. She looked at him with an expression of pure confusion, unable to determine if he was stupid or courageous based on his words and actions.

“Just keep following me.” Coop added. “I feel like we might get more momentum if we stop chasing shortcuts.” He nodded to himself, growing more convinced as he spoke. “I bet we can actually go faster if I hold onto the dreams a bit longer.” Then he shrugged. “I want to try some stuff, but we better get started.”

His spear morphed into a sword and both his eyes and his blade illuminated with a clean red energy that made Lyriel step back. “Let’s go.” He added, seemingly sure she would listen as he turned away.

She found herself following before she even decided herself. How did such a simple creature grow so reliable? For the first time, she thought maybe he was also a surprisingly good leader, though he rarely gave any commands. It was no wonder his settlement had found some success in the assimilation. With his determination one could believe anything was possible.