The Insane Regressor: Throne of Pride

Ravian turned around in his spiritual form and surveyed the space around him.

Behind him stood a smaller gate, wide open.

The Gate of Awakening.

The first gate he had crossed when he killed Max and his soul awakened was no longer a barrier before him; it had become the road that had brought him here.

Ten red points appeared in the void surrounding him, apparently representing his extra lives. Five of them moved forward—not to vanish or be consumed, but to hold the distance between the two gates fixed, like supports that would keep his soul from collapsing during the crossing.

’So that’s why the ascension required five lives?’ Ravian thought, focusing on the five red points.

Then the shadow of a mask appeared behind him.

It wasn’t the Mask of Loftiness itself, but the trace of soul energy recorded within it. It rose into the void for a moment and left a dark red mark across the middle of the gate before fading away.

As for the power of the heart, it gathered behind the gate in the shape of a turbulent sea.

[The three ascension requirements have been fixed in place.]

[The opening of the Walker Gate has begun.]

A low sound came from the gate.

It wasn’t a creak, but the resonance of something that had remained sealed within the soul since its birth and was beginning to move for the very first time.

Its two halves slowly separated.

And in the narrow gap between them, two paths appeared.

The first stretched through a colossal human body within which dense red channels were interwoven. Power ran through bone, muscle, and blood, then burst beyond the skin and coiled around an invisible weapon.

[The Aura Path]

[The Walker carries his soul power within his body and converts it into aura that reinforces his body and weapon and imposes his will upon whatever it touches.]

Then the other appeared beside it.

It was the second path, stretching through a space filled with countless circles and symbols. Soul power moved both within the body and outside it, connected with the surrounding elements, and then reshaped them according to its wielder’s will.

[The Magic Path]

[The Walker carries his soul power outside his body and converts it into magical energy that connects with his element and acts upon the world around him.]

A third window appeared between the two paths.

[Condition for completing the ascension: choose a single path.]

[Aura / Magic]

Ravian held his gaze on the two of them.

The Aura Path was more compatible with his body and the Sovereign Pride Physique, while the Magic Path offered the clearer route to using the Void element beyond the boundaries of his body.

Each of them granted him something he needed, and each would tear the other half away from him.

He raised his hand toward the window.

But before he could choose, the two options froze.

The gate suddenly shuddered violently. Red veins stretched out from both sides and drove themselves into both paths at once.

[Conventional selection has been suspended.]

[A conflict has been detected between the Walker’s rule and the host’s path.]

Ravian’s eyes narrowed, but another window appeared before he could ask.

[Reminder for the host.]

[The host was informed in the forest that the nature of his path upon reaching Walker would surprise him.]

[And now the time has come for the host to realize what manner of existence he truly is.]

The dark shadows moving across the gate stopped.

Then they surged into both paths and swallowed the dividing line between them.

[A complete path is not built out of an incomplete choice.]

[Sovereign Pride cannot be incomplete.]

[The single-path rule has been rejected.]

[Extracting the essence of the Aura Path.]

[Extracting the essence of the Magic Path.]

The entire void shook.

The two paths resisted one another for a moment.

The power of aura tried to seal itself within the body, while magical energy sought to detach from it and extend outward. They were two opposing directions for the very same soul power—two paths that could never coexist within a single Walker.

A forbidden path... one that had never had an equal before and would never have one in the future.

But Sovereign Pride made no attempt to reconcile them according to the rule that had separated them in the first place.

It tore apart the boundary between inside and outside and summoned the Void between them in the form of a fine gray fissure.

The fissure widened, swallowed the conflict between the two paths, and then returned their power in the form of a single cycle: power welling up from the soul, passing through the body as aura, leaving it as magic, and then returning to the soul once more.

Neither of the two paths contradicted the other any longer.

Each had become what the other lacked.

[Fusion of the two paths’ essences successful.]

[A singular path has been created.]

[The Path of Sovereign Pride]

[Path branches: Aura — Magic]

For the first time since the process began, Ravian’s expression changed.

And at that moment, the eyes of Ravian’s spiritual form blazed a brilliant crimson; had he been in his physical form just then, a wide, terrifying smile would have spread across his face.

Sovereign Pride hadn’t granted him some small exception to the rule of the Ninth Rank.

It had taken the rule itself and rejected the part of it that forced him into incompleteness.

The corner of his mouth lifted.

"So this is what you meant," Ravian said through his spiritual form.

No window answered him.

Both halves of the gate swung fully open.

And in that same instant, the new path surged toward him of its own accord.

His awareness of the room returned all at once.

His body bent forward over the table as the last of the power preserved within the heart exploded outward. Whatever remained of the heart vanished completely, and two different waves pierced through Ravian’s chest at the very same moment.

The first descended into his bones and muscles.

The soul power he had never been able to use in anything but a primitive form turned into a dense current that sealed itself within his body. It passed through every gray marking in his bones and filled the new channels that the Void-Grade Sovereign Pride Physique had opened, then emerged from his skin as a transparent gray membrane.

The aura.

As for the second wave, it rose into his soul.

It spread beyond the boundaries of his body and touched the Void surrounding him for the first time, not as a distant element he summoned through an ability, but as a part of his own path that he could perceive and direct.

The air shuddered.

Fine gray points, verging on black, appeared around Ravian, neither absorbing light nor reflecting it, and then connected to one another through gray threads that formed an incomplete circle before dissolving into Void Shadow.

Any one of those gray points could erase even the air itself from existence upon contact.

The magic.

The two forces surged in opposite directions, and his body nearly split apart between them.

His bones creaked.

Fine cracks opened across his skin, and gray light seeped out of them, but every gray marking buried in his bones ignited at the same time.

It wasn’t over yet.

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