Prometheus

Hopeless whispers echoed from the surrounding spirit world, right into Winston's ears. His eyes were closed. And then, a blinding light extended from his eyes, piercing through the shinsu. An ocean of waves and lights exploded before his eyes revealing the secrets hidden everywhere.

With the digestion of the Sequence 7 potions, his abilities had been completely attuned to his body. The spirit vision had been buffed and the ability to see through lies and deception was gained. Although he could already do that through the combined effect of intuition, spirit vision and his Marauder senses, the ability was much more literal now.

Winston popped his neck and felt the next advancement potion. The Sequence 6 potion for the three pathways of the Fool, Error and Door. Namely, Faceless, Promtheus and the Scribe.

He closed his eyes to feel the next sequence potion. Once again, it felt as if it was infinitely far away yet all around him at the same time. He could not help but chuckle.

The urge to consume the potion to advance immediately was abject. The logical part of his mind weighted the pros and cons to consuming the potion right now.

Although I want to increase the number of my baangs before I ascend to the next level, that was only the case if I had yet to digest the potion completely.

But now...

Winston smiled and sat down on the bed mattress. He took out the needle from the inventory and made a spiritual barrier to shield all distractions and possible interventions. Stretching out his hand, he called out from his mind and a potion bottle materialized in thin air before him.

It was a standard potion bottle, yet the contents were getting increasingly strange.

The current potion was a dark shade of purple mixed in with shades of blue. Inside the potion, where there stood a homogeneous mixture was various lights of a lighter colour that appeared like fireworks. These lights changed their colours, appearing in a shade of all colours imaginable. Above the surface of the mixture, the potion bubbled with strange faces that screamed and popped.

The bottle was cool to the touch.

Winston stared at the potion for some time before taking off the cap and gulping it down in one go.

And then, he waited.

There was no activity in the room. Everything was still. After about a minute had passed, Winston wondered if the potion had even done anything. He tried to stand up and analyze his state, but then, a sudden unadulterated pulse of pain shot up from his chest to his neck muscles.

His body froze in the motion of getting up. The pain made his body turn cold and a thick pour of sweat rolled off from his head. Then, he fell back onto the bed.

Argh!

He managed to say before quieting down. The cry of pain came out as a whisper. Even his larynx was too pained to be useful. All of his muscles, nerve endings, bones and skin; he could feel everything as if it were all burning in the deepest pits of hell where the devil itself stirred him in molten hot lava.

Various cracks began to appear on his skin, elongation across his body like a drought had swept across a barren landscape. From through these cracks, red blood began to leak out.

Whispers flooded his psyche and a pure, extreme desire to close his eyes and sleep poured into his soul. He wished to scream from the pain, not because the pain was too unbearable to experience without being vocal, but because he wished to keep himself awake. Closing his eyes would be a death sentence. He knew that much.

His skim slowly began to melt, but strangely enough, also turn into a metallic luster that resembled steel.

He felt his muscles pulled to ad infinitum and snap back into position while everything around him was ran again and again into his brain, an infinite series of process being repeated over and over to make him remember.

Winston broke out of the reverie caused by pain and abrupt shock. He steeled his resolve. He could not see for the eyes had melted, nor could he hear, speak, taste of feel. But he knew he was dying.

A moment spanned interminable seconds, no doubt the closest Winston had ever been to being consumed by the potion.

Then, the skin returned to normal. It lose it's metallic luster and popped back into position. All his senses returned as his face regained his features, the pain disappearing like a fleeting dream.

Huff! Huff!

Winston breathed heavily.

He laid on the bed for some time. Laying in stillness.

He breathed in a large amount of air and suddenly sprang to his feet, causing a small burst of air to travel through the room.

His eyes turned a shade of every conceivable colour that lay on and beyond the concept or colour theory. So alien that all notions of familiarity drained the moment one laid eyes upon it. Yet there was no one to witness this strange transformation.

Winston's field of view had changed. He was... viewing himself in a sort of 3rd person perspective. He could see himself standing in his room, completely upright. He could move normally and function in any way he would be able to. Only the position by which he viewed himself changed.

His vision soon returned to his eyes and he clenched his fist tightly. The resulting air causing a whistling sound to travel through the air. Just the simple act of closing his fist now caused such powerful waves to sweep the area.

Winston breathed in and out, calming himself down.

It was as he had expected. The potions had already been digested to 37%. Enhancing his talent for Prometheus had done the job.

Winston smiled and snapped his fingers. Fire enveloped his body and he instantly appeared 2700 meters away at the far edge of the island!

Flaming jump had already become able to cover a distance of 3 kilometers!

Winston felt the tremendous increase all of his other abilities had gotten. His spirituality, which before if taken as a small bucket, now seemed to be worth a large pool. His physical prowess had jumped ahead, far ahead from his previous state.

And speaking of the mystical abilities?

Winston again appeared into his 3rd person point of view. And then, his skin morphed and began to transform. His height increased a couple of inches and turned darker. His hair extended to flow down his shoulders and eyes became sharper. His stature turned more robust, gaining more muscle mass and a slight uneveness appeared in the length of his legs.

As the transformation ceased, in place of Winston stood an entirely different person!

This was the primary ability of a faceless. The power of transform their body parts freely. Of course, there was the problem of body mass disparity, by which he could not change himself too radically, but the synergy between his pathways allowed him to bypass that limit pretty comfortably.

He could alter himself to appear two times as taller and as short as a garden gnome. He could make eyes, ears or a mouth appear at any part of his body and effortlessly remember the mannerisms, gait and disposition of anyone he had ever seen. Even the ones he had momentarily glanced at while walking.

Every other ability on the Fool Pathway had been enhanced by at least 70%. A far better increase than what Mr. Fool had gotten upon his ascension to sequence 6!

Winston's body morphed again, returning to his usual appearance.

Then, he extended his hand towards a coconut tree 73 meters away and flicked his wrist.

Instantly, a coconut appeared in his hand.

He smiled maliciously. The Error pathway's ability to steal things had gained the first level of conceptualization. Now, he could steal material things, immaterial things such as beyonder powers and even mundane psychomotor abilities like the ability to walk!

Winston turned his head to the soil beneath hum. Some distance away, a small cricket was minding it's own business. Then, it stopped.

Instantly, Winston felt a strange sensation on his limbs, almost unnoticeable.

He had stolen the cricket's ability to 'walk', adding it to his own. Shaking his head, he returned the ability back.

Further into the Error pathway, the power of Deception and illusions had been greatly enhanced.

And finally, for the Door Pathway, the Sequence 6, Scribe gave him the ability to 'record' any and all abilities he could grasp. Of course, there was a limit as to how many he could record at a certain time and the power level of the recorded powers couldn't be too disparate from his own.

For a Scribe, their soul was the paper and the astral projection was the quill. They wrote onto their soul to record the beyonder powers, which were gone once they utilized it.

However, with the Decryption of the Error pathway, Winston could simply reverse engineer the ability to make his own through shinsu!

It was, in essence, the perfect synergy of abilities!

The Door pathway will begin to shine through from this stage. Although until the 6th sequence, the Door Pathway is the weakest of the 3 pathways of the LoTM, after it crosses that threshold, it's difficult to gauge how powerful they are in comparison to each other.

Winston nodded in satisfaction, feeling all the abilities and boosts he had gained. And finally, there was just one more thing to check.

He closed his eyes and breathed in.

Instantly, the air around him seemed to go through a transformation, growing restless.

And so, in the air there began to materialize spheres of light. Baangs made of shinsu.

Quickly and without wait, they passed the previous threshold of 11 baangs and continued on beyond even 20!

25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31!

31 baangs was where it stopped! A regular that had not yet become an E ranked regulars, creating baangs on par with a ranker!

If news of such got out, Winston could no doubt be instantly thought of as an irregular. Either that, or a freak of nature!

Winston turned his head to the clouds, his eyes taking on an icy demeanor.

There it was, a giant in clouds peering in from somewhere.

It was the floor guardian to the 13th floor, quietly watching Winston. Observing.

Winston could only pass it a smile and shrug his shoulders.

His power level was not at the point any regular should have. It was natural he drew the guardian's attention. Even though he was still below the level of an Asvanced Ranker, much less the High rankers, he was, after all, not a ranker.

Waving to the guardian that watched him, he snapped his fingers again, disappearing in a puff of fire.

~~~

A/N: And there you go people. He has reached sequence 6.

Throw some stones. Cheers~~~