Ascent

Naked, with his arms folded and his breaths calm and even, he stood there, silent as he thought about what his future moves should be.

For the first time in a long time, he was free, truly free.

'Return to Earth.' His gaze brightened. 'And to do that, I need to clear the dungeon or find a way to leave this planet and go back to Earth.'

Having decided, he nodded to himself and began to truly look around. Now that he knew what he wanted to do, the next logical step was to leave this dungeon.

He hoped that by the time he did so, the clear conditions of the quest would finally pop up, and he didn't know why, but his senses told him that would be the case.

'Hm… surely I got here via a physical gate… how the hell did I even get here?'

Immediately, Mordred recounted everything back to him.

The more he heard, the more he frowned.

'So I got here through the sun of flesh, and this same sun got here via the clearing portals of each level and floor…'

'So this means that there's either a boss here I must kill to get back to the outside world, or there's a physical gate I can use…'

He sighed.

'Or there's one last level…' He shook his head. 'No… that's probably not it. The sun of flesh went through them all and only stopped after reaching the limit. So I suppose the answer is that I need to kill this floor's boss.'

'Following the current pattern of things… the last boss is probably… him.'

Amon wasn't intimidated in the least as he came to this conclusion and instead, he sat down cross-legged and decided it was finally time he began cultivating.

Whatever danger he was going to face would be much easier if, for the first time, he finally played on a levelled field—cultivator to cultivator.

For a moment, he sat still and gathered all his knowledge, both on the three supreme variant paths he'd gotten from the inheritance and on the True Golden Path he'd learned about.

In his head, as he did so, memories from the sun of flesh began to invade his mind, but just like before, he wasn't overwhelmed.

They were blurry yet clear, distance yet closed and complete yet…fragmented.

His gaze widened as from these memories he found… an additional path.

'The Path of Life and Death.'

Though this was the case, he didn't linger in awe and directly assimilated all the information to form a solid and perfect plan. A plan that included three variant supreme paths, a strange gradeless path, and the True Golden Path.

After a while, he opened his eyes.

'Good.'

The first stage of cultivation and ascension was called Mortality.

Mortality had two phases, and the first was called 'Founding Touch.'

It was divided into four sub-tiers: the Awakener Tier, the Acolyte Tier, the Initiate Tier, and the Adept Tier.

Currently, Amon was in the earliest stages of the Awakener Tier, and before he could even think of forming aether marks, he had to complete a certain number of steps.

Within the Awakener Tier, the first step he'd take was called [Inner Aether Sensing].

Aether has three fundamental types. The first type, the one Amon had been using, was known as Neutral Aether or Atmospheric Aether. This type of aether was produced by the planet itself and possessed no attribute. It was a pure and blank type of energy.

But it could be used to cast spells, invoke elements, and much more.

The second type was Attributed Aether and was what Amelia had used to both form her body and her blades of darkness. This type of aether was usually reserved for those with affinities and was among the most versatile of the three types.

Fire Aether, Water Aether, Spatial Aether, Evergreen Aether—all those were part of the Attributed Aether type.

The third and final fundamental aether type is called Inner Aether, and just like the name suggests, it is the aether one's body naturally produces.

In essence, it was Neutral Aether, but the reason why it was separated into a category of its own was because Inner Aether, first of all, could only be produced by the body and secondly, it had an Innate Attribute that could later be awakened and mastered.

This attribute didn't refer to any of the elemental variants of the second type but rather True Attributes that reflected one's inner self.

From the ability to communicate with plants to the ability to be immortal and everlasting, Innate Aether True Attributes could truly be anything though in most cases, it had a link to one's awakened gift.

With this known, Amon's task became simple.

In the [Inner Aether Sensing] step, he had to sense and harmonize with the ebbs and flow of Atmospheric Neutral Aether, then he had to infuse this aether into his body and awaken his own internal stream of Innate Aether.

This required one to slowly develop an affinity and connection to aether but even beyond that, it required one to gain minor control over Atmospheric Aether.

Normally, for any normal human, this would be a tall task but for Amon? This would probably be the easiest step of his entire journey.

WHOOOSH!

Neutral aether gathered in droves around him, with such force that a whirlwind formed, with him as its core.

It thickened and suddenly became liquid before slowly, it flowed through each and every single one of his cells and akin to water and oil, thanks to this, he was able to seamlessly sense his own innate aether.

Instead of simply rejecting neutral aether, his innate aether directly devoured it, using it as a catalyst to begin to freely flow through his body.

Amon nearly groaned in pleasure as his body felt like a dried river, graced with the presence of an avalanche.

The more his own aether flowed, the more neutral aether it devoured and the more this happened, the more whole Amon felt. It was like his cells were endless canyons dried out and hungry for more and more of his innate aether, as if they'd direly missed it.

It took hours until Amon felt like he'd reached his limit.

'Hm…'

He felt like with this, he'd finally completed a sort of foundation. He felt whole.

Around his body, a thin layer of emerald and amethyst aether could be seen, tightly hugging him. This was his innate aether.

'Green and purple… just like Mordred's scales of fire… interesting.'