Chapter 110: Reservoir Cube

Heart in his throat, breathless, James stepped into the demon symbol. Light swirled before his eyes, fractals that dizzied him, and he reached out, shuffling his feet, unsteady.

Then he found solid footing beneath his feet and the refracted brightness steadied and became clear.

It took him a moment to process what he was seeing. He stood within the heart of a giant flower, its petals made of glowing gold energy shot through with tongues of silver, rising up around him like great, languorous spear tips. Beyond them a cosmos of light and energy coiled, like some Van Gogh painting, a Starry Night of rich, saturated color.

The base of the flower was a hard floor of glowing white quartz. It was a small space, perhaps large enough for six or seven people to stand in, with no visible exits or furnishing.

Instead, his gaze was drawn to one particularly broad petal of gold whose face featured a handful of shelves, their surface twisted and barely functional, as if Salvador Dali had been commissioned to create a simulation of shelves, and not taken the assignment seriously.

Golden cubes were piled on the shelving. They were uniform in size, an inch on each side, and looked like nothing so much as condensed sunlight, their edges rounded, more real than any of the visual excesses that surrounded him.

Was this where Monitors resided? This was as far from a demonic hellhole as he could have imagined. What did they do here? Where had the way out gone?

Hesitant, James reached out, fumbled at the air from which he’d come, and found the outline of an archway. It was invisible from within the symbol but there.

That was good. It meant he could get the fuck out of here if he had to.

James licked his lips and approached the shelving. There were perhaps a dozen small cubes upon the warped surfaces. Just approaching them made his mouth dry out, his throat clench, and a vice tighten around his chest.

What were they? Why did he feel like he was putting his hand inside a rabid hound’s mouth by reaching out to one.

His whole body shuddered as he picked up a cube. It was weightless yet solid. His guts trembled, his whole body felt flushed with acid. Unable to breathe James raised the small golden cube to study it.

You have acquired a Reservoir Cube.

Absorb?

What the fuck? James felt nauseous. His gorge was rising and suddenly his mouth felt flooded with sour spit. His stomach twisted into a greasy knot and the cube shivered in his trembling fingers.

A Reservoir Cube?

But what the fuck, it wasn’t like he was going to say no.

Kames Jelly flew into the space with him in his humanoid form, his alabaster and silver face expressing amazement. “Holy shit.”

James clenched his fist about the cube, relieved that he could put off the decision for a second. “This place make any sense to you?”

This is… familiar. I remember it, somehow. A Node. It’s connected. There are… resonances. I sense… Jelly flew slowly about the small space, peering at the petals. A web. This place is connected to the other demon symbols, somehow. One can travel between them… but knowing how to open a portal, where to go… it is too complex for me.

And this Reservoir Cube?

Jelly floated down to stare at the shelving. What is Holy Shit multiplied by infinity?

Infinite Holy Shit?

Infinite Holy Shit is right, James. This… I can’t even… Jelly extended a single blade arm and touched its tip to the cube.

Golden worms of electricity flickered over his frame and he dropped to the ground, inert.

“Jelly?” James crouched beside the Anima. “Jelly!”

No response. The Anima lay still as if it were dead.

“Fuck, fuck fuck fuck,” said James, reaching down to touch the construct, then drew back his hand. Jelly was wickedly hot.

That’s when James saw his palm. The hand that had held the Light Eternal. The skin was scarred over Freddy Kreuger style, his entire palm covered in rippled, twisted scar tissue that alternated pink, purple, and red. There was no pain, no sensation at all. It was as if all the nerve endings had been seared away.

James grimaced and stared at the cube.

This was it. This was what the Monitor had wanted to keep him away from. The passageways to the other demon symbols were useful, sure, but this - this was something else.

James tried to steady his breathing. He failed. He inhaled deeply, held his breath, but that made him feel like he was going to puke. The world was swimming around him. He felt vertigo, as if he stood on the edge of a skyrise with the wind tearing around him.

“OK,” he gasped. “I accept. I want to absorb the cube.”

The cube flared so brightly that it blinded James. For a moment the world was pure golden light, and then James’s vision went dark. His body cramped even as he felt himself fall over and begin convulsively vomiting. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do more than flail around as if suffering an epileptic fit.

The cube flowed into him.

And with it entire galaxies opened in his mind. The demon symbol, the flower and the cosmos beyond it disappeared, and James found himself sinking into an interior place, a mental construct fashioned by the cube.

Somewhere, distantly, he was aware that he was still flailing, drumming his heels on the quartz floor, his back arched to its extreme, his whole being in torment.

But down here he felt calm, removed, and filled with wonder.

The Reservoir Cube hung in the darkness of his mind’s eye, but now it was a mile on each side. Countless straight lines fractured it, turning it into a composite of thousands of smaller cubes, and even so each minor cube was awesome in its power.

Understanding hit James like a truck. This was where their power came from. Every person who leveled up. Who raised their stats. Who gained Aeviternum, who learned to wield Benedictions. Their power, their auras, their divine pools, it was all sourced here, from these Reservoir Cubes.

The demon symbols were the vantage points from which the Monitors watched the world, Nodes in a greater web whose meaning defied his understanding, and the dispensers of power. Every time James had leveled a Reservoir Cube had bestowed upon him a fraction of its power.

A thousandth, a millionth.

And James had just absorbed an entire cube unto himself alone.

Oh fuck, he croaked.

Power began to flood into him. Notifications flickered across his vision, each message supplanting the last. Disciple 2, Disciple 3, then faster and faster. 6, 8, 9, then he hit Seeker.

Your rank is now Seeker 1

Seeker 1, Seeker 4, Seeker 6, Seeker 9, and he hit Robe Bearer.

Your rank is now Robe Bearer 1

Again, he blurred through the ranks, hitting 9 in a matter of moments, and still the power continued to flood into him.

Your rank is now Cross Bearer 1

Cross Bearer 1. Cross Bearer 3, 6, 8, 9.

Boom. He crushed through the ranks and leveled again.

Your rank is now Adept 1

Adept 1, 3, 4, 8, 9.

More power.

More.

James was screaming now. He felt as if he’d been dipped in boiling mercury, his mind blasted by the experience points pouring into him.

Your rank is now Initiate 1

Initiate. The levels blurred, burned through him, and he hit the tenth level.

Progressed.

Your rank is now Progressor 1

Your rank is now Journeyman 1

Your rank is now Ascender 1

Your rank is now Capacitor 1

Your rank is now Deacon 1

Your rank is now Priest of the Faith 1

Your rank is now Priest of the People 1

Your rank is now Priest of the Spirit 1

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Your rank is now Bishop Minor 1

Your rank is now Bishop Ascender 1

Your rank is now Bishop Capacitor 1

James felt himself bite off his tongue, felt blood burst into his mouth but his tongue healed right back. His organs ruptured, healed. Blood streamed from his eyes, his nostrils, his ears. He felt his brain spasm and turn into slurry only to heal back, liquify again, heal. The messages kept piling up. Benefits, unspent experience points, new powers, new Miracles.

He wanted it to end. Was screaming and roaring at the top of his lungs, and still Reservoir Cube poured its power into him. Each new rank required ever more experience to reach, and as he climbed the higher ranks the growth was exponential. It would have taken millions, billions of Nem3’s to cross these levels, and then no amount of Nem3’s would have sufficed, and still the Reservoir Cube filled him with its might.

James’s mental manifestation lost all control as he sank to a deeper, third level. In one plane of existence his physical body was rupturing and bursting again and again only to heal instantaneously. On a second his mental self-image was shrieking in panicked horror.

But on this third, deepest level, James’s essence floated at a remove from it all. He didn’t think, didn’t feel. Beyond thought, he simply floated, an amorphous ball of light that grew ever brighter as the Cube fed him power.

It felt like floating a dozen yards beneath the surface of a storm-wracked ocean surface. Looking up he could see the turmoil, the hurricane-force winds thrashing the waves, but down here in the dark all was still.

James turned away from his body, his mind, and focused on his truest self.

So much power was flooding into his being that even as his spirit grew brighter it ceased to be James.

He was becoming raw power. His sense of self was sublimating into the Reservoir Cube. If he didn’t take control, he would cease to exist as he knew himself and become a new reservoir in human form, inert, brain dead, spiritually devoid of all identity.

Such was the force of what was happening to him that it took James an eon to decide he didn’t want that to happen. For his ego to assert itself and realize that he wanted to persist.

He didn’t want to disappear into pure glory.

He wanted to remain himself.

James Kelly.

But what did that mean? On some level he could sense the notification messages still flickering before his eyes. Archbishop of Rose. Dominion of One. Lord of Laughter. Essence of Might. Titles that meant nothing to him, but which spoke to heights of power that no human could have reached without drinking directly from the font meant to empower millions.

Who was James Kelly with such power available to him? If a person was an identity stretched across a continuum of time, defined by formative experiences and desires, by inherited personality and inherent limitations, then what did it to do to that identity to break so many barriers and rise to high above oneself?

James floated in the void. A million miles away his body exploded, splattering the interior of the demon flower chamber with blood, bone meal, organs rendered particulate - only for it all to retract as if the explosion were reversed, his body reforming into perfection.

His mind broke, his thoughts shattered, but deep down, his essence remained cool, puzzled, reflective.

James Kelly.

Did he wish to remain as such?

To be human?

More power. Ever more, flooding into him.

Certain truths became evident. Base virtues that had nothing to do with Dikastís and his Justice.

Love. Forgiveness. Joy. Wonder.

Where before James had felt the danger of falling into pure power, of becoming a new form for the Reservoir Cube, now he sensed a second peril: of losing his identity to the base miracle of simply being alive.

To become like a tree, basking in sunlight, glorying in nothing so much as the improbability of being aware.

With great regret James pulled back from that temptation.

Instead he regarded the man he had been. Weary and wry, broken and self-effacing. Strength born of trauma, weakness born from need. He saw himself in all his facets and realized that he had a decision to make.

If he wished to remain James Kelly, then he had to embrace those faults and hang-ups, unnecessary as they were. His insecurities and blind spots. His principles and strengths. To erase them, to become more, was to lose himself.

To remain James Kelly, he had to accept who James Kelly had been, and contour his power to that identity.

It felt like choosing to shoehorn a star into an old boot, but the value of the boot lay in its unique identity, how its form gave the power of the star purpose, a vector, a cause.

Without James Kelly’s weakness and strengths, he would exist somewhere on the spectrum between the wonder of a tree and the formless might of a star going nova.

Then so be it. I shall remain myself, and lose this clarity.

For a brief eternity he hung back and gloried in creation. Opened himself to the wonder of existence, bathed in sunfire and dark matter, and then, without regret, he turned and compacted himself into his own being.

James concentrated his essence until it fit once more within his mold, and became himself anew.

Passion and pain, uncertainty and doubt, love and resolve, grim ambition and dauntless courage. His strengths and weaknesses.

A mortal man, fallible and focused.

James blinked.

He lay upon the floor of the demon flower, the white quartz smooth beneath his body. The great petals stretched up around him, but now he understood what he was looking at.

Awareness was his.

Between each petal lay a twisted worm hole that was squeezed shut. There were thousands of them, overlaid yet distinct, each leading to another Node. A network cast over the planet, a means to travel instantaneously to Moscow or Buenos Aires.

But beneath him, beneath the quartz floor, lay a far greater passage.

James sat up and studied the glowing quartz. If the Monitors wished it, they could cause the quartz in every Node to vanish and thus trigger the opening of the Pits.

There was no way to sabotage this mechanism. In fact, once he left this Node, he would not be able to force his way back in. That ability had been the provenance of the Light Eternal, which was shattered now and gone.

James frowned, pensive, and blinked, summoning the system messages so that they floated before his eyes again. He dismissed hundreds of them, so that he saw only the last iteration, the summation of all that had come before.

Your rank is now Lord of the Increate 1

Titles Earned: Master of Mysteries, Overlord, Keeper of Humanity, Divine Bulwark, Prime Servant, Light Against the Dark

As the global first to reach this rank,

all Benedictions are now empowered with Gloria.

You now possess the following Finite Summons:

10x Angelic Host

5x Archangel

3x Dominion

1x Throne

You now possess the following Benedictions:

Shield of Faith

Magic Circle | Angelus Armor | Aureate Buckler | Benediction Share

Healing Grace | Mass Solace | Martyr’s Cry | Indomitable Resilience

Remove Fear | Remove Curse | Dispel Illusion | Soul Bastion

Dark Vision | Shadow Step | Black Apotheosis | Living Darkness

Empowering Light | Fortuna Aeviternum

Deadeye | Eternal Fire | Eye of the Needle | Lord’s Ruin

Dark Energy Siphon | Demonic Form | Infernum Reaper | Void Break

Aura Mastery | Nova | Righteous Obelisk | Seraphic Web

Inspiration | Terrify | Increase Arete | Holy Zeal

You May Choose your First, Second, and Third Miracle:

Flight | Resurrection | Dimensional Anchor | Word of Slaughter | Banishment | Divine Bastion | Aeviternum Hurricane | Refill the Cup | Infernum Crush | Forced Humility | Create Demiplane | Teleportation Circle | Invisibility | Freedom

Your Physical Form Has Been Purified in the Divine Flame:

Corporal Perfection Rank 125

You Have Gained Mental Dominion:

Mental Dominion Rank 100

You Have Manifested Spiritual Exaltation:

Spiritual Exaltation Rank: 75

Your Mark of Justice has been Upgraded to:

Equity

Your Mark of Justice has been Upgraded to:

Impartiality

Your Mark of Justice has been Upgraded to:

Judge

Summoning the Avatar of Dikastís Causes:

+200 to all Stats

Judgement of Siglio Power

Judgement of Angelus Power

Judgement of Sanctity Power

You have 2,315 unspent points

James blinked, overwhelmed, and then a thought occurred to him.

Slowly, hesitantly, he turned and stared at the shelving.

Where another nine Reservoir Cubes sat glowing softly.

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