Atticus’s Odyssey: Reincarnated Into A Playground - Chapter 1070

Chapter 1070: Merge
From his gains, the first thing Atticus noted, aside from the breakthroughs in his elemental paths, was a shift in another vital aspect of his power.

The spirit element.

But unlike his elemental advancements, he hadn’t increased its level. No, what had changed was its mastery.

He had broken into the second fold.

‘Integration.’

From Ozeorth’s memories, Atticus had learned that to reach this fold, one had to master awareness, to demonstrate unwavering clarity and alignment with one’s purpose.

It was this alignment that granted access to deeper spiritual abilities. His perception of truth had sharpened, and the mastery of his spiritual eye had evolved. Now, he could peer into the souls of even more powerful beings.

‘This had been useful with that Zorvan.’

In his battle with Xal’zereth, just as the Zorvan had suspected, Atticus hadn’t used his Auralithian fire sight to win. He wasn’t seeing the future.

Instead, he had been using his spiritual eye, targeting his weaknesses.

No matter how flawless Xal’zereth’s movements appeared, they still held flaws… and Atticus exploited them completely.

Then, his gaze turned inward again.

It felt like Integration should grant him one more ability.

From Ozeorth’s memories, Atticus had noted one more ability.

‘The power to repair and stabilize the world around me.’

It wasn’t just metaphorical. It meant fixing broken objects, restoring artifacts, and even mending the damage in fractured planes. But…

“Looks like it’s not that straightforward.”

It required certain conditions to be met, ones he hadn’t fulfilled yet.

‘Harmonizing the inner and outer world…’

He had to reach a state where his inner peace extended outward, where his stillness could calm surrounding chaos.

And aside from that, he needed to stabilize and manipulate the flow of spiritual energy, using it not to destroy, but to repair what had been disrupted.

Once he learned these, all that remained was to try.

Atticus nodded to himself, satisfied with the gains. It was comforting to know that even if one of his paths stalled, there were others for him to train.

Then, his attention shifted to what he’d been anticipating since the battle:

The cores.

In that one fight alone, he had claimed three new cores, bringing his total to five, if he included his human core.

With a focus, two radiant cores appeared into view. One was an abyssal black, so dense it distorted the space around it, bending the air. The other was searing red, radiating such intense heat that the room’s temperature rose sharply.

“It couldn’t be more obvious than this,” he murmured with a chuckle.

At least there was no mistaking which was which.

Then, he brought out Karn Voss’s body and stared at it in silence. He didn’t feel any grief. No remorse. They had never been friends in the first place.

But the only thing that made Atticus hesitate was because of what he was about to do to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply.

A wave of dark crimson spread from his palm, washing over Karn’s corpse. In seconds, it devoured the body whole, until all that remained was a single core, dull brown, like rotted bronze.

But it was so potent that the air recoiled from it. Mana dispersed. Life itself avoided it.

It was a core of negation.

Now, all three floated before him. Abyssal black. Searing red. Rotten bronze.

Atticus stared at them for a moment, then smiled faintly.

“Now then… which one should I absorb first?”

He had more than a month to train and prepare for what’s to come. And for someone like him, that was more than enough time to master each of these cores.

But for now, he chose the one that would offer the greatest advantage in the short term.

The Dimensari core.

With a thought, Atticus vanished, blipping out of his room and reappearing just outside the training facility Magnus had built for him.

“They’re training hard.”

He smiled faintly as he sensed the auras coming from the building beside his, Magnus’s training room.

Turning, Atticus stepped into his own training room and sat down cross-legged in the center, placing the core before him.

Just like back then, his eyes shifted into a deep, radiant purple, shining with clarity as he peered into the abyssal black core.

At first glance, it appeared like a simple radiant core. Still. But when he focused deeper, he could see through it.

It wasn’t a simple ball.

It was a bundle of intricately woven threads, each one binding and enclosing something of immense weight.

Activating Ozeorth’s Omnicognition, Atticus slowly began unraveling the weave. It took time, but eventually, thread by thread, the weave began to unravel until finally, the core released its mana signature.

Unlike the threads, the signature was simpler. Primal and ancient.

Still, Atticus replicated it swiftly since he was already well-versed in replicating signatures.

The moment he did, mana surged toward him from every corner of the room. Waves upon waves collapsed in front of his lower stomach, where the signature had embedded itself.

There, a radiant black core formed, a perfect replica of the one he had unlocked. The signature dissipated into the air like ash on the wind.

“Just like back then…”

Atticus’s gaze sharpened.

He remembered this. The Auralithian core had done the same. The mana core inside his own body began to vibrate, as though it were disrupted by the presence of the newcomer.

Suddenly, the new core trembled violently, then shot forward, slamming into his stomach and merging with his existing mana core.

Atticus braced himself.

Boom.

A surge of overwhelming force detonated through his body.

He convulsed, gritting his teeth as a fiery surge of energy roared through his veins.

His skin bulged with thick, glowing veins. His breath came in ragged. Every part of his body twisted as a transformation started taking place.

It was like magma, molten, dark magma, pouring from his core and reshaping him from the inside out.

A soft, dark glow began to seep from his skin. It grew stronger, denser, until his entire body was engulfed in a blinding, black radiance.

The pain peaked, and Atticus bit down hard, refusing to scream.

Then, his eyes snapped open. They glowed with intense, dark light, not dim but radiant.

The radiance around him swelled, flooding the room in waves of brilliance, like a star turned inside out.