The tears, hot and alien on Shinji's spirit-cheeks, dried instantly, leaving tracks of cold resolve etched into his very essence. The raw shock of the embrace, the terrifying intimacy of his own face twisted by eons of darkness, receded like a tide pulling back from jagged rock, leaving behind a stark, focused clarity. This was not a reunion; it was an interrogation at the precipice of oblivion, and the answers held the key to everything – survival, purpose, perhaps existence itself.
"I'm listening," Shinji stated, his voice raspy but firm, the first words born from his transcended core echoing with unnatural resonance in the oppressive gloom of the First Door's realm. The silence that followed was heavier than the void between galaxies, thick with the weight of impending revelation.
The Alternate Future Shinji; AFS released him, stepping back with a fluid grace Shinji didn't possess. The weariness in his eyes deepened, momentarily replaced by a flicker of... something unreadable. Approval? Anticipation? Or simply the grim satisfaction of a surgeon about to operate? He took several measured steps backwards, putting critical distance between them, the faint aura of controlled entropy swirling around him like living smoke, absorbing the ambient darkness. He stopped, drawing himself up, taking a deep, deliberate breath that seemed to draw in the very fabric of the suffocating space. It wasn't just preparation; it was the intake before delivering a universe-shattering verdict.
"Well you see..." AFS began, his voice low, resonant, devoid of mockery now, filled only with terrible, inescapable gravity. "...First of all, you are miserably weak." He paused, letting the starkness of the statement hang like a guillotine blade. "And profoundly ignorant. Not just in the raw output of power, Shinji Kazuhiko, but in the fundamental architecture of existence itself. You stumble in the dark, swinging a child's stick at cosmic titans, blind to the battlefield's true scale."
Shinji's brow furrowed deeply, surprise warring with a spark of indignation that quickly died under the weight of AFS's certainty. Weak? After transcending his core? After surviving Monarchs, channeling spiritual annihilation? Ignorant? He'd learned so much from Merus, Yamato, Kuro!
"First," AFS continued, cutting off Shinji's unspoken protest before it could fully form, "your power. You possess the potential of a Trascender, a seed capable of growing into a world-tree. Yet, you grasp only the crudest, outermost branches. There are Six Acts. Six fundamental expressions of your transcendent nature, six layers of reality you can command. You've unlocked only the lowest three – Instant Regeneration, Danger Sense; and Spiritual Energy Mainpulation, crude energy projection." He waved a dismissive hand, the gesture sharp and final. "Useful toys for surviving a Universal brawl, perhaps. Useless baubles against entities who weave the fabric of Realities. Acts Four, Five, and Six... they are the keys to shaping existence, not merely enduring its currents. To bend causality, rewrite local laws, perceive the threads of possibility... these are the tools you lack."
Shinji felt a cold tremor, deeper than bone, run through his spirit-form. *Six Acts?* He'd sensed... something. A profound depth beyond Act 3, a wellspring of potential that felt infinite yet frustratingly distant. But to have it quantified, categorized, and dismissed as mere foundation... it was humbling to the point of humiliation. His victories against Khoseph, Torento, Nirvana– suddenly felt like a toddler knocking over building blocks while the adults planned celestial engineering. The scale of what he didn't know about his own power was terrifying.
"But power without understanding is a bomb in the hands of an infant playing in a porcelain shop," AFS pressed, his gaze sharpening, pinning Shinji in place. "Your ignorance of the Verse... it's not just staggering; it's dangerous. You think you comprehend? You parrot Merus's comforting nursery rhyme: 3926 universes, galaxies neatly nested within, planets orbiting suns. Tidy boxes on tidy shelves." A cruel, knowing smile touched his lips, devoid of humor. "Kuro, bless his relentlessly analytical mind, scraped the surface. He sensed the cage. But he lacked the perspective, the context, the key to understand what lay beyond the bars."
YOU ARE READING
Trascender : The Fourth Gust
FantasyWhat happens when death becomes impossible? Nineteen-year-old Shinji Kazuhiko's life shattered the night a masked killer invaded his home. Left for dead, he made a horrifying discovery: he cannot die. And with each death, something inside him grows...
