Chapter 29
Status.
Status Raime
Race: Human (Altered)
Level: 0 (Unawakened)
Attributes:
Strength: 23
Vitality: 26
Vigor: 27
Resilience: 23
Finesse: 26
Perception: 23
Insight: 31
Clarity: 26
Resolve: 26
Cognition: 33
Available attribute points: 227
Racial Trait – Mind Over Body
Titles:
? Traveller of the In-Between
? Anomaly
? Ithural-born
? The One Who Refused
? Progenitor
He lingered on the screen. It had been some time since he dared to really stare at it, to confront what the status said about him. His change of race was still alarming but he refused to change the name from human for the moment. His attributes were no longer the humble, middling values of the man who once was a normal guy on Earth. These were beyond human, twisted upward by the Rift, by his survival, by the strange interventions of the System and the Administrator.
Damn, I accumulated a ton of points…I know this is due to the state of my soul but I wonder how many attributes a regular class will provide per level. In any case, I’ll know once I’m out of this hellhole.
Now, what mattered wasn’t what he had—it was what he could become.
Raime exhaled, centering his thoughts. The choice was obvious: Cognition. Every time he pushed at the limits of his mind, something profound followed. It had always been Cognition—his edge, his anchor. If the System had given him a new ceiling, he had to know where it stood.
He funneled a single point into Cognition. The number ticked upward without any more warning.
Cognition: 34
No resistance. No flicker of rejection from the System.
A second point. A third. He kept going, slowly at first, watching for any warning sign.
Cognition: 40
Cognition: 45
By now, his chest was tight with anticipation. On Earth, the number fourteen had been the human peak. At thirty-three, he had been remade into something not quite human anymore. And yet, the numbers climbed still.
How far can I go?
The more he raised it, the more he felt subtle shifts—like threads tightening through the folds of his mind, a delicate architecture weaving itself together. Perception sharpened on its own; Resolve steadied like stone. Thoughts became crystalline, as if distractions slid from his awareness before they could even form. His body followed swift, his racial trait made so as he empowered cognition he would be empowered as a whole, his strength soared, his vigor would let him move without feeling fatigue, his vitality and resilience made him harder to put down, be it by wound or by affliction. His senses sharpened more.
Cognition: 50
He paused, half expecting a system warning, a block, a sudden backlash. Instead, silence.
A grin tugged at his lips, rare and unbidden. He pushed further.
Cognition: 55
The pressure in his skull was different now, not pain, but density. Like his mind was thickening, becoming more layered. He pressed one last point.
Cognition: 57
And then it stopped. The System gave him again the message about crossing into Tier 1 and the consequences of following that course of action. So he stopped. The new ceiling revealed itself: 57.
Raime leaned back, pulse quickened, staring at the number as though it were a revelation. And in a way, it was.
That’s the limit now… four times what a human body was ever meant to hold.
The implications churned in his mind. If Cognition had leapt so far, what about the other attributes? Did every one of them now carry such potential? Or was this the System’s way of pushing him specifically toward his path—mind over body, psionics over brute force?
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He flexed his hand, staring at the faint shimmer of the Threads pulsing at his will. With Cognition swelling like this, more threads weren’t just possible—they were inevitable.
And beyond threads… levitation. He had tasted the edge of it when he guided his lever-weapon, when he felt the world respond to thought as much as touch. The idea had obsessed him since. The dream of lifting himself, of flying, no longer seemed like a distant fantasy. It was within reach, if only he learned to shape his will finely enough.
He closed the Status slowly, thoughts racing ahead of him.
The points left unused were more than numbers; they were choices. Each one a path forward.
“System, I want to stop receiving my attributes rewards directly, ask for confirmation before allocating them.” Raime wasn’t expecting anything, but if this was possible he would not skimp on points this time, he would become as strong as he was allowed.
System message: Rewards parameters change detected. Attributes points will be stored until claimed.
Fuck me… how can one have my stats and not even think about asking for this, I had the misconception that my stats were fine, but I would have pushed to the limits even before if I wasn’t scared of a reward making me cross another threshold. I want to kick myself. It would have helped against the centiparents. Ok ok, no use to cry over spilled milk and all of that. I’m going to get all I can now, still I have to question the System more extensively.
He had asked many questions to the System during his downtime, but he hadn’t received answers. Clearly there were things one could inquire about, but he didn’t really know about what. For now he focused again on his status, he’d push cognition and now was the time to improve the other stats as much as he could, learn how it shaped his psionics, then turn to the others. Strength and finesse to sharpen his weapon work. Resilience and vitality to endure what Ithural would throw at him. Insight to deepen the strange clarity already budding in him.
But above all, he would train.
The thought-knots awaited, puzzles that sharpened the mind like whetstones. His weapon bond needed refinement until the lever moved as an extension of himself. His armor had to be tested, worn, battered until it became second skin. And the Rift itself demanded exploration.
For now, there was work to do..
He opened the Status again, gaze steady, and pushed every attribute to the corresponding limit.
Status
Name: Raime Race: Human (Altered)
Level: 0 (Unawakened)
Attributes:
Strength: 51
Vitality: 51
Vigor: 51
Resilience: 51
Finesse: 51
Perception: 51
Insight: 55
Clarity: 55
Resolve: 55
Cognition: 57
Available attribute points: 42
Racial Trait – Mind Over Body
Titles:
? Traveller of the In-Between
? Anomaly
? Ithural-born
? The One Who Refused
? Transcendent Divergence
? Progenitor
Another wave of changes swept through his whole being, he marveled at his new capabilities, every time he got an attributes infusion he felt like he could take on the world, the addictive feeling was better than anything he ever felt before. And he had a feeling that attributes didn’t follow a linear increase, but something like a slight logarithmic curve, because he just nearly doubled his strength, but he felt somehow much more than just two times as strong as before. More questions from somebody with no answers.
And yet… the intoxicating surge did not blind him to the truth.
This is just the beginning. Numbers on a screen don’t win battles. Control and discipline do. In any case it appears that Cognition is the highest, followed by mental attributes and physical ones for last. Is it because of the way attributes were linked to it that Cognition has the highest threshold? But apparently humans are less physically inclined creatures, how would other species attributes and limits be? How many other species exist in the first place? Are elves a thing? Hahaha that would be something I’d like to see, elves dwarves and orcs, Tolkien’s stories coming to life, maybe I was just unlucky, and the multiverse is full of wonders that I just have to exit the rift to see and discover… I hope so at least, anyway, my mind is wandering too much after the power up, let’s get back to the here and now.
After the almost euphoric wave of empowerment he had to put his thoughts under control again. He had power now—raw, unrefined, dangerous even to himself if he wielded it without care. The System had given him potential, but only his choices, his training, his grit would forge that into something real.
The room around him was still, quiet except for the distant howl of wind through temple cracks. Ithural’s alien night would soon press against the walls. His body wanted to leap into experiments right then—new drills, new threads, new force unleashed—but his mind knew better. Training required structure, not reckless expenditure. He needed to prepare, to shape the space and himself for what tomorrow would demand.
First things first: food.
His stomach, dulled during the status revelations, roared back with sudden ferocity. He laughed under his breath, shaking his head.
Even altered humans need to eat apparently. Haha, I’m so fucking funny.
He moved to the packs and bundles he had left near the corner. His supplies weren’t endless—he had hunted before, gathered and stored some herbs and tubers, but Ithural’s ecosystem was strange, and every meal meant to try something new, one thing was to know that a plant was edible, the other was to eat it and feel the texture and flavour by himself, not always was it palatable. Still, he had enough for tonight, and enough to plan for the coming days.
He went outside to start a small fire in the furnace he had constructed days ago. Sparks caught the wood, then flared into life with a small explosion. The crackle filled the air with a warmth that the temple’s alien chill couldn’t quite swallow.
From his stores, he drew out the carcass of the boar he hunted previously and a handful of tubers that resembled twisted parsnips but carried a bitter, almost metallic bite when raw. He sliced the tubers thin, laid them across a flat slab of stone over the flame, and placed the meat beside them to soften.
The smell rose quickly, sharp but not unpleasant, filling the air with something grounding—something that reminded him of survival’s simplest truth: fuel in, strength out.
As he worked, his thoughts wandered, circling back to the overwhelming rush of his stat infusion.
Attributes don’t scale linearly. I’m certain of it now. Doubling Strength doesn’t just double the power—it pushes it into another dimension altogether. If that’s true for me, then how strong are those monsters out there, the ones born at higher tiers?
The thought soured him. He imagined the snake-centipede again, the way it had moved, the unnatural pressure it had radiated. Even with his new body, even with numbers four times what humanity once called peak, he wasn’t sure he could face it head-on without preparation.
That’s fine. That’s what training is for.
When the food was ready, he ate deliberately, not rushing despite the hunger. The meat was tasty in its own way, each bite carrying the faint tang of alien minerals. The tubers crisped at the edges, their bitterness tempered by the fire into something almost sweet. He forced himself to savor it. This is part of training too. Control, patience, moderation. If I can’t discipline myself here, how can I expect to master psionics or Threads?
After finishing, he wrapped the remaining cooked meat carefully in woven grass strips and stored it in metallic containers he had scavenged when he found the dining hall. That would be for tomorrow and the day after, should hunting take too much time.
Next came preparation for training.
The temple’s inner chambers were cavernous, empty in some places, cluttered with broken pillars and strange glyph-carved debris in others. He had scouted enough to know which halls were stable, which floors could take the force of his exercises. He cleared a wide space near the entrance hall, pushing aside rubble and dragging heavier stones into rough lines, marking boundaries for drills.
Here he would practice with the lever and the Tetra Unum, honing finesse, strength, and resilience. He set the goal of using the weapons in tandem, to cover every range he could, imagining the strikes, the movements he would burn into muscle memory. It will not be easy to create a unified style using both weapons, but he will do his best to incorporate the ranged component of the Tetra Unum to cover his weak spots in melee and to serve as shield and ranged attack. The weapon had an extreme degree of flexibility, and mastering it by itself would be a long and arduous journey. One that he was nonetheless excited to start.
After mastering the more physical aspect of his newfound powers, he thought about mastering the more esoteric side, for that he would start heading to the heart of the temple, he was convinced that the basin room would serve as a perfect medium for meditation training and thought-knot understanding. He wanted a clean space, uncluttered, a chamber where distraction would slide off him as smoothly as the alien stone. The fact that now he had the means to use the focusing nature of the basin only made the choice more sensible in his mind.
Finally, he carved out an area near the temple’s cracked wall where he could experiment with psionics more violently, telekinesis and levitation attempts that might shatter objects. He dragged broken pillar fragments there, already envisioning the exercises: lifting shards into the air, weaving multiple threads to control them, pushing until his mind burned with effort.
Each task carried weight, not just in the labor itself but in the intention behind it. He was laying the groundwork not for comfort, but for growth. This was his camp, his training hall, his survival forge.
As he worked, he felt the effect of the new attributes more clearly. His muscles thrummed with strength, lifting unwieldy boulders that once would have crushed him. Yet he did not revel in the ease. Instead, he marked the subtle differences, the way his body now moved without strain, the way his breath flowed evenly no matter the task.
This is the strength of potential realized. But it means nothing if I don’t control it fully.
By the time he finished, the suns had totally disappeared behind the horizon, painting the chamber in deep purple shadows. He sat cross-legged in the basin, letting his breath slow, closing his eyes.
For a time, he did not think of attributes or monsters or thresholds. He simply breathed, feeling the rhythm of his body, the strange harmony between his physical self and the mind that now pulsed with heightened cognition. He explored that sensation, nudging Threads into existence, weaving them loosely, then letting them dissolve again. Each thread came easier now, less like dragging iron through mud, more like drawing silk through water.
The levitation dream tugged at him, but he restrained the impulse. Not tonight. Not yet. Discipline. He would approach it tomorrow with fresh reserves, not at the end of a long day.
Slowly, steadily, his mind calmed. Exhaustion crept in at last, not the hollow fatigue of before but the natural, satisfying weariness of labor and planning well done.
He lay down in the stone bed, wrapping his cloak tight. The stone was cold, but his body barely felt it. His eyes lingered on the darkness dancing across the chamber walls.
Sleep came swiftly, carrying him into dreams of home and comfort, far away from the pain and the fear of a reality he didn’t recognize anymore.
