(IC) Chapter 335 - Voices from Afar

Alonso exhaled as he lowered his swords, sweat dripping down his brow as he finally opened his eyes after hours of training.

It had been five days since he began pushing toward the Third Fusion State. Progress was steady—just not as smooth as he had hoped.

He sat down near the trunk of a pine tree, caught one of his water containers as it floated toward him, and drained it in one long pull.

The second phase of the microcapacitor system had been a breakthrough. Not only had he reached it this time by his own effort, but his deeper understanding of its structure—combined with its synergy with the Second Fusion State—had pushed his mastery of the Path of Shards to 12.507%, over three percent higher than his previous peak.

And the Second State itself… it was fascinating. It no longer felt like simple muscle memory, the crude layering of repetition over repetition until the body obeyed without thought. No—this was something different, something cleaner. It was as if muscle memory had matured into a higher process, an intricate dialogue between instinct and reason. Every move was refined in real time, his instincts providing the raw immediacy while his rational mind calculated adjustments on the fly. A path that did not prioritise one over the other but maximised both, weaving them together into a single, seamless response.

His mind no longer merely issued commands to his body. Instead, his body answered first, sending feedback before the signal of intent was fully shaped. The exchange blurred. The boundary between thinking and acting eroded. It felt as though his body had grown smarter, more aware, while his mind had grown more instinctual, faster to trust the signals rising from within the flesh.

Measured coldly, the numbers were clear. With the multiplicative 60% boost from both states combined, he should now be 2.56 times stronger than his base condition—surpassing the 2.25 he had achieved at the peak of the Standard Path. But numbers told only a fraction of the truth. What had changed in him was not just a matter of scale.

The Fusion State was a qualitative shift, a threshold crossed. An irreversible change into something different—not simply a stronger human, but a lifeform of new design. A being undeniably more suited to endure, to adapt, and to survive in the merciless trails of The Tower.

He wondered how it would be for Chiara and Ayu. What would their paths demand? How different would they become?

He was fairly sure they were right where he was now—pushing toward the Third, with the timer looming over them all. But he knew they would make it.

As for himself—

He needed to revise his approach.

The First Fusion State had required the construction of nodes—bi-nodes—tiny dual anchors entangling mind and body in paired circuits. Thousands of them, mapped across him like a constellation, each one reinforcing the bond between neural impulse and physical output.

The Second Fusion State had pushed the architecture further. Each node grew more than a point; it became a hub. Around it, secondary nodes clustered, orbiting in linked patterns. The whole structure resembled the Standard Pillar lattice, but with a critical difference. Instead of being appended as an external framework to the Pillar, it was woven directly into his biology, embedded into both body and cognition at once.

Now the Third State changed the basis entirely. It did not simply multiply nodes. It redefined what those nodes were for. The focus shifted from accumulation to connection. It was no longer about isolated points of capacity, but about the circulation of energy between them.

Not thousands of isolated sparks, but highways linking them. Pathways that threaded clusters into chains, and chains into networks. The lattice began to resemble a circulatory system—energy transmitted with purpose, flow, and rhythm. The very quality of transmission changed: faster, cleaner, without bottlenecks, without loss. It was no longer just the addition of more nodes, but the birth of a new architecture inside him.

He closed his eyes, imagining the map. Pathways branching, crossing, converging, until the body was less a mass of cells and more a living circuit board, the Pillar’s current coursing through it with the precision of designed infrastructure.

This was the divergence from the Standard Path. Where the old route relied on rigid accumulation—stacking more and more lattices onto the nervous system—this one pursued integration and flow. It aimed not to overload but to re-design the body’s internal economy of energy.

And that was a serious challenge for him.

In his ‘I am the void’ approach—the main nodes as stars, the secondary as planets—what, then, would be the links? Every move was already connected in a way. The pattern was never isolated but born from the truth that each strike, each motion, each advance, was part of a sequence, a continuous flow. The Second State had expanded on that by layering ‘reality’—the interplay of possible strikes and the hidden ones that shaped Intent itself.

But what about now?

Was it naïve to think that simply adding the Perception Realm—Understanding of Self—would provide the solution, just because the same method had worked for the first two?

Maybe. It might have worked if the Third State hadn’t bent the pattern with this sudden turn.

But if there was one thing life had taught him, it was that most things never worked the way you expected. Tomorrow was always uncertain, no matter how much you planned. And sometimes… shit just happened. No reason, no fairness. You either stopped there—or you kept going.

He still remembered that day. The crash. The blood. The silence. The darkness. The day he thought everything had ended. His body survived, but his world hadn’t. He had thought it was over.

And yet, eventually, he kept going.

Why?

Because he wanted to. Because, even stripped down, even broken—even without a leg, without the two people he had cared for most in the world—he still wanted to live.

And now? Now was nothing compared to that. The Tower raised the stakes for the world, for humanity, but for him personally… this didn’t cut as deep. Was he worried? Yes. Was he afraid? …No.

Alonso drew a long breath, let it fill him, and steadied his pulse.

Like every trial before, this was just another challenge. There was always a path forward—he only had to find it.

Void. Stars. Planets.

What comes next—and what links them?

From the perspective of celestial bodies, the next piece would logically be the moons, orbiting the planets. But what could the moons represent here? If planets were the alternative strikes that never manifested—birthed by Intent—then what could Intent itself give birth to?

From a physical, universal point of view, the link was gravity. But how could that translate into his path? Every action was already connected with the next, so how could he take that further? How could he push it into a step beyond, into something qualitatively different?

The answer to either question—especially the first—felt far beyond his current realm.

No. There had to be another way, something he was mis—

“…Gen… Alonso… enemy move… detected. Xok’al… massing. Withdraw… Tlanextli Rav… focus forces… avoid… isolation. Priests… ill omens.”

A long-range transmission from General Noh?

Alonso narrowed his eyes. Had it begun? But strange… if it had, and they were detected, it could only mean one thing.

They wanted to be detected.

A plan aimed at him, to lure him out—or was he just overthinking?

Either way, he would not move. And he could not risk answering.

Sorry, Noh.

I hope we meet again, though…

Alonso knew the chances were slim.

He wondered how they would react if they ever learned the truth of it all. Maybe it was better this way. Even if it was a lie, at least within that illusion they could live—if only for a while.

He steadied his breath as his focus snapped back inward, thoughts flowing and colliding between Darius and Houston’s as the hours passed. Sessions of dynamic approach bled into quiet breaks of meditation, weighing what worked, what failed, and what paths to try next.

Two more days slipped away in solitude.

At last, he had found a strong lead on what could translate to the ‘link’—to gravity.

It was not the connection of one move to the next, but the ripple each sent through all those that followed. Not one to two, but one to three, one to four, and one… to all. Every action reshaped the entire chain. The pattern could no longer be seen as a sequence, but as something parallel, where all possible moves were born together at the start.

That hidden effect—the force that bound everything across distance—that was gravity.

And it matched the requirement of the Understanding of Self. To wield it, he needed precise awareness of his own boundaries, both physical and wave-like, so he could exploit that knowledge to project outcomes hundreds of steps ahead, while still remaining within the truest edge of his capabilities.

He felt it too. Though not yet the resonance, the void—now himself—stirred in response. Gravity whispered faintly across the vast dome, pulling it into a shape more real, more whole.

But the question remained: what structure came next? Gravity was only one layer of the pattern. Beyond planets… there had to be something more. Something that would carry the sequence forward. Something that—

“…Gen…Alo… Eastern… fallen… Wardens… dozens… if… no signal… assume… dead… protect… Empress…”

Alonso stayed silent, his gaze heavy as he processed the fractured signal.

Even if he had steeled his heart, it still struck him. A part of him wanted to rush out, fix everything, be the hero in their story. But he knew—if he left now, he would only be another body buried like the rest. His orb, just one more to feed the swarm.

He let out a breath, one he had held for longer than he realised.

Then he forced the thought away, focus snapping back as the world collapsed again into nothingness. Training. Breath. Void.

Yet only a couple of hours later, another signal cracked through.

“…Gen… Alo… escaped… Moonless Tunnels… heading… capital… request… meet… found… critical… truth… must… deliver… in person… survival… Ajnal… world…”

Alonso’s eyes snapped open. The signature was unmistakably Noh’s. But what had he found? Critical? Truth? Wait… the truth about the Xok’al!?

But how? Such a thing couldn’t just be stumbled upon—and how could he have uncovered it while fleeing from the Wardens? And most of all, why meet in pers—

…

A cold shiver cut through his spine as the realisation struck him.

His hand trembled for a heartbeat. Teeth clenched, breath uneven.

It… couldn’t be. Right?

But…

Could they? Could the Xok’al really fake Noh’s signature, intentionally sending a transmission meant to lure him out?

That would require a deep grasp of the language, of the way Noh spoke, of what might truly lure him—and, above all, the ability to forge the unique signature of an individual. All for a single purpose… him.

…

Alonso forced his pulse steady. Fear… fear was ignorance. Yes. Just… that.

He knew the limits of the Xok’al, knew what a six-tail could represent.

Now was not the time to tremble. Their intelligence, their knowledge, their plans—they would always be steps ahead.

There was no outsmarting a swarm-born race that had survived millennia in their own domain.

No. There was only one way to win.

Power.

And with that, Alonso shut himself away. Every transmission was rerouted to Houston. No signal, no voice, would reach him. Not now. Not when his path—the path to the power he needed—was the only chance they had left.

And so he trained. Hours slipped into days. His breath, his blades, the rhythm of his void.

But the messages didn’t stop. They grew. Louder. More desperate. More insistent. Houston received them all, jaw tight, eyes grim, and denied every one. None could reach Alonso. None could shake him from the one hope left.

***

“Gen… Alonso. By order… Empress… return… capital. At once.”

***

“Gen… lines… collapsing. Your men… dying… every front. Capital… surrounded. We need… you.”

***

“General… walls breached. Xok’al… inside city. I hold… counterplan… if… reach us…”

***

“Gen… Alonso. Azcoyatl… Primal Priest… Xon. Entered capital… with reinforcements. Join… forces. Together… save Ajnal.”

***

“General… Grand Priest… fallen. Temples burn. One hope… remains… beneath Sun Pyramid… weapon…”

***

And then… one final transmission—perfectly clear:

“Outsider. You see through the veils. No more lies. One truth: I stand alone, in the heart of the ones who sheltered you. They still breathe… for now. We will wait three rises of the sun. Come, or return to nothing.”