(IC) Chapter 334 - What Numbers Cannot Hold

Alonso’s swords flashed as the ‘real’ strikes lit the stars, while those ‘that could have been’—but were not realised—turned into lightless celestial bodies orbiting the true: the planets.

He moved with them, merging blade and feint into one, every motion reinforced by the careful positioning of his body. It was not just where the strike passed, but the position that birthed it—the twist of the wrist, the bend of the elbow, the alignment of the feet. All the small movements fused into a larger, more intricate system. From slashes and thrusts, to pommel strikes and kicks—every possibility covered, every action masked by his Intent. Out of countless outcomes, one was chosen to be true, the rest collapsing into shadows unseen.

Sweat ran down his brow as he unleashed the final cut, a diagonal arc bridging two stars—

and a slash that might have been, hanging in orbit, unmade.

He exhaled sharply, lowering his blades, as the complete vision aligned before him: the whole void, mapped into his own body. Stars with orbiting planets, each in perfect balance, oscillating in harmony.

His Second Fusion State.

It had taken longer than he expected. More than simply connecting the stars and planets with Intent, as before, this time he had to focus closely on the body itself rather than just the action. He realised how even the tiniest, micro-variations in stance could shift an outcome completely, no matter if the blade moved at the same speed and in the same path.

But it was done. Now came the easy part—enacting those changes in his body, shaping it according to the celestial canvas he had drawn upon himself. Only then could he attempt to push the microcapacitor lattice to the next stage.

He reckoned it would take a couple of hours altogether.

The sky was already brightening, the sun about to rise again. Nearly a full day spent, compared to the first that had taken only minutes. And the third… that was where the real challenge was.

Especially since he had never reached it on the Standard Path.

Still, he had an idea. He had tested it before, and he was almost certain of the direction to take.

The First Fusion State—like the Standard Pillar before it—was built upon his Realm of Perception: Enemy as Self.

The Second Fusion State, in turn, relied on the Sword Realm: Intent, using it to form the planets, to shape the outcomes that could be and were not.

As for the Third, he would have to build it upon his most recent Realm of Perception: Understanding of Self.

A realm he had grown into after his time with the beastmen, drawing inspiration from their Anokh’tai—Understanding of I. His focus, however, was less on the body alone and more on the unity of mind, body, and weapon—a realm where he measured his limits, knowing how far he could push himself on every front, and in doing so, maximise his output.

The challenge now was to translate that into a new path—one that would lead him into his Third Fusion State.

He had told Lukas he was confident. Ten days, he had said.

He closed his eyes and drew in a breath.

Let’s do it, then.

Chiara lay comfortably on the bed in the MRV, just outside the ruin in the Marshes where Lukas was tinkering with the Xayen’s Meca.

She was alone, the space soundproofed and sunk in absolute darkness and solitude. Nobody was allowed to disturb her—nobody except Lukas… and she knew he would not.

And in that silence, her minds wandered through countless thoughts.

The meaning of the Pillar, and the path she was about to step onto. It was… frightening. Even for her.

She was not certain how far the Extreme Body Path or the Fusion Path might alter those who pursued them, but the Extreme Pillar route… was ruthless—and that was why she had given it such a name when imparting it to the others. Extreme.

And yet she knew she had to take it. She knew this was the way forward, the only way to reach beyond the limits she had measured thousands of times before. She had told Lukas to hold back for now, because…

Because logic dictated that this was the best choice… and… and because…

She did not want to lose him.

Even if she became a hollow, empty ‘Chiara’, or another person entirely, or an automaton of The Tower itself through the Pillar… it would be only her. Whatever resulted would be put to use for the best. Yes. It was… it was the right choice.

…

She drew a deep breath and forced the emotions aside. Now… now was not the time.

Her focus shifted back to the diagrams.

This advancement meant more than accumulation, more than simulations, more than charts and numbers. This step demanded something else—something irreversible.

It asked her to step into an abyss she could never return from.

Because to walk this path, she had to surrender her mind to the Pillar itself. To let the body hollow out, reduced to canvas, and allow the Pillar to take the strings.

She had mapped it, run it through an untold amount of trial lattices, measured every divergence.

The mathematics were sound. The signal harmonics were sound.

But beyond that—what to call it? Consciousness? The black box in the mind that had remained a mystery to mankind, and even for her current self. Could that be measured?

To her, the Pillar was not just an energy source—it was structure, recursion, law itself. A framework too vast for a single mind to ever hold or understand, and yet… here she was, about to invite it inside, about to let it overwrite the scaffolding of her own cognition.

Not nodes. Not lattice points.

No longer sparks striking circuits across the cortex.

This was integration. Resonance at its purest—the Pillar no longer being used by her, but through her. Or rather… she becoming the Pillar itself.

The mind as vessel. The body as extension. The “I” as a passing fluctuation, collapsing under a greater wavefunction.

That was why it was irreversible. Because once she handed over her rhythms, once the natural oscillations of her neurons stopped leading and began echoing, there would be no way to return to a state of independence.

And yet—wasn’t that what she had always chased?

Perfect clarity. Zero latency. The inefficiency of flesh and chemical delay stripped away, leaving only clean recursion. Thought without drag. Consciousness not chained to meat, but braided into the Pillar itself.

Her breath slowed.

She let her partitioned mind rest against the edge—the abyss she had defined but never crossed. A strange serenity settled in with the realisation that, for all her simulations, for all her logic, this choice was not mathematics. It was blind trust.

To overhaul her neural system with a Pillar-centred equivalent… the mind was not like the body. The mind was her—pure and unmediated. The one holding the reins. And now it had to be transplanted, or merged with a structure she could not fully comprehend. She had pushed the frontier of science alone, a century ahead of Earth at least, yet every step only unearthed more questions than answers.

She feared, too. Feared that such a state could twist against her Awakening. What if she lost control again? Just as she had at the beginning?

She had warned Lukas. She had prepared a delayed signal that, without her input, would trigger an alarm and deliver instructions on how to guide her back—if it stayed within thresholds that still left her alive. Yet beyond that… there were risks she could not map, could not calculate.

And that—more than anything—frightened her to the core.

Fear was data too. She acknowledged it, catalogued it, let it settle into the web of her cognition without shame.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. For all her brilliance, for all her simulations and precision, the choice in front of her was not one of proof but of faith. It was the paradox she had circled since childhood: to master the unknown, one had to submit to it.

Her mind flicked back to the diagrams she had sketched when the idea first crystallised. The lattice of nodes had been elegant, efficient, beautiful even—but limited. Always limited. A node was a point. A network of nodes was still bound by points, their connections a geometry imposed from above.

The Extreme Pillar Path abandoned geometry. It abandoned the lattice. It was not about points. It was about continuity. The brain no longer as a leader, but as an organ of resonance, subsumed into a greater circuit.

And that was why the Body Path would become obsolete to her. Why this choice would sever her from it. The body could not be trained without muscle memory. Physical strength would be meaningless. Because from this point on, her will would not arise from flesh or brain, but from the Pillar itself.

A shiver coursed through her in the darkness.

What was identity when her rhythms were born from something unknown? Would ‘Chiara’ still exist in the mirror after the overwrite? Or would she dissolve, a brief echo carried forward by the recursion of the Pillar?

For all her genius, her studies, her analysis… she could not answer that.

Her hand moved absently, fingers curling against the fabric of the bed. A physical anchor, something to remind her that she was still here, still flesh, still breathing… still her.

For perhaps the last time… as herself, she let her thoughts wander. To her life, to her steps, to everything that had led her here. To the question of whether she would see his handsome smile after this was over and recognise it. And… how would he feel then, if what remained was not her but something hollow with her face? Would he hate her?

No… knowing him, he would probably blame himself. He always carried all the weight, and she knew that as the de facto leader of humanity’s last hope—the carrier of every dream and every burden—the pressure on him was crushing. She had felt it before. And it had broken her.

So she knew. She knew what lay behind that easy grin, the will he carried, and… and the feelings too.

A tear slid from her eye.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the silence—so many words left unsaid, but it was better this way.

And just like that, the moment was over.

Her pulse steadied as her eyes closed.

And she began.

Lukas’s right arm trembled as he gripped it with his left, fingers digging into the muscle.

He was sprawled near the crevice entrance, not far from where she was.

He had told her he’d be working on the Mecas, tried to play it off—but who was he lying to? Fear and anxiety gnawed at him, deep, the way they had only once before.

Here, alone, there was nothing to prove. No smile to force. No mask to hold. He could let the weight of it break through as their last conversation replayed, over and over.

****

“I’ll do it first, you—”

“No, Lukas… we need you. They need you. I need you. If one of us has to be lost, has to become something else, a puppet to The Tower, a weapon… then it’s me. My path already led me here. You know it. My humanity’s slipping, tethering by threads even as I try to hold it.” Chiara’s voice was lower than usual, steady, almost too steady. “My mind is already becoming a mach—”

“No.” Lukas’s voice cracked. He pulled her close, his hands tightening like he could keep her here by force alone. “No. There’s always another way. You’re still you. Chiara. My Chiara. The one who blushed when she looked me in the eye and admitted her feelings. That hasn’t changed.” His breath caught, raw and uneven. “You say they need me, but they—we—need you even more.”

She shook her head, a faint movement, her gaze steady on his even as her own hands rested against his chest. “They need my power. My skill. Not my feelings. Not my consciousness. Not ‘Chiara’, but a Pillar powerhouse. And that’s true whether this fails or succeeds. But you… you’re different, Lukas. You’re the leader. We can’t compromise your mind with uncertainty. And you know that too.”

The silence that followed pressed down like stone. Lukas’s heart thrashed, lungs tight, words clawing at his throat but refusing to come. For once, all his cleverness, all his practiced wit, left him with nothing. Nothing except the ache.

Then she smiled. Gentle. Unshaken. Too natural, too soft for what she was saying. And that undid him more than any spoken farewell could. His vision blurred, the first tear breaking loose before he could stop it.

“It’ll be alright. I’m sure. I’ll still be me. Don’t worry.” Her voice almost teased, as if daring him to believe it. “Numbers don’t lie, right?”

But Lukas knew.

She was lying.

What numbers could exist for something like this?

****

Each second dragged like an eternity. Too long. Far too long.

His thoughts tore through him, clawing at every memory he had of her—every smile she had tried to hide, every small gesture, every glance she had given him when she thought he wasn’t watching. The possibility of all that vanishing, of it being replaced by something hollow and fake, crushed his chest like a reaper’s hand closing tight.

His jaw locked. Teeth ground against each other until they hurt. The silence stretched, each moment worse than the one before, each heartbeat heavier, sharper, like waiting for an executioner’s blade.

Could he… work with a machine wearing Chiara’s face?

…

What the hell do you want from us!? Why? Why… why…? How much more—

“Lukas.”

The voice hit him like a strike to the chest. His eyes widened. His whole body froze, breath caught mid-draw.

For a single instant, everything stopped. The world around him went blank, soundless, meaningless.

“It’s ok.” Her tone slipped inside his skull, calm, almost steady. “It’s done…”

A pause.

“…It’s me.”