Chronicles of Forgotten Extra

Chapter 342: Reaching Ascendant Rank and Forming the Eclipse Core!

"What the hell is up with my body now?"

Alden cursed, staring at his reflection in the shiny stones embedded in the cave ceiling. His hair and eyes were unchanged, but his body, especially his abdomen, where his core was, was covered in countless cracks.

Golden energy ravaged through them, and every movement hurt like hell. Not to mention, he was butt naked for some reasons.

"Status!"

He said instinctively, out of habit, but the familiar holographic screen never appeared.

"So the system is really gone, huh?"

Alden remembered seeing threads emerging from everything around him. At the time, he had thought they might have some connection to the status window... but after seeing this, he was sure they were connected.

"So the status window was the thread Fate used to control its puppets?!"

His mind circled back to his mother, the woman who claimed that everything she did was for him. But he pushed those thoughts aside for now because judging her actions when he didn’t even know the whole story... felt pathetic.

And more than that... the small thought that maybe what she said was true, that he hadn’t been abandoned, made him feel strange, which somehow felt even more pathetic.

So he shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind, along with the question of how she knew about his other life because he was sure he would get those answers when he retrieved the final part of his bloodline.

"For now, I need to understand where the hell she teleported me to. Is this some dungeon or what?"

He couldn’t recognize the environment. It was definitely not a place he had visited before but the mana in the air felt suffocatingly thick.

Still, he didn’t rush out of the cave immediately. Instead, he sat down on the cold ground. The chill bit against his bare skin but he didn’t care.

"I need to figure out what’s wrong with my body first."

With those words, he closed his eyes and focused on his mana core. Immediately, his eyes widened in shock.

"I have advanced to Ascendant Rank!!"

"How the hell did that happen?!"

He was surprised, but the mana and the pure golden color of his once grey shadow core left little room for doubt. Meanwhile, his light core, situated within his heart, had become the opposite, glowing with a greyish hue.

Alden understood immediately.

Although his mana had been forcibly refined to the Ascendant Rank, his cores themselves were still at the Adept Rank. However, they were already on the verge of breaking through.

With the immense amount of mana still coursing through his body, he was certain he could rank up directly to Ascendant Rank if he seized the opportunity.

So he began.

He didn’t care about his unfamiliar surroundings because, in his current state, if he didn’t break through soon, the excess mana would shatter his cores and cripple him anyway.

He began by continuously exploding the mana within both cores. After each breakthrough, he could feel his body being nourished and strengthened by the surging energy.

After hours of relentless focus, he finally broke through to the Ascendant Rank with both cores. His body felt lighter and stronger, but he wasn’t satisfied.

The excess mana was still overwhelming as the cracks continued to spread through his cores under the sheer pressure of it all.

Then a risky idea came to his mind.

Eclipse Core.

He was already at the stage where he could form it.

After all, Ascendant Rank was the threshold for its creation. Combined with the immense amount of excess mana he had absorbed from Jeremy, he felt confident. So once again, he closed his eyes, focusing on both cores at the same time.

The information regarding the formation of the Eclipse Core flooded his mind the moment he reached Ascendant Rank.

The process was simple, but if he lost focus even for a second, the Eclipse would shatter... and in the worst case, it could even devour its user, or so the warning within the information claimed.

But he didn’t care about any of that.

Jeremy’s Peak Overlord soul was simply too much for his current body to handle. The mana ravaged him mercilessly anyway... and the only hope Alden had was to form the Eclipse Core and force the excess through it.

His two cores, shadow and light, both responded to his will as the energy within them flowed toward the point of convergence.

The solar plexus. [IMAGE]

The place said to be closest to the human soul.

Alden didn’t allow his focus to waver even slightly as the energy from both cores gradually gathered within his solar plexus, forming a yin-yang shape. [IMAGE]

The energies resisted one another, repelling instead of merging.

Alden wasn’t sure how many hours passed as he utilized the excess mana within his body to tame the opposing forces and force them together... but time passed without success.

Eventually, the energy dispersed beyond his control and flowed back to its respective core.

"Again!"

Alden refused to give up and tried once more, following the same steps.

He failed again.

"Again!"

He possessed an immense amount of mana, so he didn’t bother conserving it or taking a break. Again and again he tried and finally, after nearly seventeen cycles, the energies showed the first hint of merging.

They slowly combined before ultimately dispersing once more but a smile appeared on Alden’s face because he had finally gotten the hang of it.

Four attempts later...

He succeeded.

The energies gradually grew accustomed to each other, and instead of resisting, a strange harmony formed between them.

They took the shape of a yin-yang symbol before the energy within his solar plexus began spinning rapidly, forming a vortex.

An immense wave of pain erupted throughout Alden’s body, but he gritted his teeth, even biting his lip to stay conscious because this was the real step.

If he failed or lost consciousness now, his cores would shatter completely.

The vortex sucked in every trace of energy within his body, the same energy that had been ravaging him from the inside.

It didn’t even spare his shadow and light cores. They shattered before being pulled into the vortex. The vortex devoured everything greedily as a thin, glass-like core began forming around it.

Then a powerful shockwave burst outward from Alden’s body.

And the vortex stopped.

Only then did Alden open his eyes.

The once-dark cave was now flooded with light pouring in from its entrance, and he could hear all kinds of sounds from far beyond it. His senses had expanded far beyond what was normal.

His once crimson eyes had turned completely golden, while his black hair had become even darker, as though it were swallowing the very light around it. He let out a breath and clenched his fist, feeling exhilarating power coursing through him.

He tried channeling mana through his hand as a red-black energy erupted from his palm erratically, completely beyond his control and a blinding pain shot through his body.

He immediately cut off the flow of mana and examined himself once again.

The muscles of his body were far more defined now, and he seemed to have grown taller, but the cracks covering his body were still there.

"It seems jumping so many ranks at once has made my mana surpass my body by too much."

Mind, Body, and Mana.

These three were the fundamental pillars of a person’s strength. By ranking up gradually, all three would grow in harmony.

But Alden had skipped that process entirely.

By absorbing Jeremy’s soul, he had jumped straight from Adept Rank to Ascendant Rank, while his body had received only limited strengthening from the excess mana.

As a result, the strength of his mana far surpassed his body and perhaps even his mind.

If he could somehow see the status window now, he was sure it would display pitiful physical stats attached to his grand rank.

"It seems I really do need to work on my physique before I can hope to unleash the true power of my current rank."

With that conclusion, he rose from the cold ground and walked toward the cave’s exit completely naked as he didn’t even have his storage ring at this moment.

"Time to see where the hell I have landed."