The moment my palms made contact with the unpolished cosmic crystal of the central altar, the initial sensation was an absolute, bone-chilling cold. It felt as if a thousand microscopic needles were piercing through my skin, digging deep into the unsealed pathways of my arms to ruthlessly map out the internal architecture of my soul. The clinical, heavy resonance of the planetary engine surged aggressively into my flesh, tracing my circulatory veins and trying to align my latent human potential within a predictable, standard frontier ledger.
Then, the anomaly reacted.
Deep within my chest, a heavy, dormant anchor violently woke up. It was the sleeping engine that had been silently forged within my soul when I plunged into the cosmic pool—an untamed singularity that had remained completely dark while my channels were offline. Now, the absolute second the Altar's ignition sequence touched it, the spark caught. A sudden spike of intense, suffocating gravity exploded right behind my sternum, causing the blue mana circles beneath my boots to violently shatter and warp against the black marble.
The translucent public panels floating in the air above the altar platform began to violently distort, their luminous surfaces flashing broken lines of fractured text before completely blanking out into a dead void. The public monolith simply couldn't withstand the true weight of my inner soul; its standard First Echelon stone channels were actively buckling and melting beneath the floorboards under the unfiltered pressure of my core.
[ UNSEALING COMPLETED ]
[ NAME: ASTRAEUS ]
[ TALENT RANK: FIFTH ECHELON (GOLD-GRADE) ]
[ MAIN AFFINITY: HIGH SWORD RESONANCE ]
A collective, massive roar of shock rippled through the back rows of the crowd as thousands of unawakened youths gasped at the display. A Fifth Echelon Gold-Grade affinity appearing in a nameless commoner from an outlying border outpost was a statistical impossibility. My mind reeled as I stared at the flashing distortion. In my past life, I had publicly registered as a slow, heavy brawler. The planetary engine itself had just dropped a perfect high-tier illusion cover block to shield my true parameters from the public eye.
But a fraction of a second later, the public screen completely blanked out into a dead void, the stone receptors actively melting beneath the floorboards under the unfiltered strain. A low, vibrating rumble echoed directly through the black marble floor of the cathedral, a localized gravity shockwave that caused several robed system overseers to lose their footing and stumble backward in sheer alarm.
Right in front of my eyes, an isolated, private window of clean, glowing light tore open through the dark distortion, its text burning straight into my retinas with absolute, undeniable clarity.
[ SYSTEM INTERFACE ]
Name: Astraeus
Race: Human
Rank: EX-Rank
Level: 1
Experience: 0 / 5,000
Class: Cosmic Swordsman
Core: Cosmic Sovereign Singularity
Elemental Affinity: Space, Gravity
Law: None
Echelon: First
HP: 350 / 350
Mana: 400 / 400
Attributes:
Strength: 25
Agility: 25
Endurance: 25
Wisdom: 30
Unallocated Points: 0
Skills: Spatial Flick (Level 1: Novice)
Companion: Gestating
Gestation Status: Day 0 / 5
Vitals: Stable
I stared at the floating interface, the clean, stellar light reflecting off my wide eyes as a massive wave of absolute clarity locked into my brain. It wasn't a hallucination or a dying trick. The cosmic pool anomaly had fundamentally rewritten my entire blueprint, completely bypassing the standard human limits to hand me an unprecedented EX-Rank Cosmic Sovereign core. Because of the sheer magnitude of this unprecedented unsealing, the raw essence surging straight out from my physical Mana Core completely shattered the mundane constraints of a normal commoner baseline. My wisdom sat even higher at thirty, saturating my newly unsealed pathways with a dense, absolute focus that hummed with pure magical density. I was a Cosmic Swordsman starting from the absolute peak of potential.
Across ten entire years of surviving the worst frontline rifts, I had never once heard of, seen, or recorded anything called an EX-Rank. The military databases, the imperial archives, and the elite academy lectures had explicitly stated that human potential and the universal hierarchy ended strictly at the SSS Apex tier. An EX-Rank simply shouldn't exist within the rules of Aethelon.
Worse, my entire elemental foundation had been completely dismantled. My old core had been built for blunt Heavy Blade Resonance, a predictable track that had bound me to heavy iron plate. But seeing an active core designated as a Cosmic Sovereign Singularity paired with pure Space and Gravity elements stunned me. The cosmic pool hadn't just thrown me backward in time; it had fundamentally re-engineered my soul into a living gravitational anomaly.
My raw attributes had instantly initialized at a flat twenty-five, providing an unprecedented physical foundation that completely shattered the civilian bottleneck. My wisdom sat at thirty, saturating my newly unsealed pathways with a dense focus that left my senses incredibly sharp. I was a Cosmic Swordsman starting from an impossible baseline, housing a native awakening skill called Spatial Flick at Level 1 Novice mastery, and a companion egg already siphoning my mana for a five-day gestation countdown.
The clumsy weight that had plagued my greatsword practice in the arena made entire sense now. My soul had completely rejected the two-handed greatsword logic because the cosmic rewrite had optimized my internal pathways for a light, blindingly fast single blade, backed by raw spatial intelligence. I wasn't a meat-shield anymore. I was an executioner.
"What... what is that?" an overseer choked out from the darkness of the stage, his hands shaking frantically as he stared at the completely jammed public monolith. "Get the regional director right now! The altar's sorting ledger just suffered a massive structural calculation failure! The network is freezing!"
I slowly pulled my hands away from the freezing celestial ore of the monolith, the violent violet light beneath my boots instantly snapping back into the floorboards as my core settled into a silent, resting state. The heavy, suffocating pressure in my chest completely dissipated, replaced by a smooth, deep current of raw cosmic force flowing effortlessly through my muscles. My body didn't feel unconditioned anymore. The lingering fatigue from the gruelling morning arena training completely vanished, replaced by an explosive, light agility that left me feeling entirely weightless.
I reached down to grab my bronze transit token from the pedestal slot, intending to quickly blend into the crowded aisles and guide my boots straight toward the high-tier recruitment hall where Lysander was waiting. But before my fingers could even touch the freezing metal, a heavy, metallic clatter echoed across the marble stage.
Four elite cathedral Awakeners clad in heavy star-stone armour stepped seamlessly out of the shadows, their massive iron halberds crossing over the pedestal to completely block my exit. Behind them, the heavy velvet curtains of the northern stage parted, and a tall man in immaculate dark robes marched forward, his pale face tight with absolute panic as he stared at the completely jammed public monolith. It was the regional director. The countdown had officially hit zero, the global system was fully online, but before I could take a single step into the capital sector, the gates had already locked tightly behind me.