Depthless Hunger

The elves had placed Omilaena on a heavy whaling vessel launched from the eastern end of the Elven Wilds. She could blend into the mixed crew without attracting any notice, hopefully completely disrupting the distinctive combination of their trio. Since she agreed with the strategy, she had no room to complain that the voyage would be stinky and unbelievably dull.

At first everything had seemed to follow her predictions. The whalers were all hard-working types without much imagination, and if she was judging them prematurely, well, they didn't give her much reason to look deeper. She had her books and the new sword, but she was honestly not optimistic about the potential of either.

The chakra-imbued sword was the worst of the three boons, in her considered opinion. She could slowly melt it down with her Lethal Artisan abilities, which would strengthen them, but that was slow incremental progress. When she glanced at her own soul, her greatest recent gains had actually been from Kai's Physique training.

Name: Omilaena

Total Power: 730

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Heart of Poison: Level 64 (256)

Lethal Artisan: Spinel Rank (210)

Physique: D-3 (215)

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As for the books... she had worked long and hard at the Great Library of Traebor, but didn't truly believe that she'd been successful. If she and so many others had failed to discover the secrets of true power, why should she succeed now? When she retired to her chamber to read through all the books she'd stolen, it was less out of hope than because everything else was fatally boring.

Seven systems, including three energies and endless mysteries. Sources both ancient and obscure discussed them in contradictory ways, offering only tantalizing hints.

Then, while turning an ordinary page, it all snapped together in Omilaena's mind. She had been thinking of chakra, qi, and mana as three of the primary sources of power and trying to fuse them, but that was backwards thinking. It was possible to fuse them because they were never fundamentally different, just different sources of energy. The fact that similar systems appeared on different continents wasn't an ugly complication, it was actually the solution.

If she reversed her thinking and considered the capacities separately... yes, it might work.

Omilaena didn't leave her cabin for the next day, forgetting to eat or sleep. As she reread ancient sources, for the first time she could understand them as part of a unified system instead of contradictory. She felt as though she was finally grasping a real truth of their reality.

Occasionally she found herself laughing in isolation. If this was true, oh, Zae Zin Nim was going to be pissed. And it all actually connected to Kai's monstrous soul in a way she hadn't expected. As much of an abomination as he was, he followed the true laws of reality in a new way.

In fact, her revelations were more likely to benefit the other two more than her. But as she studied fiercely, Omilaena didn't really care.