Chapter 60 I Am Legend (5) Rowan's body lay on a beach, in a world of death. Around his still form, an ephemeral storm rages, while an eye blacker than night watches in fury. Suddenly, his body twitched, his hand slapping the ground repeatedly, and then he began convulsing. The shell on his body began to quickly dissipate as multiple invisible mouths consumed it, and numerous bulges appeared underneath his skin, as if countless roaches roamed beneath. In a short while, every shell in his body was gone, and he lay naked on the beach, except for his twitching body, he was not breathing. His body began to grow hot, the surrounding air began to warp by the increasing heat, a mini vortex was created around him as a result of the extremely hot air being forced away from him. He began to grow. His increasing attributes were not just numbers on a status screen, they reflected on his physique, and with his Ouroboros bloodline, his body had begun a transformation that made his flesh comparable to Divine metal. He grew to seven feet tall and stopped growing, his body made metallic clunks as his muscles expanded and toughened, his skin got darker until it was a light shade of bronze, and every motion he made was like a blur to the naked eye. Slowly the activities in his body seized, and yet, he did not breathe. Inside his body, a peculiar change was happening. Before Rowan soul fell into slumber, he poured all his Soul points into the Ouroboros bloodline, but this process was a continual one. Even if he wished to pour all ten thousand of his soul points into the Ouroboros bloodline, it would only funnel the Soul points one at a time, although this process happened rapidly. As the Ouroboros bloodline grew, the snakes around his hearts were intensely stimulated and their growth increased exponentially. They gave out quiet hisses as they feasted on his shell, until there was nothing else, and they began to expand in size. Rowan had a conjecture previously about the nature of the size of the snakes in his heart, and if he were conscious at the moment he would have seen something amazing happening inside of him. Although the snakes were growing larger, the space they occupied remained the same, his body almost seemed like it contained an infinite amount of space around his heart and no matter how big the snakes got, they would always be contained inside his chest. His bloodline growth was constant, as it slowly ticked upward, and then it hit the threshold of the Legendary mark and paused. It was as if the last Soul point encountered a barrier, and it could not push through, and it stayed that way, but a pressure was beginning to build. Rowan had dumped all his points into Ouroboros, and one way or another it was going to develop that bloodline. For a Mortal to become a Legendary State being, it would need to be thoroughly prepared for it was about to elevate his entire being from the mundane to the mystical. There were specific rituals, and specific preparations to be made because it could be argued that this step was the most important to becoming powerful, for even though a proper Mortal foundation was necessary, it was at the Legendary state that the true wheat would be separated from the chaff. At the Legendary State, the Dominators body is now capable enough to access and contain Aether, but they are unable to utilize it in an active manner, that is, until the Dominator ascends to the Rift State. The known State of Change that Rowan knew were: The Mortal State, The Legendary State, The Rift State and The Incarnation State. Though there should be many other States of Change higher than the Incarnation State, he was not at the level to access such information. Nevertheless, from the Legendary State, the Dominator could utilize Aether only through their given ability and from the Rift State they could now wield Aether. Aether is called many things: The life force of a world, The blood of gods, or The light of wisdom, but essentially Aether was a force that only beings of Legendary state and above could access. It could be found in all corners of the universe in different densities. Some parts of the universe had a stupendous amount of Aether while others barely had none. Regions of the Universe that had massive amounts of Aether usually developed into a vibrant and powerful location, where gods, titans, beasts and elemental creatures could be born into. They were regions of great prosperity and also greater conflicts. When a Dominator crosses the cusp of Legendary, their bodies are opened to Aether, and their bloodlines are nurtured to produce an ability it is inclined towards. This step was critical, for the first great divide of a powerful Dominator to a lesser one was at this point. Unique Dominators that were born at the Legendary State or above typically had powerful Legendary abilities that were closer to the roots of their bloodline. Those abilities had a high potential for growth, and could often determine the endpoint of a Dominator. A Dominator that had a passive ability of gathering and purifying Aether would regularly grow to higher States of Change than one whose Ability was Strengthening or Fireballs. However, no ability was useless and most times it depended on the ingenuity of the Dominator to find the best use for it. Every so often a powerful ability was not a good thing for the Dominator, for some were left with abilities that were too destructive, or others were too mystical, the user could not understand its usage and ended up harming themselves. There had been babies born at the Legendary state who obtained abilities relating to Spatial traversal, they found themselves locked in a unique region of space that only they could access, the only thing that was heard from them was their steadily weakening cries over the months before death took them. Few would survive such an ordeal, for the space they were in could not be rashly broken into, else it would collapse and only luck could enable one to find them using a careful manner. Most likely, in a few years later, their bones would be spat out around the area of their birth. Rowan's case was different, for as an Empyrean, they were the children of the universe and this gave them the right to have access to all their bloodline abilities, but at each State of Change they could only select one that they could tolerate. You could learn and develop the Abilities alongside the ones given to you when you reached the Rift State, but that was very difficult, or get those Abilities as you upgrade your State of Change. At every State of Change, a Dominator was given a chance to draw one ability from their bloodline origin. Unlike every other being who had to be lucky to have a powerful ability, an Empyrean just had to choose the direction it desired to develop towards, and if his bloodline could tolerate that level of power, it was then selected. Not all Empyrean are created equal and some are vastly more powerful than others, but the weakest Empyrean was not something most creatures in the universe could stand against. For even the weakest Empyrean, at a minimum could destroy entire solar systems with ease. Rowan was at the edge of Legendary before he passed out, and unlike a normal form of unconsciousness, he was barely alive. The sacrifice of his people gave his soul a bit of light, but they were ultimately too weak to cause a fundamental change to his soul, nevertheless they gave him more time, and that was what he really needed.