Hadrian assessed the abilities he had gained by turning Haldon into a vessel.

The Rank Two of the Space Path didn't offer a lot, mostly a mystical boost of his rank one abilities.

However, there was one new ability, partial intangibility.

He could now turn specific parts of his body like an arm, a leg, or even his head and neck, partially incorporeal.

This lessened the harm of specific attacks, and allowed the turned part to go through solid.

His storage had also improved. He could carry a greater volume of objects, including powerful artifacts, with a significantly reduced drain on his essence.

The recovery time remained at two hours, however, and living beings were still beyond his capability.

With Haldon having become a self-aware vessel, Hadrian could simultaneously use space path abilities and flesh path abilities with his other paths.

He thought of Alia. He had left the Rank Two Elemental Path cores with her, severing their connection entirely.

Through his experience with Baruch, Haldon, and Alia, he had discovered a method to "un-accommodate" cores.

With regular vessels, the connection was rigid; even if the physical vessel was destroyed, Hadrian retained the core.

But special vessels were different. Their cores were tethered to them by a fog string. By pushing that connection to its absolute limit, like he would when straining mechanical control to the breaking point, he could essentially offload the core onto the vessel permanently.

He had never found a reason to attempt it before, having only possessed Baruch as a special vessel. But with Alia, it was a debt he was willing to pay.

Hadrian glanced to his left, staring at the empty air where she used to be, then looked down at the shimmering portal before him.

Shifting his perspective to observe through Baruch, Hadrian gathered details of the aftermath.

The rift hadn't lasted long, but its impact was evident.

Beyond the physical manifestations of the cores left behind by the dead, the landscape itself was scarred.

The mages caught in the distortion were left stretched and twisted in unreal geometries, rendered completely unrecognizable.

Gurov was dead. Bagdona was dead. The new Baron had perished with them.

So, that is the price, Hadrian mused.

He considered the sacrifice Jasmine had made to ascend to Rank Six. The leap in power from Rank Five to Six had to be monumental; otherwise, sacrificing a Rank Four and a Rank Three mage would never have been worth the cost.

More importantly, it reaffirmed the truth of this world.

Even Rank Four mages were merely collateral damage to those with higher power.

If he were to be caught in the middle of a ritual like that right then, there would be nothing he could do to save himself.

Even if that space were to save him, he might lack a vessel to descend into, and who knows what would happen then.

The witch, Lys, had claimed a large portion of the scattered cores, though Hadrian doubted that was the only gain she, or the Sisteron witches, had harvested.

It confirmed something to him he's wondered long before, even something capable of such destruction was incapable of shattering cores.

The survivors among Jasmine's audience had not escaped unscathed.

Their minds and souls had been fractured by the rift's influence. Their memories of that specific day were now an incoherent slurry, mixed with fragmented recollections from random points in their lives.

Baruch was in the same state. Like the others, he had no recollection that Hadrian had hijacked his body.

Jasmine, who had appeared only once after the rift vanished, seemed to suspect nothing.

Lys had no reason to reveal the truth to Jasmine. As for the mages who might have seen Baruch break formation followed by Haldon, their memories were just as scrambled as Baruch's.

Hadrian leaned back in his seat within the mental space, summoning the cores he had obtained from the spawns in Krager's Wild, but hadn't accommodated at the time, fearing they might have influenced his tier threshold.

With Haldon and Alia no longer burdening his capacity, Alia gone, and Haldon now carrying his own Rank Two Space Path, Hadrian could accommodate more.

He entertained the idea that perhaps he couldn't rise in tier, and that this was the only way to obtain more vessels, but it was only a fleeting thought that didn't hold when he thought deeply about it.

The cores were two Rank One Space Path cores, one Rank One Force, and one Rank One Elemental.

Technically, he could force a sea bird or another regular vessel to accommodate these cores, eventually turning them into special, self-aware vessels.

But he had always treated those vessels as disposable.

If he turned a bird into a special vessel and it died due to factors outside his control, he risked losing the core along with it.

Furthermore, the number of times he could use the rock bracelet was finite.

Wasting them to grant sentience to rodents or gulls was a poor investment.

With the two new additions, he now possessed four Rank One Space Path cores. Their collective essence nearly matched the power of Haldon's single Rank Two.

Distributing the cores among his vessels in the first layer, Hadrian descended out of the space.

It had been a few hours since his goodbye to Alia. The night sky above the city shimmered with stars.

Through his connection to Haldon, Hadrian perceived the world from a rooftop.

Not knowing the power structure yet, Hadrian carried himself with a lot of restraint, making him seem a different person.

Hadrian, in his own main form, entered the range of Haldon's spatial sense.

He scaled the building from the outside with confident, powerful leaps.

Haldon did not react to the approach, his gaze fixed on the sprawling city of white stone below.

From the vantage point, the sounds of a ceremonial procession drifted up, a chant of exalted praises from men, women, and children.

Dressed in green, they waved branches and leaves in a rhythmic, hypnotic motion.

Unlike the Free Cities, religion held significant weight here.

Hadrian had learned that they praised the "Reverend Mother."

The title stirred a memory in Hadrian, the night Alia's mother had pleaded with the New Age gods to resurrect her daughter.

The night he'd obtained his main vessel form and Alia.

It was clear now that the Eastern Free Cities were isolated.

Hadrian suspected the other religions thrived across the human continent, only bleeding into Gritjor in the last few decades.

Hadrian landed on the roof with a heavy thud.

Only then did Haldon turn. The serious, stoic expression on his face softened into a smile. With a casual flick of his wrist, Haldon summoned the death sickle.

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