The Hollow Avatar could feel my shock and surprise, and it was silent for a long moment. When it spoke again, its voice was flat, but I thought that there may be a note of uncertainty in its words, but I could not be sure... reading the Hollow Avatar was difficult, some would say impossible, but I like to think of everything as difficult and not impossible.

"I was not designed to witness this outcome. The Shell was meant to be a foundation, a scaffold for your growth. It was not meant to evolve into a... Vessel. The Architects did not build Stone Origin Shells, and this term is not in my reference matrix."

I frowned, my thoughts whirling around in my head without finding a proper destination. I felt the continuous changes inside me, and I asked, "Then where did it come from?"

"You... I believe, the loop that allowed us to harvest materials that no one else would gather in such a short time, the Earth Gates you open and the vast amount of Celestial Essence now flowing in your body, your bonding with a Hevenly Beast, the shards of law inside you or the welded state of our souls...any of this, or a combination of all of this may have produced a result that was not anticipated. The Stone Origin Shell is not a known configuration. It is a new one."

I sat with that for a moment. A new configuration. Something that had never existed before, born from the collision of my choices and the loop’s impossible gifts.

When I entered the loop, most things happening to me were new, and I was stumbling ahead, and the arrival of Hollow Avatar was a warm blanket in the cold. It always seemed so infallible and knowledgeable; there seemed to be nothing that it did not know, and for those that it didn’t, it was usually my fault because I lacked the necessary power or clearance for it to reveal these secrets.

So, you could see how surprised I was that the Hollow Avatar did not have any idea what we had created. I believed it thought we were going to create a more powerful and perfect shell, but we seemed to have exceeded anything that it could quantify.

"Is it dangerous?" I asked as I brought my right hand to my face, casually shifting the Lightning Edict that made my skin appear normal, and watched the dazzling array of channels below my skin, muscles, even my bones. Lightning was flowing through me, and I even noticed that there were four colors of lightning inside me.

Golden, blue, yellow, and white. There were a lot of white lightning, followed by blue, then yellow, and finally gold. If I released the Lightning Edict that covered my skin, then the entire tent would be glowing as if a furnace was burning inside it, and in the grey light of the morning, the entire camp would be drawn to it.

This was clearly not normal. I still think of myself as a mage, but I was not. The Moon Fox on my shoulder suddenly jumped on my arm, and watched the lightning flowing beneath my skin with wide eyes, before it proceeded to start licking my skin.

It was ticklish, and I giggled before I covered my skin, and the disappointed fox returned to my shoulder. The Hollow Avatar finally replied to my question.

"It is unknown... and the unknown is always dangerous. But it is also... promising. The Shell is integrating perfectly with you without any rejection, which suggests it recognises you as its intended vessel. Also, do not forget that Cor Telluris was made to combat threats on a terrestrial plane. It was designed by Achons, beings of power beyond what you can comprehend, and it does not have any flaws. You may have taken it past the assigned limits, but every equation has been charted out during its creation, even if I do not have access to those data."

I looked down at my hands and felt how the channels were increasingly rooting my soul to my body, the way I think, the roots of a tree anchor a trunk to the earth. And they were still growing deeper.

The strength of my flesh and bones was unknown, and I did not know how durable and terrifying I had become. The Pale Matron destroyed me with a brush of her hand, but I was not foolish enough to think I could challenge a being like that.

If the Celestial would rather imprison this creature and toss her out into the dark, rather than kill her, it suggested many things that I did not want to even dwell upon at the moment.

Still, I don’t know where my present power would place me, at the peak of the Arcanist Tier or nearing the Sovereign level. Fighting Vrakth was not a good way to test my abilities against other mages or see where I stand in the overall conflict, but I believe that soon this would change.

Although I knew that without any unknown surprises, I was the most powerful Adept alive.

"I can feel it," I whispered. "The Stone Origin Shell. It’s... settling."

"Yes. The initiation process seemed to be slow, which is expected for the changes happening inside you. It will take time before the Shell is fully integrated. But it has begun."

I sighed, "How long do you think before it is completed?"

"Days. Possibly weeks. The loop will reset before then. But the Shell will carry across the reset. It is part of your soul now."

I closed my eyes and felt the slow, deep pulse of the Stone Origin Shell. It was like a second heartbeat, slower than my own, but steady. And as I listened to it, I felt something else, a connection to the earth beneath me, to the stone and the soil. The Shell seemed to be a bridge to the very earth itself.

This was amazing... perhaps if I had focused on being an Earth Mage, then this Shell could make me a great genius Earth Mage. However, this was not a disadvantage to me; I was sure that a completed Shell would elevate my powers in directions that I did not expect.

"Stone Origin Shell," I said. "It feels... grounded. You said it was made to battle on terrestrial planes?"

"It is. That is the nature of stone. It endures. The Celestials in the heavens knew that they could not always battle on the ground or deep in the depths... and so they needed to create something that could fight the battles that they could not... and this is the true birth of the Stone Shell."