Divine Apostasy Book 11 - Chapter 11 version 2

Chapter 11

Ruin returned to his body and found himself wearing the items he’d equipped. He expected to find them scattered across the ground, not reflecting how he'd dressed in the vault. He wondered what that looked like to someone watching his physical body and made a note to have Rami observe him next time.

Vex remained airborne somewhere and not visible to Ruin, so he opened his Display and accessed the Inheritance tab.

As if detecting Ruin's confusion, a pop-up asking if he would like to see an informational overview of the leveling System appeared.

Ruin immediately chose "Yes," and a new pop-up appeared.

Note: Additional information provided based on Destruction Emperor Class. Some terms have been changed to match the detected vocabulary.

There are many paths to power in the Destruction Realm and they are interrelated. It is important to understand how leveling works in order to make informed decisions related to one’s Inheritance.

Common Destruction Needles (DeN) are the universal currency and can be redeemed for experience to increase one’s level. Leveling is valuable because it provides an opportunity to advance further in one of three paths: Attribute, Blood, or Spirit.

Attribute

The Attribute path provides additional points that one can apply immediately to increase effectiveness. This is a common path for citizens that will never progress their Spirit into the Divine tier. This path provides rapid initial growth as Attributes are increased. However, if the citizen reaches the Divine tier, all the applied Attributes no longer provide any value as the citizen’s Body Fortification surpasses any previous Attribute manipulation. Attribute points are not recoverable.

Blood

The Blood path applies the leveling token reward to the discovery and opening of Nodes. With every applied level, the chance of finding a Node increases. Level tokens can then be spent on weakening located nodes to make them easier to open. This is a powerful path but is reliant on fate and provides no early benefits.

Spirit

The Spirit path applies a level’s token reward to one of the five towers: fire, air, death, dark, or chaos. Donating a level token to a tower has many benefits including: improvements to the meridian and pathways associated with the tower, increased reputation with the tower resulting in better outcomes, and tower specific spells and equipment.

Ruin absorbed this information. That explained why so many of the creatures here in the Destruction Realm had five powerful Meridians. Ky had warned him to not bother attacking these five Meridians with Shadow Steps because their secret forms were not effective. Now he understood why.

Normally taking the Spirit path wouldn’t make sense because it took seven or more connected Meridians to reach Divine. Since only a handful of people had that many connections it would make far more sense for most people to use the Body path and take all the Attribute gains.

But Ruin had just learned that multiple routes existed to fix the issue of connected Meridians, which meant vastly more people had a path to Divinity. For them the Attribute path was shortsighted, and for Ruin in particular, it wasn’t even a consideration since his body had already reached Divine Fortification. That left Blood and Spirit as his only alternatives.

Ruin moved on to the next page which provided additional details.

Outside of leveling, all citizens of the Destruction Realm can utilize raw destruction essence to create a Destruction Core, Fortify their body and Meridians, and execute powerful spells.

Leveling with a path of Spirit and creating a Destruction Core are by far the most common routes to power. Awakening one’s blood and exposing nodes is the path of greatness. Few take this route because the process of discovering and opening blood nodes is mysterious, unreliable, and dangerous. Even with great effort, the chances of opening more than a handful of nodes is small.

Powerful bloodlines, mythical Classes, and a scattering of items are rumored to open nodes automatically.

Ruin already knew some of his leveling rewards would go to the Spirit path so he could harden the five Meridians like the other creatures in the Destruction Realm. Assuming he could keep those gains when he returned to his human body, those hardened Meridians would give him a huge advantage in durability.

The blood nodes sounded like huge power multipliers, and since Ruin had gotten an Inheritance tab, maybe he was one of those powerful bloodlines the tutorial mentioned. It sounded like having an open node would give him a huge advantage over other Destruction Realm creatures.

This might explain what had happened to Lylan. If her bloodline provided an open node, which sounded like what she'd said, and the interaction with the hydra had filled that node with a power, it would explain the new abilities she now wielded.

Ruin dismissed the tutorial popup, and studied his Inheritance tab. As he glanced around the display trying to understand what everything meant, informational popups appeared to provide him context.

The Display pictured his Saraph body with four wings extended. Eight large circles, each labeled with the word “Array,” surrounded the figure. Inside each Array, a ring of eight smaller circles existed each labeled as “Node.”

The sixty-four Nodes on Ruin’s display had three different states. Four of the Arrays and most of the Nodes were dark, and the labels helpfully told him these Arrays and Nodes were “Closed.” A few of the Nodes contained a colored gem, and the remaining Nodes were white with a label of “Open.”

The topmost Array contained a Node with a gem inside it, and with a moment of focus, a pop-up appeared describing the Array:

Val’dor Inheritance
The Val’dor Inheritance contains a powerful lineage, providing a completely opened Array free from an associated Heritage. This allows the Val’dor family to assign an appropriate Heritage to provide the most benefit to the family. This flexibility makes the Val’dor family incredibly resilient and powerful. Great care should be taken with assigning the first node, as the Array will assimilate the associated Heritage permanently.

Ruin didn’t know what a Heritage meant. He dismissed the pop-up, and the Array expanded to fill his vision, allowing more details to become visible.

A description sat in the center of the Array, nestled between the eight nodes:

Heritage of Fate

It appeared Ruin’s first Array already had a Heritage assigned to it, and a second later its description appeared.

The Heritage of Fate is elusive and perilous, granting the ability to manipulate probabilities, twist outcomes, and alter the course of events for both individuals and the world. Those with this rare Heritage are known as “Fate Weavers,” and can reshape destiny itself, creating fortune or disaster at their whim.

This manipulation comes with the steep cost of the System’s hostility. To wield the Heritage of Fate is to walk a razor’s edge, as every altered outcome sends ripples through the fabric of existence. This powerful ability, if used too often, or projected too widely, will bring disastrous misfortune. Only the bravest, or most foolish, manipulate the threads of destiny.

That gave Ruin pause. The Heritage of Fate sounded powerful, but the last thing he wanted was more attention from the System.

Ruin shifted his attention to the first node in the Heritage of Fate Array. It had a silver-colored gem inside it, while the rest of the nodes remained empty, but apparently open. When he concentrated on the gem-filled-node, details appeared:

Name: Fate’s Balance
Compatible Heritages: Destiny, Luck, Balance, Fortune, Fate, Manipulation
Tier: Gem

Quality: Flawless
Description: This ultra-rare ability allows one to manipulate the strands of fate, altering the trajectory of events both great and small. Skewing the balance of luck too long will produce disastrous consequences.
Effect (Triggered): Fate Weaver - Collect and distribute the accumulated fate of your enemies.
Effect (Triggered): Lucky Streak - Borrow a percentage of the pooled luck for personal use based on level.

Ruin dismissed the information with mixed emotions. On one hand, he was disappointed that he never had the opportunity to choose the theme of the opened Array his Inheritance gifted him. On the other hand, it had absorbed Hamma’s luck-based blessing, which had turned into something incredibly powerful.

The gem filled node along with the other seven open nodes inside the Array confused Ruin. The tutorial information had made it sound like even one open node was a big deal. Maybe he’d misunderstood the rarity. It had also mentioned that some blood lines, Classes, and items would open nodes.

Ruin turned his attention back to the Heritage of Fate, thinking through the implications. Possessing this Heritage might provide amazing benefits, and since he remained incredibly ignorant about all these things, maybe its early assignment would prevent him from accidentally making a mistake. How dumb would he feel if he assigned something useless to the Array, especially if changing Heritages proved impossible or expensive.

Ruin returned to the main Inheritance Display and moved to the next Array, prompting a new pop-up.