The Extra's Rebellion
Chapter 112: Delta rank

Chapter 112: Delta rank

Silence.

Then— a yawn.

Zephyr opened his eyes, yawning. He felt pure relief flood his body.

There was no pain, no searing nerves and no broken bones screaming at his every movement. Just the feeling of cool air, like starlight made tangible, brushing gently across his skin.

He was lying on something soft— no, not soft. Weightless. A plane of mist and starlight stretched in all directions, infinite yet contained.

Above him, a vast cosmos unfurled— swirling galaxies, fractal nebulae, rivers of shifting silver-blue light threading through the heavens like living veins.

The stars pulsed.

Each pulse echoed in his chest.

"...Aren’t I supposed to be dead?" His voice came out hoarse, like it hadn’t been used in years.

He ’sat up’— slowly, instinctively. Every movement felt... clean. Strong. The air clung to his skin, thick with power, humming with gravity and weight.

Then he noticed the Omen Eye— it was still open. But the usual metaphysical migraine that followed was gone. No static. No nausea. Just clarity.

Lavender ripples flowed across its surface, like rings cast into a still pond. The mark around his iris had deepened— concentric lines pulsed like breathing sigils, and his field of vision was impossibly sharp. Reality itself had sharpened. He could see the drifting wisp of star dust. His perception had reached something akin to 12K.

He could feel each shimmer in the stars, every subtle fluctuation in the spatial threads coiled around him like unseen strings.

He pressed a hand to his chest.

His Aether Hearths— his metaphysical furnace— had changed.

They had grown. No... They had evolved.

It pulsed in tandem with the cosmos—resonating with it, like an extension of the greater fabric.

"...My Hearths... reached the final Delta form?" he murmured, breathless. They were no longer two, but three.

His veins burned. Not painfully— purposefully. His Aether was heavier, thicker— like molten purple. It no longer drifted atop his veins. It sank.

It was too heavy to float anymore.

It pressed, seeping deeper, settling through his limbs like it was etching itself into muscle and marrow.

He clenched his fist.

As of now, he was at demi-Delta rank. One step away from full Delta. To ascend, he needed one final act— his approval. His Aether had been refined into a purer form. But to awaken his third Art, it needed to be merged.

With excitement burning in his chest, he steadied his breath— then dove into the inner workings of his own body.

Inside, his Aether coiled atop his veins like a coiled dragon. It was dense unmoving and it was waiting.

’Now’. Zephyr thought.

He willed it, and like magnets, his Aether surged downward. It drove into his veins.

A grunt escaped his lips as the sensation crashed through him.

His Aether started to permeate.

It flowed into his muscles, soaked into his organs, slipped through his bones like ink through water. And then deeper— into his cells, into his very DNA.

His Aether rewrote his body.

Every cell twisted, shivered, and then aligned. His genetic structure, once static, was rewritten by force of will. Patterns of Aether etched themselves onto his bones.

He trembled, not from weakness— but from transcendence.

Then— he felt a pull.

A dragging, but it wasn’t external, it was internal.

The world around him cracked— then inverted. Like being sucked through a silver keyhole.

And he landed—lightly.

He was standing in his Nexus. A mental world. A scape of the soul. Only individual at Delta rank had access to thier Nexus.

Beneath him stretched an endless sea of silver-grey mist, swirling gently like breath. The sky above was a void of unformed color, neither night nor day.

Under his gaze, his Aether stirred.

The purple light that represented his being shifted. It pulsed, then divided.

The original deep violet hue lightened—split—and then fractured into two luminous rivers.

One glowed red— simmering with a pressure that felt like chains, command, authority. It burned with the fury of prisons and vows. It was border jail, the aspect of Jailer.

The other shimmered blue— fluid, weightless, humming with silence and breathless cold. It spiraled like vapor over still water. It was hollow breath transition, the aspect of Specter.

He knew instinctively what they were.

Two paths. Two essences. Two truths.

The red and blue Aether clashed in front of him, colliding in sparks of raw essence. Like twin beasts, they spiraled through the air in a furious dance, trying to dominate one another.

Each collision tore through the mist. Sparks flew— black sparks.

Zephyr’s mindscape rumbled, quaking with each blow.

Then— without command— they separated.

Each raced toward one of two ancient pillars, tall and veined with runes.

The red Aether slammed into the first, lighting it with pale crimson. The blue rushed into the second, bathing it in pale spectral glow.

The runes ignited— ancient, unreadable. But Zephyr understood them.

"Jailer. Specter."

He didn’t need to read them because they were carved into his soul— mirrored in the mark on his right hand.

But the tremors hadn’t stopped. If anything, they had intensified.

The mist churned violently— and then began to gather.

It coalesced into a third pillar.

This one forged itself before his eyes— mist compressing, condensing into obsidian-stone laced with vein-like voidlight.

And when it finally stood firm— Something answered.

A spark. Blacker than shadow.

Aether— new Aether— slashed through the Nexus like a living blade.

It darted, thick and dreadful, darker than night. It moved with purpose. With finality.

And it pierced into the third pillar.

Fwoom.

A black radiance burst outward. Silent. Crushing. Ancient.

Zephyr lifted his hand— his birthmark pulsing with fire.

The third word lit up.

WARDEN.

Every time the red and blue Aether had clashed— those black sparks—he realized...

They weren’t waste. They were seeds. Born from conflict. Born from opposition.

And now— those sparks had birthed something else.

A third force.

A balance between the two conflicting aspects, one chose to lock the world, the other chose to be free of it.

The black Aether spiraled around him now—neither fire nor mist. It had a dangerous devouring property to it.

And Zephyr knew—

He wasn’t just choosing between Jailer or Specter. He was becoming the combination of the two.

WARDEN.

The one who binds. The one who guards. The one who walks between the breath of ghosts and the clang of chains.

And now—he had three pillars.

Three Aspects.

He breathed.

And then he noticed something glowing in the corner of his Nexus.

A pale lavender light, tucked behind drifting mist.

With a flick of his wrist, the fog parted. Here in his mind Nexus, he was the god, anything was for him to do as he pleases.

It was a sigil platform— resting beneath a projection of the Omen Eye.

Symbols surrounded it— dozens of them.

Zephyr froze.

"Wait... aren’t those the Hollow Arts I failed to engrave?".

He stepped forward. He recognized them all—forms he’d studied, tried to master, but never integrated. He didn’t know why, he spent the better half of the year trying to integrate one but it didn’t work.

And yet here they were— perfectly arranged, all orbiting the Eye.

"The Omen Eye must’ve been wiped out the art and the occupied the place for itself".

That explained everything. The Eye had been holding it’s own weight, trying not to crush Zephyr’s mind. And now it could finally rest upon the vacant symbols.

No wonder it had become so effortless to use.

But that could wait.

He turned toward the pillars—toward the three lights.

The red one pulsed, displaying prisons and walls.

The blue one shimmered, carved with doors and shadows.

The black one... Held nails. Chains. And collapsed stars.

Then the knowledge came. A whisper from within the pillar itself.

Limbo — Hollow Nail Trap:—

By applying the jailer’s aspect of his Aether, Nails the target’s spatial coordinates in place, freezing the nailed part in current space coordinates, denying movement.

By applying the Spector’s aspect, each nail becomes a spatial anchor, allowing teleportation to the nail’s location instantly.

By applying the Warden’s aspect, each nails elongates to a arrow, it moves and strike with inverse gravity.

Zephyr took a breath—but it didn’t steady him.

He stared at the three pillars, watched the black Aether continue to spiral like a devouring current, and felt the weight of it settle behind his eyes.

"Overpowered..." he whispered. But the word didn’t taste like triumph.

It tasted like a warning. He turned, trying to shake the chill bleeding into his bones—but it clung. Not from cold, but from a rising pressure behind his ribs. A pressure that whispered—

You never meant to reach this.

Zephyr’s mind began to churn.

His Omen Eye awaken out of pure unfiltered mistake. His somewhat overpowered space Arts. His overwhelming battle intuition.

All of it came back to one thought—

’I was an extra’. A side character. A narrative afterthought. A pawn not even worth the author’s attention.

And yet...

He raised his hand— watched the third rune on his birthmark burn like a black star.

This power shouldn’t belong to someone like him. So then—

Who else had power like this? Other characters. The answer came out once, if he who was supposed to not exist awaken such power.

What did the original "main characters" possess if even they were cast aside by the plot— were there monstrous now?

Keal’s words returned to him. "Even the main protagonist failed".

And for the first time since awakening, Zephyr felt it again.

Fear of death, supernatural powers or not at the end of the day he was a human.

What creatures would he be fighting in the future, what kind of monstrosity would he battling soon.

Was there hope, if he was this powerful what about the main characters blessed by fate. Do this world even stand a chance.

Zephyr was beginning to question it all.

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