Chapter 42: Pain
The four numbers sank into the Codex at the same time.
For one brief moment, Atlas felt nothing.
Then his body broke into pain.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
His scream tore through the underground hall and rushed into every corridor connected to the Abandoned Wind Chapel. The wind currents inside the ruin carried his voice deeper, spreading it across the broken prayer hall, the side passages, and the lower chambers beneath the chapel.
Atlas dropped fully to both knees.
His hands struck the cracked stone floor, and the impact spread small cracks around his fingers. He could not control the force properly anymore because every part of his body was reacting at once.
Strength, Stamina, Agility, and Spirit had all reached 10 together.
The backlash was not four separate pains, but one combined correction.
His muscles tightened first. The fibers inside his arms, chest, back, and legs compressed with enough force that it felt like his body was being crushed and rebuilt in the same moment. His bones followed next. They did not break outward, but pressure spread through them from within, as though the Codex was forcing them to become dense enough to support the new numbers.
"GHHH—AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
Atlas’s jaw clenched so hard that blood filled his mouth.
The pain did not stop there.
His lungs expanded painfully as Stamina changed. His breathing became deeper, but each breath felt like air was being dragged through burning metal. His heart beat harder and slower at the same time, pushing blood through his body with a pressure that made every vein stand out beneath his skin.
Then Agility reacted.
His nerves burned.
That pain was different from the muscles and bones. It was sharper, faster, and harder to endure because it spread everywhere at once. His fingers twitched against the floor. His legs jerked violently. His eyes widened as his perception sharpened for a moment, then blurred immediately after because his mind could not keep up with the speed of information entering it.
Atlas tried to breathe.
He failed.
Another scream escaped him.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The crimson light from the Codex spread across the hall.
The wind runes carved into the floor began flickering faster. Dust lifted into the air. Broken benches trembled. The hanging ornaments inside the upper chapel rang faintly as the sound of Atlas’s pain continued traveling through the ruin.
Then Spirit changed.
Atlas’s body locked completely.
His scream cut off for a single instant.
His Spirit veins opened wider.
That was the only way he could understand it.
The power inside him did not simply increase. It expanded the pathways through which Spirit moved, and those pathways were not ready. The pressure forced them open anyway, stretching and burning through places in his body that he had never properly used before.
His vision turned red.
The Bloodbound Codex floated before him with its first page open.
The four lines remained visible.
Strength: 10 [ Locked ]
Stamina: 10 [ Locked ]
Agility: 10 [ Locked ]
Spirit: 10 [ Locked ]
But the numbers were not stable yet.
They flickered.
Each one pulsed with blood-colored light before sinking deeper into the page.
Atlas understood through the pain.
The Codex had accepted the numbers, but his body had not finished matching them.
That meant he had to endure until the process completed.
If he lost consciousness now, he did not know whether the correction would finish properly or collapse midway.
His fingers dug into the stone.
"I... said..."
His voice came out broken.
"Do it... once..."
The Codex gave no answer.
It only continued.
The pressure inside Atlas increased again.
This time, all four changes struck together.
His muscles tightened, his lungs expanded, his nerves burned, and his Spirit veins widened again. The combined pain became so much worse that Atlas could no longer separate where it came from. It filled his whole body without leaving even one place untouched.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The scream shook the hall.
A crack spread across the statue behind him.
The wind inside the ruin changed direction sharply, as though the ruin itself had reacted to the disturbance. The Spirit interference around the hall thickened, wrapping through the corridors and carrying his voice farther than normal sound should have traveled.
Atlas’s body leaned forward.
His forehead almost touched the floor.
Sweat dripped from his face onto the stone beneath him.
His breathing came in broken bursts.
He wanted to stop.
For a brief moment, that thought came naturally.
Stop.
End it.
Push the Codex away.
But he already knew the answer.
Stopping midway would be worse.
The old Atlas had stopped whenever pain became too much because stopping was sometimes the only way to survive. This was different. If he stopped now, he would remain stuck between two states, and that might damage him more than completing the process.
So he forced his right hand to remain wrapped around the Sangius Stylus.
Even though his fingers trembled.
Even though his body shook.
Even though his throat felt like it was tearing apart.
The Codex’s page glowed brighter.
Then the first line stabilized.
Strength: 10 [ Locked ]
Atlas’s arms slammed against the floor.
BOOM
The stone beneath him cracked wider.
The second line stabilized.
Stamina: 10 [ Locked ]
His breathing suddenly deepened.
Air filled his lungs properly, and for one moment, the pain became easier to endure because his body no longer felt like it was about to collapse from exhaustion.
The third line stabilized.
Agility: 10 [ Locked ]
His nerves stopped burning uncontrollably and began settling into a sharper rhythm. The world around him became clearer. The movement of dust in the air, the vibration of wind through the hall, the tiny shifts in the cracked floor beneath his hands, all of it became easier to notice.
Then the fourth line stabilized.
Spirit: 10 [ Locked ]
Atlas’s entire body went still.
The Spirit inside him surged once, then compressed inward.
His veins stopped bulging.
His heartbeat steadied.
The crimson light from the Codex dimmed slightly.
For several seconds, Atlas could not move.
His head remained lowered, his hands pressed against the cracked floor, and his throat burned from screaming. His body still hurt, but the pain was changing now. It was no longer tearing through him from every direction. It was settling into a heavy ache across his muscles, bones, lungs, nerves, and Spirit veins.
Atlas slowly lifted his head.
His eyes were bloodshot.
His breathing was rough.
But he was awake.
He had survived it.
The first page of the Codex remained open before him.
[ PROFILE ]
[ Name: Atlas Mariorett ]
[ STATS ]
Strength: 10 [ Locked ]
Stamina: 10 [ Locked ]
Agility: 10 [ Locked ]
Spirit: 10 [ Locked ]
Atlas stared at the numbers for a few seconds.
Then he let out a low, strained breath.
"Hah..."
His fingers loosened slightly around the Sangius Stylus.
"So this is... ten."
He tried to stand.
His body responded too fast.
Atlas’s foot shifted against the stone, and the ground cracked beneath it immediately. He stopped himself before taking another step.
The change was clear.
This was not the same as going from 8 to 9.
The jump to 10 had changed the base of his body again.
His strength had become heavier. His stamina felt deeper. His movement reacted before he fully ordered it. His Spirit pressure, though still untrained, now sat inside him like a larger reservoir waiting to be used.
Atlas swallowed slowly.
"If 9 was the visible limit..."
His eyes narrowed faintly.
"Then 10 is the start of the next stage."
That conclusion made sense.
The Codex had opened the second space after every stat, and writing 10 did not simply fill a higher number. It shifted the structure of the attribute itself.
But before Atlas could think further, a sound entered the hall.
Scratch.
Then another.
Scratch.
Atlas’s gaze moved toward one of the dark corridors.
His scream had been too loud.
The ruin had carried it too far.
A faint fluttering sound echoed above the broken prayer hall, followed by several small movements from the side passages. Then a thin, high-pitched laugh came from somewhere deeper in the corridor.
Atlas slowly stood up, controlling his movement carefully this time.
The Codex floated beside him.
The Sangius Stylus hovered near the open page.
Another scratch came from the left passage.
Then another from the right.
Multiple presences.
Small at first.
Then more.
The first creature appeared from the left corridor.
It was short and thin, with gray-blue skin, long ears, and wings made from pale wind currents rather than flesh. Its fingers were sharp, and its eyes glowed with faint green light as it stared directly at Atlas.
Wind Imp.
Then another appeared behind it.
And another.
From above, several black birds with hollow eye sockets landed on the broken beams of the underground hall. Their bodies looked like crows, but wind moved through their feathers as if they were half-solid and half-Spirit.
Hollow Crows.
The thin laughter grew louder.
The monsters had heard him.
And now they were coming out.
