Chương 441: Chapter 427 - Houston’s Lecture

Houston leaned slightly back in his wooden chair, the old wood creaking faintly as he gathered his thoughts, tea still steaming gently on the armrest beside him.

"For the record," he began, his tone measured, "I believe everything I am about to say is unnecessary in the sense that it won't change anything practical. But I will respect your desire to understand, so bear with me." He set two fingers on the table between them. Above it, a holographic image bloomed into existence, a radiant core of deep blue light, suspended and slowly rotating, casting a faint glow across the terrace planks.

"This," Houston said, "is the foundation of The Tower's progression. The key to the evolutionary path it is making us walk. The Pillar." He let it turn for a moment.

"This is what separates a Climber from a baseline human. It is the origin of our power, and it is also what gave birth to me and Darius. Every superhuman feat you are capable of, every wave you send, every force you exert, traces back to this core sitting inside your brain." Alonso nodded, watching the hologram turn slowly above the table.

"Now, Chiara has done extensive research on the Pillar," Houston continued, "and I can almost guarantee I have done more than her at this point. And I will give you my conclusion in one sentence." He paused briefly.

"It is a black box." He smiled faintly.

"As much as I can map what we do with it, its nature still eludes me. Particularly one question: where does the energy come from? The Pillar appears to never exhaust. No matter how much we draw from it, it keeps giving, with no measurable depletion. Will that always be the case?" He tilted his head slightly.

"I don't know. But if my hypothesis holds, true infinity is an illusion. Everything has a source. This energy is borrowed, from something so vastly larger than ourselves that for all practical purposes we can treat it as infinite." He glanced at Alonso.

"For now." He calmly glanced at the hologram. From the core, three channels branched outward in flowing streams of light, spreading like rivers from a single origin point before splitting into dense clusters of neural pathways. Each cluster pulsed in its own colour, deep red for one mind, cool blue for another, warm yellow for the third, all three drawing from the same core in smooth, rhythmic pulls, like three separate heartbeats sharing a single chest.

"Now," Houston said, watching the flows with a calm that suggested he had studied this image for a very long time, "what are the true limitations upon us? It is this." He gestured at the channels.

"The flow we can extract from that source at any given moment. The Tower does not limit the total energy available to us. It limits the rate at which we can pull it. The throughput, if you will." Alonso studied the hologram. He would have followed with a simple sketch, but what floated above the table was something else. The number of nodes ran into the hundreds of billions, each one mapped and connected with precision. He was looking at an exact replica of what sat inside his own head right now.

"So this is us three," Houston said, letting a finger trace each color in turn.

"One channel each. At the start, Darius and I were limited to less than half your throughput. As we matured, we both moved toward a threshold that seems to sit around 70% of yours." He paused.

"Which means, in plain numbers, the three of us together can extract roughly 2. 4 times what a standard Climber at your level could manage. Impressive, isn't it?" Alonso nodded. He hadn't known the exact figure, but it didn't surprise him.

"Now, throughput increases in two main ways," Houston continued.

"Stage Progress and Pillar Aptitude. Both raise the ceiling of how much we can pull from the source. But there is a third method, and it is by far the most significant: the States." The hologram expanded above the table, the blue cluster branching outward in dense waves of neural pathways that spread and spread until they formed a complete human body, every system mapped in glowing lines.

"Three paths," Houston said, "and all three still draw from the same Pillar." He looked at Alonso.

"To explain them, let's use an analogy. Think of the total flow from the Pillar as a pipe. Let's call the flow that is fixed, that goes directly to the body to strengthen it, fixed allocation. What remains after that is your usable bandwidth, the part you can actually direct and shape with your mind." He gestured at the hologram.

"The Pillar path has zero fixed allocation. Everything goes straight to usable bandwidth. The body gains nothing, but you can extract the maximum possible from the source, the Pillar, and direct all of it. The Body path is the opposite. Every gain from State advancement pours into fixed allocation, hardening and empowering the body directly, while the usable bandwidth stays flat." He paused.

"And then there is yours. Fusion. It improves both, fixed allocation and usable bandwidth, but less than either of the other two does individually." Houston lifted his tea, took a slow sip, and set it back down on the armrest, his expression calm and unhurried.

"You may be wondering why I have said all this," he continued.

"I will get there. One more thing to establish first." He touched the hologram lightly and simple labels appeared above each stream.

"Let's call the available bandwidth AB, the fixed allocation FA, and the base throughput that depends on Pillar Aptitude and SP: X. For a First Body State user, AB equals X and FA equals 0. 8X." He glanced at Alonso.

"Think about what that means. X depends on Pillar Aptitude. So Body users strengthen their physical frame using Pillar Aptitude as a multiplier. Both aptitudes feeding into their power." Alonso blinked.

"Wait, wait… both aptitudes help the body? But then wouldn't that make the Pillar path the weakest, since it's the only one that doesn't benefit from both?" Houston's expression shifted into something close to quiet satisfaction.

"Oh, does it?" He tilted his head.

"You know what the First Pillar State actually does, don't you?" Alonso frowned, then his eyes widened slightly. The Pillar path extracted biological energy from the body to feed the Pillar itself. Which meant Physical Aptitude increased those biological reserves, and by extension, fed directly into Pillar output. But then…

"How does the energy work though?" Alonso pressed, leaning forward.

"If the Pillar extracts from the body, would that make the FA negative for them?" Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"Not quite," Houston said.

"State advancement grants an overall improvement across the board in every case. Think of it as a fixed benefit to both mind and body. The difference between paths is not a matter of gaining or losing value, but of where that energy gets directed. What becomes FA and what becomes AB." He gestured at the hologram.

"In the Pillar case, everything that would have strengthened the body gets redirected into the Pillar instead, sacrificing the potential FA to increase AB. The body misses out on direct reinforcement, but the bandwidth expands further than any other path can reach. So yes, no negatives."

"Damn," Alonso said quietly, his eyes moving across the hologram.

"But this… this changes a lot."

"Does it?" Houston smiled.

"Tell me, Alonso. Aside from one item with 'Corrupted' in its name, what benefit have you seen in any gear or Title that gave a single aptitude?" Alonso frowned. Every piece he could recall had given both. There had never been a choice on the matter.

"But then the hag's scepter was detrimental to Chiara?" he asked.

"It was a great weapon," Houston replied simply, "better than anything available to her at that point. The curse made it less than it could have been, yes, but far from detrimental." He paused.

"And I won't run the full math, but based on everything I have laid out, you should be able to work out that Pillar Aptitude remains the stronger multiplier for Pillar practitioners, since it affects a larger pool. Physical Aptitude still matters, just less so. For Body practitioners it is the reverse. Neither number is useless, just weighted differently depending on the path." Alonso nodded slowly.

"Do you think Chiara knows this?"

"One hundred percent," Houston replied with a grin.

"And not just Chiara. Most of the others probably do too. While you are balanced, so it wouldn't affect you either way, both Pillar and Body users feel it clearly as they form the pathways connecting both sides of themselves." Alonso leaned back in his chair.

"Alright then. Aside from making me look stupid, what's the point of all this?" Houston set his tea down and looked at him directly.

"Summing up: energy flow from the Pillar is the key to power, independent of the path you follow. And due to our unique circumstances, Darius and I can each extract at 70% of your throughput. However, that throughput is measured against your available bandwidth." He paused.

"So, to answer the question you actually came here with: what am I doing with it?" Alonso leaned forward slightly.

"There is an obvious route," Houston said.

"Why not simply merge every wave you send with ours, making your total EM output 2. 4 times your baseline?" Alonso's eyes narrowed.

"Because it would break the balance with the body."

"Exactly," Houston said.

"Which means what I did back on the boss raid floor was something I could not keep doing once the States appeared, unless you had followed a pure Pillar path." He paused.

"Which I am not saying was the wrong choice. It does not align with who you are, independent of our existence." He touched the hologram again, the three channels pulsing gently above the table.

"So I could not let that extra throughput go to waste. During the Xok'al stage I developed a method. One that could leverage the extra bandwidth from Darius and I, and partition it in equal parts between mind and body, so your balance as a Fusion user would remain intact." Alonso frowned.

"Path of Shards?"

"Yes and no," Houston said.

"Path of Shards is entirely your creation. I helped set it up, but the idea was yours. However, yes, once it existed I leveraged it to solve the problem, particularly when you transitioned from the Standard States to the Fusion States." Alonso's brow furrowed.

"So you are throwing half of that extra throughput into the microcapacitors along my body, feeding them so that when I use them it balances out the other half you send to improve my EM output, keeping the balance while improving both?"

"Close," Houston said with a faint smile.

"But boosting the biological capacitors purely for conductivity would still throw the balance off. So I had to go deeper. I am using them as an energy source, spreading through the body via the pathways you built in the Fusion States, feeding your biological reserves directly and strengthening the body from within." He paused.

"Which is significantly harder than it sounds."

"My understanding of the brain is deep," he continued.

"My understanding of the body, less so. However, I am not alone in this."

"Darius," Alonso completed.

"Yes. Darius does not work in EM, but his understanding of the body from a combat perspective is exceptional. So I use his feedback to map the biological chains, the kinetic connections between your muscles, tendons, and the pathways you actually use when you fight, and based on your specific style, I optimize the system to match it precisely. Not just improving response time, but—""Tailoring the muscle memory across every pathway," Alonso finished.

"Correct," Houston said. Alonso sat in silence for a moment, the full weight of it settling in slowly. He had attributed the precision of his muscle memory entirely to the Fusion States. And he had always assumed Path of Shards was simply a Skill that was that good, that the edge it gave him was his own doing and nothing more. But it wasn't just that. It had never been just that.

Houston and Darius had been working inside it the entire time, quietly, without a word, building on everything he built, making it sharper, better, stronger than he ever realized. He exhaled slowly.

"So you have been optimizing my performance all along," Alonso said.

"You and Darius. Why didn't you tell me?" Houston turned his gaze toward the water, the sea stretching wide and flat beyond the terrace, and was quiet for a long moment before he smiled.

"Because that is how it is supposed to be," he said.

"I know you are tired of the car analogy, but it holds regardless. After a long time thinking about my existence, our existence, and what our paths actually mean…" he paused, "I believe we each have a purpose. And mine is twofold in its nature. I am both your Awakening, and I am also myself." He looked back at Alonso.

"As your Awakening, my influence in your path must be entirely passive. That means doing everything in my power to make you stronger in every sense, while perfectly aligning with your path and never interfering with it. Our aim, Darius's and mine, is to make sure you have the best possible foundation on this road to whatever lies at The Tower's peak. That you have the best car." He paused.

"But there must only be one driver. Your path must be yours, and yours alone."

"So that's it," Alonso said.

"You want me to treat you as a passive boost, as an Awakening like any other, when you are so much more than that?"

"Yes, and no," Houston said.

"Regarding your path, I am an Awakening, yes. A passive foundation that makes you faster, stronger, that brings out the best of what you already are. But outside of your path, I have my own." He looked at Alonso steadily.

"I, Houston, exist. And I am carving a road of my own. I want to reach the limits of EM control, the same way Darius wants to reach the limits of the sword. But that is our path, and ours alone." A brief pause.

"So feel free to treat me as another existence, independent of yourself, Alonso. Maybe a friend, or whatever the right word is." Alonso stared at him for a long moment. Then he exhaled, slow and deep, and looked out toward the sea. He had spent so long focused on his own road that he had never stopped to consider what it meant that Houston had one too. That Darius had one.

That inside him, quietly, two entities had been walking their own paths the entire time, building themselves into something, grinding in silence, asking for nothing. He turned back.

"Houston."

"Yes."

"Thank you," Alonso said simply. Houston held his gaze.

"Don't thank me," he said quietly.

"Just reach the peak." A faint smile crossed his face.

"We will be right there with you."