After experiencing it firsthand, Ian could responsibly say that Aether placed an enormous burden on life.
It was an extremely high-order energy. It caused incalculable minute changes in the surrounding spacetime. If ordinary people used it, even if Aether did not actively harm them, the changes it brought to the material world would be enough to kill them.
Only True Dragons and certain exceptionally powerful ancient Magic Beasts could withstand Aether's erosion. Even Crystal Dragons could not; the reason Aether Crystal Dragons could endure it was because they had atavistically awakened the bloodline of the ancient Aether Stardust Dragon.
By Ian's estimation, creatures and tools capable of using Aether had to be at least "interstellar-colonization-class."
Faster-than-light colony ships, super battleships that suppressed star systems, sky-piercing fortresses of interstellar Empires... or colossal cosmic beasts wandering between countless starfields, super lifeforms capable of suppressing an entire civilization alone...
Only existences of that level could use Aether without aftereffects.
A near-divine "divine power."
Ian possessed the Star God's Gift. His flesh and soul were no longer those of an ordinary human; his sensitivity to Aether and tolerance for it could be called unrivaled across Terra. Yet even so, every time he finished using Aether, Ian felt exhausted.
Both his body and soul told him that "he" was still far too "young," and should not casually wield such power.
Even a juvenile Star God—if the Star God's Gift truly occupied such a position—could not use Aether for battle over extended periods.
Yet Terra's Ascenders fused the origins of their souls and flesh to create this terrifying power, storing it within their bodies, even compressing an entire Aether True Form into a human frame.
Before this, the vast majority of Ascenders had only come into contact with Origin Matter.
They had never even encountered psionics.