Beyonder characteristics were indestructible.
Beyonder characteristics were conserved.
He had never read these two laws in any tome, nor had he ever heard any high-ranking member of the Churches mention them.
Yet they were like two scalpels, precisely cutting open every vague area in his past understanding and exposing the bloody, deliberately concealed underlying structure of this world.
He recalled those Beyonders who had died in naval battles. Beside their corpses, some kind of crystal radiating spiritual brilliance would always precipitate out.
Those precipitated Beyonder characteristics were ironclad proof of "indestructibility."
He also recalled the Sealed Artifacts kept under strict guard within the Church of Storms. It was said that some of them had been formed from the characteristics left behind after high-Sequence powerhouses lost control and died, possessing warped and terrifying powers. This was another manifestation of "indestructibility."
And "conservation"—
Alger's thoughts abruptly turned to the Acting Method.
Why had the secret that allowed people to safely and rapidly digest potions been so tightly suppressed by the Churches of the Seven Orthodox Gods?
He had once believed it was to maintain the Churches' ruling position, preventing wild Beyonders from growing too quickly and threatening their authority.
Now, that reason still held true, but an even darker, colder logic lay hidden beneath it.
If the total amount of Beyonder characteristics in a pathway was fixed, then the birth of a high-Sequence powerhouse would inevitably squeeze out the slots available to low-Sequence Beyonders.
The Churches strictly controlled the Acting Method in order to limit the number of mid-Sequence Beyonders at the source!
They were not merely maintaining stability—they were deliberately controlling the number of Beyonders!
The Potion System had been tailor-made for humanity.
The Acting Method could accelerate that process.
When Beyonders died, they dropped characteristics.
To advance, one had to