"Perfect persona blessing - This blessing is one of the rarest awakening blessings in the world. It appears in only a few of the children in an entire era. There are no specific rituals to obtain this blessing and only the world's chosen ones get it. The blessing nominally allows one to control things with their willpower when it is in an unawakened state. But the name of the blessing emerges from the fact that it allows the subjects to flawlessly merge multiple totems at a fundamental level, allowing them to keep on improving and reach perfection. As long as one can form multiple totemic imprints in their mind, using their will as a medium, they can awaken the blessing and combine them to form their unique astral persona. Even after awakening, one can obtain more totemic imprints and merge them to their avatar. The methods for awakening are .... "

This was the excerpt from the book of rituals that Michael was reading in the Iron Lion tribe's scripture pavilion.

Never had Michael expected to find the name of his blessing written here. It was a welcome windfall.

After waking up in the Iron Lion tribe, Michael had been thinking of a few things constantly.

This world's language and writing are very similar to aterna. It is just more archaic in nature. How can there be such similarities?

Why are the people in the Iron Lion tribe so confident that I am one of them? Even if I don't have law marks, the tribe should have been suspicious about me. Why do they trust me enough to stay in their tribe?

Why are some of the blessings here similar to the ones found in Aterna?

Thinking of all these points, Michael already had a strong hunch - there is some connection between Aterna and Sumeru world.

While he did not know what the relationship was, he knew that this was an opportunity of a lifetime. Thus, he had chosen to remain in the scripture hall for almost 2 months straight and understand everything related to awakening.

Awakening was a serious matter, so it was generally done by the elders of the tribe for the children. But it was also quite simple. Mostly, it just required carrying out a simple ritual that called forth the will of the world. Many children were able to awaken even without rituals as long as they gained epiphany or were strongly emotionally stimulated. Given Michael's situation, he did not feel comfortable asking this of the tribe, thus he chose to try out the awakening by himself. While he did not know if the world-will would be accepting of him, he decided to take the gamble that the relationship between Aterna and Sumeru world was a positive one. At worst, he would only fail to awaken. After all, he was as insignificant as an ant against the world. Taking action for entities like the world-will required a tremendous amount of energy. Thus, it was unlikely that the world would try to kill him. As per the given instructions, he created the ritual altar and decorated it with his blood and started chanting and dancing around the spirit flames. Soon, he felt the world-will graze his conscient and awaken his perfect persona blessing!

Suddenly, he felt like he had transcended himself. The feeling was surreal. It was disorienting but at the same time, completely novel. It was as if he was a blind person who could suddenly see. He knew that his blessing was ready to be used. Awakening required one to awaken the totem that they had imprinted in their conscient. Before awakening, one could only use these totems in intangible form. But after awakening, one could manifest these totems into reality. All tribes had their own methods to imprint totems in the conscients of children before they underwent awakening. Michael did not have any totem, but he did have many things floating around in his conscient. While these imprints were different in origin from the totems of tribes, functionally they were the same. With perfect persona blessing, he could awaken his imprints.

First - the giant silhouette imprint made by will manifestation.

Michael directly chose to awaken the giant. This was going to be the base of his avatar. As soon as he did so, he could feel as if he truly had become a giant. He could see the entire world from a broader perspective. He could see the members of the iron lion tribe looking at him, as well as the elders coming out of the discussion chambers. It was truly exhilarating! But Michael did not stop there, he chose to awaken his dao tree as well. Soon, the tree started growing from the base of the giant, and the vines started flowing through his body fusing into its bones! Under the perfect persona blessing, both of his abilities merged perfectly! Next, he awakened his martial will. The strand of will turned into thousands of runes which started to appear on the skin and flesh of the giant! At this stage, Michael could feel that his astral persona was already extremely powerful! As long as he wished, he could give it form and gain a top-tier avatar. But, he still had one more imprint - the volcano in his conscient. After detonating his bloodline, this was the only thing that he had been left with. As he awakened the volcano, it erupted and turned into lava that started flowing through the giant as its blood. The power of his persona increased yet another level! At this stage, Michael chose to complete the awakening process.

Boom!

With a boom, his astral persona formed and shrank to the size of a palm before it started expanding again! Soon, it grew to the size of ten feet before stopping. While it was much smaller than the illusion at the time of awakening, that was only an illusion. Michael was currently in the form of a ten feet giant that he had summoned! This giant body had enveloped his physical body. Michael could feel a terrifying amount of strength in this form. He crouched and jumped. To his surprise, he managed to directly jump over the 10 storey scripture pavilion's building to the common training area of the tribe! There, he clenched his fist and attacked a stone slab kept for strength testing. His punch directly exploded the slab into powder! Feeling such strength, he felt as if he was invincible! One must note that while such feats were nothing much in Aterna or Jupyter, the Sumeru Land was formed of extremely powerful and rigid laws. Even upper-ascendants would only achieve similar results.

Of course, Michael soon controlled his impulses and retracted his giant persona. The black energy forming the giant receded into Michael's conscient forming a giant avatar. Inside his conscient, Michael could not find the four imprints separately anymore. There was only a single imprint - the giant that Michael was just turned into.

A small smile emerged on his lips as he thought

The plane-will did not shortchange me all those years ago. Not only did it give me the perfect persona blessing to form this giant persona, but it also gave me the divine strength blessing that has increased the strength of my astral persona to a whole new level! To think that such a secret was always hidden in my blessings all this time!

Michael felt that he could channel the consciousness power or mental strength quite well. As his mental strength was proportional to his willpower, he did not feel any exhaustion when he brought out his giant form.

Based on the records, grade 1 cultivators can only bring out a shadow of their avatar. In grade 2, they are able to bring out tangible energy and in grade 3, they can completely form an avatar body. I should be in grade 3. All the time I spent in the cultivation of dao, martial and psychic paths did not go to waste. I skipped the first 2 grades of astral cultivation as a result. This is the best possible situation! At this level, although I might not win against Kelhus, I will be able to crush any ordinary law master! I should be able to match divine children like Elaine and others. Besides, I am only in the initial stage of grade 3 and I can feel that my avatar can still grow. At peak grade 3 stage, my avatar would easily reach 15 feet! I might even be able to defeat Kelhus then!

While he was thinking of such things, he heard the patriarch's booming voice.

"Hahaha! Very nice Michael! Congratulations on awakening! Your teacher has taught you very well. To have created enough foundation to reach the third grade directly, you must be a genius comparable to those from large tribes! Come, let's talk inside."

The patriarch took Michael back to the discussion hall. Now, not only was there no suspicion, there was genuine joy and expectations on their faces. One must know that as astral cultivators, they were very sensitive to the auras of individuals. Thus, they were almost certain that Michael was a native of the world. After all, he did not have law marks and had the blessings of this world. So how could he be an invader? They were only a bit suspicious about Alexis because they couldn't read her. But that could be attributed to the weird curse that she was under. Their last bit of hesitation also went away when Michael successfully awakened. Awakening required one to have help from this world's will. If the world rejected you, how could you awaken? Also, Michael's avatar was completely different from the tribe totems that they knew of. Thus, they completely believed Michael's story of going on a trip with his powerful teacher and being attacked. After all, not all cultivators wanted to create or become members of tribes. There were many vagrants as well. Such cultivators would explore ruins to obtain powerful legacies and inherit avatars that were not mainstream. They believed that Michael's teacher was one such cultivator as well.

Given the upcoming situation, it was their blessing to save such a talented child.

"Haha Michael, I always knew that you were a genius.", one of the elders said.

"Weren't you saying that he was already almost a hundred years old and had not awakened yet?! That he was a good for nothing!", another elder jabbed at him.

"How could I have known that Michael's teacher had trained his foundations so robustly? Now, he directly jumped to grade 3. So, he is already at the forefront of those his age. Even in the great tribes, there aren't any who are grade 4 in his age group! Given his mighty avatar, he will definitely be able to win a place in the top 100 if he wanted to!"

"Elder, what is this top 100? Also, I am still unclear about the next steps of my cultivation. I hope that elders can guide me!", Michael replied.

This time, it was the patriarch who said, "Every 500 years, we hold a competition between the disciples of tribes in the Sumeru land. The competition is held for disciples which are of reasonable age. Basically, participants that do well in the competition get many resources and legacies for their cultivation. Even the tribes behind them benefit a lot. I hope that you could participate in this competition representing our tribe."

The elders were also looking at Michael with pleading expressions. Michael bowed and said, "Elders, you have saved my life. So I should definitely be doing this for you. But I must find my teacher or my junior sister might be facing death soon. Forgive me, but I can't accede to your request."

"No worries, you are all dismissed! Micheal, stay for a bit more. Let me tell you a bit more about your future cultivation".

The elders all sighed before leaving.

As they left, the patriarch said, "Michael, I know that your junior is not a native of this world but an outsider. Others weren't able to see through it but I could. I was planning to kill her if the world-will showed any animosity towards her but that was not the case. In fact, it was the opposite and the world-will was favourable towards that child. This was very unusual. Why would the world-will not try to kill an outsider when we have been at war with them for the last century? So I investigated a bit and found out that there has been the entry of a new group of outsiders. They are not invaders but have come as envoys from a different world. They are respectful and want to ally with our world, different from the so-called devil faction. Looking at the situation, that girl should be someone from the new group. I don't know what your relation to that faction is, but if you are searching for them, then you will need to go to Azure city of the Winged tribe. And the way to go there legitimately is through the continental competition. Otherwise, the Winged tribe won't allow strangers into their capital."

Initially, Michael was planning to obtain enough strength to protect himself before setting off to find the Sect's expedition team. But after finding out the detailed situation from the patriarch, he decided that it was better to go with the tribe for the competition. Not only would this ensure his entry into the Winged tribe, but it would also make the journey much safer. Besides, the suspended animation spell that he had cast on her was gradually losing power and he needed the shamaness of the tribe to keep her stable.

Michael discussed with the patriarch before saying, "Tribe patriarch, if I am able to bring my junior sister to them while participating in the competition, I will gladly accept.".

And so, Michael decided to take part in the upcoming tournament.

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.

.

After two more months, Michael became greatly proficient in using his astral avatar. He could now call forth his avatar extremely quickly, transforming into his giant form seamlessly. He constantly sparred against other disciples in the tribe as well. These disciples all had the iron lion as their tribe's totem and so, they would turn into a silver lion when they called forth their avatar. Not only did their avatar form have a lot of strength, but it also had great metallic durability. Each tribe's totem had different abilities. Michael's giant avatar was also laced with many abilities. First of all, the culmination of will manifestation, divine strength blessing and indomitable dao made the avatar very strong. Michael found that his avatar was much stronger than the iron lion avatars in terms of raw strength. Another benefit of the hominoid shape was that he could use martial arts that he had mastered till now. His martial strand had also fused with his astral avatar, making it extremely in tune with the martial arts moves that he had practised till now. Michael had also absorbed the volcanic imprint into his avatar, giving him terrifying explosive strength. Thus, in the giant form, Michael was able to bring out terrifying fighting strength. He was completely unrivalled among the iron lion tribe disciples. Due to indomitable dao serving as the base for the avatar, he could also tank many powerful hits. It allowed him to fight an overwhelming number of enemies. Since he had a lot of mental strength to spare, stamina was also not an issue. Thus, he could singlehandedly defeat all the disciples of the tribe simultaneously!

The giant persona was perfect for the "warrior" based combat system that Michael had been pursuing. With these several abilities combined and simplified together as his astral avatar, Michael was now planning to bring all the rest of his abilities around the warrior class of combat. Currently, he was not capable of using his laws but once he returned, he would have another set of abilities to support him. Besides all this, Michael was even able to wield his life-treasure sword in his avatar form. Thus, Michael had managed to merge his martial path, dao path, psychic path as well as sword path to complete the warrior combat template. His astral avatar also had fairly high resistance to the different laws due to his powerful mental strength. This had made his future cultivation plans much more sorted out. As long as he followed the astral warrior's path, he would not have to worry about being burdened with too many paths.

Michael felt that his combat strength now was truly powerful. He was confident that except a few senior disciples from Samsara sect, none of the law masters that he had seen till now would be able to match him. That's how powerful his giant form was.

But while Michael had gained this sudden increase in his strength, he had spent most of his time secluded in the scripture pavillion instead of the training field. He was very worried about Alexis. Her situation was deteriorating fast and it was likely that she would not survive for long. She was already close to death. If she ended up dying, this expedition would still be considered a failure. It would leave both him and Aterna with an uncertain future. Thus he was constantly researching the records of Iron Lion tribe to come up with a solution. Michael knew that the calamity targeted Alexis could only be overcome by herself. If even Fate Seer had no method to make the calamity weaker, he would only be wasting his time thinking in that direction. Thus he focussed on increasing Alexis' strength. His metamorphosis had given him the idea. Michael had already achieved significant psychic, martial and dao cultivation level before. But he was unable to truly bring out his full power. Perfect persona awakening just rearranged his strengths into a well-organised form. It increased his strength by creating a synergy between his scattered abilities. It was like a missing puzzle piece that had completely transformed the picture. Thus, Michael was trying to find a blessing for Alexis that could act as that missing puzzle piece. And he had already found a solution too. The blessing of fate-sense, also called the doorway to fate shamanism. It was a blessing that allowed one to sense the changes in fate. Given that Alexis could already choose the best action due to her divine blessing without even sensing fate, what would happen if she could sense it? What would happen if a blind martial artist could also gain the power of sight? It would completely elevate their power to the next level! Thus, he brought forth the proposal to the tribe patriarch.

"So you want us to hold the blessing ceremony of fate-sense for the girl?", asked the patriarch.

"Yes sir."

"Do you know how expensive that ritual is? Small tribes like ours don't have specialized Shamans, we only make do with a single shaman. This is because we can't handle the burden of the ceremony. The tribe doesn't have anything to sell. Where will we get the crystals or the silk of fate that are needed for it? Even mid-rank tribes don't conduct such rituals. It is impossible for us.", the patriarch replied.

"Sir! Please reconsider this. Alexis is hovering between life and death. You might not know but she has a very important position in the expedition camp. If you make this investment, they will not shortchange you. Even if they don't repay you, I will submit myself to the tribe's service to repay this debt.", pleaded Michael.

"Sigh! Okay, let me see what I can do. It will not be easy. I am basically taking a big loan for this. You should also know that the chances of succeeding in such a complex ritual is very low. Due to our inexperience, it will be even more unlikely to succeed. Even if it does succeed, it might not be enough to save this child. In any case, if the force behind this girl reneges on this debt, you will have to work for several milleniums in Astral mines to completely pay it off. You will be the guarantor, is that clear?", the patriarch asked in a stern voice.

"Yes sir! I will pay all expenses even if I have to labour in the mines. Please organise the ceremony as soon as possible!"

Hence, Michael and the Iron Lion tribe wholeheartedly started preparing for the ritual. Unknown to them, the expeditionary fleet of Divine Sea Sect had reached the first great tribe of Sumeru Land.