Upon reaching the Established Class, the Branching Class allowed you flexibility and change, adaptation. Your Frames attached to your Neural Frames with more splendor and wonder than that of the other Frames. Many were capped at six Abilities, but often a Branching Class might have more, or even sometimes less, mixing and matching abilities, fusing and combining them with ease.
This endless growth and infinitely expanding and branching route of possibilities was the embodiment of the Branching Class. Sometimes, it did so with such perfection that it could be mistaken for a Recursive Frame.
However... a Recursive Frame replaced, redoing and reaffirming what already existed in another way. This was why it was so resistant.
But a Branching Frame was always growing something new, always expanding, always building on what already existed. It didn’t have nearly the same resistances to damage and crippling. Instead, it was better at ensuring that damage to its roots themselves didn’t occur in the first place.
That endless potential for growth, the thickness and width of it all...
If the Resonant Frame was the Frame that could expand the furthest outside of the body...
Then the Branching Frame was the Frame that could expand the most within the body.
It felt like every new idea, every evolving synapse that Grey’s mind had formed a new Neural Path within him. Almost like fractals, the deeper one looked into his body, the more there was to see.
The abilities of the four Neural Paths layered into one and it felt like Grey was simply a bottomless pit. The deeper you tried to look, the further you fell.
There was no bottom to reach, no ground to touch.
He was truly...
Fathomless.
’A truly impossibly large soul...’ the angel lady couldn’t hold her rage for long. The more she observed, the more baffled she became. ’At this point, his Command will be stronger than any Dominion... He has all four Neural Frames...’
Her lip twitched.
Every chosen of the Titans had a multi-Frame. It was the bare minimum requirement or else you wouldn’t even be looked at.
The problem was that most of them only had two. A rare few might have three of them.
When it came to having all four... this had certainly happened before, and many times before at that. The trouble was that that era was so ancient that multi-Frames in general were a lot more commonplace in the first place.
How long had it been since a Perfect Neural Frame had appeared in the world?
How long had it been since there was such a large soul to accommodate it?
"When are you going to put some fucking clothes on?!" Amunet finally lost the last shreds of patience she had.
Grey looked over with a deadpan gaze. "Do I look like I have any extra clothes? My drip is gone. I’m heart broken enough."
"Drip? You mean the shredded hobo set you were wearing before?"
"They got like that because I was busy saving your ass!" Grey said, clearly offended.
"Then how’d I manage to lose a leg and still look good?" she asked, blinking.
Grey looked at her covered in shadows from head to toe. Now this was truly a level of shamelessness he could learn from.
"Touché, sensei. I’ll remember this."
Thi Lan threw a set of flowery robes at his head and Grey laughed, catching it. There was no way he could fit in this thing, so he just wrapped it around his waist.
"This is kind of a fit." Grey looked down at himself and nodded. The white gloves kind of threw it off, but he could really rock the sensitive caveman aesthetic.
"Are you finished?" the angel lady asked coldly.
Grey blinked. "You’re still angry? It worked out, didn’t it?"
"It was incredibly reckless. Impossibly reckless. You wouldn’t have just died if things went wrong, you would have suffered for an eternity."
"Mm, I did feel like I was in there for a while. How long was I?"
"It was only a few seconds." Thi Lan said, confused.
"Really?" Grey blinked again. "It felt like years. I guess that’s good. If I really took that long it would have been a problem."
The angel lady’s lip twitched.
"So. What are the odds they can do the same thing?" Grey asked, pointing at Thi Lan and Amunet.
"No!" the angel lady immediately snapped.
Amunet pursed her lips, clearly unhappy about being underestimated. But she didn’t say anything.
"You’re not supposed to dunk your entire body in it. You’re supposed to take a single drop."
Grey blinked. "... Oh. Why didn’t you say that?"
The angel lady looked like she was going to strangle something. She was sure that she had much better restraint than this in her prime, but Grey really had a way of making people lose their minds.
"Then a drop or two, then. If they can manage it, then they can take a dip."
"NO DIPS!" The angel lady said.
Grey chuckled and then went off to the side, taking a seat and then closing his eyes. He would let them do what they needed to do, but right now, he had other things on his mind.
He had just gained five new Abilities he knew absolutely nothing about, and they all came from his Mechanical Jaw Lineage.
At the same time, his 12 Dark Solveign Abilities had combined into six once more and changed as well.
In fact... he felt like all of his Abilities had wild changes made to them, even the ones whose names had stayed the same, and that definitely wasn’t because of the level increase. It was like they had shifted to become more accommodating and synergistic with one another, while at the same time becoming several times more powerful and potent.
Even so, the one that Grey was the most eager to learn about were his new Mechanical Jaw Lineage Abilities...
Hide of the Forge.
Scraps of the Forge.
Belly of the Forge.
Eye of the Forge.
Fault of the Forge.
Revival of the Forge.