While things seemingly improved over the course of further days, Akevorax’s body no longer randomly falling apart being a major change, their situation remained the same overall. Neither of the two knew their location from the main universe or a way to traverse it quickly, not that they could talk much, as one part lapsed in and out of consciousness every other day. The runes compounded within him weren’t solely attracted to cells of elements, as they gladly sought out soul power and Mind Palaces all the same.
Fortunately, neither of the two suffered substantial damage with the help of his True Will protecting the pair of them. In the future, he promised himself to utilise the Land of Dragons bloodline, even if it temporarily weakened the True Will, the presence of many more beings ensured better protection against these invasive forces on his Mind and Soul.
All other damage was patched up by the golems too, with Tritheus, their accepted leader, stalling progress on the mansion in favour of more defensive goals. As the runes continued on for days on end, their order greatly minimised structural damage.
However, even now the silent phoenix flame provided far too little benefits, and Akevorax sped up his recovery by forcefully stuffing a wisp of flame inside his dragon heart. The flame of pure heat despised its current location, a body loaded with ice elements, and fought against his control with searing bursts of heat constantly. But enough wrangling sorted out its behaviour. From a fire which melted his insides to mush, his crystal heart now contained the orange flame with lively energies emitted from all sides.
It took at least two weeks since arrival, but his situation finally stabilised into a weak condition. That he kept still and utilised very little power.
Divinity, soul power, mana, elements, Origin Force, even just absorbing bloodline energy agitated the runes.
Rendered almost entirely useless, he just spent the days talking to Adret while focused on maintaining the fire in his heart. Conversations centred around equipment at most times, their lack of it as a huge issue, but also if the massive supply of supreme tier materials taken from Alkuthuzen might have given them a way back home.
In a twisted sense, one specific tool did. Called a dimensional translocator, the spatial device created a deep gravity well to slingshot someone through space at near-light speeds. It only worked in vacuums, but what could be more perfect to make it back home!
Oh, wait, it wasn’t finished yet. None of those projects were.
That hardly stopped the pair who already spent days going from item to item for any simpler teleportation-based means of return. But too many of those devices relied on the use of countless great runes, and after some hours of consideration, Akevorax came to his own conclusion, “I think the idea might work though. The problem is that his missing part was the thing that stopped the gravitational shockwaves from killing you.”
“But if we’re only travelling at, say, 1% that speed, we’d just get a bit injured from the shockwaves. 3000 kilometres a second should be more than enough to get back,” Adret considered the angle a while back, even going so far as to calculate the expected shockwaves on their bodies.
“Perhaps… But would you survive it?” He asked the question legitimately, as the penetrative shockwave might crack her heart, a non-fatal injury if they weren’t travelling at such speeds at the same time.
She went silent in response, unable to lie regarding her chances, but also unable to just accept slower speeds. It already imposed an immense handicap to reduce the efficiency for her life, and the problem which opposed them wasn’t some ridiculously powerful foe, just unfortunate choices made by hers truly. Once more she’d been told that others bit the bullet because they wished for change, and nothing suggested that she never wished for that too, yet… A desire for change hadn’t actually made it any easier.
Was the problem that she didn’t want the change enough? Maybe she just clung to an idea out of desperation, it wouldn’t be the first time… Or it could be that she was a lost cause whose fate was to die young?
Unexpectedly, an impact smacked into the side of her face all of a sudden. A momentary ache remained as the chocolate-tipped tail retreated back to Akevorax’s side, he snorted and said, “Stop getting lost in your depressing thoughts. It’ll only make things worse, especially with how little self-identity you have.”
Still out of it for a moment, she nodded meekly but immediately lost that expression as her eyes turned out to face the desolate field of solid oxygen. Seemingly possessed, she refused to blink or move as her neck twisted rapidly to check every direction.
Faced with Akevorax opening a ruby eye to look at her focus, she explained with distress, “I swear I felt some psychic element… Where did it go?”
“Nexus, can this sub-realm support naturally-formed life yet?” To avoid activating any of his senses, a question to the Nexus gave a far clearer and immediate response.
[Life cannot yet form, but it seems they’re almost upon you]
His perception shifted immediately as dimensions overlaid onto the physical realm indiscriminately, and finally he caught signs of fluctuations in the white dimension combined with agitations in grey. Further refinement immediately confirmed psychic elements alongside soul power, and not even in small quantities. He took further measurements, and even enhanced his senses to better note what appeared, every single existence around them appeared clearly.
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“They’re soul forms? Should they even appear here… Adret, 14 of them with Minds have appeared too. None of them exceed gold tier, I’ll deal with the minor freaks,” he gave very abstract orders with confidence. Most of his focus spread out on the field of enemies as runes all around his chest jumped onto cells wherever mana passed by.
Beside him, the dark orb appeared once sufficiently charged with mana and Origin Force. Then it simply vanished.
Trails of light flickered about a hundred metres out, bursts of soul power released with every single movement, and only now did 14 sources of psychic power make their announcement. All of them an entire tier lower than herself, and not even moulded by the element like her, she crushed them all with a single breath attack. The lunar breath escaped her mouth but split into hundreds of translucent threads, waving in the air as they moved as a collective before separating towards individual targets.
All of the gold tiers died seconds later, while Akevorax cleared up the masses not long after. For the kills, he received a couple hundred identical-seeming messages.
[Killed Level 30 Soul form! Received <1% EXP]
“Should they even be able to appear in this sort of environment? How are their exposed parts withstanding the cold?” He took little note of the battle itself, but with shockingly little knowledge on soul forms, a gap like this threatened him far too much. Soul forms were existences who only appeared in broken realms or sub-realms, and one could guess which were more common.
His answer, however, came from a different source this time. Adret returned and answered, “It shouldn’t really matter what environment they’re in. Soul forms only exist because of incomplete laws, specifically laws around the maintenance or damage taken by souls, which are often the last ones due to… I don’t actually know why. But if a soul form can be created, it generally can’t be damaged by the elements within that plane.”
[She’s pretty much correct about the basics. The details are hard to explain, but we can say soul-related laws come last because the whole universe imposes that rule]
“So intrinsic immunity to that plane’s elements, not that they don’t already resist most stuff. They don’t seem all that powerful though, we should be fine staying here. Just throw a few of these arrays out there,” he gave a quick answer without too much analysis. From his dimensional storage came a stack of metal sheets, all of these printed with an identical array, but before handing them over, made some slight modifications which affected their mana costs.
Adret stared at the topmost one for several seconds before giving a guess, “Seven barrier arrays, all designed to link up… Why are there offensive runes in it though?” She understood some of the parts, memorising all the runes helped immensely, but actual structure still confused her.
“Just putting up a shield wasn’t very useful. These also send out pulses which impact Souls and Minds, I designed them to hold off an army of countless low-level beings. I finished modifying them as well,” his lecturing voice came to a halt with that reminder, leading Adret to take all seven arrays and throw them at roughly equidistant points all around them. Not a perfect septogram, but close enough to grant full coverage. With this, he could leave Adret to fight smaller groups on her own, only extreme cases needed his personal attention now, like if a mithril tier soul form came knocking.
He hoped they were rare. Given how gold tiers exhibited some mental capabilities, but still fought based on instinct, it stood to reason a mithril tier possessed weak intelligence. Not exactly tough to kill, but hopefully they were stupid and incapable of any complex tactics.
Adret asked a fairly reasonable question on her return as well, “Wouldn’t it be better to just place soul-attacking arrays around us? I can just refill their stores myself.”
“Don’t waste your soul power like that… But keep this for yourself.” Another array landed in between them, this one clearly offensive in every means, with not a single Effect rune related to defence. Its effect was extremely simple too, shooting the full soul power of a top mithril tier in the form of a bolt spell. Against anything without a Formed Soul, like the foes on this plane, it guaranteed a kill.
“You really carry a lot of these around,” she said curiously while staring at the array.
The reason stuck with him strongly though, remembering the time where spells took minutes to cast instead of dropping back down to individual words once more. Pritaslo specifically made a point of storing spells where possible, and his middling progress in Draconis meant that this practice long outstayed its welcome.
His reply came with a hint of regret, “I have a few hundreds of these sitting around, ready for any circumstance. Not that I can use many.”
“This sub-realm doesn’t have that high of a mana concentration either.”
“Maybe it’d be best to move–”
“No!” Adret’s shout interrupted him unexpectedly, but just as quick as that expression came, it vanished. Her usual meekness followed on from there, saying, “It’s just a couple weeks, if you agitate it again, then recovery could take far longer. And that new plane might be even worse…”
He accepted that argument. Not just for his own sake, but because he overlooked the fact that Adret possessed few means to travel in the blank space.
“Alright then, I’ll be focusing on training. It’s best you find a use for your time as well,” he said without much regard.
His mind already drifted somewhat as memories of the books written into his bloodline emerged, the library so useful to him in the past but had fallen into disuse until recently.
While many of the books within held valuable information, especially those which explained the more complex but commonly seen spellcasting method, he just hadn’t needed any of it. Especially when in the Dragonlands with access to an entire clan’s repository of information. Bar some confidential matters.
The development of his Mind and bloodline hadn’t changed this library in the slightest though. A single thought drew a seemingly endless list of books into his vision, and one after another he could flick through them to see the next book on the list, a slow and painful way to find any specific topic or bit of knowledge. But it was all a newborn could possibly process, and no one considered that a child of his age outgrew it already, most dragons were at least 10 years old when its uses waned. Regardless, many older dragons found a rejuvenated use for these books later in their life. Akevorax actually already used it for this purpose not too long ago as well.
Of course, he spoke of Draconis. And the dozen or so spellbooks which wholly focused on it as well as teaching spells.
One word gave the power of a slightly below average Master true spell, but just five words changed that entirely, as the might inflicted rose up to the very limit of the tier.
So then, it was about time he learnt to speak… again.