It came time to initiate the return plan. Akevorax didn’t have to put in that much work, as they already looted a suitable tool from Alkuthuzen, albeit a half-completed one. Neither cared though, as mentioned. All it lacked was a way to specify how much power went into every launch.

And really, an array to just limit energy flow wasn’t that hard to create. Even more so when the sceptre’s power never entered it! His array created a suitable blocking force which held back the elements and runes at a distance, some tinkering eventually sorted out a suitable array. A series of failures took him down a notch though. This strongly reminded of his place, while he undoubtedly constructed useful arrays, he was far from true skill in the domain. Adret could only stand around and kill soul forms throughout all this.

“So it’s time to go now? Is that master tier really not going to attack?” For the past week, she’d truly expected a full barrage of soul forms their way as that unknown being at the top still sent waves of underlings their way. But even now, she last saw a mithril tier arrive over a week ago!

Akevorax shook his head in a gentle disagreement. Adret sighed but still listened as he explained, “It’s not worth it. Two unknown beings, one who is clearly similar to it in power… They value their life over food, and not that they even need flesh to survive.”

“Mmm, but surely they still care for growth? If they grew up in this environment, I’d expect a more stupid thought process,” she clearly insulted them without any regard. Though, there was no respect for the things that tried to kill her for weeks now.

He ignored her words momentarily as the final parts of the array came together. Runes etched, filled with alloy, junctions all carved and filled too. He created this array in a pyramidal design as it best concentrated the repulsive forces pointed upwards. As he placed down the device which would propel them through blank space over incredible distances, he answered Adret, “If you were as strong as the Clan Lord, would you still care about growth?”

“Why would I stop– Your point is that they assume they’ve reached the limit? But even then some people always try to reach above the supreme tier. To become as strong as gods, or demigods at least.”

“But you know gods can exist.” His point silenced her. No amazing comeback existed when the discussion fell onto the matter of limits.

Soul forms could not evolve either, and so climbing above master tier required incalculable intellect and resources. At least the Nexus provided levels to maintain their power scaling with everything else.

They no longer took note of the sub-realm and initiated the departure. Between them sat the device responsible for intense spatial warping, a sceptre made of dark, purple crystal. At its top rested a bulb of this unknown crystal as well as small rings grown outward at regular intervals from its tip. It appeared as one object, but somehow Alkuthuzen carved its insides hollow and neatly teleported the other components within. It only lacked one thing in the lower third.

While Akevorax already moderated the sceptre’s power to just fling them at 1% of lightspeed, Adret still grinded her teeth nervously at the prospect.

“Use your crown if you’re worried. It’ll mitigate most the damage.”

“It just feels a bit wrong to use it for something like this…”

“Then withstand the forces yourself. It’s a power designed to protect you, don’t be so hesitant to use it.”

She gritted with more force, but eventually sighed. With a single thought, her bare head with two half-grown horns gained the adornment of a silver crown. It was not comfortable, resembling a more rustic design instead of a royal garment, and to some degree looked like a crown of thorns. The twisting knots of unknown silver formed spikes pointing towards the sky, but a shaved base to nimbly rest on Adret’s head. Simply adorned with its presence, he felt the lunar power within force its way into his mental space in an attempt to suppress his Mind Palace.

It met a miserable defeat as a single dragon’s roar cried out from within, forcing the energy back out for the fiftieth time now.

This happened every single time. You’d think a crown with such intense psychic prowess would be smart and learn a lesson…

“Now then, hold on tight to the chains,” Akevorax said in an eager voice. Unlike the times he tied the two of them together, he just wrapped an extremely long chain around both, and then secured both ends with a metal spike through both links. By bending this spike, the makeshift link ensured it stayed connected. And just for security he did this on three links at either end.

His array beneath them activated, and with relatively precise coordinates, they began their return to the main universe.

One thought activated the sceptre, and the two dragons were instantly pushed out of the sub-realm as a ball of purple energy erupted from its crystal top. He could feel the already shifting lines of space suddenly morph violently as a deep gravitational well formed beneath. Two forces appeared. They clashed and threatened to tear him in half, or worse, rip him to pieces as unbearable power kept him in place whilst another threatened to pull him straight into the sceptre’s core.

Thankfully, he resisted this force even with his weak body. Adret felt some pain, but struggled even less.

His array beneath maintained a stable state as countless spatial elements within the staff failed to move forward, impeded and unable to fully pull back their slingshot.

And then it snapped back.

Was it an instant? Perhaps just slightly less than that, but even with divinity cladding his body, the violent gravitational forces ripped him apart. Every shattered crystal healed immediately after, but that damage hurt to his core. Pulled in a million different directions all across his body, broken and ripped countless times in an instant, yet he didn’t even have time to groan. Their figures disappeared from just outside the sub-realm and the array crumbled under such power.

Adret’s bones cracked at almost every point in her body, but overflowing lunar power from that crown protected what mattered most. She’d need a few days to recover.

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Both dragons kept their wings folded and hid within the sceptre’s minor protection as they barrelled through inherently mixed space. It formed a shield ahead of them, moving alongside at a constant pace, and when they came to a stop, time would come to repeat the process.

“Our speed already dropped to 60%, we should still make it to the target though,” Akevorax dryly told Adret their situation. She just nodded and focused on surviving the damage done to her by that shockwave.

Before long, their speed dropped once more to just 500 kilometres a second and any reductions to their speed also decreased in turn. Roughly half an hour of this ‘leisurely’ movement continued as the pair approached their destination. Given the ridiculous size of the blank space, it was well within reason that nothing ever approached them in the tiny distance travelled. One light-second took years to travel in any realm, but out here, such speeds were considered normal, this did better explain why no one travelled too far away from the main universe though.

Describing what the blank space was didn’t work well either. As mentioned, Akevorax despised the idea of movement in the 4th or 5th spatial fields earlier, primarily because those two dimensions could only be moved through with some form of power. Ideally, spatial elements. Other problems made it a hell-ish journey too. Like how everything felt like a thick syrup and random cracks in space opened without any warning…

That last one was probably a bigger issue in all fairness.

As for how this all worked.

Imagine the entire blank space as a massive box, ignoring the fact it had 5 spatial fields, two of which couldn’t even be entered without sufficient power. Within this box, at its centre, sat the main universe. This takes on the form of a smaller box with just 4 spatial dimensions. Then, all around that middle box lay marbles, dust, balls of fluff, bits of dirt, and countless other tiny objects all over. Maybe even some miniscule boxes a hundreth of the size of the main universe’s one.

All of those little objects referred to other planes of varying sizes. All of them contained 4 spatial dimensions, three for movement and one for unstable space. The latter only mattered if anyone teleported cost-effectively.

And just to avoid confusion, the Nexus forcibly separated the two further through the names spatial fields and spatial dimensions. Eventually this name became a fact as actual differences existed between fields and dimensions… Things only a supreme tier could give a crap about. Like how ‘technically’ no light ever moved through these fields even though they supported tangible mana-coated matter perfectly well.

But enough of the exposition as the two dragons came to a resolute stop just shy of another sub-realm in the 3rd spatial field.

Akevorax located its outer layer and penetrated it easily with a single thought; without any planar will, it couldn’t stop his forceful entry by any means. The sceptre vanished into a dimensional storage before both dragons jumped into the opening.

Before them lay a completely different world. A rotten smell stood out, sulphurous and toxic, but both dragons plugged their senses before gagging. Clouds and more clouds surrounded them, and Akevorax removed the chains as they stood on the wispy water that sat in the sky. Adret’s crown remained as she gently lowered her body with both wings spread.

Once below the cloudline, she heard crackling and thunderous booms without start or stop. Bolts of lightning struck a charred, blackened ground without any moment’s stop. Very few bolts of white appeared, with blue and yellow by far the most common, deep rumbling forewarned any bolts of orange or red. Before either dragon made rash movements in this place, he protected the pair of them and observed calmly. The endless bolts’ surface level danger evaporated over the course of a few hours.

But there was one thing which shocked Akevorax. It arrived as a screech, filled with rage and fury, and descended periodically every hour. Just at first sight, his body shook, the faint but developed lightning affinity within him resonated with such destructive might. It was a power born of runes, and his Elemental Body shivered in its presence.

The blackened land contained just one high peak, every other seemingly destroyed and flattened by such a barrage of lightning over the course of unknown time. Given the age of most planes… It could easily be hundreds upon thousands of years, or even millions!

And when the screech came to a halt, what sat above the only mountain became a region of darkness like a ruined mind. A god in the clouds insulted by a mountain’s reach into its domain.

It retaliated. Once every hour, summoned by that resentful screech.

A lightning bolt of the gentlest sky blue. A blue which pulsed with colour as though alive, and yet filled with such might that it reasonably disregarded the earthly realm below. That gentle bolt thrown by rage struck the mountain’s peak.

Explosions of blue and white completely covered the sub-realm. Space shattered, time slowed, and an eruption of sparks spread out from the mountain. But nothing ended there.

Those sparks, seemingly dispersed throughout, curved back upwards into the clouds and seemingly fueled more ambivalent strikes throughout the world. And the unknown rage simmered for one more hour, preparing its next strike against an unstoppable foe.

While Adret stared, petrified in deep fear that swallowed her whole, yet he somehow faced it with shock and awe. Disbelief that such a strange cycle existed, but most of all, that such a lightning bolt could form naturally. His words proved that even more. In a trembling voice he said, “Cornem tier… It shouldn’t be possible in a sub-realm. Is it an outside force? Did something die up there? Or in there?”

His eyes shot towards the upright mountain peak, then towards the mass of clouds directly above. While still a dark and stormy grey, they lost their indescribable darkness as that lightning dispersed.

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Instant anger flared up within him. Not because the Nexus tricked him regarding the plane’s status, but because the words used back then were obviously too convenient. Mentioning how ‘The mid-level lightning keeps it quite safe’, and how ‘Soul forms struggle to form because of the constant energy changes’.

Two objectively true facts which even Adret agreed with! She’d become incredibly critical ever since she broke away from that crappy personality…

Anyway, he forgot to suspect the Nexus while it gave out too much free information. In the past it only willingly did so when something threatened him!

Several suitable sub-realms appeared within the search radius for a scanning array he set up, and while he could’ve used deeper probing methods, the Nexus willingly provided basic details for all four options they narrowed down. This one stood out perfectly while Adret recovered her hundreds of broken bones.

“It is safe here, right?” Seeing his sudden change, Adret spoke passively. No immediate response came though.

Reminded, he followed up with, “Well? Is it?”

[Stay 15 kilometres from that mountain at all times. Then it’s mostly safe]

Both dragons received that message; both dragons swore under their breaths simultaneously. And finally, both sighed in acceptance after the fact.

Adret carried herself away until barely the peak and that sky blue bolt entered her eyes. At this distance, Akevorax set up an array which charged itself off lightning, but just in case also prepared a secondary barrier which fought back any red bolts. The fact they randomly struck the ground meant a small chance always existed.

Better safe than sorry.