Only one dragon slept that day.

And she didn’t put too much thought into the addicted Akevorax’s research, when did Adret specialise in magical knowledge?

He was the one that lived with a wizard for years! Still, the information brought back conflicted with everything she knew too. Learning niche or vague bits of information was certainly one of her excellent points. Unsurprisingly, the basics came into use when least expected, but only a handful of dragons ever go out of their way to check this stuff. Without much use in his research, Akevorax completely ignored her without even monitoring the arrays!

It might have been a few days since he last slept, but none of that mattered when confronted by the mountain and lightning. Day one of his research ended fruitlessly. However, he recognised that it set up several seedlings, and every single unanswered question meant another direction!

Today’s focus unfortunately could not be used on the unnurtured seedlings, not that it’d do any good, as he sought to understand the lightning formed with rage and destruction.

Things started off as usual. Some tests with arrays to check for safety, then further tests which looked into the clouds themselves for any oddities. And for insurance he even put a couple hours into scanning for weird soul forms which could cause this stuff, although a cornem tier soul form hardly ever came into existence. He wrote off that possibility extremely quickly as he failed to locate even a single one while flying about randomly.

That concluded the boring matters, in his opinion.

Before actually scanning the clouds with the Eye of Truth, he readily tried out other tests as no one could guess if such a thing backfired. What if his search angered the cause of that lightning?!

With a calculative glare, he looked up to the bulging patch of clouds above. Seconds passed before he sarcastically said, “It does look like enough. If I can’t block a single bolt, why do I bother making arrays?” His confidence came from their power, easily blocking a couple red bolts of lightning before failing. And now they relocated atop the mountain’s peak. Half a day wasted on pointless conjectures as he evaded this part…

The piercing light which revealed dimensions and secrets now glanced upwards to the infuriated sky. He already discovered the mountain’s nature, but half the story lay in the sky. The dark grey clouds did nothing to stop the light and the only thing Akevorax discovered behind them was an overpowering web.

“Complete dominance? The other dimensions are so weak too… Is the plane itself maintaining the distance?” He stared upwards without end, watching the web of colours flash momentarily before bolts of all levels rained down all around him. Once the first observation ended, he calmly stated, “It didn’t get angry. So, it’s time for more tests.”

The clouds themselves existed in a passive state, unable to fall as rain but also completely under the whims of this lightning. He already noticed that when a bolt prepared to strike, the clouds darkened slightly beneath, how did a sub-realm with no changes in water allow for such flexible brightness?

It came down to those clouds above. As the bolt prepared, the thick layer of clouds compressed immensely at the preparation point, and it always gathered clouds from the top layer. Both dragons already observed this strange change when they arrived in the sub-realm above that cloud layer. So there was one question answered… An unrelated question, but one nonetheless! His next test came in the lightning of this plane, as no reasonable explanation for the seemingly endless energy supply came up.

Firstly, he directly monitored the travel of lightning elements within the cloud and saw that most simply flowed in with insanely chaotic motions. Many of these elements jumped across entire regions with a single instance. Then that same element might move around in a circle for days before leaping halfway across the sub-realm and back!

Following the source of direction of such particles went nowhere! He had to follow the lightning itself… Except, as mentioned, those all formed ad hoc.

The elements came from somewhere, they went somewhere, and then randomly became bolts!

“Where the hell is the lightning forming from then? It has to be that mountain! But I already checked four times!” Apparent disgust on his face only grew as he met with unprecedented failure.

This wasn’t a matter of pure might, things he accepted others exceeded him in, but purely detective skills! How many beings across the eight worlds possess the Eye of Truth? How many could see through countless dimensions at will, control space like the back of their hand, and read even the subtlest magical anomaly?

So how was something inanimate tricking him?!

Obviously, it pissed him off immensely. Not a single thing about the clouds were weird. They appeared normal, functioned normally, and reacted completely as expected to attacks or spells! Only one part differed– Sorry, two parts differed.

That mountain and that lightning. He could understand how a mountain like that came to be, even if it exceeded common sense, but not a single shred of evidence favouring that lightning came about. Actually, all his evidence disproved its existence! The sub-realm actually generated a minutia of lightning elements directly from that spider web-like dimension, about enough to throw down one red bolt every second, so the massive storm covering this whole place made even less sense.

The annoyance at something hiding right beneath his nose pushed him. It wasn’t an infuriating remark for which someone spitefully worked against, nor a meaningless annoyance which pushed you away, not even close to a sustained problem like someone’s clashing personality.

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All of it stemmed from an annoyance that the Nexus tricked him.

That it realised he wouldn’t discover how this worked because everything revolved around one miniscule fact. And then five days from now it would share how things worked, not gloating… Actually, a Nexus which gloated hardly surprised him.

He would uncover the damn trick and win! With a few hours left for his second day, Akevorax doubled down on his search of the mountain peak and its clouds.

Another lightning bolt awaited, and for the past few, he always arrived on time to watch carefully.

Every hour, without fail, a screech erupted from the clouds which differed immeasurably from the electric zaps he heard endlessly from lightning forced through air. The screech always contained a rage, and now what he discerned as arrogance, to announce the arrival of that sky blue bolt. A series of events he viewed with the utmost care. He watched as the sparks within the clouds erupted from nowhere, turning into arcs ionising the air to produce that electric zap. The arcs gathered towards a point and gathered until a giant bolt of blue zipped through the clouds, never leaving more than 10 metres around that peak.

And then it descended with a fierce gusto. A supersonic boom as the bolt instantly heated the air so much that its pressure wave exploded with the might of a mithril tier’s body. The bolt landed with great accuracy, always around the peak and unaffected by all.

He even intentionally left a lightning rod atop the peak, extending another 20 metres up… Yet the lightning didn’t care in the slightest.

It intentionally avoided an object which naturally attracted it. Unstoppable, Unrelenting, unforgiving… The feelings within these bolts would never die so long as its foe remained. This was a world locked in an endless, unnecessary battle.

Truly an Unstoppable Force against an Immovable Object.

Akevorax wanted both.

More questions arose with every viewing, but this time no curiosity or further wonders appeared on his face. The lightning gathered on the black mountain surface exploded out once more, dissipating into the clouds as sparks.

And that’s where his understanding came to an end. The time for more tests came.

…

Hundreds of arrays filled the clouds around the mountain by now. All of them electromagnetically levitated to reduce future troubles, and they worked every second to roughly record lightning concentrations. He assumed a large-scale collection of data after a lightning strike would grant a higher level insight, but all the results frustrated him.

Previously, he claimed that the explosion allowed the ‘sky to collect its power over and over’. A theory built from the fact the sky somehow rebuilt the intent-filled lightning bolt so quickly.

Could he have been more wrong?

When the diverging sparks of lightning entered the clouds, they did not return and gather but instead broke down into a swarm of lightning elements. This obviously happened or arcs of sky blue lightning should’ve constantly shined through, but the network of arrays he set up clearly told him all these elements diffused out within the cloud! Meanwhile, the intent simply vanished without any trace!

And now he watched another lightning bolt form, strike, explode, and diffuse… His face turned grim with a stern dismissal. Akevorax didn’t hold in his thoughts for long as he roared them into the clouds, “Why isn’t it good enough! Just a little more and I’d see something. So, WHY?!”

But with an orchestra of lightning active at all times, the crashes of thunder quickly gobbled up that dragon’s shouts.

Every time, he met the exact same problem. Every. Single. Time.

Eye of Truth revealed so much for him, but as the detail focused in further and further until he watched the miniscule tip of a single spark, that still fell so far short. The sky blue lightning dispersed alongside its immeasurable intent, and again when it formed he saw nothing. This wasn’t an oddity now, but a problem with his ability.

Akevorax fell short of the requirements to watch the scene, a creation on which this cycle depended on, yet he saw no way of immediate resolution. The problem in question came down to lacking eyesight. He wished that was a joke.

While the Elder eyes granted penetrative magical vision alongside substantial improvements to sight, something he made excellent use of, Eye of Truth singled out a trait and enhanced it to levels some supreme tiers admired with jealousy. That trait was its ‘revelation’ ability, and so the Eye of Truth worked best when it came to ‘seeing that which is unseen’. A well-known fact for any who have heard of Elders.

This left his magnification ability behind in the dust. His magic peered deep into the microscopic cells and crystal structures seen in nature, but how far is that from truly small objects? Actual elemental particles aren’t much larger than atoms, leaving a canyon to cross as he required at least 100 times the magnification. A solution already reached both dragons.

Just learn a spell for it! The replacement of his eyes meant that vision spells worked now!

So the two words this time were Focused Sight, and like all uses of Draconis, its meaning differed from one to another. But some notes on its effects always existed, and Focused Sight functioned as both a microscope or a telescope. Which you ended up with depended on how one desired the spell to function.

Given such a transparent effect, Akevorax tested a dozen visualisations soon enough. From a literal microscope, to an array of lenses which focused light. Then literally just focused beams of light… Surely the tediousness of this was clear.

But eventually his idea of ‘focus’ began to transform. Because his goal was not a spell with unparalleled precision of light, but instead a refined sight of the world. His focus should not have been the ‘focus’, ironically enough.

The final visualisation revealed a world of dangerous, but strange, organisms and gigantic distances, all contained within a particulate of dirt. A focus without aim led to nowhere.

Two days had passed, countless more questions arose, and only now had he reached the minimum requirement to even answer some of the complex ones. This only marked a start though, once he understood the creation and result of those bolts, their origin came next! And not to forget the mountain too, he’d absolutely dig out how it managed to create such a transcendent structure!

With just shy of five days to go, confidence alongside a desire to gloat filled him. As for who he set his eyes on… Who else other than the Nexus? With the spell complete, he chuckled to himself. Hardly ending there as he broke out into a heavy laughter. The shadow cast by the boisterous orange flame nearby looked no different from a truly maniacal dragon.

“Can you shut up? I’m actually trying to sleep here,” Adret snarled beside him as he accidentally awakened her again.

So he ran off. Back to research once more.