I shot forward as I watched Aphelia fall. My hand reached out, and I grabbed her waist and pulled her into me. Her body hung limply in my arms as I flapped my wings once and slowly floated to the ground. As soon as I felt my feet touch the ground, I set her down gently and called out for Helios. A moment later, he appeared before me and bowed his head. "Yes, my lord?"

"What's wrong with her?" I asked him as I wiped away the black tears rolling down her face.

He reached a tentative hand out and placed it to her forehead like you would a child and let out a long-drawn-out sigh. "Her core is fading. This planet is on the cusp of death, and it's not giving her the energy she needs to live." He stood up and brushed the sand from his tunic and let out a small tsk in turn.

"What can we do for her?" I asked as I felt a sense of despair start to mount in my chest. Even if she did spend the last few minutes trying to kill me, I couldn't fault her for that.

"We are going to have to move her core to another planet. However, it's going to take a vast portion of your creation mana to do so." I nodded my head and stood up. I took a few steps back and gazed at Aphelia's unconscious form with worry in my eyes.

"Okay, what do I need to do?" I asked him as I straightened up and began to prepare my self.

"Well, we need to crack the planet's crust and scoop out her core. But It's going to require a vast amount of mana to do this. Once we get her heart to a new planet, it shouldn't be too much of a problem." He told me as flapped his wings once more and started hovering a few feet off of the ground. "Time is of the essence because it appears that your small fight used up the last bit of her energy reserves."

I nodded my head and stood back, "So how am I going to do this?" I ask him as I took a deep breath in and pulled out that familiar force of light from deep within my chest.

"You remember how you connected to the planet? Well, you need to do that again and change your intent." I closed my eyes and sent a branch of energy out. I opened my eyes again and directed it into the crust and thought about crushing and cracking the planet apart. The earth around me started to shake and tremble as a vast chasm began to appear as the land split around my mana. I forced more energy into the river flowing from me, and the planet went from trembling into full tremors. I felt the planet cry out in pain through our link, but I forced the emotions back until I met the core. I shot tendrils of energy out and felt around until I came across an energy source that was completely different than that of the planet. I wrapped my mana around it like fingers and felt Aphelia's core start to resist. "Come here, damn you!" I yelled as I began to tug with all my strength. I felt her core fight back with all its strength before I yanked once more and felt it come loose. I started to pull it back and glanced to the side to see Aphelia's form dissipate quickly into the air. I turned my focus back to the task at hand and kept pulling.

The planet screamed and fought as I pulled out the object, and just as suddenly as the trembling started, it stopped, and I felt the flood of emotion die off. A feeling of shame coursed through me as I realized I just killed my first real living being. I didn't have time to ponder on the realization, so I quickly shoved it to the side and kept tugging at the object. After a few moments of pulling, I saw a glimmering light start to appear in the gorge that extended into the horizon. A brilliant gemstone came into the sunlight as my energy wrapped around it and pulled it higher. As the daylight started to pierce the gem, an unimaginable multitude of colors began to dance across the surface in a dazzling display. But the light and radiance of the core were starting to dissipate by the second once it left the gorge.

"Quickly infuse your creation mana into the core before she dies!" Helios hissed out to me, and I wrapped my mana tightly around the core and felt it start to fight against me.

"Helios, how am I suppose to do that?" I cried out as the panic began to set in.

"Relax, and instead of trying to force your mana into the core, let it drink at its own pace. Otherwise, it will start to feel threatened and fight back." He explained to me, his calm demeanor was back, but I could still see the sense of urgency dancing around in his eyes.

I nodded my head and relaxed my grip on the mana and felt the core stop fighting and start drinking the mana in large doses. My eyes raised as I glanced over my hud and saw that the core was drinking my creation mana at a prodigious rate. "Okay, what next?" I asked as I started to feel exhaustion creep up on me from using so much mana at once.

"We need to take her to the capital planet and allow her to attach to its core. We can either teleport there or manually take her there."

"Well.. what if I teleport?" I asked him as I brought the radiant gemstone closer to me and let it hover just above the ground so I could take a closer look at it. It was roughly the size of a minivan and had many flat edges and points that caught the light and refracted it in hundreds of directions, causing a whole myriad of colors to be displayed in a rainbow-like display.

"If you teleport, you are going to use up much more of your creation mana then usual, and then you would have to touch the core." He told me, I could sense a bit of trepidation in his voice as he said the word touch.

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"Touch the core? What's so bad about that?" I asked him as I kept an eye on my mana bar, which was quickly diminishing.

"Well, a planetary god's core is a sacred thing. The very fact that you have it so close to you right now is unheard of." He told me as extended a hand outward and placed it gently on the surface and imagined the atmosphere of the previous planet I was.

After a small jolt, I opened my eyes and saw my self above the large main content, and I started to slowly float downwards. I felt sweat begin to bead on my brow as I saw that my mana bar dipped below the quarter mark. I shifted my hand and let the core down slowly through the atmosphere.

We descended into a broad valley that had snow-capped mountains surrounding it. Small saplings dotted the land, and little tufts of grass were starting to break through the rocks. Other than that, the valley was barren and devoid of anything unusual. Oh well, that was all about to change soon anyway. Both the core and I touched the ground, and I was greeted by a prompt.

The planetary god Aphelia wishes to merge with your capital. Permission required.

I allowed the core to merge, and it quickly sunk into the ground like it was quicksand.

I watched the top of the core fade when a voice tore me out of my thoughts. "And you touched the core." Helios deep voice jarred me for a moment before I floated back in the air.

"Yes, I did. She was asleep, so she probably won't remember." I said dismissively and motioned him to follow me. I teleported my self back above the remains of the previous planet and watched as it started to break in half and fracture into pieces that were beginning to float off into space. A moment later, I saw Helios appear in the corner of my eye, and we both took in the sight of the planet falling apart.

"Helios, what is a planetary god?" I asked as I started to channel the remainder of my energy into the fragments of the planet, my goal was to corral them all together so I could crush them into a fine powder

"Its the first step in the evolution path of beings that are referred to as true gods." I nodded my head and make a quick hand motion causing the sawed the particles apart and quickly transmuted others into different elements. I started sifting oxygen and hydrogen apart before mashing them together to form water, which quickly turned to ice in the unimaginable cold of space.

"And what are true gods?" I asked him as I watched the planet fracture even more before it slowly started to crumble into rocks of various sizes only to end up getting funneled into the sea of particles that were currently floating right across from it.

"True gods are one of the few beings that existed in the days before the system came to be. They are few and far between, but their power rivals that of most low-mid tier Administrators." He explained to me as I the last bit of the planet eroded into dust and combined with the other particles leaving a colossal dust cloud behind. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye as I realized that he dropped his typical accent and decided to prod him with more questions.

"Ahh. So you are telling me that I have a potentially potent ally if I play my cards, right?"

"You would be right, my lord." I noticed that his accent shifted back to a more aristocratic one. I raised an eyebrow and brushed the thought away. I have bigger things to attend to then why his voice keeps shifting tones. I checked my mana bar and saw that I only had about ten percent left after molding the dead planet. I brought up my menu and quickly rifled through the list only to find nothing that seems to fit.

I frowned and turned to look at the dust cloud as I started to mold it "What is it that you are doing, my lord?" Helios asked as the cloud began to buckle under the stream of yellow energy. It slowly started to swirl and compress into the vague outline of a ring.

"I'm trying to create a ring over Ouradia. This is the first step, I think." I told him as I let out a grunt of exertion. The dust finally compressed down into a layered ring that looked like I pulled them from Saturn, and I let out a sigh of satisfaction in turn.

"Well, they are magnificent, my lord, however, please be warned that you are starting to run out of your mana allotment for the cycle." I quickly glanced over and saw the bar hovering just over the five percent mark and sighed. Now how the hell am I going to move these rings? I pondered the thought for a moment before deciding to encompass them with my mana and began to shift the entire construct to the right by ten feet. My mana dropped by a full percent. I kept the whole construct selected and scrolled through my menu, trying to find something to help.

"Why don't you just try using the teleport option on it using creation points. That should help my lord." I narrowed my eyes at Helios for a moment before doing as he recommended. In the blink of an eye, the construct vanished, leaving behind an empty patch of space. I teleported my self to my capital world and saw the newly formed ring was tilted slightly in a forty-five-degree angle across the planets equator. The sunlight caught the rings revealing dozens of different shades of blue that seemed to sparkle and shine like ice in the summer. A broad smile crept across my face as I looked over my creation, and a sense of achievement grew in my chest.

"Okay, Helios, how long will it take for my Creation Mana to regenerate?"

"A standard cycle, my liege." I saw a faint smile flash across his lips as he gazed at Ouradia that vanished just as fast it came. I smirked and realized that he is merely hiding his real personality.

"How long is that?"

"Thirty-six rotations, or in earth time, it would be about forty-five days."

"Ahh, alright, thank you for answering that question." He nodded his head and flapped his wings in the airless space, and a thought occurred to me.

"Wait, why aren't you breathing ?" He let out a patronizing snicker and waved his hand.

"Don't worry about that now, in due time, my liege; however, let's get started on getting this planet going." He vanished, and I rubbed the spot where my nose used to be. This was going to be a long day.