The unfettered storm raged within Zac's quantum space. He was the universe, ripped apart and reborn in a Big Bang of his own making. The next minutes would decide whether the road that led him here was paved with discernment or hubris. The calamitous mayhem mostly adhered to his path, but there were hundreds of discordant notes in the mix—disarray brought from the core's imperfections.
His Cosmic Core may have been High Quality in terms of qualifications, but there were still weaknesses to its makeup. Even he faced the unavoidable problem of incompatibility brought about by using external materials to forge his core. These hidden daggers of heterogeneity were now trying to impose their beliefs on the universe. If left unchecked, they would destroy what he'd created with blood, sweat, and tears. He wouldn't let it.
His first set of Mental Tendrils had already been shredded, so he conjured a second one. Many were destroyed before they even reached his Duplicity Core because of the energies ravaging his body. Each loss felt like a cut on his soul. A few fared marginally better and successfully entered the quantum space. Where the destructive forces of dimensional genesis waited.
A miserable cycle of destruction and reformation began, where Zac desperately tried to connect his Dao and Mental Energy with the struggling barrier to bolster its defenses. With every defeat, Zac's resources dwindled while the opposition grew fiercer. Zac's plight only worsened when the first pieces of his shattered core crashed into the barrier.
The array had already shown incredible resilience withstanding the energy shockwaves. However, it simply wasn't capable of dealing with the monstrous force released from Zac's Trinity Core. Cracks multiplied and spread, worsening the punishment Zac had to bear. Blood and ichor fell like rain, to the point Zac had to keep his bodies together with willpower and energy. Any other mortal would already have died from the onslaught.
The situation far exceeded Zac's expectations, but treacherous thoughts and seeds of fear were strangled and replaced with determination and purpose. So what if his ignition surpassed any recordings or estimates he'd seen? It only proved his path was one aimed at the peak. And like many times before, he'd prove he had the qualifications to tread this path of supremacy.
Zac roared as Hidden Nodes went into overdrive, and space buckled when he unleashed his constitutions to their limits. Human skin turned resplendent gold as grievous wounds wriggled and closed, and archaic scripts echoing the bottomless darkness of the Abyss covered his Draugr body. The unbreakable strength and conviction of the Vanguard joined the enduring composure of the immutable Void Vajra to turn him into an everlasting kingdom.
Abyssal ponds and lifegiving hurricanes flooded his bodies with primal power, generating an immense pressure. Errant streaks of spirituality were caught and pushed back into the quantum space, and the mayhem was corralled into a retreat. Following in the wake of the rallied defenses was a storm of Dao-Empowered Mental Energy.
Zac knew grit and determination alone couldn't tide him through this calamity. It would, however, suppress the ignition long enough to connect with the Core Formation Barrier. Stabilizing it would be the first step in creating a stronghold that would let him mount a crusade of reclamation on the quantum space.
Dao descended on failing runes like rain replenishing parched lands. The essence of Zac's Life, Death, and Conflict strengthened and subtly reformed the shield, allowing it to better combat the ignition's matching energy signature. The tides were finally turning.
A tremendous clap of thunder shook the Temporal Chamber, disrupting the energy streams supplying the Core Formation Arrays. The sudden blast was like a hammer to Zac's consciousness, almost forcing his soul out of his Soul Aperture. The connection with the Core Formation Array was cut, and dozens of flickering runes were destroyed when the array failed to supply the necessary energy.
Zac came to and desperately slapped a talisman against his chest, generating an immense gravitational force. Bones snapped, and new imperfections were introduced into the unstable storm. However, it was enough to temporarily force back the escaping energy before he reached a point of no return.
Wrath matching his attacker burned in Zac's eyes as he glared at the ceiling. It felt as though his stare pierced time and space to gaze upon the storm gathering above—a Heavenly Tribulation, something that shouldn't appear when stepping into Middle Hegemony.
The why didn't matter. He'd been targeted, and the Heavens weren't done with him yet. The animosity almost felt personal, and the timing ruined the ace he'd prepared. It wasn't easy to ignite his constitutions to that level, and it cost huge amounts of Vigor. Recreating the effect in the short run was impossible, and both barrier and spiritual storm were in a worse state than before.
Zac gritted his teeth as fury almost overcame reason. The burning anger helped rouse his defenses and somewhat stabilize the situation, but it wasn't enough. Zac's mind moved a mile a minute as he went over plans and contingencies, but none of them was suitable. How could he possibly have expected a tribulation to appear, especially when his breakthrough had barely started?
The world had gone insane, so he would embrace the madness.
A primal axe burning with desire to break the chains of fate and tear the Heavenly veil appeared in a hand scarred by endless slaughter. The darkness grew deeper atop the other platform as a gleaming edge released a keening cry filled with such inviolable command neither Dao nor destiny could escape.
Together, they pointed at the Heavens in an undisguised challenge. The Heavens wanted to stop his ascent? It could try. A second clap of thunder answered, resounding like a war drum heralding the primordial forces of abrogation.
Zac's eyes gleamed with insanity as he swung his companions. Three streaks of Dao and fury ripped apart the lingering woods as they converged in the cave's center. Three Spatial Batteries exploded, unleashing a hurricane of stored energy and compressed space.
Time and Space converged and collapsed, releasing a paradoxical blue light that led to the crossroads of Destiny. The Dao of Continuum. The flash was gone before it appeared, but Zac's fate and memories refused to be rewritten. An aura older than time itself had joined Life and Death in Zac's bodies as the illusory Void Mountain declared its defiance against the Heavenly wrath.
A grabbing motion formed Void Vortices where the Spatial Batteries once stood, forcing their way into the echoes of the Spatial Tunnels. Waiting on the other side was the fuel Zac needed to take control of his breakthrough and fate. Pristine Nexus Veins on the other side of the planet collapsed in a puff of paradoxical spacetime as they were dragged out of the river of time.
Torrential amounts of Life, Death, and unattuned energy poured out of his cells as the Void complied with his demands. There was no Nexus Vein holding the Dao of Conflict on Earth, but Zac didn't need it. Facing the rumbling sky, he embodied the most fundamental conflict of cultivation. Man against Heaven. Desire against fate. He was both source and terminus for his path.
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Energies wild enough to match the storm raging within the quantum space threatened to rip Zac apart before his ignition could. Meanwhile, the Soul Cores in his aperture were releasing blinding light. The galactic shrouds surrounding them spun with such speed they'd almost fused with the cores.
"Go!" Zac roared, and his Soul Cores took flight.
Like the previous time they moved, they crashed into each other with apocalyptic force. Zac's thoughts and memories fractured when a tsunami of Mental Energy was shaken loose. He kept it all together and extracted the spiritual ocean from his Soul Aperture. Soul, Dao, Void, and limitless Energy joined into an unstoppable army with billowing momentum.
Even the Duplicity Core seemed subdued, turning illusory to not get caught in the crosshairs. Zac's all-out assault flooded the quantum space. The destructive storm that had effortlessly destroyed his Mental Tendrils became prey to a fiercer predator. Imperfections were swept away, destroyed, or consumed. Zac didn't try to control the storm. He became it, seizing authority to dictate fate.
The chaotic mix of energy and shrapnel was put under control with unprecedented speed, and the immense infusion of energy added to the virgin dimension's stability and strength. So long as the space didn't collapse from energy overload, the added spirituality would help him through the next steps.
The Heavens appeared personally affronted upon seeing him continue with his breakthrough. The pressure mounted, and Zac couldn't help but shudder as he saw red strings of distilled extermination form just a few meters away from him. Their appearance was the beginning of the end, and the Temporal Energies keeping his chamber stable began to unravel.
It was the same sort of sanguine rift that formed just before the final bolt of his previous tribulation. He'd been absolutely helpless before that level of destruction and only survived thanks to his Duplicity Core hiding his location. This time, the strings actually appeared before the first bolt had formed. Just how much animosity did the Heavens hold against him? What Laws was he violating to elicit such a response?
This time, no Kayar-Elu barrier sprung up to save the day. The Duplicity Core may as well have become an empty casing from how it had completely erased its presence. Zac snorted and took out a gleaming crystal covered in golden runes.
"This isn't right! This isn't balance!" Zac roared over Time's collapse as he infused his will into the portable Nexus Node. "If you want to see the Void Emperor's bloodline reach maturity, you'll block the Heavens for me!"
Zac was pissed off, but he hadn't lost his mind. How could he possibly defy the Heavens while the ignition tore him apart and the Temporal Chamber collapsed? His confidence came from the second presence hiding in the shadows of the heavenly wrath. The System had already descended, attracted by him or Heaven's unexpected appearance.
It hadn't intervened so far, seemingly content to observe the events unfold. Zac wasn't sure what it was waiting for or what it wanted to see. After having some light shed on his origins by Leandra, Zac often wondered if he really was a crop being raised by the System. If that were the case, then the System would have to protect its investment from the winds until it was ready for harvest.
So Zac had shown his increased control over his bloodline, conveniently using it to deal with the mess with his core. The rest was out of his hands. Zac still held Sendor's seals, but there was no way such an ancient existence was willing to go to bat against the Heavens for him. Interfering with another's tribulation was a good way to conjure one on yourself. And the Realm Spirit had somehow achieved false immortality, which seemed to be one of the greatest taboos.
Each second felt like an eternity, but Zac breathed out in relief as an immense silence swept away the chaos. The heavenly wrath was still there, but its advance had slowed to a crawl. Time stabilized, and the red strings shifted into purple before disappearing. The System had come through, restraining the Heavens for him. The suppression wasn't complete, but the situation didn't seem hopeless any longer.
It was a stay of execution.
Zac had no idea how long the protection would last, so he was determined to make every second count. The further he got with his breakthrough, the better he would be positioned when all hell broke loose. However, a screen appeared just as he was about to resume his work.
The First Step of Destiny (Void Road): Form a High-quality Middle D-grade Cosmic Core of the Void Road. Reward: - (0/1) [17:00:00:00]
The sudden quest came with both answers and questions. Most importantly, the System had given him a seventeen-day deadline. It was decidedly less than what his subspace could survive, so there had to be something else behind the specific time. Seventeen days for seventeen Dao Peaks? Even Zac felt the pressure from such a tight schedule. His estimates put him at over 20 days to reforge and reassemble his core, and that was before all these problems cropped up.
The Void Road was the path he chose for himself when rejecting the Imperial and Heavenly Destiny in the Tribulation Throne. It was the source of his only upgradeable Limited Title, but he would have to be a fool not to understand it held deeper implications. Now, the term had become a quest type, clarifying the System's stance on the matter. It wanted to see where his road led.
The quest had no reward, though protecting him from the Heavens could be considered a reward of its own. Passing it would keep things going, and it was possible the next quest would come with the title upgrade or other benefits.
The quest also provided an important clue to the root of Heaven's sudden antipathy. It no longer seemed as though the Kayar-Elu and their Heaven-defying experiments were to blame. At least not in the way he previously thought. He'd believed his Duplicity Core was what triggered the unnaturally fierce Tribulation Lightning when stepping into Hegemony.
That may be part of it, but his Technocrat Heritage had been almost completely silent this time. The only answer Zac could think of was his bloodline, or rather his cultivation of the Void. His tribulations had always been more powerful than the norm because of his heavy foundations. Still, it was only after officially integrating Void into his path that the tribulations felt like no-holds attempts at extermination.
Void and Dao couldn't coexist, so it would make sense if the Heavens wanted to purge his existence to restore balance. If his theory was correct, Zac was in trouble. Utilizing the Void wasn't just a temporary stopgap to get his core blueprint to work. It had become the glue that held his path together, and his bloodline breakthrough had opened new ways to weave the Void into his cultivation.
He was still far from Monarchy and forming a real Inner World, but seeing the embryonic subspace confirmed Zac's beliefs the Void was there to stay. Did that mean the Heavens would come knocking every time he broke through, where the tribulations far surpassed what was normal? This time, the System came to his aid, but could he put his fate in the System's hands?
Absolutely not.
Zac shook his head, discarding any distracting thoughts as he wholeheartedly focused on his quantum space. He would have to survive this tribulation before having the qualifications to worry about the future. He had seventeen days, and Heaven's lingering presence indicated the System wouldn't completely keep it at bay.
Order had been restored in his subspace thanks to his daredevil gambit. Thousands of shrapnel pieces formed dozens of interlocked asteroid belts, and their trajectories controlled the immense amounts of energy that still filled the subspace. The cycle was stable, though the unnaturally high energy density created eruptions that rocked the shielding. That much was well within bounds.
The next step was originally to have the Core Formation Array shift from solely defending to also infusing his subspace with energy. There was no point in doing so for the next few days now. Perhaps at all, considering the Core Formation Array wasn't the only source of energy.
His body was instinctively nourishing the subspace with Dao. In addition, energy was being funneled into the quantum space directly by the Cosmos. The subspace was like a true universe, seemingly drawing energy and truth out of thin air. In reality, it came from other dimensions and lower realms.
Zac ate a handful of pills to nourish his damaged soul and heal his physical wounds. He was exhausted, yet he formed a Dao Braid and delved further into the subspace than he had gone before. The tendril continued unimpeded, thanks to Zac's intuitive understanding of the energy flow, until it reached the subspace's center.
The area was shrouded by a layer of energy so dense it had almost become liquid. Zac pierced the veil, breathing out in relief upon finding what he was looking for—his Core Nucleus, scarred and disfigured from withstanding the ignition. Despite its wretched appearance, it was whole, functional, and retaining most of its spirituality. A bloody grin spread across Zac's faces, and the devastation around him no longer seemed so bad.
Many of his plans were out the window, but this part had worked out just fine.