After the fifth kill, Caeden felt some actually useful information enter his mind. It couldn’t have come at a better time, since he already had enough bad news.
“How the heck could he hide himself like that?” Caeden frowned, looking back toward the artificial island. “He’s so slippery.”
Lily sighed, nodding in agreement. “We’re still trying to figure it out. Obviously, there was some kind of escape hatch inside, but we’re not sure where. The material is still incredibly durable, and it's even thicker than what Erik broke through to get into the chamber the first time. Right now we’re having Cat’s new giant undead-Etherman things use Necroflame to melt the whole wall, but it’s a slow process.”
“That’s assuming he even left a path behind him to follow.” Caeden groaned. “The entire island is his construction. He could have just collapsed whatever passage he came through. And who knows? He could have opened a CMS portal inside there and headed somewhere else entirely.”
“...” They stood in silence, watching ghosts swarm through the still burning-hot remains of the Magma Titan. Damon had found he had an easier time killing it when his ghosts were already inside when it revived.
“This sucks.”
“Agreed.” Caeden chuckled, wrapping an arm around Lily’s shoulders. “But we’ll handle it. I just learned something interesting.”
“Oh?” Lily looked up at him, raising an eyebrow. “The lock-up information?”
“Yup. It’s not all out yet, not even close. But I know the pace is picking up, and I know how much is left. From what I can tell, we have a half an hour before I get the last of it. After that, I should be able to use my new shroud.” Caeden had been maintaining a vigil over the information flowing into him, looking for any minute changes. The pace at which he gained knowledge had increased exponentially since he left the Forge, and it showed no signs of plateauing. Now that he had a vague sensation of how much was left, he could extrapolate a timeframe.
“Well, do you think you and Damon can last that long?” Lily glanced at the ghost-swarmed volcano below. Already, ripples of Ki were spreading outward, heralding the Magma Titan’s revival.
“No idea. I’m pretty strapped for shroud already, but Damon has much deeper reserves than me. Conversely, I think he’s spending more for each kill than I am. He’ll last longer than me, but I don’t know by how much.” Caeden shook his head. “If only I could pull power from my new shroud. I can’t even feel how much it contains, but it should be massive.”
“Don’t you have an unlimited amount of shroud from Blade Forge?” Lily asked.
“Not right now. That was a side-effect of the time dilation. Since I was both Father and Caeden, I regenerated shroud at Father’s pace. Because of the dilation, that boosted my shroud regeneration to an absurd degree. But the time dilation is gone right now, and so is Father, so I’m stuck with what I’ve got.” Caeden explained.
“Does that mean you aren’t immortal right now either?” Lily looked between him and the mountain below, her concern obvious.
“Ehh,” Caeden waggled his hand back and forth.
“Caeden!” Lily didn’t like his wishy-washy answer.
“Really, I don’t know.” He shrugged helplessly. “I have little knowledge of the effects of my new shroud. I could be immortal, but I don’t have that knowledge yet.”
“What have you been getting from all that information flooding into your head? You have to have learned something.” Lily threw her hands up in exasperation.
Caeden shared her annoyance. “Nothing useful. I’m being flooded with an endless stream chock full of material specifications from across the Material Plane. My new shroud seems to know everything there is to know about every single physical element and alloy that’s ever existed. Nothing about the shroud itself so far. I think that’ll come last.”
“Well, that’s inconvenient.” Lily scoffed.
“I don’t disagree, but I think it’s like this intentionally. Like all this information that I’m getting now is building a base that’ll let me use my new shroud to its full potential. Or maybe I literally wouldn’t be able to use it without this knowledge.” Caeden explained.
“What makes you think that?”
“No idea.” Caeden shrugged. “It’s just the feeling I get when I focus on the seal. Kinda like how I felt when I thought about going back to the Forge. Something in my gut tells me it would be bad for me.”
“Should we come out and help you with this?” Lily asked, changing the conversation from the dead-end topic. “We’re really not getting much done in there anymore.”
Before he could respond, Caeden felt a shift. Not from the mountain below, but from an unexpected source. Whirling around to look back at the island, Caeden’s eyes took on the power of the Cosmic Smith. He’d felt his Entrance Blade move suddenly and instantly. Teleportation.
And he found the source, which was enough to make him laugh. The island was massive and layered. Even with the exceptional abilities the eyes of the Cosmic Smith gave him, Caeden had no confidence in finding the founder within the endless halls and rooms the island contained. Fortunately, it seemed that he’d delivered himself to them.
Caeden found his Entrance Blade, and he found the founder at the same time. The man was in a new workshop, one completely sealed, as far as Caeden could tell. It was hidden behind layers and layers of protections, some of which even limited his sight. Caeden would have never found it if not for his Entrance Blade leading the way.
“The founder just stole my Entrance Blade again.” Caeden chuckled, explaining to Lily exactly what he’d seen. “I have no idea what he’s up to, but we’d be better off stopping him.”
“How are we supposed to get in there?” Lily sighed.
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“I’m a lot better at this kind of thing than I was before.” Caeden waved his hand, pulling various materials from the Forge, along with an Exit Blade. “No one can go in the Forge right now, but I think I can make a workaround. A one-way trip to the Entrance Blade he stole. I’m sure you guys can take it from there. All this running and hiding he’s doing just shows that he’s not confident in winning a direct confrontation.”
Lily left to grab the rest of their team while Caeden got work modifying the Exit Blade. He might not have access to the perfect environment of the Forge, but the endless stream of information being force-fed into his mind wasn’t for nothing. The more he absorbed, the greater Caeden’s understanding of the underlying principles that shaped physical reality.
Relying on that heightened understanding, as well as his Cosmic Smith sight, his experience making the Entrance and Exit Blades in the first place, and his greatly enhanced knowledge of extradimensional physics from his time reforming his soul, Caeden was able to rapidly slap together a bypass that would force a temporary bridge between the Exit Blade in front of him, and the partially damaged Entrance Blade the founder was studying.
He would have had zero confidence in doing this without the eyes of the Cosmic Smith. Before, the condition of the stolen Entrance Blade was a mystery. Caeden could feel its presence, but not its condition. Now, he just had to look at the thing to see what the founder had done to cut off his more detailed connection to the Entrance Blade. It was something Caeden had suspected, a simple severing of the Entrance Blade’s connection to the Forge.
With that knowledge, it actually became easier to form a temporary portal without the Forge as an intermediary. Caeden would have to lose a big chunk of shroud to power the connection, but that seemed like a small price to pay to stop whatever the founder was planning. He’d proven more than enough of a pain to deal with, Caeden wasn’t willing to give him any more time to come up with a way to get himself out of their grasp.
His bypass was assembled, and his friends arrived moments later, all of them staring down at the mountain, fully revived into yet another Magma Titan, battling an army of ghosts. Caeden had rapidly grown numb to the sight after the first two times, but it was truly something spectacular to behold.
“Alright, hopefully you guys can find a way out after you get in and deal with the founder, but it's not really a big deal if you don’t. Me and Damon can lock down the Titan for at least long enough for me to get full access to my shroud, which should let me wrap this up. Even if it doesn’t, it’ll let me stall longer. Either way, you guys could probably find an exit by then.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. The founder was slippery, but none of them had gotten the impression that he was strong. Catching him was the hard part. Seeing them ready to go, Caeden flooded the Exit Blade with shroud, feeling the connection he’d created rapidly form, and burning orange light started to form in the center of the circle.
“He’ll be expecting you, no way he wouldn’t notice the portal kicking on, so expect some kind of trap when you go through.” Caeden warned as the orange light grew and grew, shot through with steely silver. It would only be a moment now.
Suddenly, the portal started fluctuating. Worried he’d messed up in his efforts to get the portal running quickly, Caeden ran through the modifications he’d made, looking for the fault. But the trouble wasn’t coming from his changes. Rather, it was feedback, coming from the Entrance Blade.
Whipping around, Caeden’s eyes bled light as his gaze bored through the many layers of the artificial island. The founder was indeed messing with the Entrance Blade. But what Caeden had assumed were hurried attempts to sever the connection instead seemed like purposeful actions aimed at a specific goal.
It seems that Caeden had underestimated the founder’s understanding of the principles governing his portal Blades. The man was throwing together something even faster than Caeden’s own notifications, and whatever he was doing was rapidly taking control of the portal.
Caeden wasn’t about to let that happen, so he ignored his friends' questions as he started working against the founder from his end, modifying the Exit Blade to stop the newly shrouded from doing whatever it was he was doing. Luckily, he didn’t have to understand the founder’s goal. Rather, he just moved to counter whatever changes the man was trying to cause.
Seconds passed like miniature eternities as Caeden’s understanding of ethertech and dimensional forces was pushed to the limit to stop the founder. The founder’s understanding of ethertech was higher, and his actions had the surety of a practiced professional. Caeden managed to close the gap through his stronger understanding of dimensions and his inherent connection to the Exit Blade.
The stalemate continued, and whatever goal the founder had seemed to entirely shift to countering Caeden’s counters in an endless escalation that rapidly added to the complexity of both Blades. After half a minute had passed, neither of the portals resembled their original forms as more and more was added on. The previous circles started to look more and more like misshapen domes with missing parts as the ethertech edges were built out further every second.
Slowly, Caeden felt himself gaining the upper hand. His connection to the Blades was too strong an advantage, and he started to get an instinctive understanding of how the founder was going to form his next counter-counter. He started leading the conflict, steering it slowly in his favor.
Arcs formed, closing over one side of the Exit Blade’s circular portal. When they connected, a true arch was formed, and more arcs quickly joined in. The founder was forced more and more to follow Caeden’s design just to stop him from taking complete control. One arch became two, then four.
All the arches met over the center of the still-flickering portal, the orange glow joined by myriad other colors as more concepts entered the fray in the endlessly added complex of what used to be a simple portal. That central point was rapidly becoming a solid knot of energy, harder and harder to influence with every arch added.
Caeden had been aiming for this. He wanted to use tha knot to force the portal to open, and stay open. If his plan reached its conclusion, this pair of Entrance and Exit blades would become a permanent portal, never closing. A perfect loop. It wasn’t his original intent, but he was working with what he had.
When eight arches had formed, Caeden made his final move, imposing his will over the almost completely solidified knot at the center of it all.
But he was too slow.
Through the corner of his eye, his sight caught the Founder pump a tiny fragment of shroud into the knot on his end, mirroring Caeden’s own. But he wasn’t about to let it slide. In a contest of shroud, Caeden was confident in winning. A surge of Blade Forge shroud entered his energy knot, ready to fight.
In the next moment, it was all ripped away from him. The founder hadn’t been trying to fight for control. Caeden had no idea what he’d done, but both the heavily modified Blades exploded with vibrant surges of Ki. The portals flared to life, but instead of connecting to each other, they swallowed both, taking the portals away to who knew where.
“Shit.” Caeden wanted to hit something, but he had no target left for his anger. How were they supposed to deal with the founder now? Especially with the Magma Titan taking up all their focus.
As if to punctuate his thought, the volcanic mountain below collapsed, Ki surging to form the sixth Heartstone of the day.
But something about the surge felt different than the ones before. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Caeden turned his gaze to the center of the rapidly cooling mountain. There he found not just the Heartstone taking shape, but too familiar half-domes.
The Entrance and Exit Blade had somehow ended up with the Heartstone, both halves coming together around it and forming a seal. The whole construct lit up as the Ki flowing endlessly toward the Heartstone powered the endlessly complex ethertech creation.
As soon as the construct powered on, Caeden’s gaze was cut off from seeing the Heartstone within.
“Well, that can’t be good.”