The universe responded to Ogras’s complaint before Zac could. An inhuman shriek that made Zac see double shook the whole tower. Zac would have lost control over his core if not for his Draugr half remaining in the isolated pocket space. The scream came from within the distant lightning pillar that cast a gloomy pall on the fading radiance of faith.
Then, it was like space was punctured, and a huge tangle of badly scorched tendrils was thrown into the heavenly furnace. The Heart Curse didn’t even get the chance to mount a resistance before it was ripped apart and turned into nothing. It was a rejection different than the absolute erosion of the Four Desolates. It was a rejection of one’s path, of the Grand Dao turning its back against you.
That was the danger posed by a failed Dao Confirmation. You put everything in the line to prove your path. It was divinity or death. A being at the Peak of Monarchy was essentially an avatar of their Dao, so having it ripped away meant losing yourself in a literal sense.
The column flickered and disappeared, though Zac could still see it from the image burned into his retina. He could feel a familiar spatial fluctuation, and the Heavens were jubilant—a complete opposite of the anger Zac always felt after surviving a breakthrough.
“The clouds are parting,” Ogras commented while cleaning off a streak of blood running down his nose.
Zac nodded in agreement. “The spatial fluctuations should be fragments of a collapsed Inner World.”
“I can’t believe I participated in a mission to slay the general without knowing,” Ogras laughed, a greedy smile gradually spreading across his face. “Why does the contribution point update have to be hours away? My efforts should surely be worth a few million, no?”
“It’s not over yet,” Zac said. “The pope is a heretic who’s mastered the Dao of Sacrifice. There’s a risk this is all a ruse to hide from the Heavens.”
“You think he sacrificed his Heart Curse to escape?” Ogras slowly nodded. “It’s possible. What do you think? Your kin were better versed in this stuff.”
“He’s not a threat to Zecia if he’s been pushed down a stage or two. He’ll probably die before having recovered from his wounds, let alone make another attempt at Divine Monarchy,” Ogras snickered.
“Let’s hope the Heavens finished the job. A dying, vengeful Monarch lurking in the area would still be a huge threat to us,” Zac said before giving K’Rav a curious look. “Was that you before? Who conjured an attack made from corruption?”
“A small trick.” K’Rav looked quite pleased with himself. “The taste of this purple stuff is slightly different from what I’m used to, but the Ra’Lashar techniques work just fine with it. Want to learn? I’m sure it could come in handy in the trial, and my prices are quite reasonable.”
“Don’t encourage this little bastard, or we’ll all end up as vengeful ghosts,” Ogras said. “We’ve absorbed too much of that stuff already.”
“No guts, no glory,” the spectral goblin said with disdain.
“Famous last—hey, what are those big bastards doing?”
Zac followed Ogras’ gaze and frowned in confusion. The Eternal Guardians were drawing in the sunlight and golden faith to form a huge rune between them. Zac didn’t recognize it at all. It wasn’t part of the simple instructions he’d implanted when awakening them, nor anything he recognized from his interaction with the Centurion Beacon.
The sigil seemed insatiable, and more and more was dragged inside. Zac’s confusion only deepened when it began absorbing the innumerable spatial tears. Were they repairing the subspace? Zac wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad. There was no chance he would be able to hold onto the Centurion Base even if it survived, which meant it’d fall into the hands of someone else.
Most likely an enemy, considering their location. It wasn’t just the pope to worry about. Zac had sensed someone spying on him before. They were gone now, but they likely lurked in the area. And he hadn’t forgotten that more members of the Kan’Tanu and the Black Heart Sect should be in the area. He’d only spotted the pope when connected with the base, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an armada waiting outside.
Stabilizing the base would slow down the countdown on his quest screen, though, and time was something Zac desperately needed. His previous breakthrough had taken less than twenty days, so the thirty days on his quest timer were technically enough, even if his situation was more complicated this time around. However, they’d be lucky to get ten days at the current rate the quest was ticking down, which definitely wasn’t enough.
“Whatever they’re doing, we need to be ready for it,” Zac said.
“We’re working on that part. They’ll pick us up in ten minutes. Maybe faster now that your puppets are mending the dimensional damage,” Emily said as she emerged from the control room, continuing with a lower voice. “Are you okay? What happened with your other half? And that bastard?”
“I’m fine. Arcaz is in the Void,” Zac said, looking at Emily with confusion. “And Kator is dead. Didn’t you get any Kill Energy? You helped in the fight.”
“No, nothing,” Emily said, and Ogras corroborated her situation.
Zac felt the clue was important. Kill Energy was a fundamental part of the System that worked everywhere within Integrated Space. Mystic Realms, Lower Planes, and the Void of Space were no exception. However, the pocket he’d managed to create wasn’t just outside Heaven’s purview; it was even outside the System’s reach.
It was only then he realized that Kator never released his Blooddancer Seal. He’d been so caught up with other matters he’d forgotten all about it. He took out the body again, but there was still no sign of the seal emerging. Perhaps it would appear after his Draugr half returned to the main dimension.
Zac didn’t have any direct uses of a space completely hidden from the universes at the moment, but he knew the feature carried important implications. He strongly suspected the phenomenon was related to Destiny as much as the Void or his bloodline. It was a space without Cosmic Destiny or Imperial Fate, where his Void Road was the thing acting as the glue to reality.
Something like that could have huge ramifications on the way Laws and Dao functioned inside the Void Realm, and it somewhat tied into the glimpse of truth he’d seen within Ultom’s light. The details were blurry again, but he better understood how Destiny related to Cosmos’s other building blocks. It was direction.
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That wasn’t even the important realization. Destiny was different from Laws and Dao in one critical aspect. It wasn’t static. Zac had already understood the concept on a surface level, that Destiny could be created, after his experience in the Tribulation Throne. The epiphany today hinted at why that mattered when he observed the clash between the tribulation lightning and the Imperial Faith domain.
Different from Dao or Law, Destiny could only grow or change. It could change ownership. Zac recalled his talk with Wal’Zo, feeling he’d already taken another step toward the truth. Even with the Eternal’s plan, the Multiverse was likely losing some of its energy between each Era. If the Eternal couldn’t figure out a solution when the Multiverse was at its peak, how could the weaker generations in the following ages?
The answer lay in the accumulation of Destiny.
Zac could picture it. Era after Era, the greatest beings would train their swords at the Terminus, determined to break the shackles of mortality. Era after Era, they failed, and their providence was torn apart and consumed by the Eternal Cosmic Destiny. The key to Eternity was a growth of Destiny that outpaced the loss of energy. The greater the accomplishment, the more the Cosmos would benefit.
Someone like Laondio must have been a godsend to Wal’Zo. Zac couldn’t imagine the amount of Fate he’d generated with his grand undertaking, how much the System generated for him. Provided nothing changed this Era, most of it would be consumed and turned into Cosmic Destiny.
Those distant matters were of little concern to Zac, but the idea of Destiny being malleable was. That notion was why he’d sighed with regret when sacrificing all the lingering Imperial Faith. Zac had instinctively felt that pieces of Destiny had become ownerless during the clash. And while he was by far the weakest party, he might have been able to siphon off some for himself—literally seizing Fate.
If successful, he might have been able to push his Void Road further, adding more permanent stability to the Void Realm while improving his Luck-boosting title. Unfortunately, the moment was lost. Zac shook his head and tabled the matter. He had a core to worry about, and there’d be more chances now that he’d come closer to understanding the truth.
“Can I leave the rest to you guys? I have to focus on my core,” Zac said.
“Don’t worry, do your thing. I’m not going anywhere without my lucky charm,” the demon grinned as he enclosed the flying treasure in a shroud of shadows.
The world grew silent, and the gentle swirl of grey allowed Zac to tune out all distractions. Talking with Ogras hadn’t occupied much of his attention, and he’d been continuously operating dozens of mental tendrils to repair pieces of his core throughout. Still, every bit counted when you were racing against the clock.
Stream after stream of precious energies poured into Zac’s quantum space, each infusion coming from a treasure that could drive Frontier Hegemons wild. Withered bands of rotating debris rapidly regained their luster as a result, radiating powerful waves of Life, Death, and Conflict. It worked as he’d envisioned, except Zac realized it would take hours to reach a satisfactory state.
It wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it was too long for the nucleus to sit completely unattended. It was already losing the heat and malleability gained from the ignition. In a few hours, it would be back to square one. Weighing his options, Zac took out a box that failed to perfectly contain the fierce winds of Life of the treasure it held. He opened the lid to expose what looked like a wriggling golden egg about to hatch.
It was actually a crystal traded with the Alliance Treasury for some of the almost mindboggling stockpiles of items he’d pilfered throughout the war. The treasures he got from his visit to the Centurion Lighthouse were the most unique and had the highest grade on average. However, their value still paled before the sheer quantity of Spatial Rings he’d seized when fighting on the battlefronts and frontlines.
Most Hegemons on the frontier were pitifully poor, but Zac was always the one who dealt with the enemy camp’s leaders. Whether elites from the Seven Chapters or World Lords, most had some valuable treasures squirreled away. There were a few among these who’d hoarded surprising levels of wealth.
Zac already possessed sixteen Peak D-grade treasures, not including whatever waited in Kator’s sealed Spatial Ring, though only two of which were of use to his cultivation. Late D-grade treasures personally owned by him already numbered over a hundred, and the Atwood Empire’s treasury had even more. All of the materials came from slaughter, and they’d proven just as useful as Merit.
It was nigh-impossible to buy resources a Middle or Late Hegemon needed with Nexus Coins or Cosmic Crystals. Trades at that level were almost exclusively done through the barter of treasures or favors. His rampage had let him secure most of what he needed through trade, though a few pieces could only be found on the Limited Exchange.
As for his breakthrough to Peak Hegemony, Zac would likely have to search beyond Zecia unless the System Exchange store remained when he returned from the trial. It wasn’t that there were no materials, but finding ones of high enough quality and suited for his purpose could take dozens of millennia when you had to turn over a war-torn and poverty-stricken sector to find them.
Zac took out his [Cosmic Hammer] and began extracting useless streaks of spirituality from the Life-attuned Crystal. Zac felt the Flying Treasure move mid-way through and guessed the huge Imperial Destroyer had come to pick them up. He didn’t bother with the details. This part was different from the simple infusion of spirituality. The slightest mistake would ruin the treasure meant for his Core Nucleus.
It took twenty minutes to extract as much spirituality as he could without destabilizing it. Zac would normally have gone a bit further before throwing it into the refiner, but he couldn’t this time. His Draugr half was still busy collecting materials in the Void Realm, preventing Zac from performing a simultaneous refinement of the matching Death-attuned treasure.
Zac transported the miasmic box from his Draugr side through [Purity of the Void] but didn’t immediately start refining it. He first extended his Soul Sense beyond the shadowy curtain, realizing his Core Formation Arrays had been moved into a roomy hangar. Galau was in the middle of setting up an array mimicking his cultivation cave around him. Emily was resting while a swirl of tomahawks danced around her, which added some conflict to Galau’s infusion of Life and Death.
Ogras stood some distance away, discussing something with two new faces—Carl and what appeared to be a ghost. They were arguing about something, so Zac dispersed the shadows. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, did we disturb you?” Ogras grimaced as the trio walked over. “Can you talk for a second?”
“Not long. A minute or two.”
“That’s all we need,” Carl quickly said, turning to the ghost. “This is him. As you can see, he’s in the middle of a breakthrough. Interrupting him any further will harm our grand undertaking.”
‘Grand undertaking?’ Zac sent a mental message.
‘Lord, please play along. We still can’t access most of the ship unless you can win this blockhead over. It shouldn’t be too difficult. He’s slightly stupid, and our shimmer already has him half-convinced,’ Carl explained.
“Sir, please present your credentials, or I will have no choice but to imprison you all for impersonating an Imperial Officer,” the gentlemanly-looking spirit said with a slight bow.
Zac gave it some thought before taking out the [Court Cycle Token]. The destroyed Imperial Faith rune the System imparted would have been even better, but it didn’t prove necessary. The spirit looked like he had been struck by tribulation lightning, taking a step back in shock.
“Greetings, your Eminence,” the spirit said with a much-deeper bow. “I apologize for the delayed response. The Centurion Base has been sealed off for overly long, and I have been unable to run the customary verifications. Your manservant thankfully informed me of your arrival, though he failed to inform you of your esteemed affiliation.”
“That’s okay,” Zac said, glancing at Carl, who shook his head in confusion.
“May I ask what brings the Holy Son of the Empyrean Chalice to my humble vessel, and what can I do to assist?”
Zac coughed upon seeing Carl’s eyes briefly widen in shock before gaining an uncomfortable calm. Even Emily and Galau stopped what they were doing to look over in surprise. They were all too familiar with Instructor Rava and the Empyrean Chalice, but Zac had never shared how he accidentally became their Holy Son. He’d simply said he’d passed Rava’s test, allowing others to use her facilities.
How some ancient Ship Spirit had managed to suss out his status was beyond Zac, and he guessed it didn’t really matter in their current situation. What mattered was that they’d just gained a very powerful helper.