“BOOOM!”
The first thump came like thunder that shook the area for millions of miles, it generated a wind that staggered Rowan, and his Sovereigns whispered a harsh word of command and the spreading wind vanished, if left unchecked that wind would have wiped out every life here apart from Rowan and the two Sovereigns.
The forces he was employing were in many ways still far beyond his control, but his bloodline had given him the tools he needed to harness them, although it could not block the effects from accessing those powers.
Although it was not all bad, that wind signified the dissipation of the imprint of the outer–universal creature, because the Aeorkron Core had pulsed once like a beating heart… the first of many, and that eruption of change was enough to break any bond inside of it.
Currently, the Aeorkron core had hundreds of millions of tubes connecting it to the swirling mass below, and those tubes that were thousands of miles long and moving like giant serpents drained billions of tonnes of materials from the remnants of his World Engine and Gears of Madness, but there did not seem to be any visible change in the mass below. .
These materials that resembled melted gold filled with starlight traveled up the tubes and into the Aeorkron Core, where a grand change began to happen.
The Core began to change color, from its bright blue to something that was between black and gold, and as Rowan connected more ports to the remnants below, another change occurred as the Core suddenly shrank, reducing from something the size of a small star down to a large planet.
This drastic change made it beat like a heart and set off that loud sound and a wave of force that was dissipated by the Sovereigns.
Rowan’s Knowledge Well had anticipated this change after the billions and billions of simulations he had been running on the process of forging.
Yet even with all those billions of Simulations, he tried not to think of the success rate he got every single time.
Rowan growled, “I have to succeed. Failure means madness. With the weight of this damned universe pulling me down, I need to see the light, I need to know the truth of it all, otherwise, it’s all meaningless!”
The Core thumped again and shrank, the force that erupted was ten times more massive than the first. Rowan set his feet and using his shoulders like a battering ram he slammed against the wave of force erupting from the Core, his Sovereigns did the rest, protecting his formation and his children.
Rowan gasped in pain, that contact between him and the wind had crushed all the bones in his arm and caved his chest. Healing was thousands of times more difficult for him, not only because his physical body that housed his Chaos-infused Ouroboros body was now incredibly weak, but because the power of the wind contained forces that could only exist outside the universe.
The wounds he was receiving were affecting all levels of reality, from the last, present to the future. It was hard to deal with something that was still harming you both in the past, present, and future.
Rowan grinned and wanted to spit, but his body was burning at a hundred thousand degrees, due to the amount of power he was burning and the sheer amount of energy that was ongoing in the process around him.
What came out from his mouth was a liquidized Aether that was burning at a million degrees. It seemed to relieve a mounting pressure in his chest.
His eyes sharpened and the pain and tiredness that overcame his thoughts became fuel, he accelerated the forging process and the connection between the Aeorkron Core and the swirling mass below became faster, until after three weeks he made the final connection.
How he maintained the alacrity of mind during those three weeks was impossible for Rowan to fathom, with every pulse that escaped from the Core, the strain grew higher, unleashing massive damage to Rowan.
His Sovereigns were tasked not to aid him, but to make sure that his Formation did not fail, Rowan bore his wounds, and his blood had flooded the ground for countless miles.
Deep inside his consciousness, he could see the small and broken figure of a boy. That stubbornness… that fire… it was almost like a will that could never fade.
“He would not fail!”
Rowan staggered back and fell on a single knee, his breath coming in harsh pants, like a mortal who had run a thousand miles without stopping.
In a manner of speaking what Rowan was doing was similar, except if he was that mortal, he also had a fifty-pound weight strapped to his chest while reciting prime numbers up to a trillion.
Everything hurts.
Rowan had begun to forget what it felt like to be a mortal, to be… lesser, and this crafting had dragged him down from his throne of hubris, revealing to him that even after all the calculations, he was still not enough when true power came to play, he was still too young.
The risk he was taking was enormous, but Rowan understood that the only reason he could survive for this long was because his rate of growth exceeded anything his enemies would ever anticipate.
He knew he had only one shot to grow in this journey, and if he faltered and was satisfied with taking it slow and moving a step at a time, he would not survive.
Rowan needed to make giant leaps forward. Nothing else would suffice.
“You can rest and heal for the next seven days.” the gentle voice of Eva echoed in his consciousness, “We are going to be doing all the preliminary work.”
Rowan acknowledged her by blinking and his eyes closed, as he settled his consciousness pillars into a process of healing, for the forging had placed so much strain on his pillars, that they were no longer pillars, but melted stubs!
The large eye that represented Knowledge Well was a smoking ruin, as a river of burning golden blood gushed out from the exploded orb.
His Knowledge Well and Consciousness pillars had suffered horrific damages during this last year, and Rowan had felt every single second of it.
He looked at the glowing Core above him that had collected every single bit of his World Engine and the Gears of Madness.
It now resembled a beating heart, and Rowan cracked a grin.
‘It was worth it.’
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