"What final step...?" I voice back, but overlapping memories of past cycles already show me hints of what this step will be.
"It may take you some time to accept it, but I will not guide you any further. That is because you will soon find out what I really am. As always, the answers are before you, but you must piece them together yourself. It would not be a unique event if I intervened, that would be quite the waste." Ember echoes back, and a light grin slowly graces his lips.
His words do not entirely make sense, yet the laws that fluctuate off every word feel extremely familiar.
It becomes entirely logical in my mind to believe that he cannot help with this process. Ember is one of the many keys, but for some reason, I must be the one that initiates the notification waiting to trigger.
I can feel the system's pressure in multiple places. The first is deep within the very core of my consciousness, where my level is trying to break past 9,999,999, but no more experience is being granted. The lack of mana and ether to convert into levels is the only constraint I cannot break through.
There is quite literally nowhere in this entire universe full of dead galaxies for me to find it.
The second place I feel the system's growing pressure is deep within the core of my blade.
It gives off an entirely different presence. It feels as though all of the raw energy necessary is already infused within it. No more ether, or artifact mass, or mana is necessary. The blade feels as though it could absorb more, but it is indifferent, as though this true energy would not make any difference.
It requires something else.
The laws fluctuating off this artifact have far more depth than anything I've observed in the origin plane.
It appears just like the foreign originator artifacts from past cycles I collected into my storage, yet, unlike them, those that carry a single altered law from a single universe's iteration, this blade vibrates with countless fluctuating ripples of the past.
Even in its solid state right now, I feel an unsettling motion within it that cannot be comprehended or stopped.
I get a momentary flash of memories back to the day I found this amplifier within a tomb on my origin world. It floated within the head of a black statue deep underneath the sea. It was formless, oscillating with divine colors, changing size and energy levels in a chaotic state.
In that moment, the foreign object that named itself Atom was beyond my understanding; and now, as I look deeper into the laws of this artifact, it is as though I'm watching an exotic material shift and evade my understanding once again.
The full active mind of an Immortal Emperor, using all of the raw energy and lifeforce-refined ether in the universe, still can only peer into the surface of this entity.
Even with the myriad laws Maria and I altered ourselves while consolidating our silver cores, this effect on the laws of reality feels so minuscule compared to the layers of complexity within my blade.
When my eyes shift back to Ember, my gaze can finally see right through him without any barrier or blockade on my mind.
Yet, when I study the depths of his golden threads without restraint, a tremor of understanding washes through me.
I feel the unfathomable depth of laws equivalent to the true material of my sword within him too.
It feels as though the enormous golden dragon ten galaxies long from head to tail is nothing more than an avatar. It has the same technical makeup of laws that my blade contains; even the golden glyphs at the core of my sword now resonate with his being as though they are all one.
Yet, the sea of silver threads that flows within it is not the same.
These silver threads fluctuate with the same simple laws that lack depth—just like me.
They are just like the dead galaxy below us.
Just like Maria, and just like this membrane holding us in suspended animation within the universe's deep space.
I realize that all of these uncompressed factors left behind only have one more place they can go. These laws that have been formed, altered, and consolidated are just another layer that must assimilate with this complex machine.
As the final wisp of ether within the origin plane's construct barrier fades away, I watch all of the divine threads within it be instantly devoured by the membrane, slipping behind the layer of space where all of the silver threads once hid from me.
The enormous sentinel tree artifact starts to fall out of this abyss, but I reach forward with a strand of my silver threads to pull it into my storage space with all of the others before it does.
The sensation I feel is of every last divine thread seeping into our beings like an unstoppable gravitational pull, compacting them into silver, glistening light.
Then, the entire membrane shivers. I do not feel any direct effects, but Maria's Immortal body reacts in a very unexpected way.
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Author's Note:
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There's custom chapter art for every new daily upload too!
Thanks for reading:)
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