Lucien then mimicked the Liberator's principle.
But he chose ground.
He stretched his split body's strings of existence outward, thinning them into filaments and letting them seep into dust and stone.
The fist-sized Lucien vanished.
His presence became a shallow layer inside the soil's definition. The world no longer called it a body because it no longer behaved like one.
Lucien's eyes narrowed.
Then he felt it.
He felt the ground.
Every step miles away became vibration. Every buried secret became tension in the rock.
A slow curve lifted the corner of his mouth.
'Is this what Marie feels when she uses Absolute Earth Governance?'
He breathed in once, steadied himself, and moved.
They did not need to walk into the split-open site anymore.
He could approach it as the ground itself.
Lucien pushed the distributed split body forward. It glided on the surface without leaving a trail.
Just then—
Far ahead, something changed.
The vibration pattern sharpened.
Fear.
