"What? Don't joke about this, Adrian. I'm truly not in the mood for that," Hestia said as she stared at the white-grey knowledge spheres revolving in front of her. "I was away from the Origin headquarters for barely less than an hour of external time, and you are telling me that you completed an entire Astral inheritance while I was gone?"
"I did," Adrian replied. "It is the same way I created the foundational divine concept I used against Orveth."
Hestia looked from the knowledge spheres to Adrian as though waiting for him to admit that he was still joking. "When you created that foundation, you remained inside the training chamber for nearly a month of headquarters time. With the additional formation inside the chamber, that should have given you nearly two centuries to work with. It was absurd, but at least that made it slightly acceptable. This time, I was gone for one conversation with Caldris. You spent barely more than a year inside the chamber, yet you are telling me that you raised two divine concepts to the Ultimate tier, mastered their spells, joined them into an Astral inheritance, and completed its first Ultimate-level spell?"
"Devour and Ruination already existed," Adrian corrected. "I did not create both from nothing."
"That doesn't make it reasonable," Hestia replied. "Cultivators can spend millions of years mastering a single divine concept, Adrian. You reconstructed two of them, mastered both, and fused them while I was gone for a single conversation with Caldris. How can anyone do that?"
"Maybe I'm simply a genius—ouch! Hey, don't pinch me." Adrian twisted away as Hestia caught the skin at his waist between two fingers.
Hestia released him, but the look she gave him made it clear that she considered the punishment insufficient. Adrian rubbed his side despite the fact that she had not used enough strength to harm him, while the three knowledge spheres continued rotating between them. One contained the completed Devour structure, another carried Ruination, and the largest preserved the fusion knowledge and the new crimson-purple spell.
"Before you decide how to use those, there is one more inheritance I want to give you."
Hestia's eyes narrowed. "Another inheritance you created while I was gone?"
"This one is not mine." Adrian raised a hand, and a fourth white-grey sphere formed beside the other three. Fine pale-golden threads appeared within it. "This contains the Astral inheritance used by Tenyz and the other Yiphraens of the Ethereal Providence Sect."
Hestia's attention sharpened at the mention of Tenyz. "You entered his memories again?"
"No. I didn't return to the memory ocean." Adrian moved the sphere toward her. "Part of Tenyz's Fate comprehension had already been assimilated into my own understanding when I devoured him. I reconstructed this from what I already know, then removed every part that depended upon his personal memories."
"The rules required by this inheritance do not overlap with Origin's foundation, Crimson Genesis, or the Devour-Ruination inheritance," Adrian continued. "There is no reason to distribute it throughout either sect, but a restricted department within Origin could use it for intelligence work, battlefield coordination, and the protection of important locations. Its external manifestation will have to be altered before anyone uses it publicly, but you can choose a limited number of suitable disciples when you have time."
Hestia accepted the sphere and set it beside the three spheres of the Devour-Ruination inheritance.
"You take care of this. I have some other work for now, so bye!" Adrian said before turning immediately toward the chamber doors.
He knew perfectly well that remaining for much longer would only give Hestia time to begin asking increasingly detailed questions about how he had created everything, why he had not informed her before constructing another inheritance, who he expected to cultivate it, and which administrative structure would now need to be created around the plan. There was also a very real possibility that she would simply hand part of that work back to him.
The doors opened, and Hestia watched Adrian enter the corridor beyond them without attempting to stop him. She knew the man walking away from her better than almost anyone in existence, and she loved him, but the limits of what Adrian was capable of accomplishing had become the part she could no longer understand. Every time she thought she had adjusted to one absurdity, he somehow produced another before enough external time had passed for anyone else to finish a conversation.
…
At the highest level of the Central Origin Construct, Adrian entered the chamber containing the primary power core of the headquarters formation.
Concentric platforms filled the circular chamber, each supporting rows of pure mana crystals held within transparent containment fields. White-grey lines extended from those platforms into the walls, carrying power toward the Master Formation, the folded spatial layers containing the seventeen headquarters worlds, the Origin Net, and the transport, concealment, offensive, and defensive systems connecting them.
"Welcome, Founder," a calm voice said from every part of the chamber. "Core authorization has been confirmed. All primary systems are operating within their established limits."
Lysandra had already informed Adrian that she, Selena, and Mira had created an advanced formation mind while adapting the master formation he built in the Milky Way, so he recognized the voice immediately. His old construct could identify fixed conditions and activate assigned responses, while this one was already comparing the state of the entire headquarters and adjusting thousands of connected branches without instruction. Layers of rune logic and stored information allowed it to manage the headquarters with an adaptability his first formation mind had never possessed, although it remained an artificial construct rather than a living consciousness or conceptual Will.
"Open the upper maintenance route and display the complete master formation," Adrian instructed.
The ceiling divided without a sound, revealing the white-grey exterior of the construct and the silent void beyond it. Adrian rose through the opening, and his Source Eyes brightened as the formation mind released its concealed structures to his perception.
An immense formation unfolded across the surrounding void. Countless runic lines crossed between the Central Origin Construct and the seventeen worlds hidden within different spatial layers, while golden-white streams carried vessels, information, and energy along routes that changed whenever the planets shifted. The underlying architecture remained the design Adrian created around the Origin Capital in the Milky Way, but its Virelith reconstruction already exceeded the original in scale, redundancy, and the number of functions it could coordinate at once.
New structures had been merged through every major branch. Some stabilized routes across far greater spatial distances, others allowed the Origin Net to reach through the same formation without interfering with transport, and several redirected excess energy from industrial worlds toward storage or defense. Adrian could recognize the principles Lysandra, Selena, and Mira had learned after entering the universe, although their work had been integrated so thoroughly that he could not always identify which of them had created an individual improvement.
"Transfer the Origin ink reserved for master-formation maintenance to this location," Adrian said. "When I select a formation branch, isolate it and reroute its active functions through the nearest stable alternatives. Nothing within the headquarters is to be suspended while I work."
"Instruction accepted. Maintenance reserves are being transferred."
Spatial fluctuations appeared around Adrian as sealed metallic reservoirs emerged from storage. He raised one hand, and streams of origin ink flowed through their opened seals before dividing into hundreds of narrow currents around him. Once the formation mind shifted the first group of functions away from the selected branch, Adrian erased several runes, reshaped the connections around them, and began inscribing the first new structure within the master formation.
Across the next several headquarters days, Adrian continued modifying the master formation one branch at a time without disturbing its overall operation.
He first incorporated the principles of the Time, Space, Life, and Void foundation. Space strengthened the routes connecting the folded planetary layers, Life expanded the restoration systems protecting inhabited regions, and Void reinforced the concealment and isolation separating the headquarters from the rest of Virelith. Time was left untouched for now.
He then added new branches derived from Devour and Ruination. When supported by enough energy, the new structures could help defensive attacks corrode hostile formations, barriers, and artifacts before separating and purifying part of the released mana and divine essence for recovery by the headquarters system. They remained locked behind multiple levels of authorization, preventing the formation mind from activating destructive spells merely because an unknown vessel crossed the edge of the concealed region.
The Providence Fate inheritance gave the formation mind another kind of defense. Rather than showing a future that had already been decided, the Providence structures allowed it to follow how detected intentions, movements, and gathering energy could develop into several probable attacks. Limited adaptations of Causality helped it identify which disturbances could spread into failures across connected systems, while Severance allowed a compromised branch to be cut away before the damage reached the rest of the formation. Adrian did not place either complete Prime Arcane Concept inside the formation, since sustaining their full structures across the entire headquarters would require far more energy than the formation could currently support.
Every successful reconnection sent a wave of light through the master formation. The golden-white streams brightened across the seventeen worlds, and disciples, inscribers, administrators, and workers paused beneath the changing sky as new patterns passed through the routes above them. The Origin Net identified the changes as Founder-authorized maintenance before concern could spread, while transport vessels continued moving without a single interruption.
On one of the industrial worlds, Lysandra and Selena looked up from an inscription line as another wave crossed the planetary formation. Selena checked the production arrays surrounding them, while Lysandra opened the system report through the Origin Net. Once they confirmed that the changes remained stable and that Adrian had assumed direct control of the master formation, they returned to recalibrating the artifact line in front of them.
The Time-concept branch within the master formation required the greatest caution because it carried the entire headquarters at a stable rate of one external day to four headquarters years. Every person, world, formation, and active process within the concealed region depended upon that flow remaining continuous, so Adrian could not remove its Basic Galactic structure without risking a temporal discontinuity across the headquarters.
He therefore constructed the Advanced Galactic structure beside the existing formation rather than within it. Origin ink spread for thousands of kilometers around the Central Origin Construct as Adrian inscribed the principles of continuity, sequence, and synchronized temporal flow. The formation mind repeatedly compared both structures within dormant trial branches, adjusted their boundaries, and matched the temporal state on either side until the new formation could accept the burden without forcing anything inside the headquarters to repeat or lose even a fraction of its experienced time. The older structure would remain intact as an inactive emergency path even after the transfer was complete.
When the final connection was ready, Adrian redirected one portion of the regional flow into the Advanced Galactic structure. Nothing changed within the seventeen worlds, and he increased the share slowly while the formation mind confirmed that their inhabitants and every connected system remained within one continuous history.
As Adrian completed the last rune and transferred the full temporal burden, pale-golden radiance erupted above the Central Origin Construct and spread through every branch of the master formation. The golden-white streams connecting the seventeen worlds shone with a brilliance that could be seen from every inhabited region before the new Time structure stabilized and the additional color disappeared into their normal flow.
"Temporal transition complete," the formation mind reported. "All worlds, inhabitants, networks, and active systems remain synchronized. The regional temporal rate has increased from four headquarters years to eight headquarters years for every external day. Energy consumption has risen, but present crystal reserves and conversion systems can maintain the new requirement."
Adrian examined the formation for several moments before allowing the surrounding Origin ink to return to its reservoirs. The increased rate would double the time available for cultivation, inscription, construction, and internal research, although it could not accelerate material arriving from outside Virelith. Origin would consume its stored crystals, alloys, and inscription materials more quickly if production expanded to fill those additional years, so the formation mind would track the rising demand while Lysandra adjusted the external procurement schedule.
Before Adrian could decide what he was going to do next, the Origin Net node within his spatial ring transmitted a priority signal. A white-grey screen opened before him, carrying a message from Lara.
"Elder Adrian, one of the four selected candidates has reached the threshold of Advanced Galactic comprehension of Time. The disciple has stopped cultivating further. Sect Leader Hestia has been informed. We are awaiting both of you before the disciple proceeds."