On the far side of the Purple Zone, a crimson-eyed dragon in his human form sits on the edge of a tear in space that leads down to the zones below and the Lower Realm. A bright white ascended elf curiously floats around him, asking questions while they watch a galaxy-wide war taking place.
"None of them can wield Primordial Aura... how are they possibly going to win these fights?"
Ember doesn't move, he only stares downward and lets out a sigh.
"I don't know. That is still unclear."
A moment of silence passes, and after Ren twirls around him three more times, he nods and stands to his feet.
"The Immortal Healer and Last Wyvern are fully awakening their Amplifier Legacies. That is the first bit of good news at least..."
Ember slowly begins walking around the rift in the ground in a circle, watching more events play out, then occasionally looking up out into the Primordial Garden in the direction of its center where the Ritual Domains and stump of the Tree of Life remain.
Ren speaks again, "But what about Jay? You can help him, right? There's no way someone could come to the Purple Zone and be strong enough to take on Outer Guards in a few hours."
Ember shakes his head, then looks down at his hands. "What? You think I can help him here?"
White Glyphs float around his wrists, then swirl into his palms. However, they sink into a soul storage moments later.
He chuckles while looking up at the heavy foliage above, "Dragons cannot accept glyph imprints. The arrays I manage to create aren't summoned, they're manual creations made of High Quality Ether. It is quite inefficient for a real fast paced battle. How could a living legacy itself take on a second one? It would break the laws of nature."
Ren's happy twisting and twirling around Ember starts to slow, until they stop right in front of his eyes. "What do you mean?"
"Dragons aren't real," Ember says in a playful tone as he looks the confused elf in the eyes.
Ren blinks a few times, trying to process what he's said, but nothing makes sense. Ember shrugs.
"Have you ever seen a dragon in the Primordial Garden?"
Ren looks up to think, but Ember continues without an answer.
"Maybe there are a few, but they would be killed off quite quickly. After all, to complete the saturation of a Demon's Glyph Imprints, they must merge it with their Dragon's Soul. In essence, they are dying, but at the same time living on forever in their wielder's Legacy."
Silence follows, then Ember sits back down to stare into the Lower Realm.
"That's why I say it would be quite impossible for a Legacy to try to claim their own."
Ren floats down and questions him again.
"Then... wouldn't that mean Jay needs your help even more? If he's facing Demons with their Glyph Imprints fully awakened, would you need to merge with his to give him a fighting chance...?"
Ember grins, then starts slowly swinging his legs in the rift's void below.
"What gave you that impression? Jay isn't a Demon. The Legacy he and Maria inherited is far different... Right now, out of everyone in this galaxy, I think he's the least likely to need help."
The crimson-eyed dragon starts to laugh, and the confused elf nervously circles around him.
In the Domain they're currently hidden in, nothing from the outside Garden can possibly hear them.
–
I watch a White Griffin, Black Ogre, and Fiery Mammoth fall from the sky in front of me.
The Primordial Aura that spreads out from a single point floods through multiple rows of buildings. The Outer Guards' Auras would not seep out further than one or two billion kilometers at most. This Demon... I can feel its Aura spreading for tens of trillions of kilometers.
When I try to look at its body, where I'm sure the Aura is permeating from, all I get back is the blurry visual of a Demon about 75 billion kilometers tall, over one hundred times larger than some of the Outer Guards.
All it does is float in place and stare forward. No matter how focused my All-Seeing Eyes get, I cannot see through the Primordial Aura surrounding it. The Aura should be transparent and allow me to see through it without a problem, but there is something far stronger tethering this aura to reality.
Maria and I are already pooling our auras and creating a series of protective arrays in front of us to try and prevent more of this constant shockwave from wearing down our psyches.
Five loud thuds echo throughout the settlement as the gravity in the air only gets stronger. All of us slam against the nearest roofs of buildings below.
Maria and I are the only ones that land on the same tower. Additionally, we're the only ones that land upright on our feet. This is because at our point of impact, both of us borrow 5% of stats from my links of loyalty.
It does nothing to improve the strength of Glyphs being produced or our Primordial Aura's reach, but it does increase our reaction time and the strength of our currently activated Astral Forms and Greater Forms.
After impact, we waste no time and activate our strongest Energy Forms.
I have no fear anymore of perceiving anything too complex that would potentially overwhelm my mind. After seeing into that Outer Guard's aura, I'm sure I can handle what almost debilitated us when first entering this Zone.
My Sacred Body activates, and Maria's Archangel's Celestial Body activation is triggered as well.
Red and blue light explodes upward in pillars from the top of the black tower we stand on, and it creates enough pressure for its roof's outer shell to fracture.
My soul pours out of my Astral Form, summoning silky-smooth muscle mass that tethers to my Royal Vibrations and saturates its flesh with the bubble of Primordial Aura around me. Every one of my Soul Armor pieces that were bonded deep in the Ravine of the Cyan Zone grows in size to create a glimmering white suit of armor, only exposing my head.
Red Celestial Fire bursts outward as well, swirling with black tendrils of corruption to begin covering my body and face with another layer of protection, even creating the manifestation of horns above my head.
My form grows over 50 billion kilometers tall, and Maria's sparkling diamond wings erupt from her back beside me. An aura of ice seeps out from her Celestial Body, and it easily flows with my fiery aura without any reaction to each other.
The same Glyphs glow all over the outsides of our bodies. When we raise our hands to produce more protection arrays, it flows like second nature. Instead of having to reach from our ether pools deep within our cores, the ether is already available in our Energy Forms. Wisps of our energy just float off our bodies into the compression arrays to form glyphs even faster.
In fact, the floor beneath our feet cracks open more and more as our transformations complete, and I feel a very familiar feeling. Pure, refined Celestial Energy leaks out from within.
We drain it through our feet and pour more into our arrays. It isn't much, not even the same amount as a full cloud we would come across in the atmosphere, but it's noticeably more than should be normal...
I even feel a flicker of a consciousness waving at me from below, just like the Dryad's Domain Barrier; stuck deep within this building's craft. However, it is not strong enough to catch my full focus. My gaze is far more steady on the Royal Demon that is starting to appear in my newly enhanced vision.
"So this is what I was summoned out here to deal with. It makes sense that the Outer Guards couldn't kill you, but it is still below my rank as a First Blood to take out common Lesser Race trash like you." It grunts out, then raises a single hand.
I still can't see its facial features, nor a solid appraisal of its armor or level. All I'm beginning to see are bright purple Glyphs imprinted all over its Greater Demonic Form, and matching purple eyes gazing forward with hatred.
The shadowy outline of two short horns on its forehead comes into view too, but I quickly shift my vision to its hand.
A thin purple line of runes begins to summon into existence, then it becomes thicker and longer until the Demon grasps it and swings it across its body.
From the distance between us, easily a hundred trillion kilometers away, logically I know it is impossible to strike us from this distance.
Yet, my instincts scream at me to summon every protective array I have the second this Demon's hand moves.
Collectively, Maria and I summon over 2 million glyphs in fractions of a second, tens of times more than anything we've created before, and with our peak forms activated, they're larger and rooted in reality with far more force than anything seen in the Outer Guards battles earlier.
Vardon, Ulgar, and Axel are all pinned down to the roofs of nearby buildings, unable to even lift their heads to watch.
Our ether pools are exhausted by over two-thirds in an instant, and every drop is well worth it.
A massive purple beam of Demonic Essence slams into our arrays like a hundred-trillion-kilometer-long laser pointer has swept across the battlefield.
Some of the taller buildings nearby have their upper stories sliced through, and they just begin sliding off from the clean cut.
This beam of purple light is held at the end with one hand and swung like a bat by the Demon.
It collides with our protective arrays and shatters almost every single one of them in their centers in an instant.
In the time we have to react to the impact, we begin using up our remaining ether pools to activate propulsion arrays as the last glyphs that Demon will hit. We use the inevitable impact to our advantage and get blown flying backward deep into the settlement behind us.
The first impact I feel is my back against a taller tower behind us, and it's cracking and breaking apart as the momentum pushes us all the way through.
Fear is the initial primary emotion running through my mind, but the next is relief as I watch the strange energy weapon continue its path across the settlement, meaning it's past us now... at least until this Demon swings its arm again. However, in the moment, that feels like it's an eternity away.
Only exhilaration fills my heart now, and a wide smile spreads across my face. From within the building we've just crashed through, a massive cloud of pure, refined Celestial Energy pours out, paired with the faint tremble of a new Dryad's consciousness awakening from within this Tower's Glyphs again.
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Author's Note:
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