Chapter 33: The Eye of the Storm
The transition between worlds was supposed to be a triumph. It was the moment where the frogs in the well finally jumped out to see the ocean.
We stood on the deck of the Golden Star-Cruiser, a vessel the size of a small city, hovering above the Stellaris Academy. Below us, thousands of students cheered, their voices faint against the roar of the mana engines.
Headmaster Altair stood on the platform, his white robes fluttering in the wind. He raised a hand in farewell, a look of grim pride on his face. He knew he was sending his children into a war zone, but it was the only way to save our world from stagnation.
"Say goodbye to the mud," Elder Sirius, the lead Envoy from the Divine Sky Academy, sneered. He stood on the bridge, looking down at Planet Aerthos with undisguised contempt. "You should be grateful. Most Low-Worlders live and die without ever breathing the air of a higher realm."
I leaned against the railing, sipping a cup of tea I had brought from the villa.
"Grateful?" I mused. "I'm mostly just hoping the in-flight meal isn't terrible."
Seraphina stood beside me, wearing a dress of midnight blue that shimmered like the night sky. She linked her arm with mine.
"Don't worry, husband," she whispered, her voice low enough that the Envoys couldn't hear. "If the food is bad, we'll eat the Envoys."
Anya was pressing her face against the reinforced spirit-glass of the hull. "Bye-bye, Villa! Bye-bye, Turtle!"
Prince Valerian, Lyra, and Kael were huddled together near the center of the deck, looking pale. They were clutching the railing as if their lives depended on it.
"Initiating Dimensional Jump," the Captain announced.
The ship surged upward.
We pierced the clouds. The blue sky faded into the black of space.
Above us, a massive Golden Vortex swirled—the stable wormhole connecting the Low and Middle Worlds. It looked like a tunnel made of light, pulsing with the rhythmic heartbeat of a safe passage.
The ship entered the vortex.
"Entering the Stream," Elder Sirius announced boredly. "ETA to Middle World: Ten minutes. Do not vomit on the carpets."
Everything was normal. The tunnel walls shimmered with golden runes. The ride was smooth.
And then, the universe blinked.
CRACK.
It wasn't a sound. It was a sensation. Like a giant hand squeezing the hull of the ship.
The golden light of the tunnel didn't flicker; it turned pitch black.
"Alert!" The Captain screamed. "Spatial turbulence detected! The tunnel is... it's collapsing!"
"Impossible!" Elder Sirius shouted, his arrogance vanishing instantly. "This is a charted route! It has been stable for a thousand years!"
I looked out the window.
My Void Sense screamed.
The tunnel wasn't collapsing naturally. Something was tearing it apart from the outside.
A massive, purple-black hurricane of chaotic energy was shredding the dimensional walls. It looked like a mouth. A mouth trying to chew the ship into dust.
"A Void Storm," I whispered, my eyes narrowing.
This wasn't an accident. Void Storms of this magnitude didn't just appear in stable sectors.
'The Arbiters,' I realized, my blood turning cold. 'They sensed the anomaly. They didn't know it was me, but they sensed the disruption caused by the Ouroboros Ring and the World Core connection. They are trying to sanitize the sector.'
The ship groaned. The defensive shields shattered like glass.
Gravity failed.
"We are going to die!" Valerian screamed, floating off the deck as the artificial gravity cut out.
"Rudra!" Seraphina grabbed my hand, her violet eyes wide with fear. "This energy... it destroys souls! I can't block it!"
I looked at her. I looked at Anya, who was floating in the air, hugging her teddy bear, terrified.
If the ship broke, everyone inside would be cast into the void.
Seraphina might survive—she was a Demon Queen.
I would survive—I was the Sovereign.
But Anya? Valerian? Ria? They would be erased from existence.
"I need to clear the road," I said calmly.
I pulled my hand away from Seraphina.
"What?" She froze. "Rudra, what are you doing?"
I walked toward the airlock. The pressure inside the ship was dropping rapidly. The metal hull was screeching as the void clawed at it.
"Ria," I commanded. "Engage the emergency barrier around the team. Divert all power to the engines."
"Master?" Ria's voice glitched. "If you exit the vessel, probability of retrieval is..."
"Do it!"
I punched the emergency override.
The airlock hissed.
"RUDRA! NO!" Seraphina screamed, lunging for me. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare leave me again!"
I looked at her one last time.
"I'll catch up," I promised.
The airlock blasted open.
The vacuum of the void sucked me out instantly.
I flew into the chaotic darkness.
Behind me, I saw the Golden Ship struggling, a tiny speck of light in a sea of darkness. The Void Storm was closing in on it, a tsunami of purple lightning.
I drew Antakala.
The black blade hummed. It didn't fear the void. It was born from it.
'Seal 3: Sword Emperor.'
'Concept: Pathfinding.'
I didn't slash at an enemy. I slashed at the destination.
I focused on the coordinates of the Middle World. I visualized a road where there was none.
"OPEN!" I roared.
SHING.
A beam of absolute black light erupted from my sword. It cut through the purple storm. It cut through the chaos. It carved a straight, stable tunnel through the turbulence, creating a highway of silence in the middle of the hurricane.
The Golden Ship caught the current. It surged forward, riding the path I had made, accelerating away from the storm.
I watched as Seraphina's face pressed against the glass, screaming my name, until the ship disappeared into the safety of the Middle World.
Then, the tunnel collapsed.
The Void Storm crashed down on me.
The Drift.
There is no sound in the void. No air. No light.
There is only Entropy.
The chaotic energy tore at my clothes. It tried to tear at my skin. It tried to dissolve my soul.
But I was the Tenth Sovereign. My soul had been forged in the fires of ten lifetimes. My body was a Supreme Yang Body. I didn't dissolve.
I drifted.
I drifted for seconds. I drifted for eons. Time had no meaning here. There was no sun to rise, no heart to beat.
I was a speck of dust floating in the space between realities.
"Is this it?" I thought, my consciousness fading. "Did I save them just to float here forever?"
And then... the storm stopped.
I didn't hit a wall. I passed through a membrane.
The violent purple chaos vanished.
I found myself in a pocket of absolute stillness. A "Bubble of Zero" existing in the deep cracks of the multiverse.
I opened my eyes.
And I saw it.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in ten lives.
Floating in the center of the bubble was a sphere.
It was roughly the size of a house. It was translucent, shifting between colors that the human eye couldn't perceive—ultra-violet, infra-red, deep-gold.
Inside the sphere, I saw nebulas birthing and dying in nanoseconds. I saw stars forming. I saw the blueprints of gravity and light being written and erased.
It pulsed.
Thump-thump.
A heartbeat that shook the fabric of reality.
"A World Embryo," I whispered.
My voice didn't echo. The Embryo absorbed the sound.
This wasn't a World Core like the one beneath Aerthos. That was a mature core, set in its ways.
This... this was an Unborn Reality.
It was a universe that hadn't decided what it wanted to be yet. It was pure, unadulterated Potential.
I floated toward it.
As I got closer, a memory unlocked deep in my soul. A memory from my 9th Life.
The Memory of the Edge.
I was the Divine Musician then. I had traveled past the Supreme Worlds, seeking the source of the Music of the Spheres.
I reached the Edge of the Multiverse. The place where the Arbiters' jurisdiction ended.
There, floating in the true nothingness, I found a stone tablet. It was made of a material that predated the universe.
The language on it was incomprehensible to the mind, but clear to the soul.
It described a technique. A Forbidden Art.
The Arbiters ruled through the Law of Cause and Effect. If you tried to manipulate Time, Causality would find you and erase you.
But the tablet proposed a loophole.
The Universe cannot erase what it cannot define.
If a being could separate their "Time" from their "Body"... they would become Acausal.
The technique was called: The Twin-Fate Protocol.
It required three things:
* A Void Soul (To survive the process).
* A World Embryo (To act as the vessel).
* The madness to sever one's own existence.
I couldn't do it back then. I didn't have a World Embryo. I died.
The Present.
I floated in front of the pulsating sphere.
"I found it," I whispered, a crazy smile forming on my lips. "Fate really does have a twisted sense of humor. I jumped off a ship to save my sister, and I landed in the Womb of God."
I touched the surface of the Embryo. It felt warm. It felt like holding the sun.
"The Law of Time," I muttered. "The one power I never mastered. Because every time I tried, the Arbiters sensed the ripple and cut my thread."
But this Embryo... it hadn't joined the River of Time yet. It was independent.
If I used this...
I drew Antakala.
"Ria," I spoke to the sword. "Go to sleep. This is going to get ugly."
The sword hummed worriedly, then went dormant.
I sat in a lotus position in the void.
I pointed the sword inward.
I aimed at my chest.
"To cheat the Devil," I gritted my teeth, "you have to offer him a hand, and then stab him with the other."
I thrust the sword.
SPLAT.
I didn't stab my heart. I stabbed my Soul.
I used the Sword Emperor's Intent—the concept of Severance—to cut my own soul in half.
"ARGHHHHHHH!"
The scream I let out wasn't human. It was the sound of a being unmaking himself. The pain was beyond physical torture. It felt like my memories, my love, my hate, were being ripped apart.
I reached into my chest with my hand.
I grabbed the severed half of my soul.
It was a glowing, writhing ball of silver light. It contained my essence, my potential, but none of my cultivation. It was a blank slate.
"Go," I gasped, blood dripping from my eyes.
I shoved the soul fragment into the World Embryo.
BOOM.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The Embryo shuddered. It turned from white to gold, then to black, then to a blinding silver.
It began to shrink.
The nebulas inside it swirled faster and faster, compressing the power of a potential universe into a singular form.
It took a shape.
Legs. Arms. A torso. A face.
It took the shape of Rudra.
Floating in front of me was a naked boy. He looked exactly like me.
But his skin was translucent, like alabaster. And his eyes...
His eyes were not human.
They were Clockwork.
Inside his pupils, golden gears turned silently. His iris was a flowing river of starlight.
"You are Chronos," I whispered to the clone.
The clone didn't speak. It didn't breathe. It didn't have a heartbeat.
It didn't need one.
It was a World Core Clone.
Now came the final step. The Logic.
"Listen to me," I spoke to Chronos. My voice was weak, my main soul battered. "You will not cultivate Qi. You will not learn the Sword. You will not learn the Void."
I placed my hand on the Clone's forehead.
"You will learn only one thing. The Law of Time."
Because the Clone was made of a World Embryo, it was a world. A world defines its own time. Therefore, it was compatible with the Law of Time without triggering Causality... as long as it remained hidden.
I raised my left hand. The Ouroboros Ring.
The Ring contained a pocket dimension. A "False World."
A place outside the jurisdiction of the Arbiters.
"Get in," I commanded.
Chronos nodded once. His expression was serene, detached from all emotion.
He turned into a streak of golden light and flew into the ring.
Inside the Ouroboros Ring, Chronos flew to the highest peak of the floating mountains. He sat down in a lotus position.
The moment he sat, the time inside the ring shifted. The artificial sun stopped moving. The wind stopped blowing.
Chronos closed his eyes and began to meditate on the concept of Eternity.
Back in the void, I felt the snap.
The connection was formed.
The Clone was learning Time for me.
And because the Clone was hidden in the Ring, the Arbiters couldn't see it.
And because the Clone was technically me (sharing my soul), I received the benefits.
I looked at my hands.
The wound on my chest healed instantly.
Not because of regeneration.
But because my body simply... Reverted.
My body "remembered" it was whole five seconds ago, and it simply slid back to that point in time.
I felt Heavy.
Not physical weight. Existence weight.
I felt like a rock in a stream. The River of Time was rushing past me, pushing everyone else toward death. But it flowed around me.
I had become Timeless.
I would not age.
If I was killed, my body would simply rewind.
If an enemy tried to manipulate my fate, the Clone would sever the cause.
"The Arbiters control the River," I laughed, wiping blood from my mouth. "But I just built a boat."
I stood up.
My cultivation base was still Core Formation.
But my Essence... my Essence was now something that defied categorization.
I picked up Antakala.
"Now," I looked at the void around me. "I believe I have a class to attend."
I raised the sword.
I didn't need to find a path anymore.
I could simply step to the moment when I arrived.