Chương 390: Honored Guest

The transition back to the surface of the basalt platform was an abrupt, unceremonious yank of my physical coordinates. One millisecond I was standing before the nine kings of the Deep in their silent, gravity-warped geode; the next, the silver-violet light evaporated, and I was stepping out of the absolute black water of the Plunge. I stood on the edge of the circular pool, water-fluid that didn't wet my boots sliding off my Abyssal Carapace in dry, silver-mote streams.

I shook my head, my star-cores settling into their standard, cautious idle. I was a bit surprised at how quickly they had kicked me out of their 'office'. For all their grand posturing and eldritch transformations, the entire encounter had lasted barely twenty minutes. And as the leader had snapped his fingers, I could have sworn I detected a microscopic hint of panic in his telepathic resonance — a sudden, silent urgency to get me out of his chamber before my star-cores could spin another rotation.

I didn't think much of it. In this business, when a bunch of god-tier entities decide to let you go without a fight, you don't stick around to ask why. But I was still highly annoyed by the leader's quick parting words after he promised information.

"Learn you shall," he'd said, with the solemn authority of an ancient sage. Yet, all they had actually done was give me a long, conceptual lecture on the reincarnation of souls — a theory of cosmic memory-scratches that I had already mostly put together myself during my years of meditating on Sylvaris' records and studying the Zenith's World-Soul. I had been expecting a manual on deep-void manipulation or a high-tier skill-key, but instead, I got a cosmic philosophy lesson. Oh well, I thought, adjusting my cloak.

At least my soul gate is still intact.

"You are back." The voice was not telepathic. It was a sharp, collective gasp of physical shock that came from the basalt platform. I looked up, and my star-cores gave a tight, defensive hum. The planetary-scale plaza, which had been completely empty when I'd taken the plunge, was now crowded with dozens of high-tier entities.

There were at least fifty of them standing in wide, cautious circles around the pool, none of them completely unveiled, but their suppressed presence sending deep, heavy vibrations through the basalt floor. Some looked like shifting clouds of kinetic starlight, others like tall, crystalline constructs of gold-light, and many wore the silver-and-black silk robes of the local nobility. They were staring at me with an absolute, paralyzed disbelief.

"He... he returned?" a tall, grey-skinned cultivator whispered, his giant black eyes wide as he looked at my unascended Tier 8 frame.

"We saw his signature descend past the Stellar Silt... past the Acheron Threshold... he reached the Abyssal Gate itself! And he is completely intact!"

"Unascended?" another clicked, his telepathic voice crackling with a frantic, chaotic static.

"How can an unascended soul survive the density of the Acheron? He should have been compressed into raw void-sand within the first ten hours! Did the water refuse his blood?"

"His signature didn't fade!" a third argued, pointing a slender, four-jointed finger at my chest.

"He didn't get rejected! He... he went all the way to the Gate!" The crowd began to press forward, their curiosity turning into an aggressive, suffocating pressure as they sought to scan my coordinates, to count my variables, and to find out what kind of cheat code I had used to survive the deep. Before their scans could touch my domain, a sudden, cold wave of absolute-zero wind swept across the basalt platform.

Vespera, the tall woman who had invited me through, stepped out of a fold in the shadows, her starless black silk gown actively absorbing the ambient starlight, her cascade of light-eating black hair floating around her head like a crown of darkness. She didn't flare her Domain, but the sheer, silent weight of her presence was enough to force the fifty high-tier onlookers to instantly freeze, their aggressive scans snapping back to their own coordinates.

"He is my guest," Vespera said, her voice quiet, level, and carrying the cold, unyielding authority of a ruler who didn't tolerate a crowd on her lawn.

"And the Plunge has accepted his blood. The Gateway has spoken. If any of you have a question regarding his coordinates, you are welcome to address them to my palace." The crowd went completely silent. The high-tier cultivators exchanged a series of rapid, anxious looks, their giant black eyes darting from Vespera's dark features to my silent, unbothered posture.

Without another word, they bowed their heads deeply to her, stepped into the sub-layers of the void, and simply edited themselves out of the scene, leaving no trail behind.

"They are persistent," Vespera noted, turning to look at me, her dark eyes carrying a mixture of relief and intense, silent curiosity.

"But you have passed. You are officially granted entry to the Deep."

"Let's get out of here before they bring more analysts," I said dryly. She smiled, a thin, graceful curve of her lips.

"A wise decision." With a single, silent translation of coordinates that completely bypassed my suppressed defenses, Vespera teleported us away from the neutral trial basin, appearing directly within her private quadrant. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Her private residence was a masterpiece of ancient design — a colossal palace of dark, lightless crystal that hovered over a deep, glowing valley wreathed in the violet-amethyst light of the planetary rings. The moment we stepped through the high, black-crystal archway of her inner chamber, Vespera's posture went rigid. She raised her right hand, her long, pale fingers drawing a series of complex, high-frequency spatial runes in the air.

Instantly, multiple layers of uncompiled gravity-strings, temporal loops, and conceptual nullification veils constructed themselves around the room, completely blocking any external scrying or data-leaks from the rest of the planet's lattice. The air in the chamber became heavy, entirely detached from the rest of the world. Once the veils were locked, she turned to face me.

She stood silently for several minutes, her bottomless black eyes searching my face, her gaze scanning the dark geode of my heart where my star-cores were spinning. She looked at me with an expression of intense, silent gravity, her breath shallow.

"You met them, haven't you?" she finally spoke, her voice a low, whispering purr. I kept my hands in my pockets, leaning my back against a pillar of lightless crystal.

"What do you mean?"

"They left a signature on your soul gate, Eren," she said, her voice carrying a faint, trembling awe.

"It is non-hostile, and completely non-intrusive. But it is an absolute message. A directive left by the nine progenitors of the Local Deep themselves." She took a step closer, her tall, eight-foot frame looming over me, her dark eyes wide.

"The signature dictates that from this second onward... I am to treat you as if you were an Emperor of the Deep yourself. I am to grant you unlimited access to our resources, our libraries, and our sanctuaries. I have so many questions, Eren Kai. I want to know what happened in that dark room. I want to know what they saw in you." She paused, her chest rising as she controlled her breathing.

"But... I shall respect your privacy. The Wardens have spoken, and their word is absolute." I let out a slow, dry chuckle, shrugging my shoulders as I looked at the dark crystal walls. An Emperor, I thought, my sarcastic thoughts taking over. Right. Let's see how much that title pays for my next upgrade. Might as well take advantage.

"Well," I said aloud, looking back at her.

"Now what? Your ancient progenitors were very polite, but they didn't actually give me the answers I needed. They spent twenty minutes telling me how my soul got its scratches, and then they kicked me out of the office." Vespera's lips curved into a graceful, amused smile.

"They are sages, Eren. They do not hand out blueprints; they teach you how to draw them. But as I said... my libraries are now open to you." She waved her hand, and the basalt wall at the back of the chamber folded inward, revealing a massive, planetary-scale archive that stretched into the dark. The library was breathtaking.

There were no paper books; instead, shelves of glowing, uncompiled data crystals, ancient stone tablets carrying the raw, primordial syntax of pre-System logic, and floating holographic projections of un-catalogued galaxies lined the colossal basalt walls. It was a library of the deep void — a repository of knowledge that existed completely outside the Prime System's sandbox.

"Anything you need to know," Vespera said, her voice quiet and solemn as she gestured to the archives.

"Any technique, any history of the ancient wars, or any method of soul-forging... I am willing to help you learn." I looked at the glowing data crystals, then back at her dark, beautiful face. A dry, confident smile found its way onto my lips. I had spent too much time being blind, and my [Nullifying Veil] had just been bypassed by every single citizen on this rock. It was time to upgrade the build.

"Let's start with the basics, Vespera," I said, walking toward the first row of glowing crystals.

"Let's start by teaching me how to truly veil my presence... and how to stop getting caught when I'm performing my 'intrusive searches' on people." Vespera let out another soft, adorable laugh, her dark eyes sparkling.

"A very practical first lesson, Prince. Let's begin." She pulled a small, glowing amethyst data crystal from a nearby shelf and projected a shifting, three-dimensional spatial grid in the air between us.

"You think of stealth as a cloak, Eren," she said, her long, pale fingers tracing the lines of the grid.

"You use your [Nullifying Veil] to impose a system-defined coordinate change on local space. It is a highly advanced technique, especially when integrated with the strange mana methods you are using, but it is still too rigid. In the Deep, the ambient mana is uncompiled and highly sensitive. When you use your omnipresence to scan someone, your stealth acts like an invisible stone being dragged through a still lake. Even if the stone is unseen, the water ripples. That is why our people felt you instantly."

I watched the projection, my [Void-Lattice Perception] dissecting her explanation. It made perfect sense. My system-skills were designed to hack the rules of the machine, but here, there was no machine to hack.

"So," I mused.

"Instead of hiding my ripple, I need to become the lake. I thought I had been doing that but I assume since this is out of the normal systemic boundaries there is more to it?"

"Exactly," Vespera smiled, her eyes bright with a quiet, impressed approval.

"You must teach your star-cores to resonate at the exact uncompiled frequency of the ambient space. You must align your gravitational density so that your presence doesn't drag at the local gravity strings. You are doing it to some extent but it's only invisible to those unaccustomed to the Void." I closed my eyes, reaching into the forge behind my ribs. I wove my star-cores into a slow, delicate cycle, utilizing my [Symphony of the Animus Arch] to translate the ambient "white noise" frequency of her chamber.

Slowly, I adjusted my hybrid core's balance, letting my gravitational density settle until it matched the exact uncompiled resonance of the room. A series of violet system prompts wreathed my vision. [Integrating local uncompiled resonance...] [Symphony of the Animus Arch: Harmonizing...] [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil: Active. Conceptual drag reduced.]"Fascinating," I whispered, opening my eyes. The air around my boots had stopped whistling.

The microscopic gravity-spills had vanished, my coordinates settling into a state of perfect, silent stasis that left absolutely no trail on the Lattice. I looked at Vespera, a confident smile on my face.

"Lesson one," I said, my voice barely producing a ripple.

"Is complete. Now, how do you feel about signing a contract of secrecy with me? I have a few more things I could use some help with."