Chương 461: Paper Fragment

In the Hall of the Chronicle, the atmosphere was alive with high-level intellectual energy. Edward stood beside the central projection array, his eyes glowing as his [Thirst for Knowledge] skill continuously absorbed the theoretical metadata we had been discussing. He pulled up a secondary, specialized data-visualization ability — a skill he called Structural Mapping — and linked his diagnostic slate directly into ANON's supercomputer matrices alongside Kasian.

"If we overlay the flow vectors of the three Dark Essence rivers with the historical pre-Shattering star-charts," Edward explained, his fingers rapidly manipulating floating holographic coordinates, "and adjust for macro-cosmic spatial drift over the last three million cycles..." A glowing, three-dimensional nodal intersection flared on the central map.

"There," Kasian pointed a spectral finger at a specific, un-catalogued void-sector.

"That is the precise coordinate where the rivers of lead, gold, and ash intersect in Sector Z-99." I looked at the glowing coordinate, my eyes flashing with a starless black and arterial crimson fire.

"Excellent work, Edward," I said, offering the scholar a genuine, appreciative nod.

"You've given us the exact key we needed."

"I am merely glad my skills could serve Ferra," Edward smiled modestly. With the target coordinates locked, I prepared for immediate deployment. However, instead of activating the Spire network, I decided on a covert approach.

"I'm not using the Spire for this transit," I told Jeeves and Kasian as I adjusted my dark cloak.

"The High Courts' orbital diviners could have a way of monitoring sector-wide leaps across Sector Z-99 and if this Well is powerful enough to change the equation they must never find out about it. I will travel through the deep-void layers on foot, using my [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil] and [Void Emperor's Omnipresence] to keep my movement completely un-scryable."

"A wise precaution, Master," Jeeves agreed, handing me a sealed communication slate. An hour later, I stepped off the terrace of the Sanctum, collapsing my physical coordinates into the uncompiled safety of the fourth Void Layer. The transit across Sector Z-99 took six hours of continuous spatial leaps. Moving through the deep void under full conceptual stealth, I bypassed outer-sector patrol fleets and orbital scrying arrays without leaving a single trace on the universal Lattice.

Finally, I re-emerged in the physical world at the exact coordinates Edward had calculated. I stood in the center of open space, looking around with my [Omnipresence Perception]. There was nothing here. There was no planet, no star, no asteroid belt, and no ancient ruins. The coordinates led to a completely empty, featureless void — a dark vacuum indistinguishable from any other random patch of space. I frowned, narrowing my gaze.

"Nothing?" I opened my soul gate, deploying my zeroth-tier [Symphony of the Animus Arch] alongside my [Lattice Perception] to scan the surrounding space. I could feel the background, quiet presence of Dark Essence through the deep void. I could feel the microscopic, un-coded circulatory rivers of the universe pulsing beneath the spatial fabric. But other than the standard background energy, there was no sign of a Well of Origin, no pre-Shattering Sanctum, and no spatial portal.

I remembered Vael's words: the Well was hidden behind ancient, pre-Shattering spatial veils that predated the Prime System itself. To see something that existed before the System, I needed to train my perception to look past the visible world. I pulled my communication slate from my cloak, sending a brief, high-frequency telepathic ping to Jeeves.

"I'm at the coordinates," I reported smoothly.

"Everything looks like empty space, which means the spatial veil is running deep. I am turning off my comms for a while to enter deep void meditation. Don't worry if my signal goes dark. Double check the math while I'm offline and try to find other possible locations."

"Understood, Master," Jeeves replied.

"We shall maintain perimeter monitoring from Ferra." I stored the slate, sat cross-legged in the middle of empty space, and closed my physical eyes. I locked my [Primordial Shell] into zero-friction stasis and entered a state of hyper-deep void meditation. The process was an exercise in extreme, disciplined patience. I compared it to staring into a pitch-black night sky: when you first look into the dark, you see nothing but empty blackness.

But if you remain completely still, letting your eyes adjust without blinking, the faint, hidden starlight gradually begins to emerge from the shadows. I focused my perception on the empty space before me. I caught faint, microscopic ripples in the Dark Essence, tried to lock onto their frequency, lost the signal, re-centered my core-rotations, and tried again. For ten long, agonizing hours, I sat motionless in the void, repeating the cycle over and over.

My physical frame was frozen like an obsidian statue, my star-cores spinning in a slow, hyper-stable rotation. At the end of the tenth hour, just as I was preparing to open my eyes and ping Kasian to ask about their secondary calculations, a sudden, sharp anomaly flared in my perception. The anomaly didn't occur in the empty space before me. It occurred inside my own Inner World. I blinked, my star-cores stalling in surprise.

I immediately shifted my consciousness inward, landing on the vast, ash-capped continent of my soul-realm. Everything on my inner continent appeared completely normal at first glance. The lead-alloy pillars stood firm, the liquid-gravity streams flowed peacefully, and the lush green meadow beneath the bright blue sky was quiet. My curses were fine too — Gluttony's five hydra heads were resting near the edge of the grass, while Pride's Leaden Titan sat quietly on his basalt throne.

Except for one tiny, bizarre object. Hovering in the air three feet above the green grass was a single, paper-like fragment. It looked like a piece of ancient, yellowed parchment, roughly the size of a human palm, torn from an old book. It carried no Mana, no System code, and no active energy signature. It simply floated in the air beneath the Primordial Spark, humming with a quiet presence. I translated my consciousness over to the meadow, staring at the paper fragment in complete, unadulterated confusion.

"How did a piece of paper get inside my soul-realm?" I muttered into the quiet air. Gluttony's primary hydra head slithered over, sniffing the yellowed parchment with its dark snout before looking up at me telepathically. Boss! Can I eat it? It smells weird! Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"No, don't eat it," I chuckled, stepping closer. I raised my gauntleted hand, bringing my perception right up to the floating fragment to inspect its runic structure. The microsecond my perception touched the yellowed parchment, reality shattered. There was no warning, no temporal slide delay, and no spatial disruption. My consciousness was violently yanked out of my Inner World. A sudden, blinding flash of white light engulfed my mind, and I felt myself being dragged into an intense, hyper-accelerated Vision.

Unlike any vision I had experienced before — where I merely watched past memories like a quiet spectator — this experience was terrifyingly interactive. I didn't lose my mind or my identity. I remained myself — my thoughts were clear, my analytical philosophy was active, and my soul gate was intact. Yet, I felt physically teleported into a completely different body, in a completely different world, in a different, ancient time. I opened my eyes, gasping for breath.

I was standing inside a warm, beautifully furnished living room constructed from polished white marble and glowing dark wood. Sunlight streamed through tall arched windows, illuminating a peaceful, idyllic city built across rolling green hills outside. I immediately tried to activate my [Voidflame] and my [Void Emperor's Omnipresence] to collapse my coordinates and escape back to my physical body in deep space. Nothing happened. My core conduits didn't respond to my Void skills.

I looked down at my hands — they were human hands, but they carried a different, unfamiliar core architecture. My physical skill set was locked, replaced by an entirely different array of elemental affinities and core-rotations that belonged to this body. Yet, beneath the unfamiliar physical shell, my central Star-Core and my soul gate were still mine. Before I could process the terrifying nature of this interactive vision, the doors to the living room swung open.

A beautiful woman with long, braided auburn hair and warm hazel eyes stepped into the room, flanked by two young children — a boy of seven and a girl of five — who ran toward me with bright, ringing laughter.

"Father!" The two children squealed, throwing their arms around my legs. The auburn-haired woman walked over, a soft, loving smile on her face, and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me into a warm, gentle kiss.

"You have finally come home. We missed you." I stood frozen in the living room, completely dazed and utterly confused. My conscious mind was screaming at me to find a way out, to escape this strange trap and return to my body. And yet, as I looked down at the two children hugging my knees, and felt the warm embrace of the woman holding me... an extraordinary, terrifying phenomenon occurred inside my soul.

I felt an instinctual, profound, and overwhelming wave of love, warmth, and protective devotion toward this family. It wasn't a form of mind-control or manipulation, my [Primordial Shell] and soul weaving made sure of that. It was a form of… Soul resonance. The ancient soul-scars embedded within my core gate were echoing with the memories of a past life? Perhaps, this woman was my wife, these children were my blood, and this house was my home.

The love I felt for them was as real, raw, and undeniable as the love I felt for Anna and my family in Bastion.

"I..." I stammered, my voice sounding different in this body, my mind struggling to maintain its grip on reality.

"I... I missed you too..." The auburn-haired woman smiled, leaning her head against my chest.

"The tea is almost ready, my love. Sit down and rest." She turned toward the kitchen, holding the hands of the two laughing children. And then, the universe shattered. Without a single microsecond of warning, a deafening, planet-cracking explosion tore through the ceiling of our home. The roof collapsed in a blinding flash of blood-red fire.

A high-tier orbital beam of pure, sanctioned kinetic energy slammed directly into the kitchen, vaporizing the room, the furniture, and the street outside in a fraction of a millisecond. I watched in paralyzed, absolute horror as the auburn-haired woman and my two young children were instantly incinerated before my eyes. Their bodies, their laughter, and their smiles were reduced to clouds of bloody mist and vaporized bones right in front of my face.

"NO!" A primal, apocalyptic shriek tore from my throat — a scream of such profound, soul-shattering grief and rage that it felt like my central Star-Core was exploding inside my chest. The grief wasn't a simulated thought; it was a white-hot, agonizing nightmare that shredded my mind. I fell to my knees in the burning rubble, clutching my head as blood poured from my eyes and ears. Outside, the idyllic city was a burning, apocalyptic wasteland.

Thousands of buildings were collapsing, and the sky was raining showers of blood and shattered marble. Overhead, the sky had turned into a terrifying, blood-red nightmare, dominated by a gargantuan, crimson Blood Moon. Floating in the center of the Blood Moon, looking down at the burning city with cold, detached arrogance, was a powerful Transcendent. His domain — a vast, oppressive field of sanctioned blood — engulfed the entire planet, locking down every spatial coordinate.

The Transcendent looked down at the ruined plaza, his voice echoing across the burning world with absolute, unyielding cruelty.

"You refused to kneel, scholar," he sneered, his voice carrying the weight of a collapsing mountain.

"You thought your research could save your world? Look upon your home. You will suffer, like all those before you." I stood up from the burning rubble. My dark eyes, burning with two spheres of pure, unadulterated hatred, locked onto the god in the sky. I didn't care about understanding the rules of this strange vision. I didn't care that this body wasn't mine, or that most of my mana, resonances and skills were locked.

All I knew was that the woman and children I felt very attached to, had just been butchered in front of my eyes, and the monster who did it was standing in the sky. I unleashed this body's unfamiliar skill set. I opened the host body's core, channeling a roaring, volcanic stream of uncompiled kinetic plasma into my palms. I forced my boots onto the cracked marble, using the host's vector-slopes to launch myself into the sky toward the Transcendent like a rising meteor.

"DIE!" I roared, driving a plasma-infused fist straight toward the man's throat. The fight was a brutal, one-sided slaughter. I was fighting in an unfamiliar body, wielding an un-optimized skill set against a fully consolidated Tier 12 Transcendent whose domain controlled the entire planet's sky and gravity. The Transcendent didn't even unsheath a weapon. He flicked his wrist, summoning a wave of blood-iron spears that slammed into my chest, shattering my ribs and throwing me backward into the burning city plaza.

I crashed into the marble floor, blood pouring from my mouth, my limbs broken. The man descended slowly, landing ten yards from my broken body, looking down at me with cold, amused disdain.

"Pathetic. A scholar trying to fight a God." I lay in the bloody rubble, my vision fading, my lungs filled with ash. I couldn't win this fight with this body's skills. So, I chose the only option left. Driven by a primal, unstoppable rage that transcended logic, I reached into the host body's central core and initiated a Soul Sacrifice. I didn't care that it would destroy the host body. I didn't care about the pain.

I forcibly ignited the host's Core, converting its entire spiritual density into a volatile, planet-cracking energy bomb designed to drag the Transcendent into oblivion with me. The Transcendent's eyes widened in sudden, genuine shock as he felt the volatile, suicidal energy building in my chest.

"Madman!" he spat. Before my Soul Sacrifice could complete its wind-up, the Transcendent brought his white-gold war-hammer down with light-speed velocity, driving the weapon straight through my chest to extinguish my core before the explosion could trigger. My vision went pitch black. A sudden, violent spatial shockwave tore through my mind. My consciousness was yanked out of the interactive vision, snapping violently back across causality into my Inner World.

I opened my physical eyes on the green meadow beneath the bright blue sky. I collapsed onto my hands and knees in the high grass, gasping frantically for air, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped beast. Sweat poured from my brow, and dark blood leaked from my nose onto the green blades. My eyes were wild, burning with a terrifying mix of lingering grief, white-hot rage, and primal adrenaline. Around me, my Curses gathered in deep, terrified concern.

Even Gluttony's five hydra heads were quiet, slithering over to nuzzle against my arms, sensing the profound, terrifying storm of emotion raging inside my core. I sat in the green grass for three long minutes, my hands clutching the soil, forcing my hyper-accelerated cognitive arrays to process what had just occurred. The woman, the children, the Blood Moon, the Transcendent...

I wiped the blood from my face with the back of my glove, my breathing slowly turning steady, though my eyes remained locked in a cold, starless glare. I looked up at the quiet blue sky of my inner world, my raspy, shaking voice echoing across the meadow.

"What the hell... was that..."