Chapter 1106
Malcolm Tent
Monkey with a typewriter.
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It took me about twenty minutes to get my head on straight. The various secrets Alara had let slip about the nature of reality were staggering, awe inspiring even…and functionally useless to me at the moment. Getting locked in on the forest and running face first into a tree was the exact opposite of what I needed to be doing right now.
Filing away the explosive information for later, I focused on what was important. The ritual.
Unfortunately, there were some problems. First was Deveskane. I'd fulfilled my promise to him, bringing the shard here and making introductions to Atlas, but according to Alara, the ritual couldn't be used to bring him back now. The blood drop had possessed more than enough energy to be used to fuel the ritual more than once…but that was originally. After who knew how long with Alara draining it to bring herself back and strengthen herself, there was only enough left for a single pass of the ritual.
Drexel, meanwhile, didn't have even that much. I wanted to assume that he couldn't pull off the ritual given his lack of resources, but his presence implied he had some other way of getting it done. Alara didn't know what it was, but we both agreed it couldn't be allowed to happen, which meant we needed to HURRY.
Finding the ritual chamber itself was surprisingly simple, and accessing it was even easier, but upon stepping inside, I found myself frozen in wonder at the sheer opulence of the chamber.
Noticing my shock, Alara smiled grimly. "This chamber was only in the beginning phases of construction when I died. Even I, who was privy to my father's plans to construct it, find the completed product awe inspiring. This is a grand working of Formation craft from a practitioner whose skill has reached the Divine Threshold. Even in a suppressed state, this location is a work of art the likes of which this universe has scarcely seen. Welcome, to the Orrery of Creation."
She spread her hands dramatically as she spoke, the gesture encompassing the entirety of the space, and despite the melodrama of the action, I couldn't bring myself to consider it overkill. Dramatic was the only way to reveal something like that.
The Orrery of Creation was…dizzying. A massive spherical room, every inch of it was covered with complicated scrollwork and symbols, engraved into a durable, shining brass I couldn't place, but that felt powerful and deadly. Among the rippling, turbulent space within the sphere, islands of calm floated, held aloft by currents of tightly controlled power so fine that I had to concentrate to see them, even with my powerful stats.
Within the islands, I could see sparkling stars and phantom planets, a tiny galaxy overlaid on space like some kind of holographic display. "Is this a chamber for resurrection or stargazing?" I asked skeptically as I glanced around. "It looks a bit…specific."
"The Orrery is a ritual chamber with many uses," she clarified. "The Astronomer, the Formation Divinity who designed it, was quite enamored with the warp and weft of the cosmic streams. He built this chamber to take advantage of the Void's malleable nature to connect a million points of reference to powerful realspace cosmic anchors. Every ritual performed here channels the natural flow and rhythm of an entire galaxy."
Staring into the phantom stars, I could see it. Like I was looking through space itself and finally drilling down to stare at an actual celestial body. Formations that used natural energy constructs to enhance power were pretty standard. Doing more with less was what Formation Mastery was all about.
But creating what amounted to a miniaturized spatial construct that connected an entire galaxy…I froze. I'd seen something like this before. On a much smaller scale, but very similar. A room that looked like a patch of space, all the way back on Callus. "Cosmic Witchcraft," I said aloud, my voice hushed. This was just like Stella's office, but scaled WAY up.
Alara blinked in surprise. "Tangentially," she admitted. "Energy is a part of reality. Ascendants, monsters, gods, all use the same core forces to manipulate this universe. We take different paths, but as you approach the peak of those paths, they begin to converge somewhat. Witchcraft is a useful and powerful discipline. Though in truth, it's a very broad designation for a large variety of different force application techniques, all of which have some common elements."
"Thaumaturgy," I nodded. "Symbolic linking. What happens to the small happens to the big."
"Even so," she confirmed. "Formation Mastery isn't witchcraft, because it acts as a CONDUIT to representation rather than using it directly. But as I said, at higher levels, paths converge. The peak of the formation path dips into the domain of witchcraft, and vice versa." She gestured around us. "This is the pinnacle of Formation crafting below the god rank. The Astronomer, despite reaching divinity in his skill, was no god. But he was about as close as one could get to being a true formation god without true ascension."
I nodded as I took it all in. "And this can be used to bring back Atlas? This ritual will allow us to do what the vanished gods did?"
"The Orrery is a tool. A type of metacraft that can be adjusted to many uses," she clarified. "It's not the ritual itself. It just massively streamlines and refines the process, allowing for the execution of rituals that would otherwise require specialized settings, times, and preparations. That said, this particular tool has already been preconfigured for the purpose we have in mind. We need only supply a few final ingredients." She gestured towards the center of the Orrery. "Can you see the locations where our ingredients need to be places? The flows of power outline the points of input, if you know how to look."
The sheer detail of the place was mindblowing. It was currently a C-rank construct, after so long being eroded and suppressed, but the foundations were still at the peak of S-rank. It was like my Wish power. Despite being ostensibly the same rank as other abilities at C-rank, Wish was a perfected bloodline ability inherited from a god. It was quantitatively the same, but qualitatively VERY different in terms of utility.
Even suppressed to C-rank, this construct was lightyears beyond anything I had ever seen in the field of formations. Its usage of power and application of force had reached a critical extreme that shouldn't have even been POSSIBLE at C-rank. It was just like with wishes. Perfect enough power application could create exponentially greater results than the sum of its parts.
Not to mention that this place was still made of S-rank material. Power usage might have been suppressed, but the actual physical device was able to withstand usage and concepts from far beyond its apparent strength.
Following the winding strands of power creating the phantom web that made up one layer of the formation hurt my brain, but I DID manage it eventually, and was able to identify the spots I needed to interact. I could see several, actually, but most of them seemed to have already been anchored to special materials or constructs. The last two were like gaping holes in the room, waiting to be filled with the powerful materials we brought.
The first up was the Eye. The gargantuan piece of divine remains I'd harvested into my Domain when we'd passed through the mausoleum, was ready to be inserted.
Luckily, the process for doing so was pretty straightforward. This whole place was basically one big maze of spatial warping and symbolic connections, which meant it could hold substantially more material than it appeared. Despite being bigger by a large margin than the sphere we currently stood inside (we were standing on a suspended deck about midway through the room), I was easily able to reach into my Domain and pull out the eye, tossing it from my own projected Domain (much more easily accessible due to what must be shielding from the spherical room) into the indicated space.
Rather than slot into some hole or shrink, I was shocked to see the object enter the spatial turbulence and move through the warping, dropping INTO the star that had been indicated. As that happened, the rest of the room came to life, beginning to shift and move, streams of power speeding up and interweaving in a series of dizzying patterns.
"The ruby," called Alara. "Add the power source, the Orrery is redirecting the cosmic forces to the star furnace. The eye has begun refinement!"
Cursing, I streaked across the room, dropping the box and flipping it open before tossing the faceted red gem into the central point of the Orrery, a black hole that acted as a funnel for the energy. As soon as it fell in, the dark void sparked with red energy, and the flows of power through the Orrery blazed to life.
Watching the interweaving matrices of energy spin up, I could see the process go into overdrive. I reached down and picked up the box, carrying it to the center of the platform we were standing on. This object of power would be the link between the ritual and Atlas.
I was about to set it down when my Danger Sense began SCREAMING. I hurled myself aside as a slice so absurdly powerful it looked like it could split the universe crashed over and rolled harmlessly off the durable bronze of the Orrery. I whirled to find a familiar form standing not far away, holding a long sword made of some kind of toxic looking green glass, a horrible glow in his eyes.
Sneering, I climbed to my feet, calling Dayna out and tossing her the box. "Get started. I've got this."
Drexel grinned sadistically. "Oh, do you? Do you 'got this', boy? Do you think yourself the equal to a god? I've blown specks of dust off my lapels with more relevance than you. And now that I have this body, I'm going to enjoy carving that fact into your very BONES."
I smiled back just as unpleasantly. "Maybe. And maybe fighting you would be a mistake. Luckily, I'm not going to be fighting you. At least not for the most part. I don't need to. Because while you might be a god, I'm something far, far greater. Something beyond your petty understanding, something that exists above your archaic and out of date worldview." I blustered as hard as I could, hitting every annoyance button I could think of for ancient, powerful creatures. It wasn't hard, there were a lot of them.
Sure enough, Drexel's eyes narrowed in arrogant dismissal, but he didn't attack. He wanted to know what I was talking about. "Oh, and what is this ineffable, inconceivable thing that I would have no knowledge of, child?"
"Well, I'm not sure what you guys called it back in your day," I said gleefully. "But we do have a simple word for it in this time. We call it 'a distraction'."
Say what you would about Drexel, but he wasn't stupid. As soon as he processed what I'd said, he reacted, beginning to spin to check behind him…but moving far too slow. Alara, with the grace of a pouncing jaguar, erupted from the shadows behind him, landing on his back. Her head went back, baring her unreasonably sharp fangs, and then plunged down, digging them into the throat of Drexel's host.
He screamed, jerking and twitching, but he wasn't down for the count. He grabbed her by the hair, hauled her forward, and HURLED her across the room as he howled. "KILL THEM ALL!"
There was a ripple in space, and a dozen or so forms exploded onto the scene from seemingly nowhere. Tall blue forms. With three heads. And six arms. Asura. I sighed as I spun up my staff, ready for a fight. "Oh hey," I called to Alara. "I guess you didn't kill them all." And then the fight was on.
Filing away the explosive information for later, I focused on what was important. The ritual.
Unfortunately, there were some problems. First was Deveskane. I'd fulfilled my promise to him, bringing the shard here and making introductions to Atlas, but according to Alara, the ritual couldn't be used to bring him back now. The blood drop had possessed more than enough energy to be used to fuel the ritual more than once…but that was originally. After who knew how long with Alara draining it to bring herself back and strengthen herself, there was only enough left for a single pass of the ritual.
Drexel, meanwhile, didn't have even that much. I wanted to assume that he couldn't pull off the ritual given his lack of resources, but his presence implied he had some other way of getting it done. Alara didn't know what it was, but we both agreed it couldn't be allowed to happen, which meant we needed to HURRY.
Finding the ritual chamber itself was surprisingly simple, and accessing it was even easier, but upon stepping inside, I found myself frozen in wonder at the sheer opulence of the chamber.
Noticing my shock, Alara smiled grimly. "This chamber was only in the beginning phases of construction when I died. Even I, who was privy to my father's plans to construct it, find the completed product awe inspiring. This is a grand working of Formation craft from a practitioner whose skill has reached the Divine Threshold. Even in a suppressed state, this location is a work of art the likes of which this universe has scarcely seen. Welcome, to the Orrery of Creation."
She spread her hands dramatically as she spoke, the gesture encompassing the entirety of the space, and despite the melodrama of the action, I couldn't bring myself to consider it overkill. Dramatic was the only way to reveal something like that.
The Orrery of Creation was…dizzying. A massive spherical room, every inch of it was covered with complicated scrollwork and symbols, engraved into a durable, shining brass I couldn't place, but that felt powerful and deadly. Among the rippling, turbulent space within the sphere, islands of calm floated, held aloft by currents of tightly controlled power so fine that I had to concentrate to see them, even with my powerful stats.
Within the islands, I could see sparkling stars and phantom planets, a tiny galaxy overlaid on space like some kind of holographic display. "Is this a chamber for resurrection or stargazing?" I asked skeptically as I glanced around. "It looks a bit…specific."
"The Orrery is a ritual chamber with many uses," she clarified. "The Astronomer, the Formation Divinity who designed it, was quite enamored with the warp and weft of the cosmic streams. He built this chamber to take advantage of the Void's malleable nature to connect a million points of reference to powerful realspace cosmic anchors. Every ritual performed here channels the natural flow and rhythm of an entire galaxy."
Staring into the phantom stars, I could see it. Like I was looking through space itself and finally drilling down to stare at an actual celestial body. Formations that used natural energy constructs to enhance power were pretty standard. Doing more with less was what Formation Mastery was all about.
But creating what amounted to a miniaturized spatial construct that connected an entire galaxy…I froze. I'd seen something like this before. On a much smaller scale, but very similar. A room that looked like a patch of space, all the way back on Callus. "Cosmic Witchcraft," I said aloud, my voice hushed. This was just like Stella's office, but scaled WAY up.
Alara blinked in surprise. "Tangentially," she admitted. "Energy is a part of reality. Ascendants, monsters, gods, all use the same core forces to manipulate this universe. We take different paths, but as you approach the peak of those paths, they begin to converge somewhat. Witchcraft is a useful and powerful discipline. Though in truth, it's a very broad designation for a large variety of different force application techniques, all of which have some common elements."
"Thaumaturgy," I nodded. "Symbolic linking. What happens to the small happens to the big."
"Even so," she confirmed. "Formation Mastery isn't witchcraft, because it acts as a CONDUIT to representation rather than using it directly. But as I said, at higher levels, paths converge. The peak of the formation path dips into the domain of witchcraft, and vice versa." She gestured around us. "This is the pinnacle of Formation crafting below the god rank. The Astronomer, despite reaching divinity in his skill, was no god. But he was about as close as one could get to being a true formation god without true ascension."
I nodded as I took it all in. "And this can be used to bring back Atlas? This ritual will allow us to do what the vanished gods did?"
"The Orrery is a tool. A type of metacraft that can be adjusted to many uses," she clarified. "It's not the ritual itself. It just massively streamlines and refines the process, allowing for the execution of rituals that would otherwise require specialized settings, times, and preparations. That said, this particular tool has already been preconfigured for the purpose we have in mind. We need only supply a few final ingredients." She gestured towards the center of the Orrery. "Can you see the locations where our ingredients need to be places? The flows of power outline the points of input, if you know how to look."
The sheer detail of the place was mindblowing. It was currently a C-rank construct, after so long being eroded and suppressed, but the foundations were still at the peak of S-rank. It was like my Wish power. Despite being ostensibly the same rank as other abilities at C-rank, Wish was a perfected bloodline ability inherited from a god. It was quantitatively the same, but qualitatively VERY different in terms of utility.
Even suppressed to C-rank, this construct was lightyears beyond anything I had ever seen in the field of formations. Its usage of power and application of force had reached a critical extreme that shouldn't have even been POSSIBLE at C-rank. It was just like with wishes. Perfect enough power application could create exponentially greater results than the sum of its parts.
Not to mention that this place was still made of S-rank material. Power usage might have been suppressed, but the actual physical device was able to withstand usage and concepts from far beyond its apparent strength.
Following the winding strands of power creating the phantom web that made up one layer of the formation hurt my brain, but I DID manage it eventually, and was able to identify the spots I needed to interact. I could see several, actually, but most of them seemed to have already been anchored to special materials or constructs. The last two were like gaping holes in the room, waiting to be filled with the powerful materials we brought.
The first up was the Eye. The gargantuan piece of divine remains I'd harvested into my Domain when we'd passed through the mausoleum, was ready to be inserted.
Luckily, the process for doing so was pretty straightforward. This whole place was basically one big maze of spatial warping and symbolic connections, which meant it could hold substantially more material than it appeared. Despite being bigger by a large margin than the sphere we currently stood inside (we were standing on a suspended deck about midway through the room), I was easily able to reach into my Domain and pull out the eye, tossing it from my own projected Domain (much more easily accessible due to what must be shielding from the spherical room) into the indicated space.
Rather than slot into some hole or shrink, I was shocked to see the object enter the spatial turbulence and move through the warping, dropping INTO the star that had been indicated. As that happened, the rest of the room came to life, beginning to shift and move, streams of power speeding up and interweaving in a series of dizzying patterns.
"The ruby," called Alara. "Add the power source, the Orrery is redirecting the cosmic forces to the star furnace. The eye has begun refinement!"
Cursing, I streaked across the room, dropping the box and flipping it open before tossing the faceted red gem into the central point of the Orrery, a black hole that acted as a funnel for the energy. As soon as it fell in, the dark void sparked with red energy, and the flows of power through the Orrery blazed to life.
Watching the interweaving matrices of energy spin up, I could see the process go into overdrive. I reached down and picked up the box, carrying it to the center of the platform we were standing on. This object of power would be the link between the ritual and Atlas.
I was about to set it down when my Danger Sense began SCREAMING. I hurled myself aside as a slice so absurdly powerful it looked like it could split the universe crashed over and rolled harmlessly off the durable bronze of the Orrery. I whirled to find a familiar form standing not far away, holding a long sword made of some kind of toxic looking green glass, a horrible glow in his eyes.
Sneering, I climbed to my feet, calling Dayna out and tossing her the box. "Get started. I've got this."
Drexel grinned sadistically. "Oh, do you? Do you 'got this', boy? Do you think yourself the equal to a god? I've blown specks of dust off my lapels with more relevance than you. And now that I have this body, I'm going to enjoy carving that fact into your very BONES."
I smiled back just as unpleasantly. "Maybe. And maybe fighting you would be a mistake. Luckily, I'm not going to be fighting you. At least not for the most part. I don't need to. Because while you might be a god, I'm something far, far greater. Something beyond your petty understanding, something that exists above your archaic and out of date worldview." I blustered as hard as I could, hitting every annoyance button I could think of for ancient, powerful creatures. It wasn't hard, there were a lot of them.
Sure enough, Drexel's eyes narrowed in arrogant dismissal, but he didn't attack. He wanted to know what I was talking about. "Oh, and what is this ineffable, inconceivable thing that I would have no knowledge of, child?"
"Well, I'm not sure what you guys called it back in your day," I said gleefully. "But we do have a simple word for it in this time. We call it 'a distraction'."
Say what you would about Drexel, but he wasn't stupid. As soon as he processed what I'd said, he reacted, beginning to spin to check behind him…but moving far too slow. Alara, with the grace of a pouncing jaguar, erupted from the shadows behind him, landing on his back. Her head went back, baring her unreasonably sharp fangs, and then plunged down, digging them into the throat of Drexel's host.
He screamed, jerking and twitching, but he wasn't down for the count. He grabbed her by the hair, hauled her forward, and HURLED her across the room as he howled. "KILL THEM ALL!"
There was a ripple in space, and a dozen or so forms exploded onto the scene from seemingly nowhere. Tall blue forms. With three heads. And six arms. Asura. I sighed as I spun up my staff, ready for a fight. "Oh hey," I called to Alara. "I guess you didn't kill them all." And then the fight was on.
ath of the Green Sun- Solid