The Dragon of Dreams

Chapter 336: The Realm of Gods

Mid Morning - Late Summer : Remains of The Dungeon of Colossus | Western Sirathan Mountains

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"Grace." My cold tone echoed through space, regardless of the flow of time, as I matched the gaze of the cloudy figure in front of me. "How well can you clean a soul..."

Not giving her time to respond, I instantly wrapped us both in a gate before releasing us in the void. *vwoop* Even with divinity slowing time to a near halt, with the space mana in my aura it happened almost instantaneously. "~H-huh?~"

Pulling my gaze off Grace, I finally looked around, expecting to see complete destruction and chaos in the wake of what I had done, but the scene that met my eyes was rather a field of color as if I was in the middle of a nebula, with countless speckles of souls mixed into it. -Seems like the void has eaten most of it.. hopefully it will still be enough...-

Slowly easing from her state of shock, Grace finally started looking around to see the mess before noticing the countless soul fragments. "~Are these...~"

"The fragmented souls of three ancients and three gods." Letting my aura flow unrestricted, I tried to keep tabs on everything around us, but it only made me feel unbelievably tiny, exposed, and anxious.

But Grace only continued. "~Three of the Valkyries?~" She mumbled before slowly floating out into the field of fragments, gazing at each, one at a time.

-So they really were the Valkyries...- I had learned quite a bit about them a couple of weeks prior from Hera when inquiring about Asgard and its gods. To keep things short, they were a group of thirteen goddesses that served beneath the main seats of Asgard, each with strength just below the likes of Magni, but predating all but Frigg and Odin. -Based on how they appeared so suddenly, I have to believe they were trapped in the dungeon somehow.. but that means the rest probably got away...-

As Grace nervously turned back to look at me, I gave her a blunt stare. "If it's possible."

Slowly turning around to face the field of fragments again, she paused. "~It.. might be...~"

Compared to their souls originally, the void had consumed most of what there was, leaving countless tiny accumulations floating about. -But when it's all combined, it will put Father's soul just above one of the Valkyries...-

However, that was wishful thinking.

As Grace moved around, gently accumulating the countless fragments with a tiny, nearly invisible net stretching from her body, she split fragments into several groups before suddenly mixed them all and splitting them out again.

From what I could tell, it was part of the 'cleaning' process, expelling any sense of personality or identity the fragments may still carry, but.. "~For how long these fragments have been in the void.. they're filthy...~" Grace wore a slightly disgusted look as she continued to combine and split the fragments until one of the two pure white clouds was about three times the size of the other, and she flicked her fingers to launch it out into the void.

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The contaminated fragments made up the majority. -That's all that's left, huh...- It was still plenty, enough for Father's soul to contend with most older ancients, but that meant the accumulation of fragments was larger than his soul itself.

"~This should be clean enough to avoid any changes to his ego or personality,~" she held out the small, fluffy cloud as she spoke, "~but I can't promise to know what will happen considering how much larger it is than his soul itself...~"

-But we also don't have a choice...- "That just means we need to take it one step at a time and feed it to him bit by bit." After waiting a moment to see if she would object, I engulfed us in a gate and returned us to reality. -It's a gamble.. but it's the best shot we have...- *vwoop*

*vwoom* Instantly being met with a wave of mana and the beaming morning light, I turned and confidently walked toward Father, with Grace quickly following suit.

She seemed a little uneasy, but after taking a moment to gather herself, her expression stiffened. "~Hooh.. the issue is we can only take things so slow; once you force the reserve to start forming, the clock will start...~"

I gave her a curious look as she floated up to me.

"~As far as I can tell from what you did earlier, your spell compresses the soul so that it can act like a much stronger soul than it really is and allow a much larger reserve than what it could normally handle to form, but over time it will return to normal,~" she spoke somewhat softly as she came up to Father's soul. "~In theory, it should work in our favor since it will make the reserve fragile, hopefully enough that once the soul gets big enough, it will automatically reconstruct the reserve more naturally.. but we can only wait and see...~"

In short, she was saying that the soul and reserve naturally desired a balance between each other, and once that balance was offset by so much, the reserve would become fragile and, when the right conditions appeared, reform itself to reestablish balance. -It makes me wonder if that's what happened with my dragon sleep in Kaelallan...-

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But that wasn't the time for idle thought.

Before my mind could wander, my gaze settled back on Father's partially mangled body, and my chest clenched with anxiety and determination. "Hooh..." It was time once again.

Quickly confirming that Grace was ready, I slowly stepped up and prepared my spell, just as I had previously.

And after a moment of final preparation, I started the clock. *vw-wo-wo-woom*

The moment his soul was compressed, the flow of everything around us bent inward, and the dense, almost palpable mana in the air started to accumulate and solidify.

The reserve, compared to what he needed, was tiny. -But as things progress, it should continue to grow...-

And grow it did. As we kept a close eye on his condition and slowly fed him bundles of soul fragments, his reserve continued to form, grow fragile, then crumble in an endless cycle of growth and destruction, just as Grace predicted.

But unlike what she knew would happen, the farther we progressed, the more things deviated from our expectations.

"Didn't you say his soul should be getting more stable the stronger it gets?" Looking at the streaking edges of Father's soul endlessly losing their definition, a knot of anxiety churned my stomach.

"~F..from my understanding.. it should be...~" It was at the point where even Grace had started to get flustered. "~I've tried taking a break to see if giving it a moment to breathe would help it stabilize itself, but it doesn't seem to be working...~" She gently bit her thumb with worry as she closely watched his soul swirl. "~The issue is I don't think it's a balance problem...~"

-Not a balance problem?- Glancing at her for a moment, my mind accelerated, blasting through every memory I had that could be tied to the stability of souls before finally.. I found a puzzle piece that was a perfect fit. "What about a sleep lily then?"

Grace's gaze instantly snapped to me. "~Do you have one?~"

Her reaction was a good sign, giving me a moment of hope. "I do, but it's not mature..." I had gotten a young sapling of one during the auction at the academy. -But it definitely hasn't matured in just a few years...-

And if it wasn't mature, its effectiveness would be severely limited. -Shit...-

Quickly trying to find alternate routes, I dug, and dug, but to no avail. "Do you know where a mature lily is?" I quickly looked up to Grace to try grasping at a hanging string, but she immediately shook her head. -Fuck... Should I just feed it to him while it's young?-

But while I questioned myself, wondering if I even had a different string I could lunge for, Grace spoke up. "~What if you somehow used your divinity to accelerate the maturation of the lily?~"

Her voice met my ears like the voice of the void, paralyzing my thoughts in an instant. -Right.. if I can slow time with divinity, why couldn't I also speed it up?-

But I was immediately met with a roadblock.

See, liquid divinity in itself essentially has two auras: its presence and its influence. Within its aura of presence, it is able to interact with other beings who also have liquid divinity, just enough for each of them to sense one another from immense ranges. This aura, in my case at this time, was somewhere in the range of five to six thousand kilometers.

The aura of influence, on the other hand, was the area at which time was affected when one's divinity was manipulated. Within this aura, near the center, the time dilation would be strongest, and toward the edge, it would be weakest, effectively allowing you to manipulate the time of a space around you.

But this aura was unbearably small, only reaching the outer edge of my scales thanks to my mana veins.

However, that also meant if I put the flower in my body, I could freely manipulate it's time as I wished. -Right?-

But my theories told me otherwise. -Wait.. if I want to accelerate time.. isn't that what I'm doing now?- *vwoop* Quickly jumping into a gate to give myself a moment to think through the theories, I ran through everything I knew about divinity and did my best to try and understand it.

Currently, I believed I was slowing my divinity in order to slow time, tying the two together based off sensation, but isolated within the gate, I focused every ounce of brainpower on my divinity, and tried to 'slow' it. *vwoom*

-H..huh?- But rather than slow to a halt like I expected, its speed remained nearly completely constant, and rather than slowing down, it sped up by a nearly unnoticeable amount. -But I definitely...-

And that was when I finally looked at it from the outside.

When I slowed time around me, it meant that I was accelerating time for myself, and in turn, the divinity which flowed at a 'constant rate' in its own space would speed up by the time dilation between the observer, in this case, my brain, and my reserve.

The whole time I had it backward, believing divinity was a dial I was turning, when in fact, it was something I had never questioned existing.

It was a particle, not of space or matter, but of time.

-And that's why crystallized divinity is so stupidly strong...- Because while the particle wasn't matter and was so small it didn't have mass, it was frozen in time, making the only thing that could cut it be other divinity that had the same or a larger time dilation.

In an instant, the countless theories I had been cobbling together finally clicked into place.

The perfect joining of countless ideas and theorems.

All to form a piece of artwork...

A piece of artwork I would come to call the Realm of Gods.

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