Lucien looked at the four won for a long mont after thinking about the location.
Then he shook his head.
"Not yet," he said.
They blinked.
Lucien crossed his arms.
"Before we go anywhere the system points at, the four of you need to beco stronger first."
That silenced them.
For once, even Kaia did not imdiately argue.
Lucien continued calmly, "A place important enough to react to all four of you at once will not be simple. If we go half-prepared, then whatever opportunity waits there may beco a disaster instead."
Marie nodded.
Kaia sighed.
Sylra gave a quiet nod.
Marina raised one hand like a timid student. "If my prince says so, then I shall endure."
The other three turned to look at her again.
Marina stiffened.
Lucien pretended not to notice.
And so, he brought the four of them back to reality.
Marie and Kaia imdiately latched onto Sylra and Marina with the unstoppable force of extroverts discovering shy people.
"You are coming with us."
"Yes," Kaia added. "You need to et everyone."
Sylra looked as if she wanted to dissolve into the wind and leave this mortal plane entirely.
Marina looked one heartbeat away from turning into water and retreating into the ocean world forever.
Both of them looked at Lucien.
The look was clear.
Help us.
Lucien, with the composure of a man protecting his own peace, looked away and acted as though he had not understood a thing.
Marie and Kaia dragged them off anyway.
Sylra’s expression beca resigned.
Marina’s beca betrayed.
Lucien watched the four of them disappear into the distance and let out a long sigh.
"They’ll survive," he murmured.
•••
Soon after, Lucien went up to the Palace of Stillness.
This place had quietly beco his favorite.
It was high enough to feel separate from the noise below. Quiet enough that even his thoughts seed to move more cleanly here.
When he sat at the edge of the palace and looked out over Lootwell, stillness did not feel empty.
It felt useful.
This ti, his thoughts were fixed on only one thing.
The Celestial Realm.
He had already reached the peak of Ascendant.
The door had opened.
Now the question was not whether he could step through it.
But how.
That was what mattered.
Because reaching the Celestial Realm was not simply about more power.
It was a remaking.
To enter that realm, a practitioner had to do more than strengthen the body. They had to teach the body how to endure a greater law of existence.
The Mortal Realm forged flesh.
tamorphosis shed the mortal shell.
Transcendence bound one to a Law.
Ascendance ford a Domain Seed and gave authority shape.
But Celestial...
Celestial was when the body itself had to begin learning from the cosmos.
It had to be refined until it no longer treated the void as an enemy.
That was why Celestial practitioners could finally survive outer space.
Their bodies had stopped being rely bodies.
They beca vessels that could coexist with vastness, pressure, emptiness, and hostile law-density without collapse.
And the thod used to achieve that determined everything.
A diocre thod would still produce a Celestial.
A great thod would produce sothing far more terrifying.
Most practitioners chose the cosmos itself.
They would leave the Big World, activate their Domains to shield themselves, then weaken that protection little by little.
They would let the void touch them in asured stages.
Pressure. Radiation. Silence. Distance.
They would suffer it, adapt, refine, and repeat until their flesh learned to live under the sa terms as the heavens.
It was an effective thod.
There were fiercer ones.
So bathed themselves in Primordial Winds, allowing that ancient force to scour and temper their bodies repeatedly. But access to such places was controlled by certain races, and the price for entry was ruinous.
Others descended into the deepest oceans of the Big World until the pressure approached that of the void. Others went far beneath the earth, where heat and density could crush even powerful practitioners.
All of those thods worked.
All of them had produced Celestial experts before.
Lucien dismissed them one by one.
Most required leaving the Big World.
That alone made them inconvenient.
And he still did not know whether the Incarnation of the Primordial still watched certain thresholds.
The ocean depths and earth depths were possible, but they would cost too much ti and attention. Both places also hosted powerful beasts, which turned a breakthrough into a public disturbance.
Lucien leaned back slightly and looked toward the entrance of the Palace of Stillness.
Then his eyes brightened.
A reckless thought entered his mind.
And the more he examined it, the less reckless it seed.
The Abyssal Pool.
His grin widened slowly.
Inside the Palace of Stillness lay that impossible pool which devoured energy itself. Even Celestial experts feared it. Anything carelessly imrsed in it would simply be stripped, eaten, erased.
But what if...
What if he did not resist that property...
What if he used it?
To reach the Celestial Realm, a body had to be taught to coexist with vast, annihilating environnts.
The Abyssal Pool was not rely dangerous.
It was an environnt closer to negation than ordinary void-pressure ever could be.
If he found a way to temper his body within it, to let it strip him just enough while constantly rebuilding what it devoured, then the result...
Lucien’s grin beca almost wild.
"Wouldn’t that produce the strongest Celestial body?" he murmured.
He could already imagine it. A body capable not rely of enduring the void but of resisting sothing even the abyss itself used as a mouth.
That was not rely a breakthrough.
That was overkill.
Which ant it was probably correct.
Of course, the difficulty was obvious.
He could not simply jump into the pool and expect ambition to substitute for thod.
He would need a controlled process.
A way to let the Abyssal Pool devour him without crossing the line where "refinent" beca "death."
And as he thought about that, another na entered his mind.
Marie.
She had asked for his opinion.
She had trusted him to help her choose a thod for entering Celestial.
Lucien smiled faintly.
"Well," he said, "here is the opinion."
If he could make the Abyssal Pool thod work...
then he wanted Marie to use it too.
Not because it was safe.
It was not.
But because if she survived it, her Celestial body would be monstrous.
The kind of body that would justify every bit of her stubbornness.
Lucien continued building the thod in his head.
He would likely need layered protection at first.
Not full protection.
That would defeat the purpose.
•••
Lucien was still smiling when he sensed soone arrive behind him, so quietly that he had not noticed her until she was already there.
Lucien turned.
It was Eirene.
He smiled at once.
Eirene smiled back and walked over without hurry.
Then she sat beside him at the edge of the palace, her feet hanging over open air as his did.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
They simply watched.
Below them stretched Lootwell in full of motion.
The wind moved between them.
Stillness settled.
It was not awkward.
Lucien found, once again, that Eirene’s company was one of the few silences he genuinely liked.
Eventually, she spoke.
"Brother Luc."
Lucien tilted his head toward her.
"What is it, Sister Eirene?"
Eirene lowered her gaze briefly and ford a small smile in her hands, as if weighing how best to say what ca next.
"After I finished my business in this place," she said, "I ca across a map left behind by the Eternal of Stillness. There were several marked locations."
Lucien’s attention sharpened imdiately.
"And?"
Eirene exhaled softly.
"I realized those marks were not random. They were resource sites."
That made him sit straighter.
She continued.
"Across the five continents, the Eternal left hidden sites, treasuries, stockpiles, and riches. Places comparable to what we found here."
At once, Lucien’s eyes lit up.
He rembered the treasury.
The mountains of spirit crystals.
If there were more places like that...
then accommodating millions of people would stop being a question of future hope and beco a matter of retrieval.
And now he had the perfect thod for reaching such sites.
The Covenant of Pathless Sovereignty.
Only one problem remained.
Coordinates.
Lucien turned to her imdiately.
"Sister," he said, "do you know the exact coordinates?"
Eirene nodded.
That was enough.
Lucien moved at once.
He raised two fingers and pressed them lightly against her forehead.
The sudden action surprised her, and she blinked up at him with a small, curious smile.
Then Lucien activated Cram Session.
A clean pulse of intent passed from him into her mind.
He lent to her.
Eirene’s eyes widened just slightly as the borrowed clarity settled into place.
When Lucien withdrew his fingers, she looked at him with pursed lips.
Without wasting the mont, Lucien handed her the void disc.
Then he explained everything.
How it worked. How the energy curve rose by distance. How the reserves had to be asured against travel ratio. How the pathless jump was not random, but calculable if one had sufficient reference and precision.
And with Perfect Calculation borrowed for the day, she now had exactly the tool she needed.
By the ti he finished, Eirene’s smile had beco brighter.
"It really is useful," she said.
Lucien nodded.
"With this, we can start harvesting those sites properly."
And as the wind moved around the Palace of Stillness, both of them looked down toward Lootwell again.
But now, the half-built territory below no longer looked rely like a place being raised.
It looked like a place about to be fed.
User Comments
0 comments from readers