Answering the First Progenitor’s question, the ’Last’ in question, who had beco a Cosmic Being far earlier than they should have, thereby making themselves an even more tempting target in the eyes of Conceptual powers, and who had indirectly caused Lostvayne to create cracks in Balance’s spell, which would eventually lead to more individuals from the Previous Era (including the First Progenitor) rembering the existence of the "Forgotten Fifth"—was currently busy transplanting the core of a not-so-random realm in a random galaxy, within one of the countless trillions of universes in the First Multiverse.
He had removed the Seed Engine and replaced it with the Spatial Law Crystal, and now, he sat there, waiting to see how this change would unfold.
While he waited, casually chatting with Lostvayne about random things, Celestia awoke, imdiately sensing the change in Arthur’s existence and ending up just as dumbfounded as Arthur himself had been.
[Master... you look delectable...]
"...I’m sorry, what?"
Arthur blinked in confusion, and Celestia, snapping out of her strange daze, quickly corrected herself.
[Wait, no. ’Delectable’ is the wrong word! How do I even explain this... It’s like you’ve beco more ’appealing’ to ? It’s strange, but that’s genuinely how it feels...]
As she trailed off, Lostvayne, actually understanding what she ant, added,
[I think I understand what Lady Celestia is getting at. I don’t have any concrete proof, but I’m certain the current you could bring out about 25% more of my power than you should be able to, even considering your Existence Realm and your unique circumstances.]
That didn’t help Arthur understand any better.
"...I’m still completely lost."
[As am I. Like I said, I have no basis for this feeling. I just... have it. It’s strange.]
Lostvayne also found the sensation particularly perplexing, and as for Arthur, he decided to shelve it for now and focus on the more pressing matter.
"Celestia, thanks for the help earlier."
He was, of course, referring to when he had used all of her power to heal himself after being wounded by the Seed Engine’s defences. Upon hearing this, Celestia was silent for a mont.
[...You’re welco, Master.]
She finally replied after a mont, and sohow, Arthur got the sense she was holding sothing back.
"Why do I feel like you’re mad at ?"
[Hmm? Mad? You’re absolutely mistaken. I’m definitely not mad at you for draining all my power without any regard for the adverse effects it may or may not have had on . Not mad at all.]
"...You really don’t sound convincing right now."
Arthur was completely certain that she was annoyed, but Celestia kept up her denial.
[I’m being serious. Sure, I was annoyed because I blacked out for who knows how long, but I get that the situation was dire, so I’m not upset about it.]
Right after saying that, she floated closer to the Spatial Law Crystal now sitting where the Seed Engine once was, and eyed the organic appendages that were greedily siphoning its energy.
[The transplant appears to have been successful?]
"Yeah. It was surprisingly simple. So simple it’s making worry that sothing might’ve gone wrong."
Celestia imdiately turned to face him, her voice flat as she replied, [Master, that’s a flag.]
[You’ve been saying a lot of dangerously ominous things lately, Master,] Lostvayne added.
"You can’t bla for this, okay? We’re talking about swapping out the core of an entire realm with more than a dozen planets within it.
How could it possibly be as easy as just pulling out a bunch of suckers and plugging them back in?"
[Technically speaking, Master, you’re not replacing the entire Core of the Realm, only a portion of it.
This planet is the Realm’s core, and while the Seed Engine is the reason the Core beca this planet, it was still just a component of the overall ’Core’.
A difference in the degree of difficulty between the two is to be expected. That said, I’d still agree this felt far too easy.]
Lostvayne seed to at least partially share Arthur’s unease.
Celestia, anwhile, flew over to the Seed Engine and struck it with her blade, perhaps a small act of vengeance for all the stress it had caused them, before asking,
[So why is this thing still here? And why are we still here?]
In response, Arthur answered,
"Lostvayne says we should leave it here for now to let the realm adapt to the replacent’s energy. Basically, the energy from the new core needs ti to blend into this planet, overwrite the Seed Engine’s residual energy, and then gradually spread across the entire realm.
Until that happens, we’re keeping the Seed Engine out here because the rest of the realm still recognises the cosmic energy with the Seed Engine’s signature as its fuel."
[In short, we want the realm to recalibrate, but we’re keeping the Seed Engine around so the unrecalibrated areas don’t go unstable.]
The realm still operated on a fusion of the planet’s energy and the Seed Engine’s, but now, that configuration had been changed to Planet Law Crystal. It simply needed ti for the new energy to saturate the realm and overwrite the old signature.
As Lostvayne phrased it, it was a recalibration, or more plainly, ti for the realm to update its internal settings.
[Putting the Seed Engine in a subspace or sothing similar could destabilise the parts of the realm that still recognise it as their core?]
Celestia asked, a trace of curiosity in her tone. Upon hearing this, both Arthur and Lostvayne fell silent for a mont before replying at the sa ti,
"[...yeah, that.]"
They were both caught off guard by how quickly she had pieced it together. Celestia, unfazed by their reaction, continued her line of questioning.
[So, how long do we have to wait for this settings update to finish?]
[I’m not sure. I’m just parroting what soone once told in a similar situation, though that one involved a much larger, naturally-occurring Dinsional Realm.]
The sword’s ignorance was understandable. After all, Lostvayne specialised in Destruction, not Space.
Still, having lived for aeons, Lostvayne had amassed a vast reservoir of knowledge in various fields, and that insight had proven useful here.
Had Arthur stored the Seed Engine in his subspace imdiately after extraction, this realm would have started collapsing yesterday.
"Who told you about all this, anyway?" Arthur asked, intrigued.
[An old associate. I trust their understanding of space since they’re a Higher-Dinsional being.
Though even if I explained who they were and what position they held, you wouldn’t know them. Lucifer doesn’t either, since they left the Cosmic Stage long before he was born.]
Lostvayne’s response only reminded Arthur that the sword wasn’t just older than Lucifer, it was older than every single living being in this Era.
"Oh, so we’re talking hundreds of millions of years here, aren’t we?"
[No. Billions. Even Jamie, whom you encountered in Valmone, has never t them. I first beca aware of Jamie’s existence about a billion and maybe five or six million years ago, so that’s at least how old he is.
The person I’m referring to had already run aw—ahem—exited the Cosmic Stage by then.]
Setting aside the revelation about Jamie’s true age, what Lostvayne was just about to say was even more concerning.
"You were about to say ’run away,’ weren’t you?"
[Ahem, it was during the last great war I participated in, when we were preparing to—]
"You were about to say ’run away,’ WEREN’T YOU???"
[—move a number of Leviathans out of their Dinsional Realm, since that Realm had ford around the fragnt of a dead universe’s core.]
"You wer—wait, what? A dead universe’s core?"
Lostvayne had successfully grabbed Arthur’s attention, and the sword wasted no ti using that distraction to steer him far away from the earlier blunder.
[Mhmm... the violent destruction of a nearby universe sent fragnts of its core flying across the multiverse, and one of those fragnts crashed into another universe. It landed in a zone rich in cosmic energy and eventually mutated into that Dinsional Realm.]
"...that’s wild."
[I suppose you could put it that way. What’s even wilder is why we had to evacuate the Leviathans.
The Eternals and the Aggressors, the main instigators of the war, tried to rope the Progenitor Dragon into the conflict since one of the universes under his domain was nearby.
He kept refusing, but they acted like they couldn’t hear him. He got fed up and decided to obliterate both sides’ forces. But before that, he made sure to extract all Dragons and their subspecies so they wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire.
The plan was to change the core of the realm and relocate the entire thing, since the core was bound to those spatial coordinates and couldn’t be moved.]
Lostvayne didn’t need to say it aloud, but Arthur could already infer that the universe in question no longer existed.
"The Progenitor Dragon, huh? Just how many other Progenitors have you t?"
[I don’t keep count. I’ve t plenty, from well-known ones like the Progenitor of Dragons, to more obscure figures like the Progenitor Antman.]
Arthur blinked at the unexpected na and asked again just to be sure.
"Antman?"
[Yes. Antman. They’re very tiny people. But don’t let that fool you, their lifting strength is absurd.]
"Haha, I guess that tracks."
Arthur chuckled at the thought, then leaned back in his chair and asked the question he had truly ant to ask all along.
"You’ve t the Progenitor goddess before, right?"
[Yes.]
"...what was she like?"
Arthur wanted to learn more about the one person whose existence was threatened simply by him being alive, and Lostvayne’s response shocked him still.
[Like you, Master.]
"??"
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