"You say what now?" Helena leaned her head forward with a questioning expression.
Northern shrugged, "Like I said, the real body will be emerging from the woods soon."
After a couple more blinks, Northern’s double eyeballs (polycoria) merged into one and became normal.
They all stared at him in stunned silence.
There was much to be surprised about, so it was hard to decide which aspect to tackle first.
The silence ensued for a few more seconds, then Helena’s vigorous voice shattered it.
"I’m sorry, what exactly did you do to the monster?"
Northern looked aloof for a while, recalling the entire experience of disorganizing the chaos construct of all the trees here to make it so that the monster wouldn’t be able to find any of them as suitable hosts.
After, of course, finding the chaos construct of the monster itself first.
It was simple yet not simple.
Since he had an adept—beyond adept even—sensing of Chaos in every being, Northern, with the attribute of Chaos he possessed, could affect them.
Of course, it was on a different and more manageable scale pared to using [Chaos] as an active ability.
That one was more impervious and destructive.
All Northern had to do was, after tracing the ligatures of Chaos and finding its connected source, which was the supposed existence itself, study the Chaos construct.
At first glance, Northern, after following over three hundred ligatures, couldn’t help but begin to notice the slight difference in each construct—from the ligatures themselves to the connected existence.
It was easy to overlook. In fact, Northern’s opinion was that it was not something meant to be seen.
However, there was a strong possibility that [All Eyes] could have played a huge role in why he was able to discern such slight and unnoticeable details.
After all, while handling the ligatures, he felt like himself—just that he existed in a special plane, one submerged in the inner workings of reality.
Which meant that his eyes, which were one of the core parts of his physical body, could still be felt and used as much as he could feel and use his hand.
[All Eyes] could have naturally done its function.
If this hypothesis of his was correct, it would mean Northern had just gained something that the Chaos Prince never had.
However, he didn’t have the time to ponder and think about that fact.
After recognizing the unnoticeable difference with each Chaos construct, Northern began to take a more deliberate study toward them as he traced their connected existence.
When he got to over five hundred ligatures, Northern didn’t need to trace them to the connected source before knowing which existence it was.
The trees, the soil, and the wind – these were the major ligatures. There were insignificant ones that led to some matter like stones and pebbles, fungi, moss and lichen.
And with time, even those became very recognizable as they were not numerous.
Eventually, Northern had perfectly understood the construct of Chaos in this forest, so when he saw that of the monster, he recognized it immediately.
It was a bit tricky.
At first, even after tracing over two thousand ligatures, he could not find the one.
Afraid that he must have missed it, Northern began a delicate search all over again.
However, this time was quicker because he was more familiar with the constructs.
It was because of that familiarity that he was able to find the peculiarity hidden in a certain ligature.
Like any other, it was just like a line of flame, flowing through the darkness that shrouded this sub-reality.
But with a deeper and intensive look, Northern could see it – he could see the difference.
Within the ligature was another one, a much fiercer but somehow contained flow.
It was like two ligatures were embedded in one, which was not quite the case so far that Northern had been inspecting.
Something had to be wrong.
Then it clicked.
It made a lot of sense. If the monster was inhabiting trees, then did this mean that its Chaos construct was also following that pattern and inhabiting the Chaos construct of the tree the monster itself was using as a host?
If that was the case, then would it be possible to remove one construct from the other?
What started as curiosity, however, led Northern to try his luck.
He wasn’t even sure if it would work, and even if it did, he was sure it would be a painful experience.
First, he tried to immerse his hand into the ligatures, touching the Chaos construct.
And it was indeed a painful and bitter experience.
With immediate effect, his hands began to deconstruct from the inside out.
Along with searing pain, as if they were being burned from within by lava from the depth of a volcano.
Luckily, the rate at which they were being deconstructed was how [Chaos Thread] was reconstructing them back.
That, at the very least, kept him from losing his hands before getting to do anything meaningful with the constructs.
But at the same time, it caused him a hundred times more pain—because the longer his hands stayed in the chaos construct, the quicker his hands deconstructed, and hence causing [Chaos Thread] to respond with equal speed of regeneration.
Northern had to endure the burning pain of his hands being torn apart, forcefully mended together, and being torn apart again... over and over again.
While keeping his focus to ensure he wasn’t messing up with what he was doing.
It should never have been possible to touch a Chaos Construct.
But the [Unseeing Eyes] and [Chaos Thread] made it possible, although Northern could not say for sure.
But he suspected that even the Chaos Prince had never tried this.
Eventually, after a long while of delicately removing the embedded ligature, Northern twisted its construct.
He wasn’t sure, but it was just an idea that if he could mess up the construct such that the ligature wouldn’t be able to fit into another ligature, the monster would just end up hopping into another tree.
Messing up the Chaos construct was less difficult than separating the ligatures.
It was more like he was unlinking tiny fibers of flames and linking them differently than they were.
When he was done, he could tell that no matter how hard the ligature tried, it couldn’t fit into another one.
Simply because the Chaos construct of the ligature permitted it to enter into another ligature – that was its essence – but messing up with the construct meant destroying that particular essence.
Now, the ligature’s Chaos construct could not fit into other ligatures. Maybe it would eventually find a match – it could be lucky enough to find a construct that fits the new sequence Northern had linked.
But that was certainly not happening soon.
This disruption was what caused the monster to revert to its original body.
And finally, Northern opened his eyes back to the real world. Luckily, with no physical damage whatsoever.
But, his mind had taken an even heavier toll than he had expected.
This, however, had its advantages and disadvantages.
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