Mid Sector 99- Planet Donara
Only a few decades ago, this place had been nothing more than a barren desert, a dead world stripped of vitality, ravaged relentlessly by earthquakes, waves of drought, and every conceivable natural disaster. Life had been completely erased from its surface, leaving behind no trace, no sign that it had ever been inhabited... aside from a fragile atmosphere that itself had been on the verge of disappearing entirely.
But then, the forces of the True Beginning Empire arrived... and from that mont on, its fate was completely rewritten.
Clamor Clamor
The space gate no longer stood alone in the middle of an endless desert, guarded by a handful of soldiers rely fulfilling routine duty with little purpose beyond maintaining presence.
Now, an entire city had risen around it... a city inhabited by tens of thousands, its presence growing steadily with each passing year.
And not a military city, but one filled with life. A city where children ran through the streets without fear, where won and elders carried out their daily routines in peace. A city with markets selling vegetables and clothing, with schools filled with students learning and growing... this place now held a complete, thriving ecosystem that had replaced the lifeless wasteland that once existed.
After space beasts were killed, their bodies were transported here by trainees of the Imperial Guard, carried with care as valuable resources rather than re remains.
Each corpse passed through multiple stages, from peeling and skinning to cutting and separating every part individually with precision. Even the smallest details, such as nails and eyelashes, were carefully classified and sorted, nothing wasted, nothing ignored.
After that, each category was sent to a specialized workshop designed to handle that specific material, workshops led by veteran craftsn brought in by the Swords of Shadow, whether through threats of exposing dark secrets from their past or by tempting them with the opportunity to work with the rare and valuable materials of space beast corpses.
And it had worked... beyond expectations.
The chain of workshops here now contained so of the greatest minds in the universe when it ca to refining materials, inventing new uses, executing complex processes, and even designing advanced products from those resources. Their combined knowledge turned what was once raw flesh into priceless tools, weapons, and components.
But they alone were not enough...
So, a large number of families from across the empire were recruited and brought here, promised stable work and high wages that far exceeded what they could earn elsewhere. They beca the daily workforce, laborers who gained experience day after day, steadily improving, learning techniques, and refining their skills through constant exposure.
After decades of working on the corpses of nascent space beasts... each one of them had beco more experienced than those original experts had been when they first arrived, their hands steady, their judgnt sharp, their understanding deep.
- Inside one of the city's houses -
Richard's eyebrows trembled violently, his eyelids twitching as if he wanted to open them but was forcing himself not to, maintaining the fragile state he had placed himself in.
He sat on the ground in a ditation posture, his back straight, holding a pearl in his left hand and another in his right. Yet despite that, the flow of energy entering through his hands was extrely weak... so weak that even a child preparing to build their first foundation could draw in more energy than this. "Mmm..." After several minutes of outward composure, Richard began letting out a low, pained groan, his body trembling slightly under the strain, then- "Pffft-!!" He opened his mouth and coughed up a large amount of blood, the tallic taste filling his senses.
After that-Bam-he let himself fall backward, lying flat on the ground with his arms resting over his chest, his breathing uneven.
"Heh~"
Richard let out a tired sigh as he wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand, his expression sowhere between frustration and resignation.
"I'm afraid you overestimated this ti, Father."
Fifty years ago, his father had told him he would co up with sothing to make him stronger... then entered seclusion without further explanation. anwhile, Richard had gone to assist Holak and the others in the second opening of the gate, then the third, and the fourth, throwing himself into those tasks without hesitation.
Until his father called for him once more and handed him a tal plate, instructing him not to break through to World Cataclysm until he had finished modifying his foundation according to the thod described within it, no matter how long it took.
At first, Richard accepted the task with seriousness and enthusiasm. He imdiately found himself a house on the safer side of the planet and began examining the plate carefully to understand what it contained, expecting sothing complex yet manageable...
- Anti-matter-
The mont he understood the nature of what was written, everything
changed.
It seed that when Richard had told his father how well he believed the Anti-Life technique he obtained from the Cursed Manifestation suited him, his father decided to grant it to him in a true and complete form, not as a crude imitation, but as sothing refined to its very core.
The rged Anti-Matter Law retained fire and life as its core foundational elents, anchoring everything around them so that the system would not collapse under its own weight.
And upon them, it added patterns from the Fundantal Primary Law of Fission, weaving them carefully into the existing structure.
As well as patterns from an unclassified energy law, sothing far less understood, yet no less essential to completing the cycle.
The fission aspect would forcibly break the bonds between molecules, tearing them apart at a fundantal level, producing that hollow, weakened black state that would appear after Richard used the Anti-Life technique, a state that seed empty yet held imnse potential.
anwhile, the specialized energy patterns would draw in the imnse energy released from the splitting of those bonds, capture it before it dispersed, compress it into a primitive state before it even entered the body, and then absorb it to be stored automatically within the body, exactly as Life Fire used to store stolen power without resistance.
This alone would be incredibly beneficial for him even after breaking through to World Cataclysm, changing the way he cultivated entirely. Instead of waiting weeks or even months to absorb energy from planets and refine it within his core into dense primitive energy, now the compression aspect within his technique would reduce that ti to a quarter... or even an eighth, drastically accelerating his growth.
Even if he never absorbed life energy from living beings again, this addition alone would be enough to sustain him, even treating that energy as life energy itself and allowing Richard to store it throughout his entire body just as he had always done, without needing to alter his habits.
Richard still retained Life Fire, but Robin had supplied him with the sa foundational structure that had been crafted for him through the Sovereign Law of Will. After completing the correction process, everything would function properly, seamlessly even, and he could develop those abilities further at his own pace, refining them over ti.
Richard had effectively obtained a four-rged law!!
But his joy did not last long...
Nearly forty years had passed since he received the new rged technique and began restructuring his foundations, dedicating himself entirely to the process. During that ti, he had only reached foundation number seventeen.
And the first ten did not even count, as they required no law to establish and
were rely the base layers of his structure...
aning that, over forty years, he had only managed to modify seven foundations out of fifty!
Four laws sharing the sa energy core... a core that had already been overcrowded with two laws before, unstable even in its original state. Now, he had to break the old structures and force the new ones in by any ans possible, carefully dismantling what was already built while ensuring nothing collapsed prematurely. He had to prevent the walls of his energy center from instinctively rejecting and attacking these "foreign" foundations. He had to ensure that the higher foundations would not collapse due to the changes happening below, maintaining balance at every level.
He had to force himself to remain focused, suppressing pain and instability, while engraving these extrely complex patterns onto his foundations, where even the smallest mistake, even the slightest deviation, could result in
catastrophe!
With every bit of progress, the difficulty and pressure only increased, the resistance growing stronger... and his progress slowed even further, almost grinding to a halt at tis.
"...No wonder I couldn't find any record of a four-rged law in history," Richard muttered as he stared up at the ceiling, his voice carrying a trace of exhaustion and disbelief.
Then, after a long mont of thought, he found himself speaking aloud, "Just stabilizing the new inscriptions puts in this miserable state..." He paused briefly, his brows tightening, before continuing, "...how did Father find a way to link all these laws together so they don't interfere or destroy one another? The
seven foundations are completely stable!"
Poof
Richard returned to a ditation posture, sitting upright once more, forcing
his breathing to steady and his mind to clear. He looked in a certain direction,
his gaze firm and resolute. "...He's already done everything he could." Then he tightened his grip on the two pearls, the faint flow of energy still entering his body. "Now it's my turn to do my part."
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