"Where have you been?" Umbra greeted Giza with a tone of misery and his eyezs casting the judgent that he couldn't while he was locked in the process of absorption. "You keep going off on your own... hey, let go of ."
Amidst what was supposed to be him complaining, Giza approached him from the side and slowly wrapped her arms around his torso, then with a sigh she braced herself onto him and closed her eyes. "Giza," Umbra called to her again, staring at the strand of blue coming from her scalp and stratching the full length of her hair. "What happened to you?"
"It is indeed, different," Giza mumbled while she held on to him. "The sensation, the atmosphere, My King, your body is cold to the touch, I never noticed before."
"Answer , what happened to you?" Umbra demanded a response from her, eyes wide in shock when he saw the blush of her right cheek and the hazel in her eye above it. "Who did this to you, are you hurt?"
"I am fine, my King, just a little confused," She released him, floating in the void next to him with her hand covering her eye when it began streaming tears again. "It is everything I imagined it would be, and so much more, I am overwheld by this feeling of... warmth." She furrowed her brows.
"Who did this to you?" Umbra cald himself and turned his attention to the anti-quasar now being rapidly absorbed into his body. "Why have you deliberately been avoiding the question, Giza?"
"I am sorry, my King, but I would rather not explain this struggle to you. It will take so ti for to get used to this new sensation, I beg your patience while I try to suppress it." She smiled at him, a genuine smile almost radiating with warmth.
Realising she had co into contact with so form of being of light, and ruling everyone out based on the conversation they had before she left the last ti, Umbra was already aware that this was Sol's doing without even sensing the mana running through her body, but if she was unwilling to explain what happened to him then he had no chance of getting it out of her.
He had discovered that what she thought was her loyalty to him was nothing more than co-operation, what she thought was her unwavering readiness to serve him in every way was nothing more than a mimicry of what she had observed through other beings who displayed total loyalty, like Ikaris whom she obsessed over.
Umbra figured out that the being he nad Giza was naive, she was easy to manipulate because she had no prior interaction with anyone else, she was a tool he could always sway in whatever way he wanted as long as he said the right things.
Even as a being of pure evil and darkness, Giza was innocent.
"If you have trouble suppressing it, I can help you." He offered to get rid of the obvious Godslayer mana surging through her body, but she reclined from his touch when he reached his hand towards her. "Giza."
"Apologies, my King," She lowered her head and shook it, "I wish to rid myself of this invasive power on my own, I understand that to you who are experienced with it, destroying it would be no trouble, but I need to also learn to counter the enemy."
Without raising her head, Giza disappeared again, swallowed by the void as she entered the inverted emptiness that stood parallel to reality.
"Fuck,
Sol Vestic
, what did you do to her?"
°°°
Aside from Giza's interruption, Sol was able to continue travelling towards the edge of the Khalla-Nova Collective without hassle or any other interruption, he did sense several Primordial beings out in the distance while he travelled, but they showed no interest in him, so of them even actively avoided his path, others hid their preseces and the weaker ones fled when they sensed him.
Three days after setting out, Sol was before the great barrier that had healed after Ikaris had shattered it in her fight with the Eighth General which was what allowed him to get his first hint of the Collective outside.
"This is it, the edge of a collective," Jena appeared when Sol slowed and rested his feet on the barrier which was at least a dozen tis stronger in this area because of the overlap between Khalla-Nova and the Grand Collective.
"I never imagined I would need to venture beyond these stars, I have only explored one out of the millions of collectives, the grand collective is so vast," Sol placed his hand on the barriers. "And yet, I am being forced to seek outside help because of a ti limit."
"It would take years to do the sa across the Grand, Uncle," Jena huffed and crossed her hands, kicking the barrier and watching the waves of light rapidly ripple across the horizons. Read latest stories on empire
"Yeah," Sol took a deep breath, removing the chackles that held his Divinity locked away and placing his hand on the barrier, "I don't know what lies beyond this threshold and what hostility I will be faced with," He admitted, seeing the sigil on his arm which connected to his wives light up when all three of them sensed his uncertainty.
"It has to be done." Sol stood properly on the barrier, leaning his torso and angling himself for a punch. "This is the only-"
With a single punch the masks that had protected the Grand and Khalla nova caved, and Sol was sucked out by an unexpected vaccum that spat him into the passage then sealed the barriers shut before he could even stop spinning.
"What the hell was that?" Jena caught Sol by his arms and righted him, creating thrusters beneath her legs to steady the two of them.
"Aren't you supposed to be eight years old?" Sol raised his brows at her.
"I am, but that frightened !" She chuckled and released him. "Did it harm you?"
"No," He turned his back while the sigil on his hand slightly dimd and then went dormant again. "Let's keep going, Jena," Sol created a large barrier of his own beneath his feet, staring in the direction of the collective so far away that he could barely see it and then preparing himself for a jump.
"Extend your powers as far forwad as you can, create an acceleration tunnel, your estimate of a week from here to there is too long, I want to get there in half the ti."
"Understood," Jena closed her eyes and started creating one ring after the other, each spread almost as far as a galaxy and each slightly smaller than the last. "I think I covered as much as the full distance of three Origins," She looked at him. "I am not mom, the power I have is the sa but as a clone of the original I am limited to so degree, I am not as strong as she is.." She lowered her head.
"That's fine."
"What?"
"The tasks I need done are tasks that I was assured by Alpha that you were easily capable of accomplishing, don't sweat the small stuff, Jena." Sol smiled at her and ruffled her hair.
"Right!" The mini System chuckled and vanished, resting within his soul while he stared ahead at the rings.
Unlike the inside of a collective, the mana out in the passage was harder to manipulate and took far longer to absorb because of how sparse the particles were, almost as if the mbrane of space was deliberately keeping them apart.
Knowing this, Sol had already abandoned the idea of external absorption and was instead focused on internal mana reproduction, putting pressure on his soul's inner worlds and the vast collectives within him to specifically recreate Divine mana rather than expose any prospective enemy to his Godslayer mana and reveal his trump card.
There was no friction here in the passage, so Sol made a show of exerting power to the point that his collective dimd within him with his initial leap through the first ring which collapsed the space between him and the second ring, granting him speed even faster than what had almost killed him on his way here.
"This is nuts...!" Sol stared ahead, keeping his trajectory steady while he moved to prevent any accidents from occuring. "There has to be a way to replicate this inside of a Collective's dense mana field!" He exclaid excitedly.
[Maybe there is, but is now the right ti to be thinking about such things, Uncle?] Jena asked from within his soul and he chuckled.
"I suppose not!"
Each ring was the equivalent of a galaxy apart from the next, but in the span of a second he was easily crossing thousands of them, the tunnel of rings looked like an endless tunnel of light instead. And for each he passed, the system would adjust the others and create another.
Far away, where no being existed, where no entity resided, what was an infinitely long tunnel to his eyes was a small dot barely moving from one large source of light to another smaller but much brighter one.
"Three to four days max, One month to complete this quest, and if I can't, I have no choice but to return emptyhanded."
Sol's eyes narrowed and his attitude beca dry of any fun or humour.
"Wait for , Ikaris, I will return."
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