Alex wasted no time with the looks being sent his way as he lurched back and hissed. Bullrushing in the blink of an eye, too flustered even to use his gates, but able to move so fast he was back at the healers before a gold crown would have clinked upon marble floors, so fast did he teleport through his home.

So fast he was there to catch Zhu Bi’s dying gasps. Alex’s eyes widening with horror, a scream in his throat, clawing for release.

Sensing the great great granddaughter he never even knew he had slowly slipping away.

“Dong Xiao, heal her!” Alex’s desperate cry echoed through his palatial manor, resonating in harmonic sympathy all could hear, yet all his seneschal could do is crash to his knees, Zhu Bi still held in his healer’s grasp.

“Forgive me, my lord. What you ask… I have given my all. But the damage done, the lingering hate of gods long gone… no Silver could possibly heal this. I… I can buy her a handful of minutes, Child of the Heavens,” his seneschal sobbed, despair and regret radiating from red-rimmed eyes. “I can do no more than that.”

The blood roared in Alex’s ears as a terrible wave of horror assailed him.

Imagining all too well his vile enemy’s laughter echoing through his skull as Alex’s voyage through life hit bitter waters once more.

Before froze, eyes widenening as time itself seemed to pause.

Alex locked gazes with his seneschal. “No one short of a Gold could heal my granddaughter.”

The sobbing seneschal jerked a nod. “Yes… pray forgive me, my lord...”

Alex shook his head. “Apologize for nothing.” Alex’s mind began to race as flashes of all he had hoped to accomplished blazed across his mind’s eye.

His enemies were dead.

His realm was clean.

All that remained was the bitter tidings of ultimate sorrow…

And the power to wash it free.

“If Gold is needed for my Zhu Bi, then Gold you shall be!”

With those words Alex held up a pristine prize that caused his seneschal to cry out in awe and wonder even as the entire palatial compound seemed to explode.

All of existance turning to pristine golden light, reality itself bending to Alex’s will.

You are now accessing World Seed Interace Sheet!

You have invested 1 Tier 3 Gold Soul stone into your Eternal Palace!

You have secured Gold Ranked Dining capable of feeding you and your closest friends fare worthy of the Jade Emperor himself! Any savory or sweet treat you’ve ever seen or can imagine is now just a single bell pull away! Enjoy the most glorious and exquisite fair the world you left behind has to offer, so perfectly made that any Michelin star restauranteer would be green with envy! You will enjoy supernatural health benefits, including +1 Rank to Vitality and Scholarship for 48 hours after eating! Your thoughts will be supernaturally clear and lucid even as you drink the finest beverages to be found upon any king’s table, so infused with spiritual essence that it’s as if you benefited from 4 free hours of daily cultivation! Additionally, every meal will contain a Golden Apple that, should you choose to bite the succulent fruit will fill you with joy and halt all aging for a full day and night. (Golden Apples expire within 1 day. Golden Apples cannot be consumed outside of your Domain. 1 out of 3 points spent)

Your suits have all been upgraded to Gold tier status! Gold tier bedrooms assuring the most restful sleep of any cultivator’s life, in addition to 4 free hours of Gold tier cultivation and the need for only 4 hours of sleep are just two of the benefits to be accrued from sleeping in accommodations so luxurious that your body reverse aging for 1 day for every day rested! All skill checks to recover from all injuries, whether physical, spiritual, or related to cultivation, will be made as if said cultivator enjoyed +1 Gold tier Vitality and Spiritual Energy! Enjoy the most glorious dreams you can imagine and wake up feeling nearly as refreshed as the gods! Enjoy an additional 2 tiers of effective scholarship during the 20 hours after sleeping within any Gold tier suite! (2 out of 3 points spent.)

Note! Free perk in effect: Familial inheritance is now in effect! Gold tier quarters and dining facilities will magically expand to incorporate not only room inheritor but spouse and direct descendants!

Congratulations! You have elevated your Eternal Palace to Gold Tier status! All servants, guardians, entertainers, and instructors, are now fully sentient and aware with lives, dreams, and accommodations (that do not count against your room count) of their own.

Congratulations! The sleepers have awoken!

All Guardians and aids are Gold Rank 1, and they know just who to thank for their transformation!

You have invested 1 point in expansion. Congratulations! You now have sufficient space to feed and shelter 1,000 of your closest friends (and their direct descendants!) Never feel lonely again! (3 out of 3 points spent)

In that breathless, endless moment, Alex clapped his hands, the world changing with the reverberation released.

His magnificent palace expanded in ways wondrous and profound.

Countless servants living lives of waking dream came to life in truth…

And his beloved Seneschal resonated with the pristine power of a Gold.

“My lord, I have awakened!” Seneschal Dong Xiao’s eyes widened with the rapture of a lifetime’s worth of forgotten wisdom and lore becoming his once more. As all he could have ever been and perhaps countless lifetimes ago truly was, awakened once more.

His gaze filled with tears and Alex had no doubt he would have slammed his poor head upon tiles of ivory and gold, had he not been carrying Alex’s descendant in his hands.

“You’ve been awake for quite some time,” Alex said with a warm chuckle. “But I’m happy if I was able to bring you back to yourself, my friend.”

Dong Xiao bowed his head, rapturous gaze filling with the serious concern of a healer once more.

And how grateful Alex was to see the gaze of a man preparing himself for a difficult task, not one overwhelmed with despair.

“I can never repay for the gift you have given me, master. Now please, allow me to put it to best use. For a procedure this delicate, may I beg my lord for privacy?”

Alex bowed his head. “I will be at the library if you need me,” he said, with a final anxious look for a still ravaged Zhu Bi, though his eyes burned with hope as Dong Xiao gently put her down on a bed now infused with the spiritual energy of all his Gold tier bedrooms and began chanting over the downed Kitsune as Alex slowly shut the door behind him, ignoring all the stares now being sent his way by absolutely everyone he raced passed along luxuriously appointed hallways now fit for an imperial palace, not a single soul even pretending not to be riveted to the young man doing his best to put all his worries behind him, and focus on the one positive step he could take at this moment.

Turning his dreams of the perfect library to a reality.

When he opened the door to the library proper, he was not surprised to find it empty, for all that the burnished hardwood chairs and tables, the luxurious thick stuffed leather reading chairs, magical lamps and tall grand bookcases reminded him of a certain wizard’s academy sans magical hat and awkward wand waving teens.

Presently empty of anyone at all.

Save for himself, and the magnificent vision now thrumming inside his skull, struck by a sudden epiphany. During the countless hours he had imagined a perfect library for himself back at Royal Phoenix, he had known just how he wished to improve his innermost sanctum.

A flash of insight and memory of a certain god’s mischevious smile was all he needed to invest another Gold Rank 4 Soul stone in forging a miracle he doubted even the jade emperor himself could imagine, in the world he had left behind.

It all had to do with a library that his gifts had elevated to a Divine tier already, allowing him to supercede all normal limitations. And if a skilled cultivator could detect books with flawed techniques, or those purposely infected with traps or compulsions… if a skilled sage, seer, or librarian could sense the ideal cultivation manuals for a prospective student, then why couldn’t a Divine tier library? One that perhaps was far more than a simple collection of books?

And Alex couldn’t help but chase that vision.

Because every path forward to devising a proper cultivation technique from Silver to Gold had been ruthlessly blocked by his enemies. And perhaps had been for thousands of years. Such that even now, after all he had seen and endured, he had found perfection only in a single Silver Cable.

If he was to ever evolve beyond that, he knew he was in desperate need of help beyond what any mortal cultivator could give him. Particularly in a world where his enemies would do absolutely anything and everything imaginable to sabotage his growth and break his foundation that they could.

What he needed was something closer to the divine.

Congratulations! Your library is now overseen by a Spiritual Librarian! This spiritual librarian can sense all traps, bindings, and contracts hidden within the pages of any cultivation manual. This Librarian can sense any and all flawed techniques, exercises, and cultivation paths. All flawed passages will be greyed out, assuring safe reading for any borrower! If the entire tome is fatally flawed, it will be blank! (You possess 3 Divine Tomes you yourself forged into being! Jade tier prerequisites superceded!) (1 out of 4 points spent).

Bloodlines now in effect! Congratulations Your Spiritual Librarian can now determine the best cultivation manuals for your affinities with a single drop of blood! (This is a divine tier perk. You possess 3 Divine Tomes you yourself forged into being! All divine tier prerequisits superceded! (2 out of 4 points spent.)

Unified Theory is now in effect! Your Spiritual Librarian can now generate a personalized Cultivation manual for your background and affinities! The most ideal portions of all manuals within library will be compiled into a pristine manual tailored to you and you alone! This manual will be free of all traps and hindrances. This manual will contain excerpts from multiple manuals and is meant to be studied and followed sequentially! An unlimited number of manuals can be generated from the database of tomes within your library’s collection. Note. This is not necessarily the best cultivation path any disciple could conceivably have, merely the best within the tomes you have at your disposal. This is a Divine tier perk! - You posses 3 Divine Tomes you yourself forged into being. Divine tier prerequisites have been fully superceded!

And suddenly thousands of tomes that had been sedately sitting on their hardwood shelves burst into swirling flight. A maelstrom of books in the very center of the library.

And within the dark cloud of near infinite spiritual energy and posibility, twining the strands of Fate, Time, and Spirit, Alex saw the warm blue glow in the center of that mass, like a brilliant eye openin up to awareness at last.

Alex suddenly felt such a profound sense of awe and reverence that he would have crashed to his knees, before the urgency of the moment crashed back into him. He was as aware as anyone could be of just how momentous an accomplishment his forging truly was. But before he left that sublime state, he knew he had one more facet of his forged universe that he could change with a temporarily divine act of will. A thousand different possibilities called out to him. He could fill his palace with Gold tier luxuries, performers and entertainers… he could invite bring life to a hundred specialists in countless fields. He could increase the number of rooms within his palace, and all the support structures to assure guests could be cared for in perpetuity another order of magnitude.

Instead, he was determined to invest it in a single redundancy.

An absolutely unnecessary clause, purely redundant that shouldn’t even be necessary, his Spiritual Librarian sure to spot and blank the passage of any flawed treatise or manual that might cross his hands and enter this library. Once more, it was Divine Rank. What trap, no matter how vile, could possibly get through?

But he was owed a tome by a clan that hated him beyond comprehension, a hatred he felt for them in equal measure. A fury that now burned just as hot as the fires with which he would burn all that his enemies had ever loved. And should he ever actually get a hold of a divine tome, he had absolutely no doubt that there would be a clause, trick, or trap that would somehow be able to slip past his defenses and spell his downfall, no matter how he designed his wondrous library. And against that hazard, he could only think of one counter.

The Final Defense is now in effect! It doesn’t matter that your Divine Tier defenses assure no corrupt passages can escape your Librarian Guardian! You have invested an additional point with the Fate of your realm, assuring that any passage of any tome that crosses your library made with malice or the intent to harm will never be read by your guests, servants, or your Spiritual Guardian! (4 out of 4 points spent.)

You have invested invested 28 Ranks into your Eternal Palace! (+2 free library ranks, gift of your patron.) Jade tier Soul Stones (or a millennia in isolated cultivation) will be needed to develop your palace any further!

Alex collapsed to his knees, shuddering at his monstrous undertaking. He was surprised and shaken to find himself drained so utterly, so completely.

But then again, he had never dared to invest a full 7 Golden tiers of limitless potential into his World Seed before now.

Slowly however, as he hovered between cognizance and exhausted stupor, the sound of a thousand thousand violently flapping books became the soft rustle of pages on a pair of tables flapping in an unseen breeze.

And then utter silence.

Only then did Alex open his eyes, surprised to find everything back in its place… save for a single librarian looking down at him, wearing a strange cross between cultivator’s robes and the skirt and blouse his favorite childhood librarian had worn long, long ago.

She smiled fondly down at him, and Alex couldn’t help grinning back. Her features were more Japanese than classic Han, but then again, so had been the young librarian who had so enjoyed helping the elementary schoolboy Alex had once been.

“Alex?”

Alex grinned. “You remembered.”

She chuckled softly, tilting her head with a bemused smile. “So did you, Alex.” She looked down at herself. “Surprisingly well.”

Alex winked. “You made a very strong impression on this little boy, Mrs. Tanaka.”

Mrs. Tanaka laughed. “Call me Aiko.” She teased him with her smile. “You’re not going to tell me I was your first crush, are you?”

Alex felt his cheeks blaze unexpectedly. “Maybe you were, at that.” He gave her a look strange with longing. “Aiko?”

“Yes, Alex?”

“Do you remember?”

She gazed at him for long moments, giving him the saddest of smiles. “I do, Alex. For all that it now it feels a bit like a dream, like I’ve awoken from a long, long sleep, I remember it all.”

Alex swallowed, feeling his heart hammer in his chest.

There were so many questions he was desperate to ask her.

But the sad half-smile she gave him said all that needed saying. The slow shake of her head was completely unnecessary. But all he said was, “I’m in desperate need of a Silver tier technique I can use to weave a seven cable container that will hold the strongest Gold core imaginable.”

Aiko looked at him for long moments, rubbing her pert little chin.

“Alex?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

Alex shuddered, feeling the world start to spin, dizzy with sudden dread.

“What are you saying?”

She chuckled softly, brushing his sweaty brow with a checkered cloth of spiritual energy, seeming to peer with gentle eyes into his very soul. “I’m saying you have a massive supercable not even the Jade tier cultivation manuals you gleaned from the hall of Emperors can account for, and you had the gall to counterweave six additional cables to it. It forms a perfect orbit about your soul many moons would envy, and has a diameter beyond belief. For all that it simultaneously rests comfortably within you. The thought of spacing six, or eleven, more Silver cables to generate a spiritual energy field strong enough to contain a Golden Core?” She slowly shook her head. “There’s no way you could mimic that cable six, or eleven more times, Alex. Nothing could.” She chuckled throatily. “Honestly, Alex, what you have created is an absolute impossibility, according to every treatise within this library. Save, of course, for your own.”

Alex gazed at her for long, horrified moments, his stomach churning with dread so bad he could barely stand.

“So I failed.”

The words were little more than a broken whisper. It was all he could do, choking back the bitter gall rising up within him.

Aiko slowly shook her head. “I didn’t say you failed. Only that I have no cultivation manual or treatise that accounts for any Cable as massive as the one you formed, Alex.”

Alex shook his head in frustration. “But how the hell else am I going to contain a Golden Core if I can’t weave a net of cables around it?”

Aiko smiled. “That’s a very good question, Alex. If I were you, I’d give it some thought. Your future does sort of depend on it.”

Alex groaned. “This is what I get...”

The librarian’s eyes grew sad.

Alex winced. “I mean… thank you for trying.”

The sacred spirit who might or might not have been a young grad student he had crushed on as a child, gave a sad shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Alex. But your Cable is far beyond anything we have in our collection. If I had a definitive answer I could give you, I would do so. I would suggest updating me with another dozen tomes of Gold Calibre or better, but you already blessed me with a half dozen Jade tier manuals from which I can now derive inferences that can be of aid to even those of more uncommon meridian configurations. Though I’m afraid none of those have any revelations that would do your present situation any good at all.”

She then winked, somehow bending down and whispering in his ear, just as she had when he was a little boy, for all that he was now considerably taller than her. “Riddle me this, Alex. What do all Golden Realms paradigms have in common?”

Alex blinked at this, both chilled and awed by the almost teasing expression on her face. He swallowed, somehow feeling as awkward as he had at nine. “Umm… tension cable configurations?” She stared at him wordlessly, reminding him oddly of WiFu waiting for him to wake up and read between the lines.

He felt a flush coming over his cheeks as he cleared his throat. “They’re all forms of containment vessels, using both tension in the formation of their meridian structure and compression during core formation. The Pearlescent Path I’m helping Yinzi and Hao Chan forge is forgoing the tension part altogether.”

Now his cheeks were burning with the unspoken reprimand behind her smile. “That’s not fair, Aiko. You didn’t even exist an hour ago!”

“And whose fault is that?”

Alex flushed and rolled his eyes. “It seems to be working so far. But never mind that. What you’re getting at. Or oddly… not getting at. It’s about containment. Forces and fields generated, that sort of thing. Am I right?”

She flashed a brilliant smile. “I’m eager to see what you finally come up with, Alex. Please don’t forget to include an honest assessment about what did and did not work for you with as much visceral intensity as you possibly can, just like you did with your Eternal Fox Unified Cultivation Manual. A true treasure, and I’m glad you included both an addendum and apology that resolved the flaw that made it so deadly to those with incomplete configurations!”

Alex flushed, still feeling a bit guilty, knowing it had taken at least one naive student’s life, a risk that would never have happened, had she been taught by any living teacher. Now, however, his divine tome was able to teach anyone at just the rate they could handle, including at the speed of comprehension he, Yinzi, and her cousin Hao Yin had embraced during an oddly transcendent carriage ride where years’ worth of lessons were learned in a matter of weeks. It might not offer a cultivator a body as strong as steel or a dragon’s bones, a flaw he desperately needed to correct for himself, but the secrets it did offer were priceless, nonetheless.

The guardian spirit flashed an almost teasing smile. “Though I will be editing out any reference to Silver Swan or the Pearlescent Path for about 95% of your disciples, Alex, since chastity here is even less common than it was in college during the ‘90s! And your midnight mistress perk is one that absolutely every unclaimed boy living here who has been able to snag a room has made use of, pretty much nightly. Why do you think they all fought with such killing intent during your insane little competition? Now, is there anything else I can help you with today, Alex?”

Alex forced himself to speak on, wondering if blazing cheeks was the price to be paid for his divine treasure of a librarian, and just how many of the students now calling his palace their home would be sent fleeing. He purposely did not look for the telltale signs of a mischievously swinging tale or fur-tipped ears that her luxuriously thick hair might be hiding. Aiko had enjoyed both history and folklore, educating her young charges in both. She had definitely had a thing for the mischief makers of most pantheons, declaring them misunderstood outlets for every culture’s inequities. He recalled all too well that she had had a thing for misunderstood bad-boys as well.

Before one of her ex boyfriends killed her on her wedding day, a handful of years later.

He flushed and looked away, knowing that awful memory had no place in this realm. Though it did make a sad kind of sense, that causality would equip him with a librarian that knew no more about what happened after he had passed on than he did.

He cleared his throat and spoke on, though he couldn’t bear to meet her eyes right then. “I’m looking for any tomes that might help me forge a body strengthening technique that would synergize perfectly with Eternal Fox. I think the three Dark Qi tomes Elder Ru lent me are the key.” He solemnly handed her back the tomes he had borrowed. He couldn’t hold back a smile when her eyes lit up with awe and wonder, as if assimilating all their secrets, and of course, being instantly aware of their strengths and flaws, the minute he handed her the tomes.

“I think those three tomes might be the key. But if you wouldn’t mind highlighting what passages might be ideal for me… or at least, shading in the parts that are clearly flawed conclusions or deliberate traps… I would appreciate it.”

Aiko flashed an oddly relieved smile. “Thank you, Alex. For a moment there, I was afraid I’d have to disappoint you twice in a row! And after you were sweet enough to cry at my funeral as well.”

And before Alex could think of a response to that, she solemnly handed him a fresh tome now in the palm of her hand, which he somehow remembered her thoughtfully scribing over a period of hours, for all that it was before him in the blink of an eye.

She flashed Alex a sad smile. “I must say, Alex. The amount of vindictive hate tainting the first two tomes is chilling. How is it that the gods of that world hate you even more than my drunk-ass boyfriend did? Anyway, let’s never mention that again.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Those two books have two minor flashes of insight you might find illuminating. The rest of their insights and, indeed, their work as a whole, were corrupted by several gods who found the idea of mortals daring to harness chaos absolutely unforgivable, at least one of whom was hoping your future incarnations would be tainted by those tomes as well.”

Alex swallowed, speechless, when Aiko flashed a warm smile. “They have insights that could lead you to a Silver Tier bone hardening technique that you can generate with hardly any effort at all! However, there is a deadly flaw… one which your abilities compensate for perfectly!”

Alex blinked at that. “Really.”

She nodded. “There is a brittleness in that hardness. For all that the cultivation technique does allow for healthy marrow able to generate fresh red blood cells, the Dark Qi latticework strengthening the bones themselves are not very osteoblast friendly.”

Alex frowned thoughtfully. “Osteoblasts are the cells that make new bone. So your saying once a bone breaks, I’m done for?”

“Hardly that,” she said with a smile. “More like fresh bone growth is massively suppressed. It would take a practitioner years to repair any bones that shattered under an enemy’s blows, assuming they even survived the encounter, but it would heal. Eventually. Yet your Eternal Fox, a Divine technique, trumps its flaws. Your bones would regenerate in minutes, almost as fast as they do now.”

Alex winced. “But there is a price in pain.”

Aiko’s gaze grew solemn. “I know.” She wrapped the spine of the tome she put in his hands, her warm brown eyes pinning his own. “Most of this compilation contains excerpts from the third tome you handed me, definitely the most fascinating. Would you believe it managed to survive in its original form for countless centuries, not infected by a single divine trap or curse? I think it was because the author was clever enough to preface it with half a dozen examples of everything that could go wrong with any cultivator daring to do that which the gods forbade.” She flashed a bemused smile. “While leaving tiny notes very few would understand at the end of each red herring. And the final passage, Alex, I think you’ll appreciate in ways few others could. But the price you would pay trying to form the master latticework within is something no mortal could manage. Perhaps that’s why it was left alone. Still, you might find it an inspirational read, and it too gives hints to a Silver tier bone strengthening technique that, though quite a bit more complex than the ones mentioned before, it would be no harder to heal than bone normally is.”

Alex gazed at Aiko for long moments before honoring her with a solemn bow, feeling an odd mixture of disappointment, and gratitude. As much as he had hoped for a clear path to Gold for the sake of both his cultivation, and a body strengthening technique equally strong, at least he finally had in his hands a way to strengthen his bones to Silver. At least he might not have to worry about a skull so fragile that a single lucky blow delivered by an opposing Silver could instantly crush his skull. Blows that, to them, might border on the insignificant. How easily had his bones snapped when he dared challenge the might of Silver Giants and worse during his final days at Royal Phoenix Academy?

Alex shuddered at the thought, remembering how close he came to death today, even after getting the drop on a distracted Silver Giant and his Bronze tier lackeys. Because for all that he had torn through his foes less than an hour ago, it had been desperation as much as fury that had driven him. Forever needing to seize the Vor. Forever needing to overwhelm his enemies with Silver Tier Speed, Strength, and 8 tiers of a unified killing art. Because if he didn’t take them out fast and hard enough, he’d be the one collapsing to the ground making the grunting sounds of a brain-dead idiot with the first solid blow his opponents managed to land upon his skull.

If there was one easy counter to Eternal Fox, it was turning his brain to paste. A feat that would be nearly effortless for any cultivator who managed to get in a lucky blow, when he didn’t even have a proper bone hardening technique.

A haunting truth that was always in the back of his mind.

His heart beat with sudden hope as he tightly gripped the compilation his divine spirit librarian had placed in his hand. A tome that could see him to heights of Silver, strengthening him to the point he could safely spar with peers of his level without a chance blow delivered to a helmetless head being at such high risk of killing him. And, assuming he could take full advantage of the draconic blood now hardening and strengthening his body, reducing a full damage tier from all his opponent’s blows, perhaps his bones would almost be as strong as Gold.

He couldn’t be sure, of course. But he desperately hoped that would be the case. And he would work just as hard as he could to transform that hope into a reality.

“Thank you, Aiko. I am more grateful than words could say.”

He blinked in surprise when inhumanly strong hands halted his bow at exactly 45 degrees.

“This is your realm, Alex,” she said with a soft smile. “The Child of the Heavens should bow no lower, not even to your newly risen god of knowledge.”

Alex gazed slack-jawed at her. “You’re joking… right?”

She chuckled throatily. “Well, I’m certainly not calling you Highlord or Allfather, Alex. Because if I was a god...what does that make you?”

Alex smirked. “A fool wise enough to know he’ll need a hell of a lot more than a Silver tier bone hardening technique if he wants to face the world with that title.”

Her grin turned teasing. “And right now, you lack any body hardening technique at all. So let me leave you with the same advice I did, all those years ago. Put away all distractions and study, Alex. Somehow, I’m almost positive you’re going to find the secrets within far more fascinating than you ever did World History. Once you’ve finally strengthened your foundation? Then you can go out and play.”

Alex flashed a bleak smile. “By play, do you mean hunt down the red bastards that had threatened my home and rip them free of existence for all time?”

Aiko winked. “I would never dare say those words, Alex. Because your universe cares nothing for the tainted karma of a world you left behind, but some things are best left unsaid. Now go study, Alex. I sense several dozen of your people approaching. Some of them are sensitive enough to sense the change, though most are just eager for a cultivation manual to study.”

Alex chuckled softly. “And I’m sure they’re all full of questions I’d rather not have to answer,” he said as he summoned a gate leading right to his quarters. A feat which he now found both effortless and instantaneous, at least within his own world, instantly stepping through to his quarters and closing the portal with a final wave to his old friend.