Chapter 034

Avi watched as the readings on display, using the sensors placed throughout the room, continued to flow across her monitor. The changing readings were a relief and a mystery.

On the one hand, it seemed as though the likelihood of Joram randomly exploding had dropped significantly over the past few days. On the other, well…. The situation seemed to have gone from a rickety cart full of nitroglycerin rolling down a hill to someone priming a nuke for launch.

Whatever he’d done, it seemed to have worked out well for him. Yes, the concentrations in his body of that new type of energy were getting to be on the ridiculous side of things, much like how Matriarch Aneath felt like to her.

Cultivators, no matter which continent they originated from, wound up with vast stores of mana inside of themselves, in their cores. But also in the very fibre of their beings. Cultivation changed a person down to their very nature.

So, if one weren’t used to being around cultivators, then their instincts would scream at them to get away from the incredibly dangerous being. That said, cultivators of a lower Tier could always sense the disparity between their strength and a higher-Tier cultivator. Sure, often enough they’d not know exactly what that person’s strength was, but they’d know that they wouldn’t stand a chance against them.

Well, that is if they were cultivating the same Tier of Mana. The problem that some ran across was that even if you were cultivating Tier 2 Mana, Earth Qi, you’d not feel anything from someone who cultivated Tier 3 Mana, Heaven Qi. Yes, their reservoir of lower-grade mana would be much larger than someone of a lower Tier, but that didn’t always tip off the weaker cultivator.

Avi shook her head, bringing her attention back to the readings. Since she’d fine-tuned the sensors, she’d been enjoying a higher resolution on her scans. Which meant that she was able to track how the energy was now flowing through Joram’s body. From what she saw, it looked as though he was now able to cycle the energy through his body much like how one would circulate mana while cultivating.

Well, mostly.

He still seemed to have trouble getting it back to its origin, namely his head. He seemed to have done well enough with what trickled out of his head, but wasn’t having much success on the final approach.

Yes, he was nourishing his body incredibly well with the new energy, and it was soaking into his body, being assimilated, almost perfectly. But. That final bit of returning the remaining energy to one’s Core was an important step too. There were many theories about why, but they all agreed that it was important.

From the Encompass the Universe manual, written by Altaea herself, it just said that full-cycling was important to keeping a “healthy” Core, whatever that actually meant. Perhaps the energy that flowed through one’s energy channels was tempered in some way, adding solidity to the Core.

Avi shrugged. This was all new ground that needed to be covered, recorded, examined, and interpreted. There was a lot of work to do!

* * * * *

1344.13.26

Tillia was… stressed.

So many things were weighing on her these days. Yes, she’d finally broken through to Tier 3, a major accomplishment by any standard in the Clan. They’d even thrown her a party. But that had only added to the social pressure on her from families trying to worm their way into her good books, nevermind those who went directly to her parents.

There was also the issue of Joram still missing in action. Well, she assumed he was still alive. The Matriarch had only told them that she’d found where he was, but was unable to retrieve him just yet. But that was also top-secret as they’d been instructed to tell no one. Which also put pressure on them as they were very much tired of the various rumours and slander floating about the Clan.

The biggest pressure on her at the moment was the return of Joram’s parents. It was much less dramatic than their previous return under relatively the same circumstances.

Tillia had learned that Sulia was expecting when, with the help of Ivaryn, she walked into the apartments they shared and exclaimed how good it was to be home.

Now, the day following that memorable entrance, Tillia was rearranging Joram’s room to once more include a bassinet. She took her time, placing his bed by the window, then slid it over a bit more so that the morning sun would shine directly on his head as the first rays of day came over the horizon.

She then shifted the bassinet a bit so that it wouldn’t get direct sunlight until the second hour after dawn, hopefully giving everyone a bit more time to sleep in in the morning.

Tillia sighed. The bassinet wasn’t likely to get much use in the first several months of the child’s life if Sulia and Ivaryn continued with the co-sleeping like they had with Joram. Well, it didn’t really matter much so long as the room was set up and ready for when it was needed.

She tinkered a bit with the mana-gathering array disguised as a mobile. This one was a set of vividly coloured birds in flight, each one exquisitely carved to be as lifelike as possible. She wasn’t sure if that was a great idea or not, seeing as how some of those birds weren’t exactly friendly to humans, but shrugged it off because by the time the child was old enough to go out and about, she’d have already learned what was safe and what wasn’t.

When finished, she went and sat at the edge of Joram’s bed, gazing at everything, but not quite seeing it all. She was too caught up in the past to fully appreciate the present. According to Healer Reursa and, more importantly, Midwife Ulanan, the baby was due any day now. The child was turned the right way, was head down, and appeared to be healthy as could be.

She wondered just how much longer Joram would be away, not wanting him to miss out on his new sibling growing up, not to mention the infant’s arrival.

Tillia sighed again and was about to get up when she felt a presence behind her suddenly appear. There was no noise, nothing to let her know that someone had approached. Her senses were alive with feedback, Tier 3 having enhanced her senses to ridiculous heights.

She smelled a faint perfume that she couldn’t quite place, but also that electric scent you’d catch just before a very potent thunderstorm. She heard cloth moving ever-so-slightly as it moved across flesh and other fabrics. She sensed a… void- perhaps calling it a blank space in the mana worked better?- where she expected to feel the cultivation of another person, telling her that they likely had an aura shroud item or were well-versed in stealth techniques… or had a significantly higher cultivation than she had.

But if the second were true, then why was she able to smell the other party? Her instincts were telling her that she would die very quickly should she do something wrong, but the anger that was rising in her chest at the thought of some stranger trespassing here, in Joram’s room, in the soon-to-be nursery, quelled that instinct.

So, Tillia slowly turned her head so that she could catch a glimpse of who it was that dared to intrude into this sacred place. Then a bead of sweat rolled down her forehead and managed to get into her eye just as she caught sight of someone in brown robes, their hood up, but not quite managing to hide that the person wore a high ponytail on their hear, or maybe some silly hat?

What really caught her attention before the sweat blurred the image, stinging her eye, was the smaller figure being laid on the bed.

The purple hair was a bit darker, his features leaner, not to mention how much taller he seemed. But it was Joram.

Tillia cursed out loud as she rubbed the sweat out of her eye, then looked back to the stranger and Joram, but only found Joram laying there, eyes closed. She rubbed at her eyes again, not quite sure that she wasn’t just having a waking dream.

But sure enough, it was Joram laying there in what looked like a very plain white robe. His hair was much shorter than it had been when last she’d seen him, looking almost like a warrior’s close-cropped style. As she’d noticed before, he was also taller, leaner.

She looked at him, noticing the changes and wondering at them. His baby fat was mostly gone, leaving his face looking older than it probably should have. She wasn’t sure if it was because of malnourishment or growth, though, because he had indeed grown.

He looked like he should be in his early teens rather than just over seven years old. She had learned that the Law of Space and the Law of Time were connected, so maybe he had fallen into a place where time flowed faster than here? Whatever the case, it didn’t look like he’d gotten much exercise while away as she could see his cheekbones a little too well, not to mention how slender his arms and legs looked under his thin white robe.

She then noticed that that electric smell was still in the air and blinked, finally noticing that her hair was starting to rise on its own. She looked at her hair, then back at Joram and reached out her hand, wanting to touch him, to see if this was all really just a dream.

Her hand paused, then quickly withdrew just before touching him. Not because she was afraid of ending the moment, but because she’d received a stinging static shock before she could touch him.

She looked down at her stinging finger, noticing that the shock had left a small circled of reddened skin behind, telling her just how powerful that arc of electricity had truly been to burn her 3rd Tier body.

But with that shock also came a sense of just how profound the power inside Joram was. It was truly frightening if just an errant shock could injure her finger so. It also came with the impression of… ferocity. A primal sense that there laid a sleeping beast, one powerful enough to rule all it saw.

Tillia blinked, then blinked again. She wasn’t sure where that thought had come from, but was also completely sure that it wasn’t just a flight of fancy.

She was really starting to trust the “visions” she’d been having the past couple of years. Not that they made much sense, but she was starting to get the feeling that the ones where she saw different people at varying ages was somehow very important. But at the same time, she was very unsure about what they meant exactly. Some people always showed as only a bit older than they currently were, others varied between a bit older and looking like they’d grown old and were ready to find peace on their death beds. Still others seemed to shift between that slightly older look and something much older to positively ancient.

The fact that the majority of those she’d seen were in the category of “just a bit older” worried her immensely. As time had slowly passed, so too had the gap between what the subject of a “vision” looked like and what the “vision” showed. Which meant that whatever caused them to cease aging was rapidly approaching. And by the sheer number of people whose “future” age was rapidly closing on their current age, it very much felt like a disaster was coming.

A very large disaster. Catastrophe, even.

“Hey,” someone breathed from her side, causing her to jump a good foot into the air from where she was sitting.

She quickly looked over and saw that Joram had cracked open his left eyelids to look at her. His voice was certainly deeper than it had been, but could also just be a symptom of not speaking for a prolonged period of time.

“Hey, how’re you?” She asked reflexively, then wanted to kick herself. Of course he wasn’t doing well, otherwise he’d be up and about, nevermind whispering as though he was on his deathbed!

Tillia saw him grin ever-so-slightly before whispering his reply.

“I’ve been better.”

Tillia smiled a smile that she hoped was reassuring, warm, and welcoming, but was unsure if it came out that way. Her belly was full of butterflies, or wasps, she wasn’t quite sure as it was also in the process of tying itself into knots.

She’d just had another “vision” of Joram, this one clearer than the first, and last one, she’d had so long ago of him. He was still that tall, muscular, devastatingly handsome man she’d seen, but now also had a palpable aura about him. She couldn’t quite catch the nuances of it before the vision had faded, but it had left an impression, to say the least.

“We need the seamstress to stop by again,” she said lamely, once again taking in his added height. Or in this case: length, as he was laying down and all.

His slight smile grew a bit more pronounced, but then disappeared as his eyes closed, scrunching ever-so-slightly as though even that pained him.

She wanted to say more, but years of taking care of people, nevermind Joram, had taught her that she needed to wait and observe first as it didn’t appear to be life threatening. So, she watched as the pain faded from his countenance, his body subtly relaxing until he once again peeked at her with his left eye.

“Still… working… on… getting… better,” he whispered slowly, saying one word per breath, making it quite clear that he hadn’t quite recovered from whatever it was that caused the issue.

Tillia nodded to him, then remembered why she’d been in the room to begin with. She nearly smacked her forehead in exasperation, but stopped, not sure if the extra noise would bother him.

“So, your parents are back,” she began, then explained the “why”, and the other “why” related to her being in his bedroom so late at night. All done in a whisper.

She was proud of herself when it appeared that his pain levels hadn’t risen, not even when that ghost of a smile appeared on his face again.

“I… get… to… be… a… big… brother,” he got out, eyes twinkling. “I… need… to… work… harder,” he finished, now looking fatigued, his eyelid drooping.

Her heart nearly overflowed when she heard how happy he was to be a big brother, then nearly broke when he got the second part out.

As far as she knew, there was no one that she knew that had worked harder on their cultivation than him. Yes, Xixi and Zanth were making amazing progress. Heck, even she had nearly surprised the sandals off many clan members with how well she was taking to her efforts in cultivation. But Joram, well, he still outstripped everyone she knew.

Yes, he was a Reincarnator. But he hadn’t been what she’d have called a Mage or Cultivator in his previous life, even with the similarities between them and Mental Strength- er, Psionics. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d call what he’d chosen to do, but having a weird mix of martial arts and psionics was far from conventional.

Could one compare it to an expert practicing Mental Strength and Body Refining at the same time? She wasn’t very accomplished in academics like those closer to the main family line were, but she was pretty sure that that wasn’t something people did. At all.

She was taken out of her thoughts when what her eyes were telling her finally got processed in her brain. Joram had fallen asleep again, his chest slowly rising and falling with his shallow breathing. Was that normal?

She had another freak-out moment as she tried to remember how he looked when he slept, not having seen him in almost two years….

At length, she stood up as slowly as she could so as not to disturb his sleep, then made her way out of his room, closing the door behind her as gently as humanly possible. When she turned around, she nearly jumped out of her skin when she noticed that she wasn’t alone.

“How is he?” The Matriarch asked quietly, eliciting nods from Joram’s parents who stood just behind her and to her right.

Clutching her chest, Tillia motioned for the trio to follow her to the other end of the living room and into the parlour. It wasn’t very big, nor had it been meant to accommodate many people anyways. It was a simple room with bay windows on two of the walls that provided a beautiful view of the mountains. Tillia noticed that some rare snow was falling outside and smiled as she remembered how Joram loved to see snow at least once a year.

“Please, sit,” she said, bringing a comfortable recliner over so that Sulia could rest. She saw just how tired she was even though she was already in the Fourth Tier.

Sulia accepted, allowing Ivaryn to help her into a seated position. Once done, Ivaryn just stood beside the recliner, much to Sulia’s visible annoyance. The Matriarch also remained standing.

“So, he’s…” she said, looking for words to describe what she’d seen. She noticed that her hesitation spiked their worry and hastened to explain. “He seems healthy enough, though a bit skinny. There seems to be an underlying issue that causes him some pain, but he’s sleeping now, so it can’t be all that bad.” She finished in a rush, realizing that she was doing nothing to alleviate their worries.

“The missive I received said that he should only need quiet and rest to fully recuperate now,” Matriarch Aneath said, nodding away. “I wish we had more information to go by, but his mysterious helper seems to want Joram to explain things instead of just doing it herself,” she finished with a slightly bitter tone.

It was a woman! Tillia thought, eyes narrowing a bit. She’d been pretty sure, but one couldn’t make assumptions based on hair length and perfume.

“Did she say anything else?” Ivaryn asked as he rested his right hand on Sulia’s shoulder, seemingly for comfort.

“No,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “I only get written missives, nothing more.”

“Oh,” Tillia said, raising her hand slightly as though she was still in class. “Another thing. I don’t know what’s caused it, but Joram seems… electric.”

Three sets of eyes turned to her, then blinked. She blushed.

“I mean, when I tried to touch him, I received a shock,” she said, holding out her hand for them to see the still-reddened spot on her finder. “It was quite strong, so I don’t recommend anyone below Third Tier approach him lest something bad happens to them,” she finished, her words growing quieter as she spoke.

She was very glad when, almost as though it had been practiced, they began looking at each other. Ivaryn shifting between Sulia and her grandmother, Sulia going from her grandmother to her husband, and finally the Matriarch looking at the younger generation, Tillia included.

Slowly, a look of disappointment and sadness came over Sulia. It took her a moment to realize that it was probably because, while pregnant, she wouldn’t be able to go near Joram for fear of affecting the baby.

How hard it must be for her to finally have her son back, but be unable to touch him, Tillia thought, trying very hard not to start crying for her plight. As confused as she was, Tilia also felt intense relief knowing that Joram was back and wanted to hug the little-, er, not-so-little guy…. Hmmm….

Her mind went back to how Joram looked, eyes closed and laying in bed. He looked like those kids who’d just started their growth spurt. Not quite as tall as an adult, but much taller than even those kids a year or so younger than them. Awkward teenage phase. But he was already well on his way to becoming a grown man, even though he hadn’t yet reached his full height, nor had he filled out… if her “vision” was anything to go by anyways.

“Tillia will continue to care for Joram,” Matriarch Aneath suddenly spoke, bringing her back to reality. “Sulia, you’re due any day now, so it is better to continue resting. We’ll keep you up to date with how he is,” she said, then muttered, “Much better than that woman did.”

She wasn’t sure if the Matriarch had intended to say that last part out loud, but everyone present felt, and heard, the venom and something else in her voice when referring to Joram’s mysterious helper.

Was it uncertainty? Trepidation? Fear?

Tillia truly didn’t know, but decided that she really didn’t want to know, especially if someone as strong as the Matriarch seemed to, at the very least, have a healthy respect for her.

* * * * *

Avi sneezed, then briefly wondered who was talking about her before shrugging and getting back to work.

She wasn’t quite as good as Joram when it came to arranging atoms into repeating patters, forming molecules, then entire structures from the base building blocks of physical matter. No, but she was getting there.

It was tedious beyond belief working on that scale, but orders of magnitude better than having to recreate things dozens of times as what you were trying to make failed time and again.

What was she working on? Well!

She knew that Joram would want a properly working omni-tool when he woke up, and so she’d worked on, and finished, that. No, she was now using the enhanced sensors that came from that tech tree to help her make a lightsaber. Yes, Joram’s long sought-after wish was being worked on. Very, very, slowly.

She’d been exposed to the… altered canon that came after her beloved universe was purchased by that company. Specifically, after that director had decided that decades of universe-building by countless contributors wasn’t worth spit and changed just about everything he could about the universe.

Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but close enough.

Specifically, the claim that a lightsaber needed to have a kyber crystal to work at all.

Well, that was bull, as the memories that had come to Altaea from her counterpart in that universe could attest to.

Yes, Force-attuned crystals made them better, but there weren’t strictly required to make one work. No, a sufficiently hard crystal could do the same, along with having sufficient clarity. Add a ridiculous power source, the appropriate emitter, focuser, and a few other little bits, then you got yourself a bona fide “laser sword”.

Well, not a “laser”, per se. But a very powerful, limited, beam weapon that could cut through most anything she knew.

And that was before she would integrate sonic technology from yet another Altaea in the multiverse….

Avi smiled as she worked on the very fine circuitry. She had a few experiments going, and she believed that she would soon find an appropriate focussing crystal for the first prototype she’d soon make. Sky Nether Jade was a good candidate, but needed some treatment to reduce inclusions and increase clarity. She was also working on the various mana crystals, but the likelihood of them being stable enough to handle the kind of temperature and energy flow needed was slim.

Last on the experimentations list was a small shard of the Heavenly Lightning Jade Dragon scale, carved then facetted to the needed specifications. Well, that one wasn’t doing anything except waiting for one of its siblings to finish treatment. Again, she was working on increasing clarity. It was much harder with something that had come from a living being, ostensibly being organic in nature. But looking at it, she wasn’t too sure at all.

The structure looked like a grown crystal, not a bit of grown keratin or chiton. This had initially confused her, but then she just wrote it off as magic messing with the “laws of physics” and such. Nevermind that they were in an entirely new universe, so who was to say what was possible or impossible?

Which led her to what she was currently doing.

Atoms seemed to have a tendency to either absorb mana or reject it. Some even seemed to effectively be “transparent” to mana, which was even weirder. Which threw some of the knowledge that had been sent to Altaea out the window.

Some stuff, like the Force, didn’t even exist in this universe, or at least this part of the universe they found themselves in. Which made things awkward when trying to replicate tech from other universes. Hence why they’d had so many issues trying to get something as “simple” as an omni-tool working.

Well, it would work out. She had the patience of a Grand Master, and literal legions of droids to help with production, never mind the ones building more server farms….

Avi smiled again, this time in satisfaction of a job well done. She had only read stories of Gally, another of Joram’s “made-up” characters, but found that she had a lot in common with her. Sure, she was no “mad scientist”- er, sufficiently motivated scientist, but she really did enjoy making stuff. Perhaps it was a side-effect of having been created in part from Joram’s personality, but it was what it was. She loved research, crafting, and expansion.

With that last thought in mind, she made a mental note to check up on the one server that was working on an improved [Genesis]. If she could speed up the expansion of the realm, it would surely make things easier when it came time to build the various specialized factories she would need for her future projects.

She really liked the idea of a space station the size of a moon after all.

“Wait, if the moons here are roughly the size of Saturn, it’ll take quite a while to get something built…” Avi murmured to herself as she began drawing up rough blueprints and calculating how many droids she’d need.

* * * * *

“How many of our people are in position?”

“Almost half.”

“How much longer before the rest arrive?”

“It’s hard moving through these kingdoms without attracting too much attention…”

“How long?”

“As little as a year. As much as two more.”

The first person sighed. It was boring waiting for the mission to start, but there wasn’t much they could do when they had direct orders from the heads of the coalition of sects.

“Want to go on another hunt to pass the time?” The second person asked, sounding hopeful.

“… Sure.”