A hole implied a separation of at least two things. It meant that ‘something’ created a closed path where yet this oddity directly connected to another place with nothing in between.

To truly move instantly, that dormant power within her took the most overwhelming but simplest path. It cut out the innards, welded both ends together, and created an incredibly unstable point in space. After all that, the Nexus repaired whatever damage it caused. Not to mention how some of that power lingered around her after the execution of Flash Strike, the result became a condensed strike of unknown energy which reduced his wing to nothing alongside some of the ground.

Given that just the remnant energy of her bloodline’s momentary activation resulted in such damage, it was easier to see why she collapsed.

“This is a lot slower than you dealt with the void flames,” he commented casually on the slowly shrinking hole struck through all dimensions. It wasn’t without reason though as he remembered the massive regions of nothing returned to normal space in seconds. Although, at the time he didn’t know how other dimensions looked due to the flames, so perhaps the Nexus simply started on nearby spatial fabric to ensure he killed Lostradus.

An answer came soon enough.

[There is no reason for us to overexert ourselves here. Other reasons exist, but you should understand why we cannot give those]

“Is repairing this stuff really that taxing? Even for you?” He didn’t doubt the words, but sometimes he found the Nexus exaggerated matters for whatever reason. Other times its sense of scale differed from his own too, so perhaps ‘overexert’ actually just meant putting in any real effort.

[Yes, for the same reason some assimilated options fail to have proper explanations during evolutions. We have to constantly simulate and test every single change to avoid cascading errors. Just as you would carefully inspect a high level array after every change so it doesn’t self-destruct on accident]

As he watched the hole slowly disappear, eaten away as the laws of the universe were reverted, he felt Raccelline squirm as she groaned. While everything appeared fine at a glance, her body and mana perfectly normal, the same could not be said for the quiet bloodline power within her. Usually it never stirred, giving off the illusion of an ordinary human’s all the time, but now it pulsated with a weak, tangible strength. However, as it clearly dispersed with every moment, he just gently stroked her back with his tail.

“Should she even be capable of doing this… If you can even say it,” he asked this question to the Nexus once more as the final cracks finally sealed themselves.

[Did you not manage to comprehend some basics of the dimensions through your divinity? It’s a similar principle]

He partially understood the comparison, but on the other hand it made little sense. Explaining the analogy, what she just performed amounted to Akevorax utilising divinity before master tier. An almost impossible feat given that he never once truly controlled it back then, but maybe the difference lay in who the power truly belonged to. Everyone’s bloodline was part of them, even if dormant like hers, unlike the divinity which he effectively stole from a dead race.

With training finally over, he returned to the cave and put her to bed. That left him the only one around now and so he wordlessly activated the teleportation array towards a sub-realm.

There was no better time to finally form that first wave of Mind palace golems.

…

Progress within his mental space continued as expected since forming the first golem, in this time keeping it limited to just Tritheus as a way to monitor and change arrays as necessary. While everything more or less worked well, it clearly suffered at precise actions. Nothing could be done to resolve this, at least not before his palace upgraded and improved the size of all arrays he created. An improvement in this case meant smaller with more precision.

On the other hand, Tritheus already set up the base of a new house in just the several hours since he even set the golem to work. The exact speed of placement was well beyond a dragon who awakened their mental space, although it fell short of his own speed, but this all happened without any intervention from him!

He moved over to the hardworking golem placing bricks down, their actions orderly and almost repetitive, they dropped their current task and dropped to one knee for him. Akevorax signalled for it to stand, before mentioning, “Your progress so far is good. I will create the bodies for others in a few days.”

“I will have the building ready by then, master. What should I do for the roof?” Tritheus asked an expected question, in truth, the question of beds and other adornments also came to mind. The overly loyal golem chose to ask the only necessary one though.

“It’s a small matter to handle. This has all been a trial to test the ability of these bodies, which appear satisfactory now, so your job for the future will be focused on building larger structures. And I’m surprised you never once asked about the changes in this space as well,” he said with a light chuckle. At the same time, he glanced towards the new mountain range which formed a ring about the core of his mental space. The dense fog which blocked all sight revealed this bit of land, but were those mountains originally there?

It didn’t really matter, but curiosity was hard to restrain more often than not.

As for the ring of mountains, he had a pretty good idea of how to use it since it appeared. Although such a project might take countless more years than the production of a single large estate…

He would create a giant wall! An encircling barrier that offered a completely new level of defence to all his actual buildings, preserving valuable knowledge, not to mention how this insured his life better. All that space also meant the Palace of Array’s bloodline could reach an incredible degree of enhancement through self-supportive effects.

Still… Did he even have the time for all this?

This time it was a Cornem rank that attacked him, but next time it could even be two or three of them. What if they decided to annihilate him at all costs and sacrificed a Primordius rank to ensure his death?

The elves certainly performed this tactic a few times over the many years. If they tried now, he stood no hope besides the elders saving his life. And that meant he remained trapped in the Dragonlands, when it came to permanent residency at least. Short trips presented no danger still, and so he left his Mind palace to focus on the resurrection array in front of him. With the information he purchased, it was easy to surgically destroy a few enhancements creating something similar to the original array.

He naturally didn’t want the same degree of failure as the original, but he sought its high chances for mutation and mental distortions. How exactly those worked were a mystery unto themselves, Eye of Truth certainly revealed all the psychic energies coming together and forming a non-physical object covered in thin dendrites. These long tendrils clasped onto the host’s head and confirmed the link between Body and Mind.

Obviously, the flesh and blood meatsacks worked great, and the Minds happily sat in their new prospective bodies. And Souls required no further explanation. They gladly accepted the body once receiving their own feedback which confirmed flesh and blood. Both eyes flashed open and life poured into the previously empty pupils, shaking as the laid down figure shot up and tried to stand.

“Urgh, where am I? We were fighting and then– Dragon!!” The nude elf assassin stumbled backwards in fear as he finally noticed Akevorax’s presence, immediately making the link between his memories and what stood before him.

But missing out the part where he truly died for a brief stint of time, not that it mattered just half a second later.

[Killed Level 1 Dark Assassin! Received <1% EXP]

Well, he expected that much. Another revival with too much of its original personality left intact, and as always, that just meant he tried again. Over and over…

It took him 2 days of nonstop attempts, amounting to almost 300 activations of the array, to finally complete the set of ten golems for his palace. Tritheus was already ideal, and with nine more, he sought to begin production on his advancement to Adept Mind Palace. But, as promised, he tiled the roof of the golems’ house and created some simple beds for them all. With their bodies formed of stone and arrays, he tricked their senses into finding the simple wooden slats a comfortable temperature and shape.

Strangely, many of them struggled to sleep the first night without pillows and some sort of blanket. A requirement brought by habit ingrained after so many years, even if their Minds transformed wildly, those things defined quite a few actions.

For example, two of the golems presented left dominant hands, one of them always turned their head when someone spoke due to a deaf ear, another sometimes hummed a sea shanty as they worked. These differed from the plain mutations and errors introduced in their mental state due to resurrection, like how they sometimes dropped all thoughts and completely forgot what they were doing. Even with all this in mind, their productivity left him stunned.

Nine worked on forming the concave bricks and Tritheus, as their de facto leader, fixed their shape and ‘set’ them in place. Taking just ten seconds per brick, the ten of them produced enough material to recreate his first building in just a couple hours!

That took days of work back then… Although, he then considered that if he acted personally it was possible to reach a similar speed.

“Master? I think the mana ran out!” From the platform, one of the golems called out with a hint of fear. They turned the tap but it was clear every last drop of condensed mana in the tank ran out.

He sighed, fully expecting this the whole time and in a frantic mess to upgrade the tanks underground which condensed tanks of gaseous mana into the liquid form. For some, he just directly created larger chambers, the limit allowed by his bloodline, but for others he tried to upgrade the arrays which gathered mana and channelled it into condensers.

But as seconds turned to minutes, and the mess of pipes around him only furthered his bottlenecked system, nothing about this could truly change things immediately.

And even if he upgraded it enough to keep up with just these ten, an already unlikely event, how exactly would he get the mana to support that? At the moment, his Mind palace automatically drew in some mana from the outside world at all times, but this passive absorption hardly compared to the amounts wasted to create bricks of condensed mana.

“This won’t work. Not without a major change,” he whispered to himself, stressed, as he lacked a fast, immediate solution. So, he solved it in the only way thought of in advance, teleporting back over to the ten golems. He first addressed the unnamed nine, “Until more mana can be gathered and condensed, only four of you must be awake and ready to work at any time. Two of you will create more bricks and hand them over to Tritheus, whilst the other two will watch over this palace and repair any destruction using the mana. Understood?”

One of the more curious golems immediately asked, “What if the tanks are empty again though?”

“One tank must always be left for those on repair duty, if more are needed, I will adjust that later. And Tritheus,” he paused with a moment of contemplation, looking down on his first and most loyal golem.

But before he could come to a decision, they had already dropped to a knee and answered, “No need to worry about me, master. I will gladly work throughout the day to ensure progress is made.”

For a few moments he considered rejecting the proposal out of fairness, but it didn’t take long for him to reject that pointless belief instead. In the first place, these things were effectively slaves trapped in his palace, if one of them willingly offered to work to the bone, who was he to refuse it?

With an accepting nod, he gave the golems some time to sort out a schedule amongst themselves and returned to the cave once more. Raccelline still slept, far more peaceful now as her bloodline had calmed immensely. These nights of rest hadn’t been easy on her body, even with its intrinsic power, she squirmed and breathed heavily from the pain. A few times now, her entire body spasmed uncontrollably in a seizure, tearing several muscles and even dislocating her shoulder on one occasion.

The backlash from a single use of her power only furthered his concerns this time, just as she often fretted over his suicidal tendencies. She would continue to use and refine this power.

“We don’t have long now, hopefully I can fulfil my promise before the ten years are up… The first strike will begin soon. But war is slow, as long as I build and evolve, who can stop me?” His ruby eyes flamed with ambition, an acceptance that he might change the flow of war on his own. Before, he questioned if his Mind and Soul could keep up, requiring so much time and effort, but those concerns wafted away with today’s confirmation.

And not just him. As she actualised a power so great that nothing across the eight worlds could stop it.

Now she just had to avoid collapsing after using it.