Akevorax awakened to the sensation of hard chains around his body and claws very clearly stabbed into something, the ‘thing’ being an unconscious Adret. Memories returned quickly enough over the next few seconds and he very quickly confirmed survival for both of them, but this also revealed just how dire things became.

He untied the chains and spread his senses for any immediate dimensions in any direction, but that very quickly proved useless as anything beyond a kilometre turned blurry.

A tickle built in his throat all of a sudden, and even with an Elemental Body, he coughed violently for a few seconds. The sound completely vanished in this blank, empty space. However, the coughing just didn’t stop, strengthening into a gag until finally… A large milky lump spewed out of his mouth. With reds, greens, creams, and white, the mixed ice cream lump contained a little bit of several flavours. But Akevorax just trembled and activated Eye of Truth without any restraints. Its beam of white split apart countless normally unseen dimensions and revealed spots of lights nearby like stars in a night sky.

But it took just a single look for him to instantly frown and wheeze heavily.

Something inside him devoured a portion of his mana instantly, and for a few moments allowed him to breathe easily once more. Without many more options, he infused himself with divinity and asked the Nexus, “Can you tell me the nearest realm? I don’t care as long as it isn’t hostile.”

[4th spatial field, 170,000 kilometres towards the Flame Source. Drifting towards the Stellar Source at 13.6 kilometres per second, movement appears stable]

Just those two numbers almost enraged him, how far did that explosion fling him to put the closest realm that far off? Without any consideration, he said, “4th? Fucking… What about sub-realms with stable space and livable environments?”

[2nd spatial field, 5,000 kilometres away. Contains environment with 99% oxygen atmosphere and average temperature of -224 degrees Celsius]

He could deal with cold, that wasn’t an issue for either of them, and anything breathable was better than this blank space. However, just travelling there already felt impossible.

Akevorax spread his wings, and connected Adret to him with a longer chain, but could only grit his teeth as he began to flap. Space around him bent in response to his wings, and pushed him forward with a furthered acceleration to mana, fortunately, the Auric Spirit took note and merged to give this action some real force. But with expressed movement, his body also twitched from severe pain, not that he could afford to stay in this place for any longer. Today, tomorrow, a week from now, or perhaps in just an hour… No one knew how to predict the movement of the monsters that made this space their home.

And using the Nexus’ scalings, quite a few tier 9 things lived here.

Space rippled and curved as he moved through the endless blackness, but with every movement, little bits of the sugary, glistening wing detached from his body and dissolved in the blackness. Mana quickly repaired every little hole, but every movement only exacerbated a further problem, from little pores came chunks of material gone. An entire part of his wingbone fell away one time, and multiple times had his tail, claws, and teeth dissolved away.

Every single time his bloodline replaced it without fail. With such huge expenditures that he topped up his mana repeatedly, countless potions and restoratives were all that kept him going when entire limbs began to collapse and dissolve.

But finally, after two hours of such a damaging ‘flight’, he forced his way into the sub-realm and threw himself and Adret into the barren, frozen world. In a world of pure oxygen, water hardly existed in any form, but that didn’t mean a torrential downpour failed to catch him unaware.

He crashed down into a sheet of blue ice with transparent drops raining down the two of them incessantly. No clouds were in the sky, not even stars or a sun, and yet light came from somewhere as this sub-realm allowed him to see both himself and Adret. However, as the drops of clear fluid quickly slid down his scales, eerily similar to water even in thickness, they suddenly stopped movement and frozen solid into a chilly droplet.

Not just that droplet, but hundreds of them pelting him and Adret every moment. All the while, vapours released from the ground below as solid oxygen sublimated back into a gaseous form…

He didn’t have any better options as a massive metal plate dropped in front of him with a pre-engraved array. Once activated, a small flame spawned at its centre with absolutely miniscule mana costs, a necessity as another purple crystal withdrew from his storage and threw a mere wisp of orange flames within. The phoenix flames resisted his every will as soon as it gained freedom, but the tiny fragment hardly ment a dent in his forceful manoeuvres. And the moment it contacted that miniscule wisp, it devoured that barebones magical flame and took its place. Some last moment adjustments to the array allowed the vibrant orange fire to draw any mana it desired, superseding the entire array’s purpose, and he even dropped a handful of mana crystals onto engraved sockets.

With the heat defrosting him from the sheath of frozen oxygen, the vibrant healing of pure life washed over him, granting a single moment of relaxation. His mind dulled as he looked at the array and said, “Six days… Six… I should leave out more–” Worry entered his voice at the end, but that single moment of lacking guard already ended things.

He collapsed against the blue ice ground. Unstirred by the magnificent heat on one side, or the polarising cold at his other, recovery came at too slow a speed.

Repeatedly, without any sign of an end, his body dissolved away into energy and repaired itself immediately after. As the rainfall continued endlessly, a frozen landscape being the half-grown world’s growth, their little flicker of life was the only thing which refuted death.

…

While the two young dragons clung to the britches of their lives, the intense wave of energy created from their destruction of Alkuthuzen’s sub-realm caused more than a little bit of worry all over the place. Things only grew even worse as some Great Sages, Primordius ranks, and supreme tiers investigated incessantly, but very little remnants actually explained what happened.

The matter escalated to draw in all seven of the worlds, with demigods sent for further analysis, but for some reason their abilities failed to see into the past anywhere near the blast site. And it was around here that the surrounding locations received some attention, particularly the nearby lunar realm which none of them dared touch as it reputedly killed a whole group of Great Sages that tried, and failed, to take over it once.

To avoid drawing ire, they only probed its internal state and sent menial scans throughout without any real power. And the first being to do this, unsurprisingly, was the Clan Lord of the third world’s Dragonlands… Whose shock prompted many others to repeat the scans with terrifying conclusions.

“What in the world? Was this the origin?” A Great Sage’s voice passed through the blank space like normal, a confusion and deep-seeded curiosity created from such a sight.

“It shouldn’t be, the source point is clearly a sub-realm just a mile away. And how could a Supreme true spell possibly do this?”

“You do realise we could just ask?”

“Why not try that, Rubius? This thing hates talking to anyone without an affinity.”

“Then get Mylus or Contreya. Damn, ask the Constapians to send Cheruk!”

All demanding or curious in their own ways, it didn’t take long for groups of individuals to start minor arguments over methods to take deeper scans or dig out further information. From the massive chunk of empty space in the lunar realm, as over half the planet outright vanished, to the explosion of energy itself and the supposed sub-realm which had been completely destroyed in the process.

Some chunks of metal or stone turned up every now and then as these beings looked about, but no real information or links. And as they tried to communicate with the lunar realm’s will regardless, it became clearer that the damage forced it into hibernation for the most part. A few zealous Primordius ranks jumped into the realm regardless, but found an overwhelming force ejected them at high speeds near-instantly.

Its non-hostile attitude thankfully let those fools live another day. However, without any clues, the top-level beings all went their separate ways back home…

And even though the Clan Lord extended her senses to its very limit time after time, but not a single existence appeared in a range of two light-minutes.

It sounded like such an impressive distance, 36 million kilometres of search range, but that wasn’t true. Her spatial sense worked best when inside realms, as its smaller size concentrated her powers, deepening that sensitivity to the point where even just the mass of a squirrel could be noticed.

Out in the blank space, where technically five spatial fields of motion existed, all of which fluctuated wildly due to the movement of super-massive objects known as planes flying about…

She certainly sensed the existence of sub-realms and realms in that 36 million kilometres, but hoping that two small dragons could be detected was like winning the lottery. And even if she wished to stick around longer to investigate further, such actions only raised suspicions against the dragons, and her absence placed the dragons back home in grave danger.

Unable to stay, she glared at the former sub-realm’s location with a fury none had seen before, but let go of the internal struggle eventually. Truly empty space carried away her regretful words, “I should have known better than to send you, so do come back alive. Both of you.”

The vibrations in space carried on for minutes, moving further out but with a clear problem, the movements in space ate up these vibrations constantly. And eventually such words blended into the background completely, heard by several beings who lurked in this world, but none that cared for the contents.

* * *

Akevorax awakened, he could not tell how much time passed, nor the state of his own Mind and Body, but one thing immediately stood out to him in the placid heat which failed to warm him.

His eyes weakly opened to see a strong blaze in front, but instead of a lively orange flame, it came from a flame of deep blue which burnt purely in the oxygen-rich atmosphere. This looked warm, and to a degree felt warm, but compared to the falling liquid was a mediocre stopgap. At least a large make-shift canopy above blocked that freezing oxygen.

Everything still ached, and as his eyes fluttered open, he distinctly felt parts of his insides collapse once more and regrow immediately. But at least now his groan wasn’t met with silence or blistering winds.

“Are you okay? I woke up… some time ago, but you were just falling apart. All I could do was give you more potions, they’re almost all gone, sorry.” Adret spewed out more words than he could reasonably keep up with in his current state. But after a few repetitions, greatly slowed down too, he finally understood their situation. One thing he checked was the potions she mentioned, and sure enough his storage ring showed a couple dozen bottles left.

Mala packed around 200 mana restoratives for master tiers in here as well. He forced himself to ask, “When did the phoenix fire run out?”

“10 days ago, if I kept track right. I tried to replace it, but nothing came out of the crystal…” Her voice turned more timid as she realised that the words pretty much admitted to touching his stuff beyond random potions. A funny thing given the confidence shown at first, created by her belief of a right decision at the time.

“There’s a soul lock on it, I’d be more concerned if you could access it. The mana crystals are untouched too, so how did you– What a stupid decision,” he sighed, but put little attention on the matter. A wisp of orange phoenix fire quickly devoured the blazing blue flame and he re-adjusted the array to better fit its requirements. In that process, he mentioned something which caught his eye too, “You learnt how to read arrays?”

“It seemed important,” she gave a short and sweet response without any extensive stutters or fading tones.

Thankfully she made that choice, or the only thing he’d be taking back home was a frozen corpse…

“What happened back there? I remember activating the explosives and then… Everything was so dark and cold, like I stood on an icy lake at night. Or a deep abyss. There were things around me, terrifying things that made me stand still like my life depended on it.” Her eyes turned listless for a few moments as the memory ruptured within, such an innately timid attitude made fighting back a conscious response. When it came to Fight or Flight, that childish mindset picked the worst third option: Freeze.

He resolved it by knocking into her Mind Palace a few times with raw psychic force, a power her bloodline offered immense resistance to anyway. Enough nudges reawakened her as she instead shivered, not from the cold offset by phoenix fire, but purely out of fear struck deep into her heart.

Well, Dragon’s Fear wasn’t considered so incredible without reason. Anyone without a True Will of their own or an Exalted Soul fell exactly into that state.

His own memories of those final moments took a different look at things. Survival alone meant great news, as Alkuthuzen’s advanced True Will still failed to kill him, but nothing about the blast guaranteed that the dragon died… But worst of all was that blast. The final moments still appeared fresh.

After tunnelling out of the sub-realm, that dreaded laughter’s end indicated the detonation. It gave him hardly a second to escape the tunnel connected directly to the exploding location, and keep the two of them connected regardless of where that blast flung them. Except he also positioned his body behind Adret, a precaution to ensure whatever blast escaped through the cracks in the lab, they landed on his regenerative body instead of her significantly weaker one. And the damage that left on him, crippling ailment a more apt description, filled his body like a metastasised cancer treating his body like a dumping ground.

A real description for the current war within his body was needed, and for that it started with the pure supreme tier energy wave. It mercilessly slammed into him, launching the two at unknown speeds randomly through the chaotic black space. And in that impact alone, it completely destroyed 90% of his body.

His brain avoided damage as he tucked it in safely, but clearly a heart regeneration lost some of its transformation progress. A minor loss overall though, as the true decimation of such power carried through.

All throughout his crystal body, millions of great runes swarmed about, latching randomly onto elemental cells until a great enough accumulation collapsed internal structures. The broken state drew in more runes though, and repeated the process over and over. Movement agitated them, excessive action exponentially so, but he took solace in his current situation. How the life elements spewed out from this fire aided his draconic endurance in its fight against these foreign runes. Still, there were just so many.