The battlefield turned still. Endless torrents of liquid oxygen fell on the pair with heavy splatters, forming a thickening layer of frost and blue ice. While Akevorax looked at the sightless dragon for a few seconds more, he quickly accepted that the process was actually a lot longer than expected. Did she just plan on dying if he hadn’t been here?

Regardless, a simple thought warped the curved lines of space to form a tunnel back. Both teleported back into the entrancing flickers of phoenix flame, its heat a much needed relief for Adret.

His array soon deactivated as every soul form lay dead once more. Pockets of ice cream cells detached from his internals and broke down again, but he ignored the damage. She did well to reduce its size to such an extent, otherwise his Wind spell utterly failed.

In a few hours the runes would calm. Then with things back to normal, his healing could progress. According to some Nexus calculations, with unknown degrees of accuracy, when it lowered to about 200,000 runes, he could more or less ignore them entirely.

Akevorax laid back down on the ground without any concern of future attacks. More master tiers posed a rather serious issue, but at least Adret wouldn’t be so threatened in the future. A single mithril tier already proved more intelligent soul forms hid in this plane, and that gave them relative safety as many of them gained some desire for self-preservation over primal instincts. Few more would attack unless a group of master tiers came with them… In which case it’d probably be the two of them running for their lives.

Considerations like this often flitted through his head, ensuring that things never grew too dangerous or unbearable. Adret couldn’t accurately gauge his power after all, if he didn’t define his limits, then who would?

The soul forms that killed him?

“Not that I’d actually die…” The confidence in his revival method drooped suddenly as he now accounted for the lifespan cost required for movement back to the main universe. He held back any self-deprecating words in case they came true.

“I’m back here? How long did that take?”

The murky yet gentle voice beside him sounded as though it recently exited a long dream. And while at first Akevorax considered replying immediately, he waited until Adret opened her eyes and looked around herself. The fallen barrier and lack of any foe told her the resolution of the battle. Additionally, anyone at her level with vision-boosting abilities would realise that the dragon beside her underwent breakdowns faster than usual.

“Ah, so you had to save me even though I went through that… Would I have died?”

“Can you survive a dozen Adept soul spells? And then a potential direct attack?”

She faltered when faced with his reply, frowning before a dismissive sigh ended the internal debate. Even if she made it out on time, just one or two direct blows left her dazed. Akevorax even kindly suggested that it hadn’t learnt any way to further refine that blast of soul power into a finer beam.

However, her stressed face relaxed not long after. Adret stood up and stretched completely, healed fully but still relatively drained on mana and lunar elements.

That didn’t stop a suddenly spiteful frown to form as she truly glared towards him. Even without his eyes open or senses focused, her imminent desire to attack registered loud and clear. To which he quickly diverted the topic by asking, “How have you been feeling then?”

“Like shit, but he was right. I don’t regret it,” she replied sparingly, not too interested in idle talk.

Months of anger and rage built up constantly all culminated as she looked back on the miserable times more than any other. A growl even followed, the first time she showed innate aggression instead of a forced feeling as required for some goal. A cap on her emotions had been removed so suddenly, and Akevorax hardly counted as the primary or greatest source of suffering, but to the young dragon without any concept of control, he may as well be.

While the karma of this moment washed over him too, it wasn’t like he regretted the harshness displayed to Adret. Being an asshole probably did push things too far though…

He tried to bargain as she now stepped towards his lying body, “It’d be rather bad to attack me now. It’d only elongate my recovery time– Are you really going to attack someone who can’t even fight back?”

The emotional blackmail failed miserably.

A single set of claws dug into his neck, piercing through the scales of crystal like some sort of straw defence, and with a single motion lifted up the dragon slightly larger than herself with ease. And in the shape of a crescent moon, she rotated the wafer-scaled dragon until he slammed into the icy ground with a noticeable quake.

It’d be a lie to say any of this retaliation actually hurt him, both short or long-term, but damn did it suck to be on the receiving end.

Adret also used this time to curse him repeatedly, averaging a ‘fuck you’ every two seconds and just saying any profanities which came to mind. A limited selection as she hardly put thought into it. If not for the fact all this involved throwing his lightweight ice cream body around, he’d have found it rather funny.

She calmed down eventually… On the surface, at least. Controlling emotions took a lot more effort than he took for granted.

* * *

Winter ended in the third world not too long ago, but even in early spring, the chilly days only just began to taper off. The day in question seemed all too insignificant. It was unrelated to any historical events, and certainly now major birthdays occurred on this date, but there happened to be one small footnote of history which some picked up on. Perhaps made a fair bit more obvious as today sounded the beats of war across a whole continent.

As the Eternals of Signeum raised their flag and declared war. This day not deeply important to themselves, as its uncertain link lied in a far more devious truth.

On this day, thousands of years ago, the eternals announced their victory over the surface with the conclusion of the Second Great War.

But this time they intended to ensure their victory first.

From the Wells of Darkness erupted hundreds upon thousands of eternals. Thousands flew upwards, charging towards the battlements and arrays placed all around to stop them, however even as they reached the first line of defence, not a single one stopped in fear. Up along the walls came the seemingly endless weaker cannon fodder, mixing into the depths of darkness to hide from low-tier scanning arrays up above.

Four lines of defence existed to completely hinder all their forces, whether it be the strike teams of master tiers who used destructive shock tactics, or masses of nameless flesh to devour the power and resources as soon as possible. Guerilla warfare undoubtedly suited them best in these Wells. However, what none expected was even these high-powered units to just run right into the regions of offensive arrays without care!

Waves of frost, compressed flames like small stars, instantaneous bolts of orange lightning, spears of earth from the walls, and psychic waves which pounded through their heads. Every last effect came out equal to an Adept true spell, and Mithril ranks dropped like flies as they charged into it and were instantly injured. None cared about it. Like a possessed troop, every last one jumped up the walls into these regions, and even with casualties nearing 50,000, they continued this tactic.

The mages and attendants simply couldn’t recharge the hundreds of arrays used for this bottom layer, and very soon it fell into disarray, ironically.

Across three Wells they predicted at least 200,000 casualties so far… but in the first place, the lowest defence line only existed as a ‘soft’ measure. A look into what awaited their kind if this war continued. Not a single hesitant eternal appeared amongst them though, fiercely loyal to an almost incorruptible degree, few of the humans understood just how their foe’s emperor convinced them. What unbelievably feat could Muthzud possibly give, that initiated this behaviour?

No matter though. The second line of defence sprouted, darkness already fading as the eternals sat just one kilometre below. Rather than waste time with warning shots, this second array instead appeared in the air across the entire Well. Thousands of nodes allowed for freely moving points which–

It fired hyper-focused death beams. Designed to target 3,000 enemies at once and charged with incredibly dense light elements. In tests, it achieved a fire rate of 56,000 beams per second. As for accuracy… roughly 99% in thick, obscuring dark elements.

“Light them up!” The order came through, and across the continent, three beams of light radiated into the sky.

The war only just began, a fact easy to see as chains of explosions sprang up all around the surface camps. Bombs planted by spies going off all over with minimal damage. They successfully maximised chaos though, and without anyone above master tier to observe the whole camp at once, trouble already brewed.

Eternals flooded out through secret mines known by few, but merely in the hundreds at any one location. Thousands more instead hid in the reefs not too far from shore, stealthily waiting till nightfall for their chance, similar orders to that of their spelunking brethren.

The first day of war continued like this, merely 100,000 eternals confirmed dead with millions suffering casualties.

Both sides regrouped and prepared for round two, all while round one had yet to end. A direct offensive simply replaced with one driven under a coat of stars. The gears began to turn, equipment of war stirred, all that remained was to see which bared its fangs first.

* * *

An entire month passed for all, but it was only the two dragons in the unnamed frozen sub-realm still in the dark. Things improved drastically since Adret shattered the moon though, as her powers spiked instantly to the point where mithril tiers barely lasted two blows under her psychic blasts. Their Minds crumbled rapidly and she destroyed hundreds of weaker soul forms in seconds when necessary.

It’d taken a gruelling two months for Akevorax to heal. And even then she only recently understood why a strange fog filled his body for so long, seeing the endless spread of runes with disarray. He often refused to talk about the specifics of his injury, something she considered fully in his right, but at that moment she realised why he refused. Annoyance, pain, useless enquiries, and so on, weren’t ever his concerns. Adret immediately fretted on the day she saw the runes upwards of 300,000 hover around. The way some of them clung to his body and utterly destroyed it. Everything pointed directly to the rapid degradation he suffered after every battle.

Even now the runes only dropped to roughly 150,000 by his count. For the past few days, Akevorax moved about frequently and even flew short distances, seemingly normal actions but every single one immediately formed clusters of runes, and Adret still sucked at hiding concern whenever this happened.

Still, he could now suppress the runes. Divinity and the Auric Spirit merged into one, resulting in a force almost on par with the aimless runes, but this all came with a constant drain to his powers. The Spirit gave way first as it still hadn’t upgraded from its gold tier form!

This fact bothered him for quite a while now. There was no reason that it failed to upgrade after so many years! He fed it with significantly more Origin Force than the Warborne giants ever provided, and surely it didn’t take then more than a few years for their spirits to reach mithril tier alongside them.

So, Akevorax asked it while somewhat frustrated, “How much more do you need to upgrade? I thought you were close to your next a few years ago?” Adret caught his voice but quickly realised he addressed something else, ignoring it promptly.

The Spirit imprinted its voice without any strong emotions, ‘Was close, but only before the Domination one. Now it is still a bit away. Am stronger overall, but it is longer too.’

He probably should have dealt with its broken sentences in the past too. Understanding what that even meant took him some time, and when he came to realise what it meant, Akevorax asked, “Are you saying Domination Force increases your potential?”

‘Think that is the case.’ Its words once more confused him, this time because he mistook it for a question…

“Hold still for a moment,” he told the Spirit with a sigh and it detached before standing before him like a bright golden statue. This gold more closely reflected his scales or wings’ colour, not the true gold of divinity or life essence.

It was caramel… Because of course it was.

His Eye of Truth stared through the frozen Spirit for a few seconds, but even as he disabled the ability, he came up relatively blank. Nothing appeared all that strange, the Origin Force of the spirit still looked the same as a transparent energy. He even checked and confirmed it was all Origin Force specifically.

A Nexus prompt appeared suddenly, and confusion on his face turned to a frown.

[Try looking at other dimensions, you’re being sloppy]

A beam of light swept through dozens of other dimensions, but Akevorax eventually focused on just a handful of coloured types precisely at the Auric Spirit’s chest. Where its heart ought to lay, some unknown force very clearly stopped the flow of all elements through all coloured dimensions. A minor matter to even a master tier, but it solved part of his questions.

“When you receive enough Dimension and Origin Force… I wonder what exactly you’ll change into. A spiritual being made of a power to seal dimensions, does the Nexus have any notes?” He asked without too much hope as it sounded eerily close to an Exeter’s ability.

[Do you have any clue how rare bloodlines which naturally manipulate Origin Force are in the universe? Any transparent element included?]

Even if rare, surely across billions of worlds it appeared thousands of times? Right?

[We know of one species of energy lifeforms who are born entirely from Domination Force, few of their species evolve to utilise Dimension Force. But it is hard to say if it will transform to use or be made of the substance]

Not a great deal of information, but enough to prove his guesses correct. For now he just had to stuff the Spirit with both Forces nonstop until it upgraded once more. A mithril tier spirit wouldn’t singlehandedly change the flow of battle, it too realised this, as he rarely used pure Origin Force these days, but his dependance on the Spirit could never change. So many abilities centred around its enhancement and merging effects.

“We’ll set off tomorrow. We have the main universe’s location, and we can rest in some planes along the way, anything I missed?” This time he spoke with head turned to Adret, and she calmly thought about it without a hint of emotion.

“Not that I can think of, it may be nice to see her face this time,” she smiled gently in imagination of countless scenarios drawn up over their reunion. But for some reason, this smile wasn’t at all kind or loving in his eyes. She considered and deliberated at length for days now, stuck in the memories of those who looked down on her and resented the position given purely because of nepotism. Those immense weights looked so petty and childish that she pitied her past self who lost her heart over it.

Her face turned to Akevorax with an evil smirk. A headache almost instantly appeared in response, but he could do nothing as she asked, “You did forget to accept my proposal!” A hearty laugh dealt psychic damage to him.

It took several days, but she actually found a topic which left him distressed and worn out. Something far more enjoyable than any other form of revenge.