Bloody Odyssey-Chapter 46: Black Hole Forging II
Chapter 45
Dax carried the massive serpent corpse with effortless grace, the thirty-five-foot body dangling from one hand like a child’s forgotten toy. The sheer size of it should have looked comical—scales still glistening with residual venom, coils dragging faint furrows in the grass—but on him it seemed almost natural, as though gravity itself had agreed to lighten the load.
With a gentle, almost casual swing of his arm, he fed the carcass into the waiting black hole. The void swallowed it without protest, edges rippling like dark water as the serpent disappeared inch by inch, trunk, head, tail—gone.
Dax lowered himself to the ground in a perfect lotus position. Both hands extended forward, palms open toward the singularity. His gaze pierced straight into its heart, unblinking, unflinching.
"I can see," he whispered.
Aura erupted from his body in a slow, controlled wave—deep violet threaded with silver. The Black Hole Forging Art unfolded around him like a second skin. Derived from the sustained manipulation and supplementation of a black hole’s exotic matter, the technique granted its user absolute dominion over the compressed space within. Nothing inside could move without his permission; nothing could escape without his will.
Inside the singularity, the serpent corpse and the uprooted ancient trees danced in a divine, silent sequence—bodies folding, compressing, spiraling in perfect geometric harmony. Dax widened his palms slightly. The suction force gentled at once, becoming precise rather than overwhelming.
He flipped one palm upward, then rotated it slowly counterclockwise.
The pressure inside the black hole surged in response. The contents squeezed tighter—bones cracking soundlessly, scales grinding into powder, wood fibers compressing into diamond-hard density. Everything converged toward a single glowing point: a fist-sized crustal gem that pulsed with captured emerald light.
"Now comes the hard part," Dax murmured.
He drew a slow, deliberate breath. Memories flickered behind his eyes—the countless failures, the exotic matter stabilizers he had once forged in another life. Each one had lasted only four uses before shattering under the strain. This world held no such ready-made tools; the laws here were different, harsher.
But there was no time for hesitation.
Occasionally he spun the black hole clockwise, then counterclockwise again—fine-tuning the rotation like a master clockmaker adjusting the gears of a universe. The gem inside brightened with each shift, edges sharpening, inner storms calming.
"I will use this instead."
Dax circulated World Ki through his meridians.
This was the energy of true divine bodies—of planets, of stars in their infancy, of celestial mechanisms that birthed gravity and time. Emperors who reached this stage transcended flesh entirely; they became heavenly bodies themselves, capable of shattering worlds with a thought.
He poured the World Ki directly into the black hole’s core, guiding it toward the fragile exotic matter that kept the singularity stable.
He sensed it immediately—the structure beginning to crumble from within, microscopic fractures spreading like frost across glass.
He did not stop.
He poured more.
Suddenly an intense flare erupted from the top of the black hole—brilliant white-gold, searing the night air.
"Corona," Dax breathed, a genuine smile breaking across his face.
The sign he had been waiting for. The exotic matter was under control.
With a smooth pulling motion, he drew the glowing gem outward. A long trail of liquid metal followed—material he had just withdrawn from his storage space, silvery and viscous, shimmering with latent poison.
The gem reached the corona’s edge. The metal rushed in behind it.
Under the searing light, both began to melt—gem and metal fusing in a molten dance. The emerald core did not dilute; instead it drank the silver, veins of poison spreading through the liquid like roots through soil. The true beauty of the gem emerged—deep, sparkling emerald shot through with sober, lethal gleam.
Not even a second passed before the excess liquid threatened to spill.
Dax redirected it with a flick of will, forcing every drop back into the black hole.
"With my control now established, giving it form will be easy."
He blocked off sections of the singularity with precise barriers of exotic matter, accelerating the rotation to a dangerous velocity. The interior howled; centrifugal force pressed outward while gravity crushed inward—a perfect crucible.
The liquid metal took shape.
A surge of energy erupted from the black hole—poisonous, terrifying, thick with necrotic promise. Greenish gas billowed outward in a choking cloud, then reversed course almost instantly, devoured once more by the void.
Dax pointed with two fingers and sliced downward.
The black hole split cleanly in two.
Crack!
A sound like a dying star tore through the night—high, keening, resonant with the death-cry of compressed space itself.
Reality fractured.
A dark, boundless void yawned open beyond the tear—endless black speckled with faint, impossible stars that did not belong to this sky.
Dax’s eyes widened.
What is going on?
With urgent haste he extended his telekinesis and yanked the half-forged weapon free.
Not even a fraction of a second later, the fragmented space began to knit itself back together. Strings of mana and strange, half-seen Laws wove across the wound—golden threads, violet chains, silver filaments—pulling reality closed with mechanical inevitability.
Dax watched the healing process with rapt intensity, Origin Eyes drinking in every detail.
When the tear sealed completely, he looked down at what he held.
A jagged blade rested in his palm—similar in shape to a massive cutlass, edges broken and uneven as though torn from living stone rather than forged. The weapon carried an emerald-and-sober sheen; emerald strips ran along every surface like living runes, pulsing faintly with contained venom.
Poison seeped from the metal in thin wisps—some drifting upward, some flowing directly into Dax’s skin.
He inhaled slowly, letting the toxin circulate through his veins without resistance.
"It is complete."
His grin carried mischief—sharp, boyish, dangerous.
The blade thrummed once in his grip, as though acknowledging its maker.
Dax stood, turning the weapon slowly in the moonlight. The jagged edges caught the silver glow and threw it back in fractured green sparks.
He had forged something born of serpent venom, ancient tree essence, his own mutated blood, and the raw hunger of a black hole.
