Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 146: Fly
It didn’t take a genius to understand what was happening.
He was running at speeds so staggering he would have been able to cross entire continents of his planet in mere days or hours, and yet he wasn’t making any distance at all.
Granted, this could simply be because the dimensional space was just that large. Uriel didn’t believe it to be so.
No, more accurately, he knew that was only part of the truth.
The sand.
It was shifting as he ran and moved, reacting to every single fluctuation of aether and force he produced, constantly rolling and folding beneath his feet.
It was as if he had been running on a treadmill for hours, rooted in place, yet somehow travelling countless meters along the way.
The desert was constantly moving, and to move alongside it was to remain static; and to remain static was, paradoxically, to move.
But the issue was that...the desert was moving in a way that pulled him away from where he sought to go.
As long as he travelled on land, he was stuck.
WHOOOSH!
So he would fly.
Uriel’s core trembled, then swallowed seas of atmospheric aether from within his domain, so much so that the domain flickered violently, as if teetering on the verge of shattering.
The swallowed aether rapidly turned natal, refined and claimed as his own, and with a sharp tug of will, Uriel tore it directly out of his core, streaming the thick, silvery mass of power through his body and into his palms.
Those same palms pressed firmly against the sandy ground.
’...’
Uriel paused for a moment, doubt flickering across his eyes.
He could...die.
The last time he had done what he was about to attempt, not only had he nearly died, but he had gone insane for days afterward, a spiral that had led him into his current predicament.
But back then, his aether had been that of a regular G-Ranker. Now...everything was different.
’...’
A nervous grin tugged at his lips.
Then, he roared, runes flashing in the depths of his eyes and along the length of his neck.
"Condense!"
All of Uriel’s aether, which he had only just replenished, suddenly gathered into a single point in the sand, right in the center of his palms.
WHOOOOOOSH!
The flood of aether was so vast the entire desert trembled, such a ridiculous amount of orderly power unseen within this boundless expanse.
Radiant silver light spilled outward, blanketing the entire desert in its glow.
Veins bulged alongside Uriel’s hands, his arms trembling as his body became drenched in sweat. He bit down hard on his lips, blood spurting as he squinted, doing his absolute best to remain focused.
’Here comes the hard part!’
"Swirl!"
Once again, he used Resonant Dominance, but not through his mind as he usually did. This time, he invoked it through his Simple Domain.
Resonant Dominance imposed the user’s will upon something and seized control of it.
When he imposed his own Will, the thing in question became an extension of himself.
But if he imposed his Simple Domain—which was, in essence, a small, incomplete, and imperfect prototype of a dimensional space—what would happen?
It would be as though a world in and of itself were issuing a decree.
RUMBLE!
The point of stable aether formed from his natal reserves began to swirl violently in place, and the sand around him followed suit, rising to form a shifting sea of currents, all rotating around him.
He became the eye of a maelstrom of sand.
And with each rotation, the fabric of chaotic atmospheric aether within the desert bent and warped, forcefully compressed into the singular point of order Uriel had created. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢
Order and chaos collided, and with each passing second it became harder and harder for Uriel to maintain the fragile equilibrium between the two through his Simple Domain.
By now, the desert had transformed into a haven of silver and red light, clashing amidst a storm powerful enough to sunder continents.
And at its center, Uriel could be seen.
The eye of the chaos was silent and calm, towering walls of shifting sand surrounding him on all sides.
"..."
He exhaled slowly. Then, he drew in a breath.
He closed his eyes.
And then, he exhaled once more.
BANG!
His Simple Domain released its hold over the forces of chaos and order, and finally, they collided without restraint.
The world fell mute, and all color drained away, the desert turning into an endless expanse of darkness for the briefest of moments.
Then, blinding white light tore through the void.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
A cataclysmic explosion followed.
...
If he couldn’t travel by land, then he would fly.
And what better way to launch himself across the sky than through an explosion of utterly chaotic aether?
WHOOOOSH!
He shot through the heavens at such absurd speed he almost seemed frozen in space, as though the world itself moved around him instead.
His shell was cracked in every direction, giving him the appearance of a shattered stone statue, blood seeping slowly from the fissures.
His elemental mantle, however, remained largely intact, having somehow partially fused with his Simple Domain, wrapping around his body like a second layer of protection.
Flames ignited from the sheer friction and speed, yet they failed to pierce his mantle or breach his domain.
Even so, Uriel’s mind flickered in and out of consciousness, the crushing pressure and violent mechanics of everything unfolding proving too much for his thoughts to fully endure.
Thankfully, he had aimed himself perfectly toward his destination.
...
After Uriel’s stunt, the desert grew even more chaotic.
Though the aether itself was inherently chaotic, it still flowed within orderly channels of energy, structures that worked in quiet harmony to keep the world ’stable.’
After all, if there were no underlying order within the mechanics of the world surrounding Uriel, he would already be dead. He was nowhere near capable of surviving within a truly chaotic expanse.
The fact that the desert cycled from calm to chaos at precise, repeating intervals proved this all the more.
It was a false chaos.
But what he had done disrupted that harmony.
The air trembled repeatedly, gigantic glaciers of ice forming from imploding currents of ice aether, only to be torn apart moments later by emerald wind blades born from twisted, colliding flows.
Sand whirled alongside frozen rain and jagged shards of ice, the entire expanse teetering closer and closer to collapse.
And yet, amidst it all, near what Uriel had determined to be the very edges of the desert, one colossal structure stood completely unblemished.
It was formed of radiant pale crimson crystal, brilliant points of azure light embedded across its surface like stars scattered through a blood-soaked cosmos.
The statue was impossibly tall, so tall it pierced through the skies, beyond the clouds, and even past the settlement barrier before vanishing into an endless field of nothingness.
Its true shape was unclear, obscured by both distance and distortion, though its base was circular and deeply entrenched within the sand, utterly immovable even beneath the world’s assault.
Around the structure lingered a dark purple haze, further swallowing its details in obscure shadow that none could properly discern.
It stood proud.
