Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 171: Cosmic Blood

After he’d returned from the past and reformed his cores, the system had said something odd.

[You have comprehended part of the Void!]

[You have comprehended part of Nothing!]

[You have comprehended part of Dissonance!]

[You have comprehended part of Resonance!]

[You have comprehended part of Harmony!]

It had said he’d comprehended Harmony and Dissonance, which was abnormal considering the fact that Uriel simply hadn’t.

This discovery had led to his bottleneck regarding his cores and the tri arts, an issue he still had no solution for.

So then, by witnessing the birth of a dimension, what had he comprehended that’d been so potent that even the system deemed it necessary to point out?

What had he seen?

"Unfold."

Uriel spoke, resonance laced into the very fabric of his voice, his cores humming as he bound himself not to the ambient fabric of aether, but to the fabric of space around him.

He closed his eyes.

Then, his Simple Domain unfurled, and he spoke again.

"Unfold."

He reopened his eyes.

Rapidly, the world around him lost all colour, and he found himself in a void of absolute darkness.

But just as rapidly, this void gained colour.

Across the darkness, streams of ’dark’ multicoloured radiance and ’bright’ multicoloured radiance split and joined in all directions, forming a gigantic network of rivers spanning the entire world.

’The aether paths through which energy flows across the world to stabilise it and give it sustenance.’

The void, now illuminated by multicoloured rivers, shook once more.

And across the darkness and its rivers, countless runes appeared, lining vertically and horizontally in front of him in such ridiculous amounts that it felt like he’d peered into the very source code of the world.

And that was because he had.

’The runic fabric of space and the world. The laws of the world.’

The spark of Uriel’s mage path had been a relatively simple realisation.

Energy was potential, and runes moulded, transformed, and actualised that potential.

The world was no different.

He’d seen it.

In the most primordial days of the desert’s dimensional space, it had been nothing but chaos and order, clashing and warring, thus tearing the void.

And from the void, runes bloomed, harmonising the two forces and creating bindings—’laws’, to use the energy—and from that, space and time were born.

What Uriel comprehended, and thus gained?

He’d gained the ability to peer into the runic fabric of all things and see their energetic flow paths.

He could see the backend of the world and observe its most fundamental gears.

He could see Laws.

...

Unaware of the madness of his achievements, Uriel simply nodded to himself and continued.

’Good.’

Though he could see the runes and laws of the world, he still couldn’t comprehend them, let alone try to manipulate those laws or flows of primordial energy.

He couldn’t even form runic languages yet, or peer through all rune types, though eventually he would be able to.

Regardless, none of that was his goal.

’How should I do this... hm...’

He paused for a moment to think over his next few steps.

’During the Advent, when Ophanis came out of the void, reality mended in her wake, so I’m going to guess space can heal itself when broken but...’

He looked at the runes.

’Is there any backlash involved?’

What he wanted to do was quite... daring.

...

Mariah had been looking at Uriel for quite some time now, trying to understand what was happening as she replayed their conversation again and again in her head.

As the seconds passed and he remained unmoving, eyes closed, she only found herself growing more and more interested, her heart thundering in her chest for some reason.

’What in the world could he be doing?’

Then suddenly, Uriel moved.

DOP!

The sound was unlike anything she’d ever heard, like a thousand droplets of water falling from the sky into calm waters, the sharp sound left to echo infinitely in a closed chamber before being unleashed.

The sound shook her, her brain rattling in her head, but what she saw next made her eyes widen completely.

Uriel’s hand shot forward, yet rather than slamming against the cabinets in front of him, it seemed to travel across infinite space, space twisting and warping around his arm before it then—

"No!"

—collapsed, revealing an endless void beyond the small gash in reality Uriel had just made.

Mariah blurred and suddenly appeared right beside Uriel, her palm shooting forward just as Uriel’s hand exited the void.

PAH!

Her palm patted space as if it had no depth and was solid, a ripple spreading across the air before suddenly a loud whip-like crack echoed and the gash mended before anything could surge from beyond.

"Are you out of your damn mind?!" she screamed, turning to face him. "Do you have any idea of just how dang—"

Uriel ignored her, in part because he didn’t care but mostly because he couldn’t afford to lose focus.

His hand was covered in what could only be called cosmic blood, thick dark blue liquid dotted with countless multicoloured stars.

And in his grasp, he held a dark fibrous material almost akin to flesh, yet not quite—so opaque it seemed like another tear in reality.

WHOOOSH!

Uriel infused Resonant Dominance across his Simple Domain, his aura growing as he unleashed as much aether as he could.

Then his domain peeled off him like a spectral mantle, wrapping entirely around the mound of cosmic flesh and compressing it.

The moment the mound was completely coated, Uriel let go and collapsed to his knees, the mound remaining locked in space where it had been.

"Huff... huff... huff..."

His face was pale, his cores nearly empty of all energy and his body wracked by pain. It felt like his mind was collapsing and his heart was on the verge of rupturing.

But he smiled nonetheless.

[You have achieved a Great Deed!]

[Trigger Moon Formation?]

[YES/NO]

Uriel ignored the notification.

"Hey!"

Mariah crouched down, grabbing one of his shoulders before tapping his cheeks to make sure he remained awake.

Uriel looked at her and his smile softened.

"I’m fine."

She helped him up to his feet.

"No, you’re not!"

Her voice was firm and strict in a way she’d never displayed before, her aura fiercely towering and pressing into him.

She looked at him with blazing eyes, with as much fury as sheer bewilderment.

"Do you have any idea what you just did?!"