Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 172: Precedent
Uriel stumbled on his feet, barely standing straight, the only thing preventing him from collapsing being Mariah’s strong hands wrapped around his waist.
He looked at her. "No. Tell me."
Strangely enough, as he spoke, his voice was extremely soft, docile and endearing—so much so that Mariah didn’t even realise as half the rage that burned within her heart was snuffed out, and the other half rapidly began to dissipate.
She exhaled a breath.
"You somehow disrupted the fabric of a specific point in space and entirely tore the ambient fabric of the world at that spot, which threatened to cause a ripple in time across the desert."
Her eyes began to blaze once more as she spoke aloud, realising just how ridiculously dangerous a situation Uriel had almost created.
"The fabric of space was about to ripple against the time ripple itself to mend the hole in the dimension, but also cancel any anomalies in the flow of time."
She pulled him closer, gripping his waist and sticking him against her as she looked up into his eyes, unflinching even as their chests pressed against one another and his breaths fogged faintly against her skin.
"When that happens, all energy in the surroundings is pulled into the broken point, and when that happens—when the energy reaches the broken void—it ignites into what is known as a Void Flame."
She grabbed his tunic’s collar and pulled him down, pressing his forehead against hers and getting so close their noses pressed against one another.
"You do not want to witness the effects of Void Flames firsthand."
"Had I not been there to mend the tear, you’d be dead. Do you understand that? You wouldn’t have been able to do anything."
"Death."
Uriel remained quiet.
He looked deep into her oak-coloured eyes, then suddenly giggled. His hand rose to caress her face, so softly that Mariah froze and let go of his collar.
He tapped her cheek and walked forward just as she staggered and fell back, grabbing her waist in turn and pulling her in.
Just as she was about to recover from the shock, her mind blanked as Uriel gently kissed her forehead.
"Here you go." He giggled some more. "Thank you for saving me."
"This little house may be lacking in amenities, but it isn’t so bad if you’re here after all."
He let go of her waist and slowly walked toward the still suspended mound of flesh.
"I guess you should stay around more often then. Who knows what other danger I might put the house in?"
Mariah had words.
’W-...???’
She’d never seen a man as shameless.
...
Uriel ignored his close brush with death with horrifying apathy, getting back to work.
In the few seconds since his stint, he’d managed to recover enough aether to be functional once more. Plus, it seemed like the looping effect of his Shells and Iron Body truly made it easy for him to recover.
’Alright. Now I can begin.’
WHOOOSH!
Uriel’s body shook, and for the first time in a truly long while he summoned the spell sentry, his aether collapsing into seas of silver-gold runes that flooded his surroundings.
He waved a hand and his Simple Domain, still wrapped around the mound of ’flesh’, surged toward him, following as he made his way to the counter.
PAH!
The mound gently settled on the counter, its weight stressing the entire structure of the floor, walls and wood. The mound was small, yet so impossibly heavy that Uriel was surprised the entire counter hadn’t simply collapsed.
’Ah, well, I suppose that’s at least one decent thing in terms of quality.’
Shaking his head, he refocused, staring at the mound.
The thing in front of him couldn’t truly be called flesh, but rather a portion of the world’s fabric which he’d torn using resonant dominance.
It was a concentrated bundle of primordial chaotic and orderly force and shards of the world’s laws, mixed with broken pieces of the fabric of time and space.
While peering into the fabric of the world, he hadn’t even known it would be possible to do something like this, and had only tried it on a whim. After all, his understanding of space and the world was still very much that of a mortal’s.
What mortal would know it’d be possible to tear a little part of the world off of it?
None.
In fact, Uriel had a deep suspicion that even amongst ascendants, such a thing would be shocking.
And beyond that, he was almost entirely sure that outside of this trial space, none of what he’d just done would be possible.
If Dimensional Spaces could have differences in terms of quality, what would this desert be to the entire tutorial dungeon? And what would the dungeon be to the entire real world?
It was a lucky coincidence.
One that he planned to capitalize on.
One he’d use to make the first of a long line of fine dishes.
It would set a precedent.
The runes around him soared across the air, diving toward the mound just as his wheel began to spin and his hands weaved through the air like a puppeteer controlling his puppets—his runes.
’The first step is to turn the mound into a homogenous liquid and then...’
Runes pierced into the force field on his folded Simple Domain, searing into the mound only to instantly shatter, unable to bear the sheer energetic weight of the material.
Uriel blinked, then found a solution.
His runes shook, then shed the natal aether he’d used to fuel them, using resonance to bind themselves to the material and using its own energy as a foundation.
The runes, of silver-gold, seemed to melt into the mound before re-emerging as complex dark-amethyst structures that rapidly etched across the dark surface to form a vast and layered complex formation.
The mound shook, the ambient fabric of aether on the floor trembling alongside it, its solidity fading as its structure’s most fundamental bonds collapsed, then reforged, smoothly transitioning between states of matter.
From a dark mound to a floating liquid mass of dark ink.
The first step was successful.
’...now I’ll use my natal aether to lessen and dilute the liquid’s basic aether reactivity and make it—’
Uriel got to work.
