Ren was sitting in a room with hundreds of books stacked on each other. Around her, notes and torn-out pages littered the floor. Ren was seated in the center of this messy, chaotic landscape as three thick lexicons floated before her, automatically flipping through the pages while she was scratching her chin, immersed in her thoughts. It was an idyllic picture at first, but it was soon destroyed as the whole Spire shook amidst a loud explosion originating from the top.
"Huh?" Ren blinked her eyes, skipping towards the only window in the room. Opening it and leaning outside, bathing in the strong sunlight, looking upwards, she was watching the purplish smoke rising towards the Sky. It was sparkling in the sun's bright rays like fireworks. "That crazy bastard!" She flew out, rising towards the top quickly, taking a deep breath, and blowing away the flowing, thick smoke. "Hey, gramps, are you still amongst the living?" She shouted, waving away the fog-like, dark blue clouds inside the room.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine!" Rabout coughed, slowly becoming visible as he walked towards her. His clothing was shredded to multiple pieces, hanging from his body as rags, while his long, silvery hair was reduced to a buzzcut, with clumps of hair curling upwards. Their endings were still smoking like some strange incense. It was not just his hair; he had lost his beard and eyebrows, making Ren laugh as soon as she saw him, not holding back at all. "What?" He blinked his eyes, producing a small handheld mirror. "FUCK! My lush, beautiful mane! It's gone! Damn it! Wha?! My eyebrows?! Why are they missing!? And my beard! My baby!"
"Bwahahaha! You should completely go shaved now, gramps! Embrace it! If you want, I can polish it for you until everybody can see their reflections on the back of your head!" Ren laughed, slapping her own thighs.
"Very funny!" He looked at her with slanted eyes, adding with a barely audible voice, "6 out of 10."
"Sorry?" Ren wiped her eyes, stopping her laughter.
"I said, laugh 'till you can!" He snorted, showing her a perfect octahedron, the size of a human eye, spinning rhythmically above his palm. It was without color, completely see-through, and seemingly empty.
"Huh? What is that?" Ren asked as she raised both of her eyebrows.
"A vessel. A perfect vessel. Also, it acts as the world's first immaculate and functional energy filter!" Rabout explained proudly.
"I do not follow you." She looked up at him, then back to the… thing, trying to see what he was talking about.
"Try fusing your energy into it!" crept a grin on his face as the octahedron was tossed towards her. When she caught it, it continued to spin with the same speed above her palm, unaffected by Ren's hand or the motion when it was thrown over.
"Wait… It pushes me away… I can't… touch it?" She said with awe, as no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't grab it. The weird octahedron refused her body with such a strong, natural repulsion that she couldn't touch it. Not even when she was using her full strength, making the air crackle with lightning and thunder.
"I told you! It is the only perfect filter ever created! It refuses anything that is from this realm! Or are you not from here?" He grinned, watching her struggle. In the end, Ren finally gave up, letting the octahedron just float above her palm.
"Damn… you are a madman… I love it!" Ren laughed once again. "How did you manage to create this?"
"Are you really interested in it or just asking?" Rabout asked as he tilted his head.
"How long would it take you to explain it to me?"
"A few days."
"Then just asking." Ren shrugged, turning her eyes back to it and letting her energy seep into the thing. At first, it was wholly refused, but soon something changed. Its previously transparent color started to change, and it was as if some kind of smoke appeared inside of it, bearing the same reddish and purplish color of the cosmos. Just as it appeared, both of them heard an ear-splittingly loud rumble coming from the Sky itself. Looking up, the Tear was already visible, and not just for them. Everyone could see it in Rozex, looking up to the Sky, seeing red lightning flash above them as if it was searching for something.
"Damn, stop the energy flow! It attracts the energy from the Cosmos itself!" Rabout exclaimed loudly, but by then, Ren had already cut all her connection to it, not wanting to draw down a tribulation.
"You made something perilous, gramps…." Ren whispered, watching the Tear slowly fade away, remaining only visible to her eyes while everyone with lower cultivation could no longer see it.
"It would seem like it…." He nodded with agreement and wonder glistening inside his eyes, watching the Sky return to its previous calmness. "But this can capture and filter energy! It is going to produce real cosmic energy! If I can study it, I can eventually replicate the Cosmos's energy with its help! I derived it from the room you set up and perfected it to this form, bwahaha!" He laughed, but then he suddenly started to cough, and blood flew from between his lips onto the floor, almost collapsing forward if Ren would not be there to catch him.
"What the?!" Ren exclaimed, driving her own energy into him as her face trembled, turning serious. "Are you mad?! You are completely fucked up inside! Almost all of your organs shifted places or ruptured! Are you suicidal or something?!" She produced a healing pill quickly, almost pushing it down his throat.
"A small price for success!" Rabout grinned while Ren just let out a loud sigh.
"Idiot… Even if a Harmony expert can live a really long life, your life energy has become extremely weak and jumbled up just now! You sacrificed who knows how many years of your life in this experiment!" She scolded him as she helped Rabout out of the destroyed laboratory. That was when Milly arrived up the staircase, rushing with a panicked expression, especially after seeing Ren drag out her Lord's feeble body.
"What happened?!" She rushed there, helping Ren carry him into his room and laying him down on the sofa.
"He went overboard! Milly, go to my tower and ask Sentios to come here immediately!"
"Yes!" She nodded, hurrying away without thinking, while Rabout just looked at Ren.
"Why send her away? She should learn about it." he looked into Ren's eyes with a soft smile.
"So you also felt it?" She scanned his expression with a long, stretched-out sigh. "I only did after I started supplying energy into your body."
"I felt it right after the explosion." Rabout nodded, without a change in his eyes, unbothered by it. "My lifeforce is leaking."
"Yes…" Ren nodded heavily. "You hurt yourself deeply. Even if you had 4000 more years ahead of you, it is now ticking down like sand in an hourglass. I can't tell you how many years, months, or days you lose per second, but…."
"Enough." he chuckled, waving his hand, sitting back up, and shaking his head. "I don't care about that! Everyone has to die one day. Neither do I want to know when or why, nor am I interested in knowing how many years I have left! What matters is enjoying the now, and I am greatly satisfied right now!"
"Satisfied that you essentially killed yourself for your stupid experiment? Huh?" She scrunched her eyebrows, looking up at him, breathing more quickly because of her anger.
"No! Satisfied because I have such a cute little descendant!" Rabout smiled with a delighted expression, rubbing her hair vigorously, making a mess out of it entirely while Ren was just watching her with a somewhat dumbfounded look.
"Tsk…" She clicked her tongue, looking away, drawing another laugh from him. What was frustrating for Ren was that the situation made her remember when she told her then-disciples what her plan was. Tearing open the Sky and that it would result in her own death. Even with all the preparations, it was a big possibility that it would fail in the end. But it was a risk she was willing to take and even give her life for it. What was happening now with Rabout was something she knew very well, and she completely understood his reasoning, unable to refute him with absolute honesty. "Let's find a way to slow it down first… then we can think about a solution."
"Sure! That is the proper way!" He clapped, laughing again, fiddling with the weird octahedron floating above his hand.
…
….
…..
A few days later, Ren stood inside the room where she set up the teleportation formation, and by activating it, the mirror-like gate rose up from the middle. Sentios was prepared this time, sitting at his spot, providing energy to their side more easily than before.
"Did something happen?" Xendar asked with a bit of worry in his voice while Dermitos stabilized the formation on their part, not Aerthus.
"Yes. I can't explain it in detail because we have a little time before the connection goes out. Please send someone to Thunder Valley and ask Kai to come here."
"So it is something serious…." Her father furrowed his brows.
"It is, but it is not me who is affected by it. Anyway, I need him in person for this."
"Won't he be noticed by Zelig?" Xendar asked as he crossed his arms, unsure if it was a good idea.
"Don't worry, Dad, he has a Demigod body, and he is an old God… if he didn't come here unnoticed, I would make fun of him for the rest of his life!" Ren chuckled, easing her father's nerves a little.
"Okay, I'll go myself and tell him. Anything else?"
"This." She threw a rolled-up parchment into the 'mirror,' and it took minutes for it to appear on the other side. Dermitos's and Sentios's energies were draining quickly to transfer even that little object over. They just now realized how much stress it placed on Aerthus previously when he was the leading energy supplier for the formation.
"This is?" Xendar looked through the projection, right into his daughter's eyes after he opened and looked at the half-drawn, weird diagram on the paper itself.
"I don't know." she shook her head. "My guess is that it is a formation. Show it to Levictus, please. He is most likely able to come up with something more substantial than the wild guesses I have right now." Ren replied with a small sigh, "I'll call you again three days later to see if there is any progress."
"Okay. And… Be careful… okay?"
"No worries, Dad~" Ren winked with a playful grin at him as the connection was cut between them.
When the room fell into silence and calmness once again, Sentios stood up, letting out a long breath, dusting off his hands.
"You did not say anything to us either, but if you need the help of Kai… something has gone completely awry. Isn't it true?" Sentios asked, watching her reaction, but Ren just sighed.
"The only thing that gone sideways is Rabout!" she shook her head with a little bit of anger before she started explaining it briefly to him. "The injury he suffered is something that is related to the outside world. I need the advice of someone who is FROM the outside. The other problem is… still up for debate. It is nothing concrete now; you don't need to worry about it. Yet!"
"Yet? Geez…" Sentios smiled, twitching his mouth while shaking his head.
"Only one problem at one time, okay?" Ren laughed, "I'm such a good Boss, aren't I? I am not dumping dozens of problems on you at the same time! Now you should only focus on the Wonder Emporium! Everything else comes after that!" She said as they walked out, going up the spiral staircase, watching the clear night sky from the huge windows of the Spire.
"Luckily, there are no problems with it. The people Ooda introduced are easy to work with, and with the efforts of all of us, it should be finished by the end of this month."
"Oh? That is pretty quick! Quicker than I anticipated! Well, then I must get to work too! It would look stupid if there were no things to sell and we open up an empty building~" she licked her lips, watching the full moons outside, already excited as to how the public was going to receive it.
Ren was sitting in a room with hundreds of books stacked on each other. Around her, notes and torn-out pages littered the floor. Ren was seated in the center of this messy, chaotic landscape as three thick lexicons floated before her, automatically flipping through the pages while she was scratching her chin, immersed in her thoughts. It was an idyllic picture at first, but it was soon destroyed as the whole Spire shook amidst a loud explosion originating from the top.
"Huh?" Ren blinked her eyes, skipping towards the only window in the room. Opening it and leaning outside, bathing in the strong sunlight, looking upwards, she was watching the purplish smoke rising towards the Sky. It was sparkling in the sun's bright rays like fireworks. "That crazy bastard!" She flew out, rising towards the top quickly, taking a deep breath, and blowing away the flowing, thick smoke. "Hey, gramps, are you still amongst the living?" She shouted, waving away the fog-like, dark blue clouds inside the room.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine!" Rabout coughed, slowly becoming visible as he walked towards her. His clothing was shredded to multiple pieces, hanging from his body as rags, while his long, silvery hair was reduced to a buzzcut, with clumps of hair curling upwards. Their endings were still smoking like some strange incense. It was not just his hair; he had lost his beard and eyebrows, making Ren laugh as soon as she saw him, not holding back at all. "What?" He blinked his eyes, producing a small handheld mirror. "FUCK! My lush, beautiful mane! It's gone! Damn it! Wha?! My eyebrows?! Why are they missing!? And my beard! My baby!"
"Bwahahaha! You should completely go shaved now, gramps! Embrace it! If you want, I can polish it for you until everybody can see their reflections on the back of your head!" Ren laughed, slapping her own thighs.
"Very funny!" He looked at her with slanted eyes, adding with a barely audible voice, "6 out of 10."
"Sorry?" Ren wiped her eyes, stopping her laughter.
"I said, laugh 'till you can!" He snorted, showing her a perfect octahedron, the size of a human eye, spinning rhythmically above his palm. It was without color, completely see-through, and seemingly empty.
"Huh? What is that?" Ren asked as she raised both of her eyebrows.
"A vessel. A perfect vessel. Also, it acts as the world's first immaculate and functional energy filter!" Rabout explained proudly.
"I do not follow you." She looked up at him, then back to the… thing, trying to see what he was talking about.
"Try fusing your energy into it!" crept a grin on his face as the octahedron was tossed towards her. When she caught it, it continued to spin with the same speed above her palm, unaffected by Ren's hand or the motion when it was thrown over.
"Wait… It pushes me away… I can't… touch it?" She said with awe, as no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't grab it. The weird octahedron refused her body with such a strong, natural repulsion that she couldn't touch it. Not even when she was using her full strength, making the air crackle with lightning and thunder.
"I told you! It is the only perfect filter ever created! It refuses anything that is from this realm! Or are you not from here?" He grinned, watching her struggle. In the end, Ren finally gave up, letting the octahedron just float above her palm.
"Damn… you are a madman… I love it!" Ren laughed once again. "How did you manage to create this?"
"Are you really interested in it or just asking?" Rabout asked as he tilted his head.
"How long would it take you to explain it to me?"
"A few days."
"Then just asking." Ren shrugged, turning her eyes back to it and letting her energy seep into the thing. At first, it was wholly refused, but soon something changed. Its previously transparent color started to change, and it was as if some kind of smoke appeared inside of it, bearing the same reddish and purplish color of the cosmos. Just as it appeared, both of them heard an ear-splittingly loud rumble coming from the Sky itself. Looking up, the Tear was already visible, and not just for them. Everyone could see it in Rozex, looking up to the Sky, seeing red lightning flash above them as if it was searching for something.
"Damn, stop the energy flow! It attracts the energy from the Cosmos itself!" Rabout exclaimed loudly, but by then, Ren had already cut all her connection to it, not wanting to draw down a tribulation.
"You made something perilous, gramps…." Ren whispered, watching the Tear slowly fade away, remaining only visible to her eyes while everyone with lower cultivation could no longer see it.
"It would seem like it…." He nodded with agreement and wonder glistening inside his eyes, watching the Sky return to its previous calmness. "But this can capture and filter energy! It is going to produce real cosmic energy! If I can study it, I can eventually replicate the Cosmos's energy with its help! I derived it from the room you set up and perfected it to this form, bwahaha!" He laughed, but then he suddenly started to cough, and blood flew from between his lips onto the floor, almost collapsing forward if Ren would not be there to catch him.
"What the?!" Ren exclaimed, driving her own energy into him as her face trembled, turning serious. "Are you mad?! You are completely fucked up inside! Almost all of your organs shifted places or ruptured! Are you suicidal or something?!" She produced a healing pill quickly, almost pushing it down his throat.
"A small price for success!" Rabout grinned while Ren just let out a loud sigh.
"Idiot… Even if a Harmony expert can live a really long life, your life energy has become extremely weak and jumbled up just now! You sacrificed who knows how many years of your life in this experiment!" She scolded him as she helped Rabout out of the destroyed laboratory. That was when Milly arrived up the staircase, rushing with a panicked expression, especially after seeing Ren drag out her Lord's feeble body.
"What happened?!" She rushed there, helping Ren carry him into his room and laying him down on the sofa.
"He went overboard! Milly, go to my tower and ask Sentios to come here immediately!"
"Yes!" She nodded, hurrying away without thinking, while Rabout just looked at Ren.
"Why send her away? She should learn about it." he looked into Ren's eyes with a soft smile.
"So you also felt it?" She scanned his expression with a long, stretched-out sigh. "I only did after I started supplying energy into your body."
"I felt it right after the explosion." Rabout nodded, without a change in his eyes, unbothered by it. "My lifeforce is leaking."
"Yes…" Ren nodded heavily. "You hurt yourself deeply. Even if you had 4000 more years ahead of you, it is now ticking down like sand in an hourglass. I can't tell you how many years, months, or days you lose per second, but…."
"Enough." he chuckled, waving his hand, sitting back up, and shaking his head. "I don't care about that! Everyone has to die one day. Neither do I want to know when or why, nor am I interested in knowing how many years I have left! What matters is enjoying the now, and I am greatly satisfied right now!"
"Satisfied that you essentially killed yourself for your stupid experiment? Huh?" She scrunched her eyebrows, looking up at him, breathing more quickly because of her anger.
"No! Satisfied because I have such a cute little descendant!" Rabout smiled with a delighted expression, rubbing her hair vigorously, making a mess out of it entirely while Ren was just watching her with a somewhat dumbfounded look.
"Tsk…" She clicked her tongue, looking away, drawing another laugh from him. What was frustrating for Ren was that the situation made her remember when she told her then-disciples what her plan was. Tearing open the Sky and that it would result in her own death. Even with all the preparations, it was a big possibility that it would fail in the end. But it was a risk she was willing to take and even give her life for it. What was happening now with Rabout was something she knew very well, and she completely understood his reasoning, unable to refute him with absolute honesty. "Let's find a way to slow it down first… then we can think about a solution."
"Sure! That is the proper way!" He clapped, laughing again, fiddling with the weird octahedron floating above his hand.
…
….
…..
A few days later, Ren stood inside the room where she set up the teleportation formation, and by activating it, the mirror-like gate rose up from the middle. Sentios was prepared this time, sitting at his spot, providing energy to their side more easily than before.
"Did something happen?" Xendar asked with a bit of worry in his voice while Dermitos stabilized the formation on their part, not Aerthus.
"Yes. I can't explain it in detail because we have a little time before the connection goes out. Please send someone to Thunder Valley and ask Kai to come here."
"So it is something serious…." Her father furrowed his brows.
"It is, but it is not me who is affected by it. Anyway, I need him in person for this."
"Won't he be noticed by Zelig?" Xendar asked as he crossed his arms, unsure if it was a good idea.
"Don't worry, Dad, he has a Demigod body, and he is an old God… if he didn't come here unnoticed, I would make fun of him for the rest of his life!" Ren chuckled, easing her father's nerves a little.
"Okay, I'll go myself and tell him. Anything else?"
"This." She threw a rolled-up parchment into the 'mirror,' and it took minutes for it to appear on the other side. Dermitos's and Sentios's energies were draining quickly to transfer even that little object over. They just now realized how much stress it placed on Aerthus previously when he was the leading energy supplier for the formation.
"This is?" Xendar looked through the projection, right into his daughter's eyes after he opened and looked at the half-drawn, weird diagram on the paper itself.
"I don't know." she shook her head. "My guess is that it is a formation. Show it to Levictus, please. He is most likely able to come up with something more substantial than the wild guesses I have right now." Ren replied with a small sigh, "I'll call you again three days later to see if there is any progress."
"Okay. And… Be careful… okay?"
"No worries, Dad~" Ren winked with a playful grin at him as the connection was cut between them.
When the room fell into silence and calmness once again, Sentios stood up, letting out a long breath, dusting off his hands.
"You did not say anything to us either, but if you need the help of Kai… something has gone completely awry. Isn't it true?" Sentios asked, watching her reaction, but Ren just sighed.
"The only thing that gone sideways is Rabout!" she shook her head with a little bit of anger before she started explaining it briefly to him. "The injury he suffered is something that is related to the outside world. I need the advice of someone who is FROM the outside. The other problem is… still up for debate. It is nothing concrete now; you don't need to worry about it. Yet!"
"Yet? Geez…" Sentios smiled, twitching his mouth while shaking his head.
"Only one problem at one time, okay?" Ren laughed, "I'm such a good Boss, aren't I? I am not dumping dozens of problems on you at the same time! Now you should only focus on the Wonder Emporium! Everything else comes after that!" She said as they walked out, going up the spiral staircase, watching the clear night sky from the huge windows of the Spire.
"Luckily, there are no problems with it. The people Ooda introduced are easy to work with, and with the efforts of all of us, it should be finished by the end of this month."
"Oh? That is pretty quick! Quicker than I anticipated! Well, then I must get to work too! It would look stupid if there were no things to sell and we open up an empty building~" she licked her lips, watching the full moons outside, already excited as to how the public was going to receive it.
