Chapter 96 – Reunited

Three days passed tediously, and Dream was now in the factory.

As he stood inside the container for his armor, he stared at the cloud of silver cells in front of him. Although he knew that these cells weren't fragile in any way, he didn't dare touch the cloud for fear of affecting this 'delicate' project. 

[You can touch it.]

"You sure?"

[Yes.]

Sensing his desire to touch the metal cloud, Sophia stepped in. Hearing this, he threw away all reservations and slowly stuck his hand into the dense silver fog. 

His hand was enveloped by a metallic and dry feeling. It was like he stuck his hand into a liquid metal glove, not that he really knew what that felt like. The fog was dense and viscous, not easily allowing his hand to pass through. Though with his strength, it was no issue.

"It's...Interesting. So now's time for the enchantment?"

[It is. Three days. Though with how intricate this piece is, things may happen and it could take longer. But no more than 5 days.]

"Oh well. I gave myself 4. The girls wouldn't complain if I happened to be away for one more than promised right?"

Prior to this, Dream had let Mara and Arrina know that he would be gone for the next 4 days. Neither of them were happy about it, but what could they do? 

The reason Dream said 4 instead of three was because he would likely need to recover after this. Although he would be up in his imaginary cabin during the cnhantment, his mind and soul would be actively building the enchantment alongside Sophia. And three straight days of intricate and precision enchantments would not take a light toll. So he wanted at least an additional day for after the work was done. Though another reason for the extra time was that he wanted to play with the new toy before going back to school.

"This'll be like a Christmas gift to myself. Speaking of, when is Christmas?"

[Two months. And your birthday is in three.]

"Oh yea. I'll be 21. Finally drinking age. Though my alcohol virginity was taken long ago. Not to mention how I'm no longer on Earth. I wonder if the laws would change now that powers have been introduced. If the countries that enforce such a thing remain standing, that is. Anyway, I guess we should get started."

Dream sat down and closed his eyes, though not before Sophia spoke up.

[One more thing before we start. I'm going to try something but I'll need your permission.]

"What's up?"

[The orb. I want to try using it.]

When she said that, the diamond orb with black swirling liquid mana inside came from a pocket in his clothes and floated in front of him, falling into his hand.

[Since we know that this is definitely mana, and that it's extremely dense mana, I've thought about incorporating it into the suit as a form of a core. This would of course require me to break it and reform it so that the mana inside could be utilized. I don't need to tell you how little we know about this substance, even if we do know that it's mana. So the risks of tampering with something unknown are there. If something happens, the power inside this thing has the potential to heavily injure you and even destroy the material for the suit. So I ask, would you like to experiment with this?]

"Hmm..."

Dream went into thought while looking at the orb. Sophia had analyzed the hell out of this thing, but they couldn't get much more than that it was liquid mana just like the Dome core. So they knew next to nothing about it. However, the potential benefits of opening this up far outweighed the downsides. So Dream didn't need to think much about it.

"Even if this thing does destroy everything here, we have the materials for another. And I can always recover from injuries. I don't mind waiting should things go south. And the potential of this thing is immense. Hell, we might be totally overthinking this and this little orb isn't all that extraordinary. So yes, I give permission to use this as you see fit."

[Okay! Come on up.]

The next moment, Sophia pulled Dream into his mind-space. He was greeted with a beautiful girl and a sweet kiss.

[Ready to get started?]

"Ready as I'll ever be."

[Then come with me.]

Sophia grabbed Dream's hand and they teleported out of the cabin. The next moment, they were in the middle of...nowhere.

Their surroundings turned pitch black. There was no floor, no ceiling, nothing. Not a speck of light. Dream was disoriented for a bit, until he saw a small silver speck in his vision. 

"What's that?"

He walked over to the speck. It was about the size of a pea, and it looked very familiar. 

"This is a cell?"

[Yes.]

Sophia came up from behind, enlarging the silver speck.

[It's the cell of the suit. The building block. Here, we can see it's atomic structure. Simulated of course. We don't actually have the power to view individual atomic nuclei quite yet. But that's beside the point. Check this out.]

Sophia took the cell and pulled it apart, making two identical cells. Then, she threw them into the dark void in front of them. 

The cells began to rapidly proliferate, splitting apart and creating new cells. First there were hundreds, then thousands. Millions, then billions. Until they finally stopped, creating a bright sparkly cloud that lit up the surroundings.

[This is where we'll monitor the enchantment progress. The enchantment is going to be connecting billions of microcomputers and micro cores. Though because of the complexity, we'll have to take it in clusters of a few thousand at a time.]

"Only a few thousand at a time? How are we going to complete this in three days?"

[It'll be completed in stages. The first stage is where we build up the connections. Once we connect a few million, we'll then be able to use their combined processing power to assist us. The connections will spread like a virus, and thus will kick off the second stage. We will stand back at a certain point and provide the fuel as well as any corrections necessary to the virus. They'll spread by themselves and their rate of infection will accelerate exponentially, creating short work of the connections.]

"Oh, nice. Then, won't it take less than three days?"

[Maybe if we stopped there. But there's a third stage. This is the stage where, once everything is connected to each other, we will impart an intelligence to the suit and bind it with our own. I plan to use a connection similar to Luna's familiar connection as well as the cognition skill to bind the suit to you. This won't make it in any way sentient, but it will become an exceptional artificial intelligence. And its processing capabilities will be unparalleled. By anything besides my own of course.]

"...Wow. That's ambitious."

[It is. And we'll get to watch it all. Starting now.]

Right when she said that, one of the silver cells made a connection to the 10 others adjacent to it. Another 10 connections were made, then 20, then 50. 

The connections began to rapidly spread, but it was only a minuscule amount. Soon they approached a thousand, and all the cells began to spread to another thousand.

This was when Dream felt the strain on his mind and soul. To make all those connections at once wasn't easy and it would be very easy to get out of control with the load he was bearing.

Sophia knew his limits of course and brought the rate of spread to a constant rate. This was when Dream understood the time frame and that this would take an entire day to get to their goal of a few million. But it was still an entire day, and the stress he was receiving from the processing would build up over that time period. Needless to say, he would definitely be tired.

But as of right now, he didn't really care about that. He was too enraptured by the sight in front of him to care.

"...It's beautiful."

The cells and their connections looked like a star constellation. It looked amazing, unlike anything Dream had seen before. But he was also excited about the data streaming through his mind. It was all the connections and the micro enchantments being performed, as well as how as the 'virus' spread, the data and processing capabilities of the cluster slowly grew. He could see how they were constantly being tested by Sophia to make sure everything was running smoothly. 

Something about being productive like this gave Dream a certain satisfaction. He was working towards a goal and they were pushing the limits of their knowledge to create a piece of art never before seen. He understood all the concepts that were going into the development and construction, and he could actively assist Sophia. They were connected after all, and as Dream began to connect with her more, he began to understand their roles in this almost symbiotic bond.

Sophia was a skill with the purpose of data processing. And like many of the projects they had carried out so far, Sophia was an essential part of their development. The things Dream had done would never have come to reality if Sophia hadn't been there. But Dream had one thing that Sophia, despite her intellect, seemed to lack. Understanding.

There is a big difference between knowledge and wisdom. A book contains knowledge, as does a computer. But it takes wisdom to use that knowledge. It takes wisdom to understand the knowledge and take more out of it than what it gives. It's like physicists studying the universe. Sure they need to use computers to process the knowledge and data, but it's them who understand the concepts. The computers don't have wisdom, they do. And Dream was finding out more and more that that's what his and Sophia's relationship was like.

Dream couldn't do the things he did without Sophia, but she also couldn't do those things without him. And though one might argue that Sophia could totally build a suit like this without him, they would also need to consider whether she would take on the project in the first place. It was a matter of purpose. 

Without wisdom, there wasn't much sense of purpose. Like a boat without a captain, it would just float around with the whims of the sea, having no goal or destination. It didn't matter how technologically advanced the boat was, it still needed to be given commands. And that's what the captain was for. He guided the boat, used its facilities to the highest efficiency, and sought to achieve his goal or reach his destination to the best of his and the boat's abilities. And while Sophia had enough wisdom to achieve a certain level of sentience, even that came from Dream's soul.

This was their relationship. And everyday, Dream connected further with Sophia, and they could efficiently conquer tasks before them by combining their strengths. It was a sort of affinity, and despite being with each other for a while, they still hadn't achieved the highest affinity. But they were always subconsciously working on it. And this project before them, this daunting and tall mountain peak that combined all of Dream's understanding and Sophia's processing capabilities, was the perfect way for them to push the limits of their affinity.

Even the Record thought the same.

<[Sophia] has leveled up!>

<[Sophia] has leveled up!>

<[Magic] has leveled up!>

Dream smiled at the notifications for a second before turning back to the ever-growing constellation before him. 

"This'll be fun."

.............

........

....

In a city about 10,000 miles away, two girls were sitting inside a room.

Luna and Iris had arrived in this city only a few days ago, and after meeting their infamous grandfather, they had been locked up in a castle like prisoners. 

Though it wasn't all that bad. Even this councilor, Raoul, acknowledged them as princesses, so they were treated as such. This was of course in regards to everything except the lockup. They were kept inside a villa within the castle, and it had everything they could ever ask for. It was nothing but the utmost luxury, but neither of the girls could find any enjoyment out of it. Iris had also tried to use the bracelet that would connect them with Dream, but for some reason, the connection never went out. They could only chop it down to an enchantment around the villa. So with not only nothing to do, but no hope of talking to Dream, these past few days were spent in depression.

But today was different. Only a few hours ago, they had felt something. Neither of them could pinpoint exactly what it was. Though Luna had initially thought that it was her familiar connection with Dream, those thoughts were dashed when a servant gave them a piece of news.

"High Princess Selene has requested your audience. In an hour, someone will come by to escort you to her chambers."

When the servant had announced this news to them, both of the girls had been dumbstruck. Princess Selene? Wasn't that Riddick's wife? Or in other words, their mother?

It took a while to process, but eventually they understood what was about to happen. 

"We...We're going to meet mother?"

Iris looked over to Luna, her eyes full of expectation. After they left the forest and entered the world, they came to understand what a mother was, but they also came to understand what they had missed out on. 

Though they loved their father more than anything, they couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to have a mother. Someone who would tenderly love them and care for them. Someone they could be coddled by. Their dad wasn't exactly the best at those things, being a rough and tough man. 

So while they were waiting, a million questions passed through their heads. What would she look like? How powerful was she? Was she really a mischievous fox as their dad described? Was she nice? Is she where the connection came from?

The girls fantasized about how everything would go. They were scared, excited, curious, nervous, and hopeful. But as they were indulged in their thoughts, they suddenly sensed some ruckus from outside the villa.

"You think you can keep me away from my daughters? Where are they?"

"My lady, Lord Raoul said-"

"I don't give a damn what he said! Get out of my way! Or I'll crush you where you stand."

"U-understood."

"Damn right. You bastards dare to handle them like this. You're lucky I don't cut your hands off."

After that, Luna and Iris heard the door quickly open.

"Hello? Luna? Iris?"

The girls felt their hearts stop for a split second. They got up from the bed they were laying on and walked out to the living area.

As they got closer, they could feel a connection within them grow stronger between them and the person only a dozen meters away. They could sense the hope and anguish coming from this person, and their eyes began to tear up in emotion as they felt the person on the other end.

When they quickly turned the corner, they could see an open door and a fox standing in the middle of the living area.

The fox was beautiful. She had snow-white hair that looked almost crystalline. Blue streaks waved in different designs across her fur, and her eyes radiated with a beautiful blue light. What stood out the most though, were the 5 tails this fox had, as well as the overwhelming power that radiated from her body. It was power they only felt from class 3's like their dad, except this power exuded majesty and elegance unlike the destructive power their dad radiated. 

"M-my babies..."

The fox cried out before transforming into an equally magnificent, beautiful woman. She bore striking resemblance to the girls, only with a bit more maturity. One might even think that they were sisters at first glance.

The woman slowly approached them, both parties carefully feeling the connection. As they got closer, the woman's power extended back to the door, closing it shut as to not let them be disturbed. 

Finally, they met. The woman reached out her hand to both Luna and Iris, wiping the tears that had already started flowing.

"Mom?"

"Momma?"

"It's me. My babies, it's me. I can't believe it, how much you two have grown. It must've been so hard on you...I'm so sorry..."

"Momma..."

After feeling the love that could only come from a mother, both girls had realized that this was her. The bond that was created between them even before birth hadn't disappeared even after all those years of being separated. And now, it was finally resurfacing. It deepened even further by the second, and all three of them could feel it instinctively in their soul. That this was the family that they had been apart from for so long.

Iris was the first to break. She dove into her mother's arms, bawling and clutching her clothes. Luna also began crying, and after her mother pulled her into her arms, she seemed to revert back to a small child, letting out all the pent-up frustration that had accumulated over years.

"I know. It's alright. Everything's going to be alright. Mom is here now. I'm never letting you two go again."