'So, that won't work.' He concluded after some more thinking (albeit limited in capacity due to everything he was dealing with now).
Letting the storm start was as good as letting it run its course. He had no way of controlling how it would develop. Like a chemical reaction, it would do what it needed to do to finish its reaction. To Eldrian's knowledge, no type of matter was inert to the reaction, and he did not know how to separate the mana forms.
With this option unavailable (and yet the most common option the AI employed), his next bet was dealing with the source of the reaction. Already, he was dealing with the elemental mana filling the world. This step was rather simple, but more or less just a bandaid for the problem.
The true source was the unstable mana which had been collecting since the birth of the Earth. Alas, it was a foreign concept to Eldrian. He knew of it, but not much about it.
It was unstable but also inert. The instability caused it to react violently, and the inertness caused it to build to a critical mass.
Alas, since it was inert, there was no way for Eldrian to interact with it. Thus no way to learn more about it. Yet, even if he knew how the gods did it, he couldn't apply this here. Not with a critical mass already present.
He was stuck.
He continued to drain as much mana from the world as he could. But, even with his new techniques and spells, his range was limited. The world was massive. Trying to cleanse the entire planet in a few hours or days was futile.
It would take months. He didn't have that long. He couldn't leave his condition as it was. He was still losing parts of himself, even with a constant source of energy being dispersed into the void of time. Like a river chipping away at a rock, fragments of him were being pulled into the void along with everything else.
He had to close the connection between the void and himself. But that meant losing a way to reach the Realm of Time. Eldrian didn't know if he could ever manage that again. Nevertheless, he didn't have much of a choice.
Thus while the more immediate problem was Earth's destruction, he couldn't keep focusing on it. This process could buy him another year or two, perhaps even more. But if he didn't pivot soon enough, he would be consumed. And then, who knows what would follow.
To top this off, this entire process was excruciatingly painful. Anything that does damage to the soul always is. And, sadly, pain makes thinking things through a far more difficult task.
Eldrian had managed a lot but he was at his limit. The best he could do from here on was persevere. Alas, he couldn't even realize that this was his limit. He still thought he could do more.
He was trying to thread the line, unaware that he was falling into the chasm.
...
Watching from the side, his friends tried to help him. Painfully, they had realized the danger of approaching Eldrian. Having realized their spells weren't having an effect, they tried to approach him.
As soon as Eldrian had returned, he had ripped a hole between Earth and ANW. For the first since ANW's creation, there was a direct connection between the two dimensions. Not one formed through souls, but a much more physical one.
Alas, to the despair of the gods, this was not the safe passageway they wanted. No, it was an absolute abyss. Pulling everything nearby into it. Multiple gods had lost the parts of themselves they sent to investigate the connection.
These parts, fully conscious on their own, were forcefully ripped apart. Destroyed into absolute nothingness. The backlash of which sent all these gods reeling in pain. Some even fainted, for the first time in their new lives.
Naturally, even this didn't stop them. Their desire to return to the Earth was too great. They rushed to study this void. To find a safe way to traverse the space between dimensions. All but one.
One of the gods did not bother with the new void. No, she knew the source, and she was trying her best to keep this source from dying.
Indeed, Ziraili was in Eldrian's soul. Or rather, the soul space linked to his avatar. The initial burst of energy had come from this part of Eldrian's soul. As strange as this was, everyone who played ANW had two souls. One inflated with XP and the other represented their true essence.
The former would slowly mutate the latter. That was why Eldrian had changed so much on Earth. It was also why his friends were slowly getting better and better at using magic. The larger the soul, the easier it became to use mana.
Luckily for Eldrian, his soul was more directly linked to his true essence than other players. And thus it was less inflated and more true. Other players were rewarded a bundle of XP upon clearing quests. A task that massively inflates their levels. Eldrian, though, had lost that privilege ages ago.
And while his ANW soul space was still much larger than his true essence, he had adapted to this. Forming a world inside his soul to match his true soul capacity. Which was slowly growing to match the size of inflation from XP.
Upon his return to Earth, all the excess XP had been consumed. This had been what had saved his life. Alas, his level hadn't been all that high. Having used plenty of XP in his experiments on creating artificial 'minds' (or cores) of himself right before arriving in the Realm of Time. He hadn't had the excess needed to avoid some truly harsh backlash.
Thus his current state. And, even now, his soul was shirking (in both worlds).
Ziraili was doing her best to figure out the cause. But by focusing on supplying Eldrian with extra energy, she had been too preoccupied to investigate the void that had caught the attention of all the gods. Leaving her in the dark.
That was until she felt another player suddenly losing massive amounts of XP. As she was the one responsible for administrating the souls of all players, she always had to focus on them. When she suddenly felt a soul collapse to a tenth of its previous size, she knew that it had to be connected.
Alas, simply knowing that everything was connected didn't give her a solution. She immediately started to supply the second soul with extra energy. To stop the drain and the danger to their lives.
Still, the fact that another could partake in the situation gave her an idea. A dangerous one. One she would normally never attempt.
But this was to save the life of her friend. A friend she held close to her heart.