Chapter 500: Origin of Vilmore
1
When Ning reappeared, he was in the middle of what looked like a really foggy
region. however, it was way too hot to be foggy. There was a massive sun in the
sky, but that was likely not the reason for this fog. which lead him to believe
that he was actually in the middle of a bunch of steam.
Suddenly, he lost all feelings of gravity in his body as he started free falling.
He immediately caught himself and started ying normally. He looked around
to catch the sight of Alexis awlessly oating through the air, the water vapor
parting around her, not daring to taint a single spot on her body with their
moisture.
"Let's go down," she said. The two of them oated down until they were atop a
small piece of land.
Ning looked around in shock. The land looked like nothing but an island with a
single volcano on top of it.
The brown, rocky piece of land was really warm. Ning really believed a volcano
would erupt at any moment here.
Most of the area was covered in dense fog and was hard to see.
Alexis took him and walked towards the mouth of the volcano. Ning walked
along with her and slowly ascended the mountain.
"Is... this the Origin?" he asked. He had wanted to come here for so long, and
nally, he was here. To top it all o, it was the goddess who had brought him
here.
Ning took a mental image of the location and tried to nd it on the map he had,
but he couldn't nd it.
'It must be in a folded space as well,' he thought.
"Yes, it is," Alexis said. "Not only is it in a folded space, but there is also a seal
around the place as well."
"You might think you will come back here when I take you back, but you
won't," she said.
"Eh? A seal?" Ning asked with a bit of surprise. "And you can open this seal?"
Alexis smiled at him. "Of course. I put the seal here after all."
Ning's eyes threatened to bulge out of its sockets. "You put a seal around this
place?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "I don't really like it when people come in here, so I made it
impossible to get in using any method."
Ning looked around. He wondered if this was the source of her godhood and
that was why she didn't want anyone to come here.
"I learned my lesson pretty well last time," she said, almost absentmindedly.
"Your lesson?" he asked.
"Yes," Alexis said. "I had another seal prepared where I didn't want anyone to
go to. However, preparing a seal where no one could enter cost me a lot of
power. So, I had decided to skimp out a little and let some aws there."
"I ended up making a seal where no living being could enter," she said.
"And the aw?" Ning asked, and even as he did, An answer came to his mind.
"Yes," she said, reading the answer in his mind. "Since no living being could
enter, people entered using dead people. I was quite distraught when I realized
that."
"But the seal was already made, and I couldn't really change it," she said.
"You said you didn't remember properly last time. So, you did make it?" he
asked.
"Yes, and you destroyed it," Alexis said with a hollow voice
Alexis said nothing and continued walking. Ning started thinking about what
he had just learned when he realized he had reached the top of the mountain
and was now looking into the mouth of the vol—
It wasn't a volcano. Ning was wrong.
"The hell?" he asked in surprise as he tried to peer through the upcoming
waves of steam to see what he was really looking at.
Alexis waved her hand and a gust of air took away the steam at the bottom of
the crater.
When it went away, Ning could nally see a large pool of shimmering white
liquid at the bottom of the crater.
The pool reminded him of the liquid Qi pool in the Origin of Kumia. However,
while that was a pool of Qi, this one... wasn't a pool of Aether at all.
There was no energy in that pool aside from a bit of heat to turn it into vapor
and...
Ning nally saw it. At the bottom of the lake, there was a large hole that looked
like a portal, the same as the one at the bottom of the lake in Kumia.
That was the portal to the world of Energy where even he as an immortal had a
very high likelihood of dying.
Ning subconsciously took a step back in fear, but still stuck his head out to look
at the slightly purple color of just a small section of the lake.
"Aether is coming from there," Alexis pointed and said. "But... you knew that
already, didn't you?"
Ning nodded.
"You keep surprising me with your knowledge," she said. She looked back
towards the pool and continued explaining.
"That liquid right there is nothing but water, mixed with a special mineral that
can only be found on this mountain."
"The mineral dissolves into the hot spring down there, which then becomes the
liquid that absorbs Aether. From what I know, there are many other minerals
out there that can make the Aether Liquid, but only this mineral is available on
this planet," Alexis said.
Ning nodded as he came to an understanding. "So it the mixture of water and
that mineral that makes the liquid that absorbs Aether, huh?" he said.
He would need this liquid to make the things that would stop people from
collecting Aether.
"I don't necessarily need the liquid, do I?" he asked as he looked at the side of
the mountain. "I just need the minerals."
"Yes," Alexis said.
"Depending on the amount of mineral in the liquid, it may or may not have a
really high capacity of carrying Aether. If you want a liquid that gathers a
massive amount of Aether, including the one from other Aether liquid already
in the air, you will have to make a really concentrated liquid."
Ning nodded while listening to her. He looked at the bottom of the pool once
more and realized that the Aether liquid that was supposed to be purple wasn't
really purple at all.
"Go and get as many as you can from anywhere on this island," Alexis told him.
Ning nodded and left the place to get the minerals.
It took him no more than a few minutes to realize that the entire land was made
up of the same mineral as the one in the crater.
Someplace had a higher amount and someplace had a lower amount, so he went
on to nd locations that had a lot of it.
He started digging in the rocky ground that was soft as a cake under his Aether
King enchanted body. The shovel dug into the rock like a knife entering a bread
and easily pulled out the contents inside of it.
Then, he stored the minerals in his storage.
In just a matter of minutes, he had enough mineral to make that pond's worth
of Aether liquid of the highest concentration.
He walked back up to the top of the mountain with Alexis still waiting there.
She looked solemn, with not a single smile on her face.
"What's wrong?" Alex asked.
"So beautiful," she said as she looked into the shimmering lights beneath the
pool of Aether liquid.
"Don't go in there. That is very dangerous," Ning cautioned her.
"I know," She said. "I've touched it and felt it try to devour me. I won't make
that mistake again."
Ning tried to ask her what it was like, but then he saw a teardrop from her face.
He stopped.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
As if that were the key to the sea, the oodgates opened and tears streamed
down both of her eyes.
"I'm dying," she said. "I have been dying for a while now, and I can't stop at
all."
Ning froze. At rst, he thought he heard her wrong. How could a god die?
Weren't they gods because they couldn't die?
He wasn't a god, and even he couldn't die, without special circumstances.
However, he knew he could trust his hearing and thus the words he heard
coming out of Alexis' mouth.
She was dying.
"Are you sure?" Ning asked.
Alexis nodded. She nodded while the tears streamed down her face constantly.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "I have been losing my mind a lot of the
time recently. I can't even stay awake a whole day anymore and have to
disappear to gather my consciousness before returning back."
"I don't want to regress back to the time when I couldn't think at all," Alexis
said.
Ning tried to comfort her. "I'm sure we can nd a way around this," he said.
"No, there is no way. I know everything, and therefore, I know that there is no
way," she said.
Ning didn't want to believe that. He had never been in a situation where there
was no solution to a problem.
Most of the time the solutions were horrible, and the worst choice, but they
were still solutions.
"Do you know what is causing you to regress back to this unconscious state
then? If we know how it is happening, then maybe we can x it," Ning said.
Alexis nodded. "I know the reason," she said.
Ning smiled and asked, "What is it?"
She turned towards him, with red eyes full of anger, and said, "YOU!"