Chapter 120: A Realm of Nothingness

Chapter 120: A Realm of Nothingness

Mid Morning - Early Winter : Northeast Space Rune

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"I believe it's time we go to Bahamut! Shall we?"

"Yaay! Let’s go!" Krystallo was extremely excited.

-The land of the dragons, huh... I wonder what it will look like...- Following Mother to the center of the room, my excitement steadily continued to grow.

But as we approached the pedestal with a void-like black orb on it, my excitement slowly turned to curiosity. -What.. Is that?-

As I stared at it as if in a trance, Mother walked up to it and gently set her nail against it.

But it made no noise at all. "We want to go to central, right? Or do you want to go by the Elders Hall?" Mother continued like it was normal.

"Well, it’s not like we can really introduce Vasilias to any of them, so..." He paused to glance at me before turning back to her. "What residence are we staying at?"

"My mother’s old one."

"Alright, then let's go central. We should avoid the north for the time being."

Mother was quick to nod. "Good call. Central it is." Finally turning back to the orb, she scraped her nail across the orb, leaving behind a thin blue line similar to a scratch. "Kids, you might feel a little queasy when we arrive, but don’t worry, it should go away fairly quickly. And don’t move too much once the artifact is activated."

"Okay!" Krystallo gave an enthusiastic confirmation as she sat down and held completely still.

"Haha, alright, is everyone ready?" She quickly glanced at me and waited for my nod before finally injecting mana into the orb.

The instant she did though, an all too familiar scene was replayed in front of me.

*vwoop* The orb grew and engulfed everything in a terrifying darkness in an instant, with a terrible listless sensation following it.

Almost immediately, a horrific, paralyzing fear overtook my mind, but this time, it wasn’t the fear of death.. it was the fear of losing everything.

-N..no... Am I really.. going to die again..?- I already knew there was nothing I could do, and it made me feel sick to an unfathomable extent.

Everything I had worked toward, everything I had achieved, and everything I had experienced... vanished before I could even think...

But as my mind started to fall into despair, I felt a familiar yet foreign energy begin to fill my body. -H..huh?-

It filled my body like a uniform ocean of energy, but oddly enough, there was one place it didn’t go.

My 7th attribute node.

Not taking a single second to question what it was or what was happening, I took every ounce of mana I could from my reserve and flooded the node.

*wWwwWWWOOP* Hearing the unusual noise, I lessened my focus on the flow of mana and opened my eyes.

But this time, I didn’t see a void-like darkness that encompassed everything.. Instead, I saw a nebulous space of black and red with countless clouds of blue and purple flowing through it like a uniform liquid.

A realm of infinity, but also a realm of nothing. -W..what the...-

Still not sure whether what I was seeing was real, I looked around and quickly noticed a web of black, yet somehow transparent tubes that were generally wrapped around an absolutely colossal sphere where the colors were focused and formed a gradient.

-What.. are those?- Looking around and trying to see if anything was in them, I eventually found a tube with something moving through it. -Huh?-

Moving through one of the tubes was Mother, Father, Krystallo, Maria, and Ilios, motionlessly floating through the tube as if they were frozen in time except for Ilios who glanced in my direction before looking forward again.

I wasn’t sure what to even think about the situation, but I knew one thing. -I need to follow them...-

-Now.. Where do I need to go...- Looking back toward the web of tubes, I quickly noticed the tube I had previously seen everyone moving through was completely empty. -Did they go through that other sphere?-

At the end of each tube, where the tubes intersected, there was a large black sphere which I assumed to be the space runes. -So should I just fly into the one at that intersection?-

Quickly fiddling with the positioning of the small ball of hydrogen, I got myself pointed and moving in the right direction and released my containment of the hydrogen.

*psff* An odd noise momentarily met my ears as the ball of hydrogen turned into a gas and expanded, but in the next instant, the hydrogen was replaced by a cloud of space mana with a slightly blue hue, as if the space mana had devoured the hydrogen itself. -Woah...-

Deciding to play around with it while I ever-so-slowly floated toward the black sphere, I quickly found that the space mana devoured any kind of physical matter I tossed into it. -It doesn’t devour me though... I'm not sure whether I should be worried about that...-

The next half-hour or so passed quite quickly as I continued to idly experiment with the mana, but eventually, I got closer to the black sphere and had to pull myself out of my thoughts.

I quickly ran into a problem though. -Uh... That's not good...- The sphere was completely solid and unlike the frictionless-liquid-like mana around me, it was crystalline to form a perfect sphere with no gaps for even my own space mana to enter.

-Well.. I guess I need to find another way out...-

Immediately deciding it was too risky to try and cut a hole into it, I floated just above it and tried to make a similar crystalline sphere of space mana around myself.

And sure enough, the instant I completed the sphere, it collapsed inward on me and I felt a massive wave of air slam into me. *FWOOSH* -Haha! It worked!!-

-

- Zachari Ragnarok ~

"Haha, alright, is everyone ready?" Quickly glancing at Vasilias, I waited for his nod to inject mana into the rune. *vwooom* -I wonder if Vasilias will get an upset stomach from this..-

As the surrounding area quickly turned to darkness and my body became weightless, I remained calm with happy thoughts.

-I can't wait to show off Vasilias to Mother...- But before I could even finish my thought, the darkness started to split apart and fade, revealing a bright blue sky and the sound of crashing waves. *crash-splash* *crash*

"Haah..." The noise brought back many good memories. "Home, sweet home.-

But the pleasant memories quickly came to a halt as I looked toward Krystallo and saw her hanging her head toward the ground. -Well, I can’t say that was unexpected...-

"Zachari!" Hearing Osto yell out, I turned to him in an instant.

"What?" I was still a bit upset about what happened at the temple, but those feelings quickly became trivial.

"Where is Vasilias?!" His face was washed with panic.

I didn’t even recognize what he said at first. -Huh... Vasil..ias?- Slowly looking around, I immediately saw Ilios, but Vasilias was nowhere to be seen.

A sickening nausea and anxiety filled my chest in an instant.

I could only look around with a pale face, hoping I just missed him, but it only worsened. -N..no...-

*VWWOOOOOMMMM* Cutting my panic short, a deafening noise ripped through the air making us all look up to see a colossal black sphere appear in the sky.

Then, in the next instant, a huge black dragon fell out of it. -VASILIAS?!-

I was still in a panic, but it didn’t last long.

The instant he exited the sphere and it disappeared, I noticed something.. Different about him.

His body was completely covered in a black cloud full of nearly invisible specks of light, making it look as if a night sky had formed around him.

Without even realizing it, I had fallen into a trance, and my worries and anxieties melted away like they never existed in the first place. -How.. beautiful...-