Sovereign of the Karmic System-Chapter 681: Piece of Mind

Roley stood still, dumbfounded. In his hand the familiar feeling of the glass sphere in which the true primordial nature of space twisted and turned, fractured and mended back into one. "You want to find.."

"A primordial time treasure, yes." Daniel interjected as his eyes began to glow with a strange golden light. "And I think I know where to start."

The old warrior grabbed his sword and stood up, dirt staining his otherwise peerless shiny armor. "I have seen enough of the new you to understand when our discussions are over, so let us move on to other matters. What are your intentions for our friends?"

Daniel smiled knowingly. "And I can tell when you ask pointless questions. You already have plans for them. Both of you."

Der and Roley looked at one another, then exchanged a faint nod.

"The elementals that have survived Sacrifice’s purgatory hold no loyalty for a legendary leader their ancestors used to follow, and have expressed to me their desires to join my army. So I will take them to my planet." Roley said, tone struggling to avoid a crack that could show weakness. It was a decision, armored in conviction that was tested by the underlying fear he felt for the emotionless monster his oldest friend had become.

Daniel slowly turned to face Roley, matching his oddly colored white and black eyes with spheres of pure gold. "All of them?" He calmly asked.

The young scholar adjusted his posture under Daniel’s otherworldly gaze, eyes shifting between him and Der rapidly. "All but Wolfe, who changed his mind this morning, and has chosen to follow you instead."

"Mhh.. What would you say caused this change of mind?"

Roley shrugged. "I am not sure. We had agreed to meet early this morning, so that I could bring him to meet the primordial elementals that follow me, but when I came to find him he was meeting the mind cultivator. His mind had already changed by then."

Daniel nodded, lungs filling with raw mana and constructed oxygen. "Very well." He said before turning towards Der, matching his gaze, and immediately noticing that, of the raw fear Roley felt for him he could see no trace in the warrior’s eyes. Gems of white unnaturally powerful immortal essence that stood valiantly against the visceral superiority of the existential power he was emanating.

"My armada will take the rest in." The older man said, factually.

Daniel smiled once again. Deep down he did not like the idea of a mortal acting as an equal to him, but he could not deny, after seeing his power, that he had the rights to. "What of Ligart, Xargy and Aeron? Do they not wish to find their old friends?" He asked more to make conversation that out of genuine interest.

"Ligart was more than happy to cede the leadership role, and Xargy has already made a lair out of one of my storage vessels. He calls it his personal library." Der said while slowly tying the sword’s sash around his waist. A motion he had repeated every single morning for the past two millennia. Once done, his heavily armored hand landed onto the sword’s pommel, and he added, "Aeron decided to follow you as well. He said that there is something he wishes to confirm."

"That being?" Daniel asked, curious.

"You can ask him yourself." Der said before nodding in Roley’s direction.

The young scholar reciprocated the nod with one of his own, then immediately rotated the sphere of pure glass he was still holding. The motion was almost imperceptible, yet it was more than enough to cause the opening of a square rift thirty feet and about as wide, from which a bare-chested man with pale green skin and emerald eyes, and a horse-sized metallic wolf emerged.

The large paws of the metallic wolf sunk into the soil, forcing Roley to mend it with more durable materials that screeched when clashing with the sharpness of the elemental’s metallic fur and claws. What could not bear the weight exploded, sending shrapnel and gravel in every direction. The green-skinned man did not appear bothered by this, for the pieces of rock and metal appeared to cut right through him as if he wasn’t there to begin with. People might have mistaken him for a ghost, had the soil under his feet not flatten under the hundred and eighty pounds he weighed.

Both the mind cultivator and the large wolf stopped between Der and Roley, forming a united front against Daniel’s lone figure.

"You decided to follow along. Why?" Daniel asked Aeron.

The green-skinned man stepped forward, eyes glowing like emeralds whose shine pierced through everything that was physical. His voice came as a thought that everyone could hear. "I want to study your.. condition. The damage it caused."

"I didn’t know I was damaged." Daniel snickered, amused. "Do te-"

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"You know precisely what I am talking about." Aeron said, interrupting him.

Roley and Der turned to look at the mental cultivator, surprised by his words and curious. Was the damage Aeron was speaking of the cause of Daniel’s change? They wondered. Before they could ask, they felt the space around them chill to absolute zero. Existential power of karma swirling around Daniel in an attempt to shield his mind from the mental cultivator, failing miserably.

"Fine." Daniel said after a few failed attempts and a calming breath. "And I assume you want to help him?" He then asked the wolf, who nodded his gargantuan head in response. "Who am I to stop you anyway." Daniel said dismissively before focusing once again on the growing blue moon in the distance, leaving the others to catch up.

"Alright, Der and I will start moving your people." Roley told Aeron and Wolfe before opening a second portal. On the other side of it lay the war camp Ligart and the others had built, now awakened by the ecstatic rush of people packing their belongings, eager to finally leave.

Before heading through it, Roley seemed to remember something. His right hand rose to his chest, and slipped in between his robe and pale skin. There he wandered for a few seconds, probing and fishing, until finally, he pulled from it a glob of metal. A fist-sized bubble whose surface kept moving, melting and solidifying, fragmenting and merging back together. Its color going from light grays to black, gold, silver, reds and greens.

Wolfe immediately noticed the object, feeling drawn to it. In it he could feel every concept that had formed his existence. Every variation, combination and change in the essence of metal, and yet, he also felt something more. Something old. Something he had only felt before when meeting Roley, though at that time, it was suffocated by the presence of the other elements.

This time, it was pure.

Satisfied by the elemental’s reaction, Roley threw the glob in his direction, watching him catch it easily between his sword-like fangs. "This is a fraction of my world. It will only last a week separated from the rest, but you can always come to me to ask for more when it disappears. That is unless you have changed your mind, and want to join my army instead." Roley said casually.

Wolfe felt the primordial power react to the essence of which he was made of, tainting it in the best way possible. His black titanium eyes shifted between Aeron and Roley, showing both eagerness and worry, but only for a few moments. It was when Daniel’s quiet and lonely figure was caught in his sight that his indecisiveness disappeared. When he saw the man standing to the side in silence, unbothered by his friends’ decisions. A sight that disturbed him deeply.

As Roley felt the elemental’s emotion through his metallic composition, he decided not push the matter any further, and quietly headed towards the portal instead.

Once the scholar stepped through, sinking his bare feet into the thick layer of mud that covered the camp, the heavily armored warrior followed suit. Before he could cross, however, Der heard a voice resound in his mind, familiarly cold but speaking well meaning words. "You should spend more time with your daughter." Aeron said. "She stopped cultivating a long time ago, and doesn’t have long left to live."

"Too much time has passed." Der responded, head lowered in shame. "I am a different person, and I wouldn’t know what to say to her." Words that caused the impassible mental cultivator to smile for the first time in what, in truth, had been centuries.

"What else is there to talk to an old matriarch?" Aeron asked. "Talk about your grandkids, her grandkids, and the hundreds of descendants you still have on the other side of that portal."

"Never been one for emotional reunions." Der said. Steady steps bringing him closer and closer to the portal.

"That makes the two us." Aeron responded right as the old warrior walked through. The portal closed rapidly, but not fast enough to stop Der’s amused laugh from piercing through, and lingering in the air. A laughter that, unfortunately, died soon after, leaving behind an uncomfortable silence.

Aeron’s gaze landed once more on Daniel’s figure. He was standing pensively at the edge of the platform. He wanted to talk to him, tell him that he had seen the connections of his spirit and memories cut, limp strings that would twitch during emotional moments in a pointless attempt to reconnect the two severed halves, making him human once again. He wanted to tell him that maybe, if he were to grow in power the way Der had, he could mend that damage, and bring back the person he had been before.. he just wasn’t sure how to say it.

Thoughts turned into green essence, a thread which dissipated, turning into a wave of power that reached outwards. It was how Aeron spoke. Not with sound, for there was no sound to be spoken or heard of to begin with, but through telepathy. It was quicker, and more efficient, and yet, Daniel still beat him to the punch.

"I am allowing you to observe, but one thing I need to make clear." He said. "I do not regret my ascension, nor do I wish to reverse it." The surrounding space began to tremble and crack, pressured by dense existential power that was invisible to Aeron’s and Wolfe’s eyes. Large ripples formed as Daniel turned in the direction of his two companions. His eyes shining brighter than twin golden suns. "Were you to ever make an attempt to affect my mind, change the way I think, or the way I am.. I would kill you myself."

Each syllable released a shock wave that struck the elemental and the mental cultivator like a hammer. The metallic wolf losing outer layers, tempered by the pressure like a red-hot blade between a hammer and an anvil, and the avatar of mental power shifting in and out of existence like bad static, or a broken light bulb.

A deep screechy growl came from the depths of Wolfe’s throat. Broken cogs that were forced to grind by the rest of the machine, alternated by a snarl that felt like a million blades being sharpened at the same time. Yet, all of a sudden, the metal elemental calmed down. A light green hand was resting gently against his metallic mane, injecting a calming power into its body.

"Very well." Aeron said. "I just need to be more powerful than you are before I try."

Daniel’s lips curved into a wide grin. "Attaboy."