The Dragon of Dreams

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?"

"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…-

Quickly spreading my wings, I gently flapped, expecting to be thrown through the unusual space, but I didn’t budge at all.

Not thinking much of it, I quickly tried to use thruster magic but immediately ran into a major problem.

There wasn’t a single atom in the air around me.

A hint of panic immediately started to form in the back of my mind, but thankfully, I managed to quickly calm myself. -I seem to be fine just floating here.. and I have plenty of mana still so I have time…-

Attempting to think rationally, I worked through my senses and absorbed as much information about my environment as I could. -Clearly, there is something in this space.. I just need to find out what it is…-

But I wasn’t getting anywhere, even after several minutes. My mana simply felt like it was moving through mud. -My seventh node has something to do with it.. so…- Once again dumping mana into the node, a dark red haze filled the air around me, but I still couldn’t hardly feel anything. -I just feel like I’ve been surrounded by an intangible cloud…-

Deciding to take a shot in the dark, I tried to control the cloud, and treat it like my aura.

It was an attempt to read the cloud like I would aura. -But I can barely even feel the cloud or the energy of this.. realm…-

But sure enough, after several minutes of trying to decipher the mountain of information that flooded into my head, an interesting picture was painted.

-What.. Is all this?- With the help of the cloud that surrounded me, I could finally feel the dense-liquid-like particles that filled the air around me, but the thing was, the individual particles were so small they felt like specs of static or errors, especially when compared to a single particle of mana from my aura, that felt like a colossal, uniform oval egg in the cloud.

-Is this stuff.. space mana?- It was an educated guess at best, but it was a guess I had to make before I could even start figuring anything out. -So that node is a space mana node?-

Although it was an assumption based on a guess at the time, it seemed to make sense. -That would explain why I never felt what came out of it…-

Back when I used to experiment with it to try and figure out what it was, I could never feel anything come out of it, as if my mana was just being sucked into a black hole. -But it was just because I didn’t know what to look for…-

The presence of the energy was so faint that even then when I was completely surrounded by it, I could barely sense it.

-But regardless of that.. I need to figure out how to move…- Quickly pulling myself from my thoughts, I tried to form the cloud of my space mana into a paddle and pull myself through the ambient space mana.

But instead of moving me, my mana simply brushed past the mana that I didn’t control.

I got the same result after attempting to try many other things as well, but nothing seemed to work.

-I refuse to believe there is nothing I can do… There must be something I'm missing…- Deciding to take yet another shot in the dark, I allocated every single bit of brain power into a computer-like focus.

But it wasn’t so simple, what I wanted just wasn’t working.

But after an unknown number of hours, and billions of failed ideas and methods…

-No.. Way…-

I had managed to create a quark with nothing but space mana.

Although it may sound like nothing crazy right away, it showed that something I believed to be impossible, was possible. -I can.. create matter…-

Quickly running through several other ideas I had, I found a slightly more efficient method of going about creating matter and started to slowly increase the scale.

Eventually, I was left with a small ball of hydrogen.

-I really.. broke physics…- I wasn’t sure how to even feel, it was something I had never even considered being a possibility.

With the use of space mana, I now had the ability to create and destroy matter, and energy. -I wonder.. What its limits are…- Getting excited, a slightly crazed smile came to my face.

But thankfully, I caught myself. -Right, I need to focus on leaving here first…-

Finally moving the ball of hydrogen to my back, I took a moment to slowly ignite it and ever-so-slowly begin to move forward. -It works!-

Although I was quite literally moving slower than a snail, I wasn’t confident in my ability to slow down to go any faster.

-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…-