36 - Mortality

The years passed.

I never found a singular clue to a warp drive. In fact, I hadn't even found another void magic level technique manual. I went to the two forbidden areas I still hadn't visited. Nothing.

One was just a den of dragons hoarding mythril, while another was the ruins of an old temple, but with a large golem that could kill weaker people at the class blood stage.

The golem didn't have anything of significance on it. I could even make a golem that was similar, myself.

The abyssal seraphim were still biding their time anxiously. These few years were nothing to them. It wasn't long enough to make them feel safe.

Arachne's pestering did eventually result in her getting that sanctum septica.

The Sanctum Septica. An alchemical tool that could transmute anything into almost anything else. It was one of the most overpowered artifacts in the cosmos.

Unfortunately, it was sealed. Arachne could only make string with it. Or so did the abyssal seraphim think.

***

In the Chiral Prism Dimension.

"Kekeke. Kukuku. HAHAHAHAHA. Oh my-oh my goodness. I need to calm down. THESE IDIOTS! Ha!"

On a pure white web of intricate design, there lay a certain tool.

It had a rectangular base and a smaller rectangular top face. Made mostly of some blood red material, appearing sanguine and almost pagan, it had odd runes etched onto its surface, both the top and the slanted sides.

Sometimes, these runes were individual, just put closely together but not having a collective meaning. Other times, they formed sentences and statements, of an ancient language.

In the center of the top was a circular region outlined by what looked like an odd magic circle. Inside the circle was a single symbol carved into its surface.

It wasn't a rune, yet it held a strange power like a rune, but much stronger. Its presence in the center of the artifact's surface showed its importance.

The area inside the circle was concave, caving inward in a dome shaped cavity.

It was in this cavity that the symbol was etched, and the curvature seemed to be incorporated into the design.

Around the artifact were 4 pillars, a few meters away. At the top of these pillars was an orb, of a deep and swaying blue.

This was the sanctum septica.

On the pillars were designs of angel wings wrapping around the pollars top to bottom.

At the top, it seemed as though the azure orbs were being levitated upon a throne of wings.

These pillars were all a pure white, made of some clean marble-like substance.

The pillars and central artifact were all placed on a large rectangular platform, and the entire platform, which was the whole sactum septica, was placed on the web.

There was no gravity here, so the web wasn't to hold the sactum septica up, but down. To glue it onto the webs to stop it from slowly floating away.

On the side was Arachne on a web, deep in thought after having calmed down.

It was currently sealed, heavily, and indeed could only make simple variations of string.

However, if her plan succeeded, it wouldn't stay that way forever.

Smiling, Arachne began getting to work on her "innocent hobby of making new string".

***

I tried my luck by attempting to break into Sylvia's house when I ran out of options, but I couldn't get past the defensive array.

I spoke to every class blood stage expert I could find, but none of them had any clues.

I traveled throughout the continent over and over, searching far and wide, but still nothing.

I even built up an intelligence network, but even then I found nothing.

Years turned into decades.

One time, I stepped into the void through the void rift after instilling 5 hours worth of void mana into an array that would cast [Void Hazmat] for me. I floated there in the void and constantly absorbed loads and loads of void mana.

After the 5 hours were up, I had absorbed almost 200,000 VP, the equivalent of 2 years of absorption through the momentary opening of the void rift. However, that was only enough to continue casting [Void Hazmat] through the array for another 20 minutes, well below replacement.

In that time, I gained no new skill either, and I had a lot of VP, but not even so much that I could recklessly keep doing this every day until I got a skill. Moreover, who knew if the skill would help in my predicament.

For reference, it took about 3 million VP to cast [Void Hazmat] for 5 hours, and I got about 100,000 VP a year, normally. So this one time was 30 years of savings.

I shifted my focus to studying arrays more, focusing my efforts on spells like [Teleportation] and [Greater Teleportation]. That was what the warp drive did, after all, just at a larger scale.

After many years, I made a little bit of progress, creating an 11th circle array that could endlessly cast [Greater Teleportation], but that wasn't enough. Still, it would be the fastest I could travel so far.

The speed array I had previously made could travel at mach 1000, or ~1.2 million km/hour.

This teleportation array could initially only let me travel at 360,000 km/hr, but after a lot of ingenius advancements in arraycraft I comprehended over the years, I got the speed to a similar mach 1000. However, to get it past it, I had to create a new spell, [World Step].

It was at the 10th circle, but it cost as much as [Void Hazmat] did at the 11th circle. It was probably impossible to cast for anyone below the void magic stage.

It allowed teleportation of up to a little over 10,000 km. in exactly one second, which was the casting time.

With [World Step] plus the array, which was an 11th circle array at least (but I suspected it was higher than that, I just didn't know how high), I could travel at 100 million km/hr.

This was a crazy amount, and I decided to make a preliminary ship for it, even if it wasn't enough yet.

Indeed, that's right. It still wasn't enough. Distances between universes in the void were ridiculous, and this wouldn't cut it.

I tried just traveling around in the realm I was in, but at the edges of the seas I found an invisible barrier with an illusion of infinite sea displayed in front of me. Well, perhaps it was real, but I couldn't go there to make sure.

At the bottom of the ground was the same, about 1000 kilometers down, and when I tried going straight up into the stars, I found a dome shaped barrier above.

However, this dome shaped barrier was the only one the was different from the other barriers. Not only was it a staggering 100,000 kilometers above the ground, it rippled as I touched it.

The other barriers had no ripples.

From up there, I could see the continent and world clearly. The desert sandstorm that cut off the west of the continent also cut off the sea, but the sandstorm stopped at some point high enough up.

What I saw on the other side startled me.

It was a barren, black wasteland, charred and with nothing living on it.

I could feel a destructive energy rampaging the lands there, and when I tried to go down there, my ship actually began to get scratched before I even got below the clouds.

Let it be said that this ship's defensive arrays could even handle the void.

I tried to absorb the energy, but I couldn't. Not even slowly. It just rampaged in my body until I forced it out.

That was something else different about this energy. It was more destructive, but despite being unable to be absorbed, it had no "spirit" to it.

Spirit did a lot of things, but what was important to understand in this case was that the lack of it made pushing the destructive energy out of the body relatively easy.

Well, you had to not die in the time it took to push it out, so a bare minimum level of strength was required.

In comparison, both raw mana and void mana had a certain, very minor, degree of spirit to them. Just this small amount made them almost impossible to easily push out.

After pushing all the energy out of my body, I healed up in the ship and left back up to the sky, before traversing back to the eastern side of the continent by going over the sandstorm.

When it reached the sea, the sandstorm was still around, though I wasn't sure where the sand came from. It seemed to just be the same sand particles swirling around at high speeds above the ocean.

Hopeless, I continued working on my arrays and spells, but to no avail. I couldn't get it to go any faster.

The years and decades passed on and on, and eventually, I was a dying old man.

I was 190 years old that day.

Ixtra had renewed his contract at some point for another hundred years. He'd be watching me die now, while he lived on for much, much longer.

I decided along the way at some point to enjoy my life, so I had partaken in all the pleasures of the mortal world. As far as my mortal mind was concerned, I was satisfied.

Yet, there was a part of me that couldn't accept that. It wasn't enough. I still had questions, so many questions.

I knew of the broader reality, and I so dearly wanted to experience it.

But...alas. It seemed that dream was destined to not come true.

Laying on a bed by a window in a luxurious room, my body pale and my once dense vitality due to leave me at any moment, I looked out and stared into the distance.

"Is this...really the end?"

Sighing, I shook my head and closed my eyes.

I thought about all the adventures of my life and all the questions yet unanswered, and once again felt an intense, burning desire to stay alive for just a bit longer, to find out the answers to those questions, and to journey the cosmos.

However...

Laying down on the comfortable bed, my eyes closed, I took deep breaths as my annoyance, desire, and all other emotions slowly began to fade.

'Ah. So this is it. Death. Where I fail to even muster the energy to feel enraged at my circumstance. How...miserable...'

My breaths began to get lower, softer, and less vital and strong. Eventually, my lungs breathed their last breath, I exhaled for the last time, and my heart beat its last beat.

Losing consciousness, I could only think of my despair, and soon, even that became impossible to feel. My mind was empty, and my life...

Forfeit.