Chapter 998: Going With The Flow
<span style="font-weight:400">A blonde human woman with shining blue eyes stood before the great ocean of the fifty-ninth floor of Fyor. In one hand, she held a gilded spear with a blue crystal head, her body adorned with golden armor. <i><span style="font-weight:400">Since it looks like the sixtieth floor isn’t going to be avable for habitation any time soon, we had best make use of this one as much as we can.</i><span style="font-weight:400"> She thought to herself.
<span style="font-weight:400">Behind her, arge group of humans, halflings, and dovah all stood, anxiously awaiting the woman’s order. However, she simply closed her eyes, letting her senses sweep out. This was the singlergest ocean of Fyor, its depths reaching more than a billion kilometers. Had she only been focusing on worlds such as Earth or Deckan, this astronomical number would seem nothing short of ridiculous.
<span style="font-weight:400">The idea that entires could easily fit within a single ocean was mind-boggling. However, it was true. Thergest monster recorded within this ocean had reached more than two hundred thousand kilometers long. Although it wasn’t quiterge enough to consume an entire the size of Deckan, it was enough that its mere presence would be able to destroy the.
<span style="font-weight:400">Taking a deep breath, the woman stepped out onto the water, her feet forming ripples along the surface as she walked in long strides. Her figure blurred with every step she took, crossing hundreds of kilometers at a time. <i><span style="font-weight:400">We were always warned that physicals were the easiest to destroy. That’s why Aurivy established Sanctum and its satellite worlds. However, Sanctum won’t be able to withstand theing invasion.</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">It didn’t take long for her figure to escape the sight of those watching from the shore, but nobody made any move to follow or leave. They had been instructed to wait, so they would wait until such time as their instructions had changed.
<span style="font-weight:400">Bihena wanted an alternative to Sanctum. Something that she could establish on Fyor, where there was no risk of void interference. In fact, she had considered the divine floor as a possible alternative, but chose to avoid it as the floor was still a ‘material’ world.
<span style="font-weight:400">After a few minutes of walking, Bihena felt that she hade far enough, standing atop the ocean,nd nowhere to be seen. Even the ceiling of thisyer was too far to be discerned, the atmosphere itself forming a hazy blue barrier that resembled the daytime sky of other worlds.
<span style="font-weight:400">She held her spear forward, focusing her divinity. Runic markings began to light up the spear, and when she let it go it began to hover in ce. Bihena quickly reached into her inventory, producing a second spear. This one hand a red spearhead, and she activated it just like the first. Then another, this one with a ck spearhead.
<span style="font-weight:400">These three spears were set to float around Bihena, forming a triangle. When she pped her hands, all three turned, their spearheads ringing as they struck the base of their neighbor, with Bihena standing in the center still. <i><span style="font-weight:400">I can’t just do this with divinity. I learned that from Aurivy. I haven’t done as many big projects as her, but I can’t afford that expenditure.</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">“I am the one who quells the endless waves. My words dictate the flow of the world.” Bihena began, aplex magic diagram expanding around her in a sphere. It had taken her years of study with Ryone’s incarnation to master this spell diagram.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Fire and stone as the heart. Land and sea make way to the endless sky.” As she spoke, the three spears began to separate, rotating around her as they pointed high above. “A world of boundless nature, yet untouched by the earth’s pull. A home. A hearth. A hope. And for those in need. Drift along the ocean’s road to wee lost travelers.”
<span style="font-weight:400">The spell diagram shrank and split, converging on each of the three spears. Immediately, they shot into the air, leaving blue, red, and ck trails behind them. High above the ocean floor, within the empty sky, these three spears struck together. Boundless energy emerged from the world, green lights flowing from the air around them.
<span style="font-weight:400">When Bihena saw this, she stomped one foot onto the ocean, raising her hand to the sky. Streams of blue and gold power surged from the ocean beneath her, flying to join the slurry of energy being formed. Meanwhile, Bihena maintained absolute focus, watching as the energy condensed more and more, bing a solid mass more than a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers across.
<span style="font-weight:400">She had considered making a within the sky, but it would be far too disorienting for anyone on its southern hemisphere to look up and see the ground above. Instead, she made an ind. This ind was only as wide as Deckan’s diameter, and so it had less totalndmass. However, this was an ind made of pure energy, one which passively sustained itself by drawing on ambient mana and natural energy.
<span style="font-weight:400">Bihena created mountains and forests, and channels for rivers to flow through. The entire process of the flying ind’s creation took only an hour, at which point Bihena called out. “Group one, take flight!”
<span style="font-weight:400">Her words echoed in the air, traveling beyond the horizon to reach those that were waiting at the shore. A small number of those waiting flew into the arrow, turning into streams of light that shot towards the new ind. These would be the first colonists, those setting up the initial infrastructure to allow for others to inhabit the ind.
<span style="font-weight:400">Bihena let out a low sigh, checking her inventory, as well as her remaining mana. <i><span style="font-weight:400">Good… still have plenty to continue.</i>
<span style="font-weight:400">She had been preparing for this n ever since she learned of the next invasion. Whether it was learning the necessary spell, or stocking up on materials. She had filled her inventory with Mage Heart, as well as identical copies of the three spears. A blue spearhead to be the focus of her divinity, allowing the ind to drift in the sky and harness ambient energy. A red one to form the core of fire and stone to create thendmass itself. A ck one to create a localized gravity field, enabling even low level civilians to safely inhabit them.
<span style="font-weight:400">Bihena began to walk again, moving more than three hundred thousand kilometers away. Then, she once again started to pull the three spears from her inventory. “I am the one who quells the endless waves…” She began, while thinking to herself. <i><span style="font-weight:400">One down… forty-nine to go.</i>
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<span style="font-weight:400">“Lifre, wait up!” Petra called out in a panic as Lifre jumped through a stone wall, hurrying to chase after her before the portal closed. “If the portal closes before I get through, I won’t be able to find you again!”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Pfft, it’s fine!” Lifre shouted back when Petra barely made it through. No longer was she covered in her armor. Instead, she wore a brown leather jacket and dark blue undershirt with brown cloth pants. She carried a pickaxe over her shoulder, the head engraved with runic markings. “I’ve got theyout of this ce tucked away up here.” She tapped on her head with her free hand, causing Petra’s eyes to widen.
<span style="font-weight:400">“You memorized theyout of the floor? But we haven’t even gotten to the spire yet!”
<span style="font-weight:400">“No big deal! Aurivy showed me a map while went to ry the news.” Lifre puffed her chest out proudly, Petra blinking in confusion.
<span style="font-weight:400">“You memorized a map that big from a single nce?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Uhm… well… part of it? I got the gist of it, anyways!” Lifre turned her head to the side. “Besides, this is a safe floor. The interference of the ck stone walls isn’t just preventing void fluctuations. Any airborne energy is dispersed. See?” Lifre flicked her wrist, shooting out a basic fireball spell.
<span style="font-weight:400">Although the magic condensed, it fizzled away only a few inches after it took flight. “Keep your minimap up. The only way we can map this ce out is with the system.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Petra bit her lower lip when she heard that. In fact, she had already noticed something simr before. When she mapped out the world with her World Shadow, the shadow world created was blurred. Even now, it hadn’t settled, and Petra wondered if it ever would. At the very least, it had registered as part of their shadow world, so they could grab the next floor whenever they open the way.
<span style="font-weight:400">While Petra was thinking about that, she barely noticed Lifre jumping through another gate. Gasping, she chased after her. “After saying all that, you’re still running off on your own?!”
<span style="font-weight:400">Lifre let out a light, carefreeugh. “We have the new fast travel, it’ll be fine!” The other side of this gate showed one of the elevated inds, Lifre having to walk more than a hundred meters to reach the end of it. “Huh… I wonder how these are being held up.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“There are probably branches of ck stone connected to each one.” Petra spected, seeing Lifre lifting up her pickaxe. “Wait, don’t tell me you want to…”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’ve got wings!” Lifre grinned crazily, channeling her mana into the pickaxe and striking the floor beneath her. The runic markings lit up, amplifying the force of her strike and spreading cracks throughout the ind. Petra gulped, looking left and right quickly.
<span style="font-weight:400">Yes, she had wings, but a demon’s wings were far from enough to let someone fly with the gravity of the sixtieth floor of Fyor. She could spread her wings as wide as she wanted, and she would still plummet like a stone. She tried to condense darkness beneath her feet to stand on as the stone of the ind fell away.
<span style="font-weight:400">Unfortunately for her, the energy put into the tform dissipated only secondster. Just enough time for her to see that she wasn’t entirely wrong. The ind had been attached to a branch of ck stone… of a sort. However, rather than a thin branch like one might imagine, it was more like a wide tform… which they were now falling towards.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Lifre!” Petra called out, eyes wide. Given the distance between the two of them, there was no way that they would activate the same portal. However, Lifre wasughing as happily as ever, even as she was swallowed up by a gate.
<span style="font-weight:400">Petra soon entered one of her own, finding that her downward momentum had suddenly turned horizontal,unching her out of a wall. By the time she looked down, she saw that she must have been thousands of kilometers in the air. She shot out a burst of energy, propelling herself to the opposing wall and into another portal.
<span style="font-weight:400">Immediately afterwards, Petra grunted, falling to the floor in a pitch ck cave. As a demon, and the Goddess of Shadow, it only took a moment for her eyes to adjust. “Come on, Lifre…” Petra muttered to herself, knowing that there was no way that Lifre was close by. “You know not to just smack everything you see by now… I know that you were told that this floor’s safe and everything…”
<span style="font-weight:400">With a sigh, she dusted her red legs off and pushed herself to a standing position. At her height, her horns were already brushing against the top of the cave, showing just how small it was. Still, she walked forward, eyes roaming over the walls. There were dark crystals jutting out here and there, and she dislodged one to store in her inventory.
<span style="font-weight:400">Further down the cave, unwilling to release any of her power after knowing that it would just fade away after leaving her body. She would need to conserve her energy, or else take the gate back to the fifty-ninth floor. “Huh?” Petra blinked, seeing something jutting out of the ground not far away. It looked like… a polished metal handle?
<i><span style="font-weight:400">There’s no life on this floor, how could there be a manufactured item?</i><span style="font-weight:400"> She asked herself. She reached forward, briefly tapping the handle with a finger, just to see if it was going to do anything like absorb her energy. Seeing that it was ‘safe’, she grabbed the handle and exerted enough strength to pull it out.
<span style="font-weight:400">Petra’s eyes widened at the sight before her, a ck axe that only just barely fit in this cave. While not identical to her currently favored weapon, it strongly reminded her of one that she wielded for quite a long time in the past. “But… how are you here?” She asked, thinking that she needed to take this back to Sora to study.
<span style="font-weight:400">As soon as that thought crossed her mind, the axe seemed to melt, reshaping into the form of a human woman sitting on the floor, her hand outstretched to be held in Petra’s. Although she was made entirely of a ck material, Petra immediately recognized the statue as one of her best friends. “It… responds to thoughts? Memories? This is not what they mean by memory alloy, okay?!”