The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 510 - The Mistake That Keeps On Giving: Annoyances
’The arrival area has also become a problem.’
Elua crouched at the edge of the coordinates, studying the way essence had been pooling and eddying in visible-to-spirit-sense distortions. Her latest advancement had almost brought disaster to the bubble space of a realm, but the Spatial anchors she placed to ’solidify’ the boundaries now created ever more unintended interactions with the teleportation discharge point. She’d already spent time on fixing the Gateway area’s sigilry itself, so that she maintained the helpful feeling of being able to go ’any time’ she wanted.
Now, it was time to do the same to the ingress. Every time the realmshard activated to bring people to that location, it dumped a *bit* of excess energy here while depositing the travelers. The artifact was quite precise in its calculations when it pulled what it needed from the local star to facilitate the whole situation... but it was exactly because it was so well-expressed of a cultivator tool, designed by the first Divinity himself, that it held onto extra essence energy for the sake of ’corrections’.
"His designs aren’t the only reason I like having contingencies. I had to come to that through trial and error. But they *were* a nice sign that I may be doing things right once I was able to study them."
"Who are you speaking of?"
"Spatial Divinity. A shame that he is shy. Routing his connection ritual into so many distortions that the messages get lost in time or garbled beyond understanding."
"Sometimes you say things that make me wonder if these people were not just avoiding you."
The brunette tilted her head at Madrigil’s assessment, while thinking that if Qat had said such a phrase she would be giggling in her reply. But when he said it... she only felt mildly offended.
"Please. I am not that special. Most of them just don’t like bothering with anyone. Like you actually."
"Coming from a paragon of sociability such as yourself - who clearly is not merely a terrifying compulsive worker who has made me rethink the definition of my own obsessions - your view of my nature and how it relates to my potential along the path to the highest realm is much appreciated."
Looking away from the spiraling currents of energy, caused by her very own lattice of sigils, Mint eyes narrowed and aimed at the Metal cultivator practicing the wire threading control practices she’d... completely made up to give him something to do other than bug her. Unfortunately, he became good enough at it that it just turned into a sort of fidget motion which the exiled noble scholar continued to persist with even while being a nuisance.
"Have I told you that I dislike you recently?"
"Not in the last hour. Are you attempting to establish a quota?"
"That’s not a bad idea, but it would be simpler to just record the Sound of it and have a spiritual construct made of vulcanized rubber and plastic following you around. Repeating the shallow breadth of my displeasure at your insistence on staying in this place and asking so many quest-"
"What is vulcanized? Or plastic?"
The man was treated to his seventeenth dunk in the deep cobalt pit of a lake, the Gas cultivator using her valuable time and effort to personally lift him in a body lock, rocket off at supersonic speed, and drop him there from a height that would hurt if he did not tuck his limbs but would not send him too deep to return from. Though each time *was* growing a little higher...
’Interrupting me with the *exact thing* I am complaining about was the cause of this every single time, how can he not see that?! I’ve even SAID it!’
She’d thought he’d grown less mad - less *insane* - after he arrived in this place. Yet, it seemed he did not learn. Aleck at least grew as he literally banged his head against the same ground over and over and Ondua, well, his daughter did not mind if he asked questions at all. In fact, she almost wished he asked many more! Especially after she talked so much with her mother while the woman was there.
"More and more, I’m missing the ability to interact with the people that aren’t just so much noise. Or that can give me some small peace from that Parallel minded fool’s inefficient structured chaos."
Floating slowly down back over the area surrounded by her Illusory Maze, she looked at the sigil post network from up high with a critical eye. Normally the teleportation’s excess energy, both from the spiritual barrier and the essence locked in link with it ready to be commanded... would dissipate harmlessly into the overall environment within seconds. The artifact’s very existence was essentially tied to the Exclave itself, intrinsically linked to the Spirit Of The Realm as a few ancient cultivators used to call the core construct that oversaw the entire space.
’A silly pseudo-religious title for a tiny fragmentary chunk of the Spatial Divinity. Though I admit I spent a century or two worshipping its complexity, so perhaps I am no better than they were?’
She’d learned not to mess with those components of Exclaves too much when she wanted to keep the place intact, as they were perfectly powerful and perfectly fragile - like the very bubbles they maintained at the edges of the dimensional pocket. Which is why her anchoring posts were intended to be more like a supporting framework of mesh lattice essence lining, instead of something that *directly* connected with the ’Spirit’ of the small ’world’.
The maelstrom of overcharged essence was starting to even out in the weeks that had passed by, but there were still lingering pockets of problematic changes. The place she broke through had created a lot of lingering levels of ozone thanks to the plasma-like Gas arcs severing the chained oxygen molecules. For herself, this was not that big of a problem. Whether it was using her Element to keep safely breathable air nearby or using her physical energy techniques to prevent the need for breathing for prolonged periods, she was safe from inhaling it or letting it damage her exposed parts.
But for some reason she was still working out the math of, much of that excess heavy gas was collecting at this ingress in a deeply cooled state and making the landing area thoroughly inhospitable. The plants and grass that once welcomed visitors with a fresh view of a new world was now bleached desolately white, tan, and coppery from oxidation. A bleak, crunchy zone that was not the sort of start she would ever like for the people her beloved sent to visit with her.
"Though this would be nice for enemies. Looks very alien, very dead, very ’nothing here, go away’."
