World Keeper-Chapter 1230: Each Perparing in Their Own Way
Tsubaki stood atop a large, rocky plateau, her eyes gazing into the distance. Due to the special nature of the techniques that she had been practicing, she asked Chelsea to establish a new universe specifically for her. After all, there was a high chance that this universe could be destroyed at any moment under the force of her training, and she couldn’t risk such a thing happening to one of the core universes.
With a deep breath, Tsubaki lifted one finger, concentrating her energy on it. It was time for her to display the results of three weeks of arduous training.
First, three strands of Martial Will gathered above her finger, forming three spiralling spheres. These were the wills of Annihilation, Destruction, and Decay. Next, a silvery sphere of spiritual energy formed in the center of these three balls of ki, which radiated the concept of death. Then, a dense circle of mana wrapped around all four spheres, runic markings along its edge, and natural energy flooded in from the surroundings, carrying fire, lightning, and darkness.
Normally, these energies would never be able to coexist. The moment they touched one another, they should have released a devastating shockwave, likely decimating the individual that tried to bring them together in the first place.
However, this was where Tsubaki’s energy affinity could truly shine. With her affinity, she could force the energies to coexist, merging together one after the other. What was created was not some special Saint Energy like the Eye of Ruin or World Sight. Instead, it was an energy of pure destructive power, constantly clashing with itself in an attempt to break free of her control.
Once combined, these energies turned into a black, bubbling sphere above her finger. She could hear the roaring of wind and the cracking of space from the mere existence of this sphere, and nodded her head. However, even for her, it was not as simple as dismissing this ability to continue to experiment. Once formed, this energy had to be released. She could sense that the moment she relaxed her control to dismiss the energy, it would erupt around her.
Thus, Tsubaki pointed her finger forward, and the sphere turned into a beam that shot out. Space shattered around the beam, showing Tsubaki a glimpse of the void beyond. She could sense its energy pouring in through the crack, though that crack was rapidly closing.
It’s a lot easier to destroy a universe from the outside than the inside. She mused, nodding her head. That was also the reason why Julia was able to create her destructive sword. Were its powers so potent from the inside, the universe it was crafted in would be annihilated the moment the sword was completed.
Cracks such as the ones she had just created, when made from within the universe, would not even be visible on the world border from the outside. She would need a crack at least as large as an entire solar system to cause any visible damage from the inside. Still, measuring the destructive power of the attack she had released, she could assume that this attack would be capable of annihilating a universe, if cast from the outside.
This also meant that it would be able to destroy an Origin, if the attack were able to land. This caused Tsubaki to purse her lips. In order to gather and merge the energies for this technique, she needed at least three seconds. That didn’t sound like a lot, but when you are fighting a battle at that scale, you can exchange hundreds of attacks in a single second.
If I can get the release time to below half a second, then I will be able to use it in a battle with assistance from allies. If I can get it down to a tenth of a second, I’ll be able to use it even on my own. She thought to herself, knowing that she had to shorten the time as much as possible.
Tsubaki wasn’t the only one that had been given their own universe with which to train. In another isolated universe, Dana sat cross-legged, the shadows rippling around her. Like Tsubaki, she lacked a decisive killing move against an Origin or similar level. She could almost instantly construct a spell capable of shattering a universe with her own blessing, but the time required would still be measured in several seconds of concentration.
To fix this, Dana was working on creating her own apocalyptic weapon through her power as an Origin. Something that, like Julia's sword, would be able to shatter an Origin upon contact. The problem was how to achieve such a result.
Naturally, Dana could create divine-level shadows in the same way that Julia could create divine-level plants. However, unlike Julia, she didn’t have the same degree of freedom when it came to merging them into a single entity. After all, the shadows that Dana created were ultimately living creatures, not merely a shadow that embodied a domain.
In order for Dana to be able to replicate Julia’s sword in that way, she would need to create an entity that embodied such destructive power that its mere existence was a threat to Julia herself. This was, naturally, not acceptable.
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If using destructive domains isn’t the answer, I’ll need to rely on rules. She thought to herself, which brought her to her current training ground. Dana sought to create two things during her final period of preparation. First, she wanted to create an auxiliary node for her internal universe, one that would strengthen its internal structure.
Secondly, she wanted to create an all-consuming darkness, capable of erasing matter, light, space, and even the void itself. Such a darkness would need to be isolated to a very small region, no larger than a single continent of a small planet. Any bigger, and it would be able to create a permanent weak point in her inner universe, or even outright destroy it from within over time.
Dana already knew how to create this darkness, but the auxiliary node was by far the more difficult step. And without it, she didn’t dare to create the darkness even if she knew how to do so.
Over the last three weeks, she had created more than a dozen attempts at the node, absorbing each into her body to experiment with them. However, upon doing so, she found that their effects were either not what she intended, or simply far from sufficient. Afterwards, she had to spend a painstaking amount of effort to extract the new node safely from her internal universe to start over.
It’d be nice if I could just use this directly on Hal Tua, and eliminate the Keeper with the rest of the world, but I know it’s not that easy… Through the process of their repeated simulations, Dana had learned that a special system had been installed on Hal Tua. Any damage done to the universe itself, whether internal or external, would be distributed across all connected universes. The only way to truly destroy Hal Tua would be to destroy every single universe connected to it at the same time, or to somehow sever those connections.
Of course, this protection did not work both ways. Any damage done to a connected universe was not shared back with Hal Tue, or any other universe. Only the central hub, Hal Tua itself, was protected.
She had considered bringing this system up with the Keeper, but ultimately decided against it. Their realm did not have such a central hub universe to protect. And, if they tried to connect every universe for mutual protection, that could easily backfire by allowing a powerful energy to focus all of their attacks on a single universe, shattering everything at the same time.
As Dana thought about that, an intricate pattern of glowing blue lights appeared in front of her, coalescing to form a black seed the size of her fist. Dana looked at this seed, taking a deep breath and inserting it into her chest. “Here we go again…” She muttered to herself, feeling the seed merging with her inner world.
Unlike Dana and Tsubaki, Lena was far less free to commit all of her time to her own training. Whether she wanted to or not, she still had quite a lot of work that she had to perform behind the scenes to prepare for the upcoming invasion.
The most prominent of these duties was the elimination of certain criminal elements within the various worlds. Some of these organizations were plotting against either various members of the Greater Pantheon, or even Dale himself.
The reason why Lena had left these organizations around so long, despite having already learned of their existence through her divine powers, was because they ultimately didn’t pose enough of a threat to warrant her intervention. This, however, changed when she was no longer going to be around for a while. If these criminal elements were to grow in strength or gain new technologies that allowed them to further their agenda while she wasn’t around, it could prove to be a thorn in Dale’s side in the future.
Also, although she knew that this was something that the others didn’t want her to think about, Lena had to acknowledge that there was the chance that they wouldn’t be returning from this invasion. No matter how much they prepared, no matter how well they planned, there was always the chance that they would be killed before they could take out the enemy Keeper. Worse, they may be simply unable to reach him in time, and he uses a defense ticket to end the invasion early.
If that were to happen, all of their training would be meaningless. He could simply smite them from his own Admin Room, or make a spectacle of sending the top guilds after them. Or, he could interrogate them and learn the secrets of Dale’s worlds, further improving his chances of a successful attack in the future.
For this reason, Lena had already approached Terra in private within the Admin Room, and asked her to convince Dale to create Companion copies of each of them if the invasion ended in failure. They didn’t need to be created at their full power, as it would just take some time for them to grow into what they once possessed, but their presence itself was a significant factor when it came to the morale of the people.
Terra at first didn’t want to even consider the idea, but Lena convinced her that this was merely a last resort. In the event that there was nothing that could be done, this was the only way to prevent more chaos in Dale’s world.
Lena knew better than to be optimistic that a second invasion could be mounted as a rescue mission. Even if Dale managed to get an attack ticket, and Sanction failed to receive a defense ticket in the upcoming annual meeting, there was almost no chance that they would be able to survive for a Standard Month in enemy territory. At best, they’d be able to evade the other powers of Hal Tua until the final days, before Sanction simply eliminated them to prevent future threats.
So, Lena was doing everything that she could now with the knowledge that they would be gone for an extended period of time, but also in preparation for the possibility that they may not be able to return at all. For that reason, there were numerous groups that would need to silently disappear from the world.
At the same time, she wasn’t sure what would happen to all of her avatars that she had placed around the various worlds when she left. Would they simply disappear? If that was the case, she needed to make sure to extract them from any sensitive positions. All in all, it was just a lot of background work that most people would never even be made aware of, but it was all important for the continued peace of the various worlds.
