Chương 467: The Root and the Branch

At dawn, the central courtyard of the newly expanded lodge on Outpost World V-09 was bathed in cool, violet morning mist. I gathered our entire expedition — Anna, Crys, Lucas, Silas, Eliza, Edward, and our expanded Academy cohort: Jared, Vesk, Talise, Toby, Darren, Devon, and Lyra — around the central stone platform. I opened my [Armory of the Ashen], retrieving eleven sealed jade containers. Inside each container rested a glowing, dual-colored pill and a vial of shimmering, translucent liquid.

Leoric and I had spent weeks in the deep foundries refining these medicines, fusing raw quintessence from the Freonim-Prime core-sink with ancient pre-Shattering alchemical equations I had copied from Vael's archives.

"These are Core-Tempering Elixirs and Soul-Malleability Pills," I explained, gesturing for each to take their portion.

"They do not inject artificial power into your foundation. Instead, they flood your conduits with malleable essence, loosening the calcified boundaries of your soul gates."

"Is it going to hurt, Instructor?" young Toby asked nervously, holding his jade vial with trembling hands.

"It would normally be agony," I admitted with an honest smile.

"Forcibly stretching a soul gate feels like swallowing liquid glass. But Leoric and I integrated a soothing stasis-compound into the formula. The pill will place your conscious mind into an out-of-body meditative trance, detaching your sensory nerves while I guide the expansion from the outside. I'll be here the whole time, making sure nothing goes wrong, so don't worry." One by one, the students and my companions sat cross-legged on the stone platform, swallowing the pills and drinking the elixirs.

The effect was immediate. Their eyes glazed over into a tranquil, starlight-blue focus as their consciousnesses shifted into an out-of-body state. I stepped between them, deploying my [Lattice Perception] and my zeroth-tier [Symphony of the Animus Arch] to monitor their internal energy conduits in real-time.

Whenever a student's soul gate reached its structural limit and began to show microscopic hairline fissures, I tapped into my [Syntropy], sending invisible threads of mana directly into their conduits to deny the timeline of the damage, locking their gates into their newly expanded, wider state. Darren's constricted channels widened by a staggering fifteen percent, finally grasping on the potential he has been cultivating.

Lyra's spirit-conduits smoothed out, eliminating a lingering bottleneck she had struggled with since the Crucible. Talise's wind-pathways doubled their throughput, allowing her to cycle atmospheric mana with zero friction. While they meditated on their expanded conduits, an incident occurred near the courtyard entrance.

Jared, who had emerged from his trance early due to his dense gravity foundation, walked over to the newly constructed thermal cultivation chambers I had raised from the bedrock the previous evening. He found two tired Ferran miners sitting in the outer chamber, soaking their bruised arms in the warm, mineral-rich runoff water.

"Hey!" Jared shouted, his youthful voice carrying an annoyed, arrogant edge.

"What are you guys doing in here? This place was constructed for high-tier breakthrough cultivation! You miners have basic physical frames — you have zero need for this level of essence concentration! Go use the lower baths!" The two miners shrank back, their faces flushing with embarrassment as they began scrambling to gather their tools. I stood thirty yards away. The moment Jared's words echoed across the courtyard, a cold, sharp stillness fell over my coordinates.

I stepped forward, my boots making no sound on the slate, and appeared directly behind Jared.

"Jared," I said softly. The single word carried no screaming anger, but the subterranean, unyielding weight behind it caused the air in the chamber to drop by twenty degrees. Jared froze mid-stride, all the color draining from his face as he slowly turned around to face me.

"I-Instructor..." Jared stammered, seeing the cold, serious expression in my eyes. I looked at Jared, then looked at the two trembling miners standing behind him.

"Repeat what you just said to these men," I commanded, my voice flat, absolute, and razor-sharp. Jared looked down at his boots, his throat working as he swallowed hard, unable to meet my gaze.

"I... I said they shouldn't be in the high-tier chambers..."

"Because their problems are smaller than yours?" I asked, stepping closer, my bottomless black eyes pinning him in place.

"Because your cultivation is higher, your core is denser, and therefore your comfort matters more than theirs?" Jared's face burned with intense shame. I looked around the courtyard, ensuring that Devon, Toby, Talise, and the other students who had just emerged from their trances could hear every single word.

"We are building an independent Civilization to escape the tyranny of the Courts," I told them, my voice echoing across the stone walls with ancient, unbending truth.

"The High Courts look down on lower sectors and say: You are weak, therefore your lives are fodder for our glory. If the moment you gain a little bit of power, you start looking down on the men who break stones to build your shields... then you are no better than the monsters we are preparing to fight." I pointed to the two miners.

"Those men worked for hours in a toxic rift yesterday, risking their lives so that our foundries have the ore to forge our armors. Their sweat built the walls that keep you safe while you sleep. If you ever disrespect a worker of this city again, Jared, I will strip your rank in the Academy and assign you to manual ore-drilling in the lower rifts for six months." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Vesk walked up from the courtyard, crossing her arms, her feline eyes narrowing at Jared.

"You're an idiot, Jared."

"I... I know," Jared choked out, thoroughly chastised. He turned to the two miners, bowing low in a sincere apology.

"I am deeply sorry, elders. I spoke out of arrogance. Please, use the chambers for as long as you need." The miners looked at Jared, then looked at me, nodding in grateful appreciation before returning to the warm pools. I let out a quiet breath, reminding myself that teaching power was easy, but teaching character was a constant, daily vigilance. If our young prodigies grew into arrogant, narcissistic young masters, we would lose the war before it even started.

Once the moral lesson had settled and the students resumed their guided drills, I took Anna and Crysanthe into a high-tier rift valley five miles from the outpost. I looked at my sister, offering an apologetic, warm smile.

"I'm sorry, Anna. Over the past two weeks, I've been so focused on managing the students and organizing logistics that I haven't given your Mythic Five preparation the individual focus it deserves." Anna smiled warmly, punching my shoulder lightly.

"Stop acting like an overprotective parent, Eren. I'm my own person. Besides, I haven't been waiting around." We began an intensive, multi-layered training session tailored specifically for Anna's upcoming breakthrough. I stepped back onto a high ridge with Crys, giving Anna full control to solo-delve through a dense nest of Tier 7 kinetic raptors in the valley below. Anna moved with breathtaking, lethal elegance, flanked by her two evolved Animas.

Tink, her glowing temporal sprite, hovered over her right shoulder like a bright star, buzzing with accelerated time-sparks that continually cast localized haste-buffs across Anna's nerve pathways. On her left flank was Grover — Anna's sentient miniature tree Anima. Grover had evolved dramatically over the last few years; what had once been a fragile treant was now a massive forest in the form of a small sapling, capable of communing directly with planetary flora.

When a pack of twelve kinetic raptors charged across the valley, Grover slammed his roots into the soil. Through Anna's temporal conduits, Grover accelerated the natural growth cycle of the valley's flora by ten thousand percent. In a fraction of a second, colossal, time-accelerated wooden roots and iron-thick brambles erupted from the bedrock, wrapping around the charging raptors and locking their limbs in an unbreakable vegetative vice!

Anna drew [Final Word], her silver robes snapping in the wind as her eyes flashed with pure temporal light. She fired four instant-hit time-arrows in a single microsecond, severing the raptors' cores before their bodies could even touch the ground. I stood on the ridge, using my [Omnipresence Perception] to analyze her internal streams. I tracked her core-rotations, her conduit throughput, and the exact friction points where her temporal mana slowed down before an arrow release.

Whenever she cleared a wave of monsters, I dropped down to the valley floor to execute our channel-expansion protocol. I sat cross-legged behind her, placing my gauntleted palms against her shoulder blades. I opened my soul gate, deliberately overflowing a concentrated, high-pressure stream of refined essence into her conduits. The sheer volume of energy forcibly expanded her mana channels, causing a sharp, agonizing gasp to escape Anna's lips as micro-fractures flared along her conduits.

The soothing pills were unfortunately way too weak for the methods we were using. The microsecond the pain peaked, I pulsed my [Syntropy]. We repeated this cycle three times throughout the afternoon, with Crysanthe actively participating by using her [Obsidian Ribbon] to anchor the surrounding spatial fabric and prevent the environmental shears from disrupting Anna's core-rotations. By late afternoon, our training was interrupted by the arrival of a Spire signal from the outpost.

Jeeves stepped through a micro-portal, bowing impeccably.

"Master Eren, apologies for the disruption. Administrative disputes have arisen between the House Opal trade envoys and the Bastion foundries regarding mineral allocations. Masters Lucas and Silas are urgently required back in the capital to preside over the council." Lucas and Silas, who had walked up to the ridge with the students, smiled ruefully.

"Duty calls," Lucas shrugged, clapping my shoulder.

"Thank you for the lessons and help with the soul-gate expansions, Eren. My bedrock feels three times denser. We'll take the students back with us through the Spire so they can continue their drills in the Academy halls while you guys finish up training." Jared, Vesk, Talise, and the rest of the students gathered their packs, bowing respectfully to me and Anna. They were tired, bruised, and carrying new training regimens, but their eyes were bright, humble, and fiercely determined.

With Lucas, Silas, Jeeves, Rexxar, Nyx and the students returning to Ferra, only Anna, Crysanthe, and myself remained in the quiet, expansive rift valley of V-09. I looked at the two women, a slow, challenging grin spreading across my face.

"Well," I said, stretching my arms.

"Now that the kids are gone, it's time for some real lessons." Crysanthe smiled eagerly, her white-gold scales shimmering as she unraveled her [Obsidian Ribbon], while Anna drew [Final Word], flanked by Tink and Grover.

"What are the rules, Eren?" Crys asked, stepping into a low, fluid stance.

"Four on one," I declared smoothly.

"Anna, Crys, and both Animas against me. And to make it a proper workout... I will not use my [Domain], and I will not deploy my Inner World, of course." Anna's silver eyes narrowed with playful, competitive fire.

"You're fighting us without your Domain? You really are getting cocky, brother."

"Come and make me use it," I laughed. The spar erupted into an intense, chaotic whirlwind of temporal arrows, gravity-slopes, and wooden root-vortices. Even without my Domain, I was infuriatingly slippery. I relied purely on my [Primordial Shell], my zero-latency footwork, and minimal parries. When Grover launched a forest of time-accelerated roots to snare my boots, I simply vibrated my muscle fibers at the resonance of the wood, shattering the vines with zero effort.

When Crysanthe threw a non-linear gravity-slope to pull me off-balance, I inverted my physical density, sliding along the spatial curve like ice. And when Anna fired three instant-hit arrows at my blind spots, I used my [Micro-Glimpse] to tilt my shoulders by two inches, letting the silver arrows whistle harmlessly past my neck.

For an hour, the three of them threw every synchronized combination in their arsenal at me, pushing their limits to the absolute edge — yet they couldn't land a single clean, decisive strike against me. Anna collapsed onto a boulder, wiping sweat from her forehead, breathing heavily as Tink and Grover slumped beside her in exhausted frustration. She glared at me, her silver eyes blazing with fierce, stubborn pride.

"You insufferable show-off," Anna gritted her teeth, though a wide, determined smile broke across her face as she looked at Crysanthe and her panting Animas. She raised her bow, pointing it directly at my chest with an unyielding, competitive vow.

"Mark my words, Eren Kai," Anna breathed out, her voice full of electric fire.

"Before we leave this planet... you will be forced to use your Domain."