"What is the meaning of this...? What have you done in the galaxies beyond the one connected to this system?" I send a burst of telepathy toward Ember within the membrane, even relaying the imagery of laws and my emotions attached to each new galaxy I discover.
It is impossible to piece together exactly what happened in just a glance, but I'm certain it was his doing.
The golden glyphs in his eyes begin to spin once more as he replies.
"I was looking for the key. It is never easy finding it, but this cycle certainly made it one of the most difficult trials."
His gaze looks right past me, and to the sword in my grasp.
This blade's inner mechanisms tethered to the system are still churning, and have not yet floated up to materialize in reality. All of the functions are still trapped in the form of incomplete laws.
Yet, even Ember's concentrated stare makes the tension loosen up, like it is trying to break through but still can't.
"The key...? The key to what? What exactly does this soul weapon do?"
There is still indifference in Ember's eyes, but he smiles at my question.
"Look further. You have not yet explored the ends of this universe. The answers are already in front of you, we have already completed the hard part."
Ember's eyes continue to let out bursts of laws and unique ancient golden glyphs. They are no longer so shock-inducing and extreme. Now it feels more like a calm, cool breeze, allowing me to concentrate more efficiently.
I allow my mind to seep out even further, past every known remnant of the ancient galaxies born at the dawn of this realm.
It leads me nowhere, only plunging my mind in enormous pockets of dark emptiness where no light, no energy, and no mass exists. Even the laws that hold reality together and make sense of the past, present, and future start to thin out, making it difficult to latch onto anything in my consciousness.
Yet, I still push outward further in all directions, through uncharted bends and layers of space, allowing all of the immense power gathered within this galaxy to scan all of existence outside of it.
The further I push, the more emptiness I discover. Yet, I have absorbed the memories of my blade, and have touched on the premise of infinity before.
I must go deeper, and discover new directions to search.
It does not take long.
Our minds begin to cover vast areas of space that are large enough to hold billions of galaxies, yet there are only a few hundred remnants that show up in the depths of my senses.
Eventually, these turn to only dozens, and once far enough out in the emptiness of this true abyss, I'm lucky to sense the presence of a single galaxy's remains within a billion light-years.
Even the fluctuations of laws cease to hold these portions of space together. Either there was never anything here, or it has been far too long and reality itself forgot about what was present.
My mind has to travel somewhere, so it digs into the fabric of the void. It tries to break through this universe-wide construct, like it is some kind of membrane; despite no proof it exists.
This is the case in every direction our minds reach. To a linear-thinking being on the Origin Plane, our mental prowess might look like an enormous sphere 93 billion light-years wide. However, it is bending in so many untraceable directions.
Not only is it folding through every bend and crevice in space, but it is also analyzing and deconstructing the fluctuation of laws vibrating all throughout the realm. We are not only piecing together the physical mass and structure of the universe, but also perceiving the passage of time itself. Each altered law tells a story. The more I align with each dent in this universal field, the more I see energy from the past reacting with each other.
Even though there is no mana or ether present in this dark abyss, I can see exactly where it once was down to the particle and timeline.
Ember's words start to make far more sense.
It is because once digging into empty deep space only leads to more dead ends, portions of my mind try to peer into the laws of the galaxies left behind holding the most chaos. Extracting their past, and even interacting with the fluctuating fields of reality finally uncovers clues.
I begin to watch past visions Ember in his full golden draconic form dominating many star systems and tearing galaxies apart. They aren't memories or any inheritance, they are real visions of the past. I can see everything that has ever happened in certain places, and predict the fluctuations of the current residual laws to see exactly what will happen in the future.
Each one of these galaxies had their own complex systems, unique races, and powerhouses.
They are as diverse as some of the memories I glimpsed through my sword, but within this universe my blade never made an appearance.
The more galaxies I watch get destroyed, the more I see that Ember is frantically searching for this very soul weapon.
The exact order in which he galaxy-hopped is perfectly laid out in my mental vision. This is because each time he left one, it was completely drained of its energy. This membrane artifact was even used to isolate galaxies from the others while Ember searched, and he would pour all of the collected energy from the stars of other galaxies into the new ones to search.
The technological developments of galaxies become exponentially faster when their worlds are rich with ether and a mana or demonic energy binding agent as a power source.
I begin to realize that the weakest fluctuating laws in the outer galaxies are not just because they were far longer ago, it is because they were one of the first galaxies searched and had little to no energy in them compared to the later systems.
The first galaxies were mostly reliant on pure technology using the elements of the universe and the minds of intelligent life on a select number of worlds. Gradually, pure soul essence was farmed from the many living beings in these galactic civilizations, and brought to new galaxies to speed up their growth.
My understanding of the soul ties that still connect me to the galaxy I came from begins to expand again as I realize that ether is not a naturally abundant resource in the universe.
It is a very scarce fragment of life itself that has been scavenged and collected throughout hundreds of billions of galaxies in order to create the magic system I'm using now.
When this clicks, my consciousness expands and shifts again, plunging deep within the laws of energy ancient galaxies' past left behind. They are like weak points in the fabric of the universe.
For a moment, I get a glimpse of the other side. It is a familiar place without time or space that I saw once before.
____________________________
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying Dungeon Diver and want to follow Jay on his journey 20+ chapters ahead of schedule, check out the Patreon link in my profile bio.
There's custom chapter art for every new daily upload too!
Thanks for reading:)
____________________________