Lucien stared into the drifting dark beyond the Obsidian Tower.
No matter how many times he ran the calculations and no matter how many paths he simulated, every conclusion ended the same way.
There was no immediate escape.
Space was too vast. His strength was insufficient. His tools were incomplete.
He exhaled slowly.
"…Thinking won't solve this."
So he stopped thinking.
Instead, he turned to action, clearing the tasks he had long postponed.
Lucien returned inside his Divine Energy Core.
The fractured sky there had already stabilized. The scars were faint but no longer spreading.
With a single blink, Lucien appeared before the Rainbow Slime Lord Statues, standing where they always had.
Then, Lucien reached into his inventory.
One item surfaced.
A compressed fossil wrapped in time-hardened layers of ancient power.
Dragon Progenitor Fossil.
The moment it appeared, the space around it warped subtly as if something primordial disliked being constrained by stillness.
