Virelith Galaxy, Origin Sect Headquarters.
While Hestia spoke with Caldris inside the Crimson Vital Sect headquarters upon Sanguis Prime, a white-grey sphere slowly revolved above the center of a smaller conference chamber within the Central Origin Construct.
Adrian stood on one side of the circular table, while Lysandra, Selena, Mira, and Lara occupied the four places opposite him. Adrian had summoned these four after confirming through the Origin Net that they were available. Hestia remained occupied with Caldris, while the rest of the senior members were handling responsibilities across Andromeda and the Origin headquarters worlds.
Pale radiance moved through the sphere as four colors appeared within it. Silver represented Space, emerald represented Life, black-violet represented Void, and pale gold represented Time. The currents repeatedly crossed before gathering around a white-grey center, where five divine-spell paths surrounded the sequence required to form the concept supporting them.
"The divine concept recorded inside this knowledge sphere is the foundational divine concept for our Origin Sect," Adrian said. "It is an Ultimate-tier divine concept built from Space, Life, Void, and Time, and it has reached the full ninety percent authority available to that tier. This knowledge sphere contains the component knowledge, the complete construction sequence, five divine spells developed from Low through Ultimate level, and the authority techniques connected to them. While this works for me, I am not entirely sure whether another person can safely reproduce any of it."
Hearing it, Lara found herself briefly wondering how Adrian had managed to form a Rule Core for this divine concept at all. To her knowledge, he already possessed Verdant Genesis, a divine concept built with the arcane concept of Life. For him to now hold a second divine concept drawing from that same foundational rule suggested he had found some method she had never once encountered, nor heard rumored, as a possibility anywhere in the universe.
But since Adrian offered no explanation, she held her silence.
Lysandra studied the changing structures within the sphere. "So you want the first recipients to prove which parts survive outside your hands."
"That is the purpose of this meeting," Adrian replied.
The large sphere divided as he spoke. Four smaller white-grey spheres moved away from its surface and arranged themselves above the table, while the complete record remained within the larger sphere at the center.
"Select four disciples for the first attempt," Adrian continued. "They will receive the arcane concepts in controlled stages. Once they have comprehended those concepts to the Advanced Galactic levels, we will pass them the complete record of the divine concept."
Lara considered the instruction before asking, "Do you want the four strongest candidates available?"
"No. Strength alone is not the deciding factor. Anyone who has already committed one of the four required arcane concepts to a different Rule Core should be removed from consideration. Give preference to disciples who have not formed their first Rule Core, but do not choose someone merely because their foundation is still empty. They need sufficient discipline to stop when instructed and enough patience to progress through the concepts separately."
"We are already bringing some of our Origin warriors from the Milky Way to our Origin headquarters here in Virelith. Many of them have considerable potential, so we don't lack the disciples needed for this." Lysandra said.
Adrian nodded and said, "Remember, the first attempt is meant to determine whether the path can be reproduced safely, not to produce four powerful cultivators as quickly as possible."
Lysandra nodded.
Adrian then looked toward the pale-golden current inside the central sphere. "There is one additional restriction concerning the arcane concept of Time. Do not allow any candidate to complete Advanced Galactic comprehension without contacting me. The moment one of them approaches the final threshold, they should stop further comprehension."
Lysandra's expression became more serious. "Why? What happens when they cross that threshold?"
"They enter the Epoch Crucible," Adrian said. "Every cultivator who completes Time comprehension must face it. The trial divides the body, mana, life force, consciousness, and memories across incompatible temporal rates, then forces the cultivator to restore all of them as one continuous existence. Recovering the body without the same consciousness and memories, or restoring the mind without a living body capable of carrying it, still ends in failure."
Selena's fingers froze above the table, while Mira withdrew her perception from the pale-golden current inside the sphere.
"Can you prevent the division from occurring?" Lysandra asked.
"No. If they intend to complete their comprehension of Time, they must face it. The division is part of the Epoch Crucible itself, and I cannot prevent it. What I can do is prepare them using the principle that allowed me to survive, monitor their approach to the threshold, and ensure that every protection we can provide is ready before the Crucible begins. Hestia and I will supervise each attempt personally. Until both of us are present, no one crosses that threshold."
Lysandra gave a measured nod. "I will then only pass a limited amount of knowledge of the arcane concept of time to them. The rest will remain sealed until you and Sect Leader Hestia authorize it."
Lysandra collected the complete inheritance knowledge sphere, while Selena and Mira secured the four partitioned spheres. Lara left with them, leaving Adrian alone within the chamber.
Adrian had just taken the first step toward building the strength the Origin Sect needed, but he could not force the process beyond this point. The candidates still had to be selected, the concepts comprehended, and the first divine concept formed without the advantages Adrian possessed. Even with the increased comprehension granted through his willforce technique, no one could determine how long each disciple would require. The next part belonged to the cultivators who accepted the inheritance and the senior members responsible for guiding them.
He left the conference chamber and returned to the Founder-grade training chamber within the Central Origin Construct. The doors sealed behind him as Adrian sat cross-legged at its center. Having set the Origin Sect's advancement in motion, he could now turn his attention toward his personal strength.
The confrontation against Orveth had made his first priority clear. The willforce technique he had copied from Androxus and further refined had disrupted three Anchor-stage sovereigns at once and given him enough control to retreat with Hestia, but dividing billions of microscopic willforce threads across three defended consciousnesses had consumed his reserves far faster than his existing recovery spell could replenish them. The technique could suppress all three for a short period, but it could not give him enough time to kill even one of them while the others remained capable of interference.
Adrian closed his eyes and focused upon his willforce recovery divine concept. Back then, he had already been working on pushing this divine concept's spell to the ultimate level, but got interrupted by Hestia and went to Nerath. Now he returned his focus to it.
White-grey energy spread across his skin until his physical body dissolved completely into Source Form. Emotion and bodily sensation receded as his consciousness merged with the silent Will inside the manifestation, revealing the completed recovery structure with the same clarity he had witnessed before Hestia interrupted his work. The Will had removed unnecessary circulation loops and repositioned adjoining rules until they crossed without resistance, allowing each completed cycle to restore far more willforce than the Low-level spell could recover through the same interval.
Adrian did not remain within the form longer than required to observe the sequence again. He returned to flesh and resumed the reconstruction of the divine spell from where he left.
The work consumed days inside the chamber. Adrian had to reproduce the ultimate-level divine spell without the Will correcting it for him, understand why minute shifts removed the resistance between adjoining rules, and repeat the circulation until the spell no longer depended upon a structure he could only imitate.
Several attempts began at the higher rate before unstable links forced the circulation back into the familiar Low-level pattern. Others preserved the Ultimate arrangement while drawing so much mana that the improvement became impractical. Adrian compared each failure with what the Will had shown him, corrected the differences, and activated the spell again until every portion responded naturally to his intent.
When the final reconstruction stabilized, he released a controlled version of the smoky willforce technique across the empty chamber and allowed it to consume a measured portion of his willforce. He dismissed it, activated the completed recovery spell, and observed the rate at which his reserves returned. Repeating the test at several levels of exhaustion produced the same result.
His earlier Low-level spell had doubled his natural recovery, while the Ultimate structure restored willforce at five times the natural rate. Restoring his current reserves after complete exhaustion would require close to five subjective months without assistance, but the completed spell reduced that estimate to roughly one month.
The improvement did not erase the limitation he encountered against Orveth and the two allied sovereigns. The smoky willforce technique still consumed willforce faster than the Ultimate spell restored it when three Anchors actively resisted. But now, Adrian could maintain the suppression longer and recover from using it far sooner.
Adrian allowed the recovery spell to continue circulating while he examined the other chambers within his foundation. Many of his divine concepts, spells, authority techniques, and willforce techniques had been created for one immediate purpose before he moved toward the next problem.
He had accumulated an increasingly broad collection of abilities, yet many had never been carried to the highest level their underlying principles could support. That no longer needed to remain true.
Adrian had time now, and he intended to use it to push everything he possessed toward its limits. He first began with the Devour-based divine concept.
The divine concept had long existed within its chamber, formed from Separation, Purification, and Stabilization. Its earliest spell had allowed Adrian to cleanse chaotic energy from the relic world. Later, the concept had allowed him to devour Rule Cores and preserve the rules and comprehension accumulated by the cultivators who formed them. When he devoured an entire body, it could also absorb physical structures, fragments of consciousness, and memories, although Tenyz had proven how dangerous that broader use remained.
But until now, it had remained a Low-tier divine concept, and his mastery of it had been almost negligible.
If he elevated the divine concept to ultimate-tier, forged the spells and drove them to their full extent, its purification could grow far more precise than the world-cleansing spell he had created long ago. The whole-body Devour, which had remained blunt and unrefined until now, dragging in physical structures, memories, and fragments of foreign consciousness with little control and distinction between them, could be refined as well.
Adrian closed his eyes, turning his awareness inward within the source seed, and dismantled the current Devour-based divine concept to create it again and push it to the ultimate-tier.