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Once the little ones finished working through their emotions, reassuring themselves that I was alright and they didn’t need to keep hugging me, Immortal Mother made me slowly scull around the pool, just gently waving my flukes for several laps as she confirmed that I would remain stable. Weirdly, even though she sat on the shore and I was out in the middle with my head submerged, she gently explained aloud instead of using spiritual voice. Despite the distance, her voice came to me as if we were side by side.
“You were dead on arrival to Sky Ocean, but I intercepted your soul, the same way Hero Relocation did when you died on Earth. Then I entered your body to revive it.”
My thoughts skipped in confusion at that last, until I remembered that the Immortal Mother I’ve always known is a proxy of my actual Immortal Mother. Even when I was Immortal, I could not have survived long at the lowest realm her true body can enter.
“I kept your soul within your womb so that your babies did not lose their connection to you. But I could only hold you there with them, as a third occupant. I could not immediately restore your connection to your body.”
I vaguely understood. The womb is a vital center of the body with the ability to nurture and host outside souls.
“Your Ascension was an artifact of imbalance. Your spiritual strength was far too strong for your body’s tempering at the time. A soul must dwell in a body of equal or greater refinement. Your growth physically and spiritually should be balanced. That’s why Samsara exists, to ensure that a more cultivated soul is reborn into a more evolved species, to prevent the chaos of high cultivation souls in primitive bodies, and vice versa.”
It isn’t something I know well, as I do not have full access to Senhion’s Immortal knowledge, but I do understand it somewhat. If I Ascended as I was at that moment, I would have failed my tribulation and gone to Samsara. I had begun Ascending because my soul was too strong for my body.
“I couldn’t have done it without this small world and its spiritual density. But once I possessed your body and safeguarded your soul and your babies, I still had a choice to make. I could return to Huade and operate your body, living as your replacement until your babies were born. After they were safely delivered, I could release you to Ascend. Or I could stay here in your small world and cultivate your body to the point where it could sustain you.”
I wasn’t strong enough to successfully pass through the Spirit Realm to reach the Fundamental Realm as an Entrant Soul. I would have failed the Tribulation and gone to Samsara again, to reincarnate in some higher-ranked Mortal world in a body that could host me.
“Of course, once you died, I would have reunited your soul with your Immortal body and saved you instead. I wouldn’t have allowed you to pass through Samsara again. Should I have done that, instead of this?”
I knew my answer as soon as she said it. Although I would be back in the Immortal Realm, back with Rhea, Eurybia, Gaia and Oranos, it would have separated me from everyone I knew on Huade and left my babies without an Elder to raise them. I would never have been happy with that.
“Well, I would have stuck around as long as I could, so they would have not been without a mother. But I believe I made the right choice. They needed a mother who could have stayed longer. I could never sustain the possession in the Mortal Realm long enough to raise them to adulthood.”
I surfaced and asked, “So, the fact that you safely reunited me with my body, does that mean it’s now refined enough to avoid Ascension?”
“Only here in Sky Ocean,” she stated, instantly deflating my hope I could head right back to Narses. “You can survive at this spiritual density, but you aren’t yet ready to go back to Huade.”
Disappointment. I so desperately needed to return. Sky Ocean became my lifesaver and my refuge, but it was also now my prison. I literally couldn’t survive anywhere else.
“You created this place to support your cultivation, but the spiritual density here is also ideal to temper your body. I am confident you can return in good time.”
Good time? Time was the problem.
One hour, forty three minutes and forty seconds.
If the ‘seventy two days’ that Little Jia told me had elapsed since the pixies carried me to Sky Ocean were an exact duration, and I divided that duration by one thousand, that’s how much time had elapsed on Huade.
Of course, it wouldn’t be so exact, but it was close enough. Every day that goes by in Sky Ocean at one thousand times compression is only a minute and twenty six seconds on Huade. At some point tomorrow in this world, it would still only be one hour, forty five minutes and six seconds on Huade since I left. And right now, for various reasons they had yet to explain to me, they did not want to decrease the time compression.
Which meant that people were still in great difficulty over there, and would remain that way as I chilled here.
I knew directly that Lady Chiara was alive and kicking. I can identify, or at least narrow down, the Servant drawing mana by the affinity they draw. Melione draws Holy mana only. Mireia draws Holy mana and Light mana. Ceria draws Light, Aether, Wind and Fire. Chiara draws Wind, Water and Earth. Shindzha draws Darkness, Aether and Earth.
A while ago, Water flowed, for what seemed like an impossibly long time. It was very low intensity, but of course, the time would be multiplied one thousand times and the intensity divided one thousand times. What I actually felt was Chiara drawing a momentary, extremely intense burst, the sort to be used in a fight, because only Chiara could draw it. I had the same uniqueness in Ceria with Fire and Shindzha with Darkness.
I had yet to take over the bonds of any of Father’s mage Servants, only a dozen maids. The maids are not trained mages but they use their mana before they go to sleep to charge mana stones. Three times a day, I experience a flurry of mana draws of mixed affinities, which is the maids charging their stones as they go to their sleep shifts. The biggest of the flurries is of course those on the day shift, who go to bed in late evening, but those working the other two shifts do it during their corresponding bedtimes.
Father’s former Servants circulated the exciting news when I began to exchange his old bond for a new one with me. The new Servants could charge mana stones to the levels they could in the old days, before their old Master died! The new Mistress was just as strong!
I felt a little guilty about it, but it was apparently quite a perk. After all, the maids get extra pay for the mana stones they charge. It was certainly an incentive they couldn’t ignore.
But nobody would be headed to bed at this time on Huade, not yet two hours after a battle began. That water draw was Chiara for sure.
At any rate, I felt no frantic draws of mana, no continuous [Healing] by Mireia or Melione. And Rhea, as their goddess, relayed news to Little Jia about their situation. She assured me that all my Servants were still alive.
But I still had one huge worry remaining.
Before the battle, when Fan Li used her [Deduction] technique, used on Huajie to access the Sea of Knowledge the way augurs on Huade use the [Divination] spell, she determined that the Immortal magic that Astaroth cast for Durash was [Three For One].
This spatial distortion sends its subject to three targets simultaneously. The damage done by the subject goes three places, effectively trebling its value. I couldn’t help but think of it as a certain young ninja’s ‘Clone’ technique, although the difference was that the three places were widely spread apart.
It would have been devastating, had the entire attack continued to inflict damage on all three places. The damage taken in each place was the sum total damage of the attack, not one third of it. Immortal magic is not bound by Mortal Realm sensibilities like mathematics.
When Ryuu weakened the spell and Dilorè finished it off, they accomplished a hero’s labor. By disrupting the spell at the onset of the attack, they threw a plan into disorder that would probably have wrought horrific destruction in Narses and Brigdion, while also capturing the summoned hero and the royal remains, as planned.
Even after they managed that miracle, it remained a hard fight for the ‘Oto Expedition’ with the enemy at only one third of the attack strength.
Then Cullen/Durash ended up only at Narses. The Castle and its lord and lady, Rod and myself, were still in peril of capture. According to the seniors, I prevented that as well, by destroying the demonic proxy. But I left behind a host of demons still assaulting Mother’s castle screen, and they had already made successful temporary penetrations.
But according to Rhea, both Narses and the Oto Expedition were safe.
The problem was the third location.
The spell requires three targets. You can’t just use it to teleport a bunch of troops to one place, or maybe two. It has to be all three, at widely spaced locations. And to use the spell for combat, all three locations have to become battlefields. So the third place that Astaroth sent the proxy of Durash/Cullen, his miasmic cloud and his demonic host was Brigdion, in the Duchy of Parna, where Pendor’s forces were in an ongoing battle with rebel troops.
When Dilorè destroyed the [Three For One] spell, and when I destroyed the proxy of Durash/Cullen, we ensured that the attack would fall apart, but it would take time. The demons would continue for some period, fearing the retribution of their leaders, gradually decaying as individuals snuck away. The first to leave would be the higher-ups, running away one-by-one with their valued subordinates while making subordinates leave their own underlings behind to screen their retreat.
The same process would have also begun at the summit, where the expedition was retreating with the bodies of Owen and Mother. They had that incoming host of sylph warriors covering them, so they should be okay.
But the process of a demonic attack faltering takes time, and people die in the intervening period. And no Hero’s Party or sylph army defended Brigdion. Nor did Mother’s screen protect my troops there. What happened to my people in that place? At the very least, I needed to know that much!
Although they understood my worry, Grandmother and Immortal Mother would only promise to find out for me. They insisted I focus upon my own rehabilitation instead.
Grandmother came swimming toward me, surfacing to call over her shoulder with a wave of her arm, “I’ll take her out into the deep water now, Great Senior!”
Immortal Mother smiled and waved back, then turned her attention to Kiki and the Nanas as Grandmother took over my rehab. I guess they were determined to make sure I focused on it.
