Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 1182: Unexplored Path

Like the rest of the Cosmic Core, the nucleus was supposed to be dismantled and rebuilt. You could argue it was the most important step, considering the nucleus was the foundation that kept the core stable. Zac had no intention of adhering to convention on this matter, so it was an immense relief to see it survive despite his failure to protect it during the ignition.

The nucleus's resilience only proved the merit of Zac's untested idea. It was made from materials so incredible they couldn't be properly graded and forged with the help of true Chaos and one of the best arrays in the Multiverse. From there, it had been further tempered by his fortuitous encounters.

The transformed paths, courtesy of the Tribulation Throne, were especially ingenious and elevated it beyond its original limits. Dismantling the nucleus couldn't possibly produce something better with his current resource limitations. Zac had always been reluctant to dilute it with more materials, and his Minor Enlightenment from the quest confirmed there was another path he could take.

Zac wouldn't break it down, but that didn't mean it could stay the same. Zac ate four pills after confirming his Soul Cores weren't too damaged to keep going. A tempest of energy resembling a galaxy full of primordial vigor coursed through his body. It didn't need much prodding to enter the hatch of his Duplicity Core, and Zac dragged it to the nucleus. Following it on its heels was a leaf resonating with the Temporal Chamber.

A Peak-quality Longevity Treasure. His cells screamed with desire, but Zac ignored the clamor as he had its essence join the cosmic swirl in the depths of this quantum space. With everything in place, Zac took out a ghastly spike covered in esoteric runes.

Taking a steadying breath, he stabbed the pick into his stomach, tearing through just-reformed flesh and muscle until the edge reached the Duplicity Core's hatch. Like a swarm of critters, the runes skittered off the spike and into the space. Some glommed onto the swirling fragments of Life, Death, and Conflict, resisting Zac's attempts to drag them off. Most continued into the depths, attracted by the superior energy signature emitted by the Core Nucleus.

The parasitical runes ran into the swirling galaxy from the [Realm Ether Pills] before they could reach their prey. The runes tried to break free, only to find themselves caught in a quagmire. As more runes joined the unstable soup, they grouped into repeating patterns that formed a shell around the nucleus.

The struggle between Pill Energy and runes released unstable bursts of power that tainted the harmony of his microcosm. Zac continuously had to put the pieces back into order to prevent the immense energies from ruining the hard-fought balance. Eventually, the runes stabilized into a complete array.

Unfamiliar waves of energy joined by the pure force of the stellar dust showered the nucleus, which began vibrating and spinning with increasing velocity. The pill-spike combination ran out of juice after ten minutes, having accomplished the purpose. The nucleus shone like a star in the heart of his quantum space, showering it in gold, steel, and black.

The nucleus was ready to be remolded without having sacrificed any of its spirituality for the ignition. This was something considered almost impossible, or at least so prohibitively expensive and difficult that there was no point. It had taken Zac time and effort to find the materials needed to give the nucleus the final push. The spikes, for instance, were sourced from the hands of Remoulded from the Chapter of Glorious Ascent.

True to the Kan'Tanu's aggressive cultivation system, the spikes would forcibly agitate a core with a unique array. It would speed up the formation process by sacrificing longevity. Adding the nourishing [Realm Ether Pills] removed the side effects, while the [Pexor Leaf] replaced Zac's lifespan to fuel the ignition.

The asteroid bands began spinning quicker on Zac's order. Soon, they looked like solid bands. Their revolutions generated a natural pressure on the subspace's center. The whole subspace shook when Zac activated the second feature on his Core Formation Arrays, adding another layer of pressure on the nucleus to ensure it would stay malleable.

[Void Mountain]'s illusory peaks reappeared, allowing the Void to spread through his body without clashing with the energy flows. Next, dozens of tendrils of Mental Energy descended from his aperture, seemingly fusing with strings of Void Energy.

The tendrils entered his Duplicity Core from both bodies, acting as surgical tools splitting and weaving together the complex network of paths within the nucleus. Apart from increasing the number of pathways, Zac also mended damage from the detonation and imperfections left by his previous breakthrough.

The reformation was akin to splitting strands of hair into ten strings of identical width before joining them into intricate braids. Zac's fine control was normally far from the level required to accomplish such a feat, especially when he didn't have the unique arrays of the Perennial Vastness to help. And yet, it looked like he'd performed the experimental remodeling hundreds of times before.

It was all thanks to the combination of [Void Mountain] and [Cosmic Forge]. Dasorm's crafting technique could only be used with Void Energy, where Zac possessed far greater control. If not, he wouldn't have made such rapid progress with [Cosmic Infusion] and [Cosmic Extraction]. In fact, his skill with [Cosmic Forge] had improved noticeably as a result of evolving his bloodline.

However, the first layers of [Cosmic Forge] only dealt with energy and refinement. They couldn't even interact with physical matter. That was why Zac had to use the Omnitool to engrave patterns on the materials he worked on and why he hadn't used [Cosmic Forge] much when forming his core.

Gaining [Void Mountain] changed all that. Zac could actually use the crafting method to guide the Mental Tendrils when his Bloodline Talent was running, allowing him to use them like the array provided by the Perennial Vastness.

The combination technique wasn't perfect since Zac still couldn't fully fuse the threads with [Cosmic Forge]. It was more like the Mental Energy had become mittens that were controlled with hands made of Void Energy, resulting in a slight unresponsiveness. This delay meant he couldn't use [Cosmic Forge] to weave intricate Dao Arrays in the heat of battle, but it worked just fine when dealing with core refinement.

Zac suspected he could even use [Cosmic Forge] to redraw Skill Fractals with greater precision than his arrays in the future. Perhaps it would be the key to turning his spiritual framework into his theorized [Thousand Axes Avatar]. With the tight schedule, he hadn't had the opportunity to put these theories to the test, though.

Between the superior method and two selves working with perfect rapport, Zac was progressing more than three times faster than when he first formed his core. Meanwhile, the subspace was readily providing the energy to fill up the reformed paths. Even his Duplicity Core woke up and began infusing Void Energy into the nucleus.

This phenomenon was the reason you couldn't back out even if your ignition went badly. It wouldn't take long before his subspace would hold more energy than an Early-grade Cosmic Core could withstand. Creating an identical core to the one you dismantled would only lead to an explosion from energy overload.

This knowledge brought some mental pressure, but all that energy entering the nucleus did come with benefits. His rapid pace allowed his nucleus to absorb more energy than the cosmos provided. The pressure in his overstuffed subspace weakened, and the explosions rocking the barrier were cut in half. Of course, if he drew too much, the energy starvation would make the subspace collapse. It was a balancing act and a race against time.

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The preliminary work was eventually finished, at which point a number of boxes appeared on the platforms. Zac opened a few and threw the Natural Treasures onto the refinement arrays. Next, he turned to two of the boxes covered in dense scripts. Each held a bone, though they looked opposite to each other. The first seemed crafted from gold and was covered in odd growths like it had kept transforming after its owner had died.

The other was dark grey with veinlike patterns of black runes. Both exuded immense spirituality, though a round of refinement had already removed any lingering hints of will left from their previous owner. Both were Middle D-grade Supreme Treasures, one Life and the other Death. They weren't quite at the level of the three treasures that went into his nucleus, but they were qualified to take up a supporting role.

Zac carefully engraved a set of runes on the golden bone, and the ancient patterns from the First People formed a natural complement to the seemingly random growths. The small hammer disappeared in a flourish the second the engravings were complete, appearing in his Draugr half's hand thanks to [Purity of the Void]. A similar pattern was added to the deathly bone before the Omnitool jumped back.

A powerful shockwave in his subspace reminded Zac he couldn't grow distracted for a second, or the subspace would devolve into an unstable storm again. At the same time, he couldn't just pause the engraving since they were already destabilizing the treasures. As such, the hammer jumped back and forth, where one side added to the runic tapestry while the other maintained order inside the quantum space.

Finally, Zac extracted a pristine string of essence holding the distilled truths of Life. He glanced at the Core Formation Array's transportation disk, shaking his head before pushing the essence against his belly. It moved into his body without causing any trouble, and Zac exhaled when he successfully picked it up with a Void-controlled Mental Tendril. Zac carefully infused the essence into his nucleus, adding to the already incredibly complex network of connections.

The nucleus' aura subtly shifted, growing deeper. By the time the delicate work was complete, a Death-attuned string of essence was already moving in to restore the failing balance. For the next hours, one side extracted, while the other infused. Altogether, the essence of six Supreme Treasures was added to the mixtwo for each Dao. Zac even managed to extract two essences per item, an incredibly difficult feat.

When using [Cosmic Extraction] on your equipment, you only took the heterogenic spirituality that would then be discarded. The focus was on maintaining the stability of the weapon. Extracting essence from a raw donor treasure with [Cosmic Infusion] was the opposite. You only wanted the best of the best, and it needed to be a coherent whole. It didn't matter if the material became scrap afterward since it had served its purpose. Zac only succeeded thanks to ample preparation and the overflowing spirituality in the Supreme Treasures.

Between the infused essences, redrawn pathways, and energy influx, the nucleus was completely reborn. The unique spirituality of the [Calamity Core], [Warstone], and [Void Engine] remained intact while the nucleus as a whole had ascended into a High-quality Middle D-grade nucleus. Zac smiled at the sight. The hard-earned lessons learned when stepping into Hegemony paid dividends today.

Surviving the ignition and dealing with his nucleus were the most difficult hurdles. What came next simply built on the stable foundation he'd set. That didn't mean Zac could relax as he turned to the asteroid belts surrounding his nucleus. Their trajectories had gone slightly off-course while he dealt with the nucleus, so Zac spent the next thirty minutes getting everything back in place.

When he was finished, the first set of outer treasures was refined and ready to be incorporated. The rest of the core needed an infusion just like the nucleus, but using [Cosmic Infusion] on thousands of pieces was impossible. He was already using a large amount of Void Energy to control the tendrils, and he couldn't keep [Void Mountain] running around the clock.

It wasn't much of a loss. The treasures that went into his Core Nucleus had the potential to carry the weight of his cultivation all the way to Peak Hegemony. The same couldn't be said for the rest. They needed to be reformed with the help of Middle D-grade Materials.

An optimal solution would have been to replace all the damaged pieces with better ones. Unfortunately, that wasn't possible. His core was still one unit despite being turned into a field of debris. Each piece held a sliver of the core's essence, and swapping them out was like using pieces from another puzzle.

Days passed as Zac integrated new with old. Refinement Arrays were constantly running while two sets of tendrils dragged one piece after another from the asteroid belts. It was crushed by the immense gravitational forces and joined with white-hot Middle D-grade treasures before being added to his growing Cosmic Core.

Meanwhile, [Void Heart] was refining and spewing out incredible amounts of Void Energy. Having evolved the Hidden Node to D-grade drastically lessened the pressure Zac faced. Even then, the core formation only became more taxing as time passed. The biggest strain came from using [Void Mountain] to control the Mental Tendrils.

It wasn't designed to keep going indefinitely, at least not at its current stage. Three months of experimentation had shown the path forward. [Void Mountain] could be upgraded, and it wasn't very difficult. He simply needed to have [Void Heart] consume Peak-quality treasures of all seventeen Dao Peaks. A small amount of the refined energy would bolster his Bloodline Talent.

Unfortunately, it had become painfully clear the upgrade was a long-term project. The sigil had barely seen any improvements despite [Void Heart] running around the clock. It was obvious some treasures worked better than others, but Zac hadn't figured out the rules behind the differences. It seemed completely random, where some mediocre treasures worked better than top-tier materials.

[Void Mountain] wasn't the only way for him to refine his core, but it was much better than relying on the Core Formation Arrays and supportive tools. They were slower and imprecise, leading to mistakes and imperfections.

The other problem Zac faced was the deteriorating situation within the subspace. As a temporary dimension, the subspace became less stable by the day. The energy infusion grew erratic, which created constant disturbances. Even the core formation process made exerting control more difficult.

It was the asteroid belts that kept the energy flow stable and helped generate the gravitational pressure. Zac lost some of his control with every piece removed and integrated with the core.

All this was accounted for in his original plan. He'd planned to slow down the formation process while recovering his Void Vigor, taking that time to reinforce his subspace. It wouldn't be a problem so long as the ignition formed a subspace strong enough to give a few days' worth of leeway.

With a seventeen-day deadline, that wasn't an option. Zac had to keep going, even if it meant making some compromises and relying on outside help. Pills, Talismans, and Natural Treasures began sharing his burden as he passed the ten-day mark. Each came with side effects, though some were better than others. For instance, Zac had some that destabilized the subspace and shortened its lifespan. Since he had to wrap up his work ahead of schedule, that wasn't much of a downside.

Eventually, Zac saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The asteroid belts had been reduced to one solitary piece each, and those were added to the almost fully formed Cosmic Core. It was more than five times larger than his old core, and the last pieces added some additional heft.

The core looked incredible, like a newly forged world teeming with energy and potential. It wasn't just appearance. Despite the rushed process, Zac had managed to accomplish everything he'd set out to do. Relying on so many treasures to make the deadline had added more imperfections than he'd anticipated, but he was still in a good position. [Cosmic Forge] had let him remove some of his old mistakes, so it should still be counted High Quality.

Its size wasn't a good thing, though. It couldn't even fit inside his Duplicity Core after the subspace dispersed. It wasn't a mistake on his part; it just meant there was one step remaining to the formation.

Zac ate a pill teeming with Spatial Energy and put a matching talisman against his belly. Coruscating waves of Space entered the Duplicity Core, fusing with the failing dimension. It began convulsing, which kicked the large amounts of ambient energy into a frenzy.

Each contraction unleashed the force of a world on the newly formed core. More energy was crammed into its pathways while the immense energies forced the core to compress. The process was incredibly painful, and Zac held on for dear life while guiding the compression the best he could. And then the universe imploded.

Zac briefly passed out from the shock, but an angry thunderclap immediately woke him up. He urgently turned his gaze inward after confirming the System still held the Heavens at bay. And there it was: his upgraded core floating within his Duplicity Core, surrounded by a haze of energy. The subspace was gone, having accomplished its purpose.

The formation was a success, which meant it was time to face the music.