MTLNOVEL Chapter 756
Day 74 to 78 updates stream in as the commanders continue to rest. Bri slowly cultivates yellow threads to make progress toward her True Core but it does not look like she will achieve this any time soon as she is occupied by managing everyone here and watching the trading markets and setting up deals and meetings with the other large-volume traders within the Galactic Trade Commission.
There seems to be little to no change in Abby's live feed, other than her illusion of her outer body sparkling more than usual.
Arie appears to be about 85-90% saturated, while Maria's holograms all still look very similar to the same day she started cultivating. Despite this fact, Alveron has restocked her chamber with a fifth load of fresh divine fragments—enough threads to fully saturate a 1st Class True Core ten times over.
[Minute 16][Ava]: Still no new distortions, continue as usual.
Ava sends another report and begins to receive updates back as usual. However, no more than a few seconds pass before the sensation of her body being consumed by an overwhelming mirror-like bend in space washes through her.
The second Realm Wave flows through the entirety of the green zone of the Upper Realm.
When Ava's mind and body recalibrate and she looks down at the Day 79, 80, and 81 messages in her system, she waits a full half-minute before convincing herself that the time between realms has actually stabilized.
To confirm her suspicions, instead of sending a normal update back, she uses the new private spectate function and directly calls Bri.
Their connection links instantly, and the two stare at each other in the empty black void that the system summons as a virtual calling space.
Ava waits a few seconds but speaks up."The second wave just hit. Time between realms should be stable again... You've gained a 78-day head start, but know that Jay will be expecting you all soon."
Bri shows a light smile, looking up at the Goblin Queen avatar that towers over her with a troubled expression. She's been quite stressed, processing months' worth of information over the last few minutes, then replies back in a nonchalant tone.
"Well, nice to actually meet you face to face too. No need to be so serious."
Ava pauses again, still reliving the constant stream of updates in her mind, leaving her mouth open to reply for a few more seconds before smiling back.
"Right, yes. We still have plenty of time. Nice to formally meet you too."
Ava lets out a sigh of relief, and the two speak to each other within the simulated room for many minutes as Ava adjusts to the fact that weeks aren't passing by in the lower realm anymore.
Raven joins the call as she walks in from another room nearby, and news of the time distortion stabilizing spreads throughout the moon base very quickly after this fact.
Raven, Bri, and Alveron come to a consensus, adding both Abby and Arie to the live call.
Raven is the one who gently disrupts the two generals' cultivation.
"Our extra time has run out. We are now synchronized with the Upper Realm again."
Abby is the first to open her eyes and reply.
"Very well. I'm ready. Collecting more energy from these yellow fragments won't do me much more good anyway."
She deactivates all her buffs and borrowed stats, and the second sparkling green body around her sinks back into her true form.
Then, with the crush of a crystal, Abby returns to the main moon base.
She creates a strong layer of soul energy and divine threads around her body to keep her aura contained, but to anyone with even a hint of divine sense, it's clear Abby has evolved beyond an average True Core awakening. ṟãΝО𝔟ĘṨ
While no actual excess energy overwhelms the senses, something unnatural distorts the perspective of one looking at her as she walks through the base.
It's as though she's shimmering and giving off warmth, but reality is hard to properly judge. It's like a mental illusion—impossible to tell if it's reality or not.
Even through the holographic link, Ava is captivated by her manifestation through the system, as it is far more detailed than the simple hologram recordings sent to her over the last few months in her chamber.
Ava's instincts trigger the urge to get closer to Abby in the same way they did back on her home world to find an inheritance tomb. However, she doesn't comment on it because Arie speaks up through the link next.
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"Understood. I shall finish my saturation now so we can head down to Kelfar as planned."
His connection to the group call cuts out, but Bri links one of the live feeds to his cultivation room for Ava to view.
At the rate he's been integrating divine energy these last few weeks, it should take him a few days to reach saturation at the earliest, but his words before cutting off the link sound very confident.
A visual of the sitting cultivator activating his 3rd Ranked Up buff is displayed through the live feed temporarily.
The familiar six demonic spirit arms emerge from his back, glowing light purple. Then, as if stacking atop these arms, another set of six forms, and another six after that.
Quickly, 18 arms turn to 36, then 72, and it becomes far too many to count as they continue to multiply. The palms of each glow while the arms connecting them to Arie's back expand in response to how much energy he inputs.
The arms reach out in all directions, surrounding the room as if they're grasping the circulating divine threads and pulling them inward. But soon, the whole screen becomes covered in yellow and purple light while the energy readings begin to drop in the room. This triggers more divine energy from the storage units to pour more threads into the room, and the cycle repeats over and over.
Flashing lights and corrupted footage are all those on the call can see; only Alveron has access to the divine energy consumption data.
Though, after Abby's unique breakthrough readings, not much surprises any of them.
After a few minutes, the group's attention shifts to how they will tell Maria that the time between realms has equalized again.
As it's been over two and a half months in isolation, no one wants to just whisper in her ear and disrupt any important moments in a delicate process.
However, Alveron has a system already built into the cultivation pods for this exact scenario.
Many visitors have used these bases to cultivate for years at a time; however, sometimes emergencies from the outside world occur.
Alveron's advanced surveillance and data tracking systems don't only measure fluctuations in mana, divine strength, qi, or demonic energy; they have very in-depth physical functions as well. Blood pressure, heart rate, and brainwaves are constantly recorded and monitored throughout this process.
Raven records a message explaining the situation, and it is pinged off to the moon in an instant.
However, the message waits to be sent to the target within the cultivation chamber until the ideal time.
All fluctuations in brain activity are monitored, and when natural concentration wears down for even a millisecond, brief relaxing bell noises are sent into the cultivator's mind like a peaceful alarm clock.
Once fully aware, the message can be played. The cultivator will know that the outside world is attempting to contact them, and from thousands of tests in the past, the brainwave reaction to the attempt to make contact will relay to the system that it can continue sending the message without harming the cultivator's mental state.
If the focus is too deep, and the message is rejected, the process will repeat again after the next fluctuation in brain function.
The Silver Knight nods once its explanation to the group has finished, and Raven's message enters the system.
"That's it, now we wait..."
—
Waiting is exactly what they do.
Though, Ava continues on with her mission as usual.
It has only been half an hour since this realm wave, and just over three days since the Rising Emperor gave out orders and a plan to all the generals and warlords before going into a closed-door training session with Seraphel.
She exits the call and agrees to check in daily now that the time between realms has normalized.
The Goblin Queen closes her eyes, pulls 4% of stats, and focuses on the warm feeling from her instincts and this new hint of an Ether sense to farm more Ether stones around the central peak.
—
Seven hours pass, and a group message from Arie notifies the moon base that he has fully saturated his core.
What should have taken days has been done in just hours with the use of his newest buff that corrupted the live feeds.
When the archer sends his message, the live visuals of his cultivation room return to their natural state, and many cracks all over the walls can be seen now that the violent swirling energy has retracted back into his body.
A total of 26 walls have fractured from his display, and it only merits a single comment from Alveron's Silver Knight.
"Halfway through, not bad... From aura alone, I think that's the most damage I've ever seen."
Then, with the crush of a teleport crystal, Arie appears back on the main moon base.
Just like Abby, he has a new presence to him. Though, they are totally different.
While Abby gives off a feeling of inviting warmth, Arie's eyes glow with a faint white and light purple aura.
A faint demonic purple mist even hovers around his body, and the moment Raven and Abby make their way upstairs to the large dome on the moon's surface, they feel as though his gaze is locked on them even when he's looking in a completely opposite direction.
It's like they're in a room with a Demonic Beast, eyeing its prey.
Raven remembers that even before he started cultivating divine fragments or even borrowed stats from the Rising Emperor, he was able to kill Orange-Cored Demons from the Vermillion Family army.
She tosses him two teleport crystals. "That one's for going down, and that one's for coming back up."
Raven's eyes point to each crystal as she says this, then they return back to the purple aura around Arie.
Now, with a saturated True Core burning hot in his chest and trillions of links of loyalty ready to be used, it's impossible to make a proper guess as to what kind of power he can wield... or what that 3rd Ranked Up buff really does.
He catches the crystals and nods. Then, the three of them stand in the center of the room while Bri and Alveron go over the plan one last time.
Raven is well aware of its intricacies, as she was in the room when it was created, but Abby seems quite uninterested, thinking about something else. Arie, on the other hand, holds a sharp gaze and listens to Bri's strict words of warning about the Kings.
However, his slight grin once they're given the go-ahead to crush their crystals and go down to the Demonic World makes Bri believe he's not going to take them as seriously as she thought.
These worries are confirmed when the first words that leave his lips once the three of them touch down in the mountainous ravine base are: "You're telling me it was an arrow that merely ricocheted in the commander's direction from over ten thousand kilometers away... That is what forced them to retreat after weeks of progress? Now, this is an archer that I have to meet."