Chapter 896 An Ugly Turning Point
Integral Time.
Replicus couldn't believe his eyes. He almost got so lost in the idea that he had gotten into contact with such an absurd concept, that he forgot to make a sharp turn to avoid the crazed Musing whose figure almost caught up in that moment.
Skilfully, he dodged and darted to the side while keeping track of where [Epiphany] supposed detected the flakes of Integral Time.
'What in the world...?' Replicus thought while enabling his thought phantoms to take the theorising wheel from him as he focused on outmanoeuvring Musing.
The Ardent Curse had taken to hurling jets of explosive might while cackling bitterly... sombrely, more like.
"What is that? How do these creatures even have access to a Rule level concept? What even is a Rule level concept? Is it what I think it is? Are we missing something? Does it have something to do with that sealed Cluster General?" a thought phantom wondered while circling over Replicus' helmet, bombarding the others with a flurry of questions.
"I don't know about that. If that thing had anything to do with these Curses, then they should know about it. From the looks of it, they don't seem none the wiser. I think it's something else. Besides, Rule... If it is what we think it is... creatures of this calibre shouldn't have something like the ability to manipulate time, right?" another said.
"You know what, that makes sense. Right there..." the phantom who spoke said while pointing at the remnants of the diamond river, "...where the river was... and close to the entrance to the Cluster that that Thrill character closed off and masked... I believe that's our biggest clue."
"That's not a deduction, you sockethole! We can all see that! Do you reckon it has nothing to do with the Curses at all?"
"Well, let's swivel by that position and see. This Integral Time or whatever is unrealistically expensive and powerful. Whatever its origin is must be ridiculous!"
And so, Replicus, while avoiding Musing, turned and headed towards the deformed land, carved in by Dander's Territory effect, and once again, the notification he had seen before appeared:
[Rule level concept detected. 'Integral Time.' To learn the lesser fundamentals, an investment of 5,812,000 is required]
'Right here,' he thought, and a glaring glow ignited from his luminous body.
"Incismic Flurry!" Musing suddenly called out from behind Replicus.
Four large, white, sharp-ended objects came rushing towards the Penetrator with astounding speed, and a peculiar, ghostly outline that one of Replicus' thought phantoms was certain would be able to damage him – and heavily at that – should it touch him, even if he remained assuming his Levin form for travel.
The Penetrator wasn't too concerned, however. In a blink, he actually went ahead and restored himself to physical form, and darted out of the way of the teeth-looking objects!
No. Perhaps darted wasn't the right word.
He had been pulled out of harm's way!
Replicus had summoned a ball of Distorted Gravity that sucked him towards it with impressive speed, and at the same, he made another one appear right above the Ardent Curse, Musing.
With a flip of his fingers upward, something strange happened to the Ardent Curse... something it hadn't been expecting.
The chunks of rock and stone – great and small – left in the wake of the earlier devastation, rose up quickly, as though Dander's Majestic Territory had reincarnated to wreak havoc again.
They flew so fast that anyone paying attention would have mistaken them for rather athletic black holes jogging upwards.
...!!!
At the same time as when they all disappeared into the ungolden skies, the orb over Musing attained a modest, lilac-purple tinge, and the Curse, along with everything close to him – except Replicus – was forced to plummet via a harsh force that threatened to strip skeleton from flesh!
Musing let out a bellow of pain as he fell, stricken without mistake.
Replicus scoffed while watching his figure crash heavily against the indented gold crust of this world and continue to sink further without pause!
'Yeah, guess I was right. No one is immune to gravity, nomatter which form it takes...' Replicus thought.
The true power of his Distorted Gravity, was something he had only been able to demonstrate after he raised his affinity to the concept to rank C. Before that, all Replicus had been able to do, was use an amped version of normal gravity, much like Skullius.
Distorted Gravity allowed the user to channel stronger gravitational forces by fuelling them with their inverted applications. For instance, he had made the rocks nearby to fly up through the gravitational orb, just so he could channel the upward force they each generated into a single, opposite effect through said orb.
Naturally, this would call into question why Replicus wouldn't just use the Distorted Gravity orbs to create the directional gravity he wanted, as he had been doing before, to which the answer was simple.
Applying Distorted Gravity in this unique manner... didn't use additional mana after that which he used to create the initial, opposing effect. In this case, the mana Replicus used to speed the rocks up, was all there was to use his expenditure.
Additionally, the inverted effect generated this way, was more than twice as powerful and as intrinsic, meaning it would work up to the cellular level if Replicus truly put his back into it.
Replicus had done this so that he could buy time to study this oddity in space.
Integral Time.
What was its origin?
How could Replicus find out?
The Penetrator, still clinging to the Distorted Gravity orb, considered rapidly.
Strangely, the sting of the surrounding gold to his sockets suddenly worsened.
He had been spared for a while because he was travelling as Levin all this time, but now, when his body settled for more than a moment without changing form again, the irritation of seeing the gold returned.
'Nevermind that for now...' he thought as he stretched his arm forward. 'What I need to focus on, is this...'
Replicus' hand became encased in a foggy light, Lambent Phosphor, which he had acquired from Nedalia.
'This concept can show the truth. Nedalia had a broad interpretation of what the 'truth' was. The ghosts, the mirrors, and that Secondary Territory function, Rage of Truths. I can't be too sure, but the reason why she was free to interpret Lambent Phosphor like that, was likely because of its source, her Hidden Class. I probably won't be able to summon ghosts like her but...'
And without wasting any more time to thought, wisps of foggy light sprayed over the spot were [Epiphany] continued to cry out that it sensed Integral Time.
At first, the Lambent Phosphor Replicus released was slow, and lazy, but it soon became powerful, and unabashed.
Regardless of whatever Lambent Phosphor was capable of, if he willed it, it should be able to reveal to him the source of the disturbance, right?
What's more, much like Dander, Musing and Thrill's attacks, it couldn't be avoided, meaning as Replicus gave it a target, it shouldn't miss.
The Penetrator was unsure of how exactly the source of this going to be revealed to him.
Depending on how you split it, Lambent Phosphor could be used as a tool for Divining – looking into the past... or maybe even the future.
'Will it work?' Replicus thought.
It now started to occur to him that the odd shapes the ghosts took when Nedalia extracted them from living bodies, were likely reflections of how the victims saw themselves, or what they aspired to become – though perhaps warped a little because of Nedalia's Hidden Class.
If only Replicus had such a firm grasp of...
There!
It happened just as he was starting to doubt.
A vague image appeared blindingly in his head, taking what he was currently looking at, and plastering it with the details it was missing now!
Unfortunately, perhaps because Lambent Phosphor in Replicus' hands simply couldn't be as absurd as it had been before, or because it was only rank B currently, the image lasted only for a second and a half.
...!!
Replicus reeled.
That had been plenty.
"No way!" he exclaimed as he imprinted the image he had just seen in his mind!
He saw Eaniss on her ship, in the diamond river.
He saw her holding something... odd, which he couldn't quite describe.
He saw something familiar appear before her.
A Reverse Cluster!
"It's the same Reverse Cluster that we saw before. The one that messed with time!"
And indeed it was. It had looked different aside from behaving oddly.
An anomaly among the Reverse Clusters which had a terrible habit of hopping from spot to spot, until it caught prey.
So far, the Factions had only seen it devour a ship of their own which then emerged on the Reverse Cluster's nether side looking as though it had cruised through lifetimes at sea!
'Did Eaniss... somehow harness its powers?!' Replicus thought... but then his mind trekked back further to a greater clue.
'Past.'
He recalled the nagging Apostle, Araeyn constantly try to tell him this.
Past.
The past?
Replicus was awestruck, and somewhat frightened by the idea.
Did that bugger mean... it wasn't just about Eaniss simply attaining something like that... but she actually used it?!
Had she actually been in the Cluster with them before... as the image he saw suggested?!
No way!
The Penetrator couldn't believe it.
Unfortunately for him, whether he believed or not in anything didn't matter to the current course of events.
He felt strangely sacred light bathe the entire Cluster world.
It was, to him, unmistakably a blessing in action.
Quickly turning and spreading his senses, Replicus was appalled at its source.
If he had a tongue, he would have clicked it at the sight of the Mad Bishop rising into the sky like a holy angel, a demented look on her face.
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