Eternal Emerald Dragon

Lind had no further contact as the pair of aliens returned to their holds. It was only then he realized he had no idea where any of them had come from. What kind of movement technique was that?

There had not been a ripple in Path, Intent, or Qi!

How did they do that? It gave him a clue that there was more. He thought he had been at the peak but there was more to reach for!

The weakness of the Eternal Realm also gave him hope. If the Bastard was forcing his cultivation by brute force, there was a chance he had not formed a Harmonic Core. Fiend cultivation broke so many rules yet that was under Heaven and Earth.

Eternal Realm cultivators were not bound by those rules. Lind understood it was about achieving something else. He felt like he was on the cusp of grasping something but it slipped away.

He noticed a few changes. His mind felt more solid but his Harmonic Core was no longer purely emerald. It had gained color!

The human form had emerald eyes and hair but the rest of him was still deeply tanned skin of jade with the usual variations for his fingernails. His robes were not just part of him but true artifacts he had created.

Thus, the fact that a very faint color aside from emerald made him think that Harmonic Core was the key. He also wondered if his mind could be as powerful as the pair he just met.

The human had been screaming but he had felt like any other Eternal Realm he had met.

Lind pushed it aside as he began to consider how to find the First. He wanted to know why the Bastard ignored them or if they were on his side. Facing a Fiend, he had growing confidence but against any other Eternal Realm, even with the weakness, Lind had far less hope.

He could not be the only one to know that if the mind was shattered, an Eternal Realm would die. Their own power would run amok and nothing could stop it.

Demi Tier was like a careful balancing act. The Harmonic Core had to be condensed, stabilized and placed into the mind. Once that happened, not only was power increased, but the mind became much harder to damage.

The storm in the mind was actually a warning! It was unstable, or at least on the cusp. Mental attacks were not able to simply get in and damage it. It had to be stressed more than attacked. The heaviness of the alien minds would have wiped him out before he understood the danger if not for his Harmonic Core.

The power of their minds made him think of a way to find the First. He stayed in the area as the Bastard would fear any legends of Eternal Realm cultivators being killed easily. Such threats would not be taken lightly.

He focused solely on his Harmonic Core. He could not force it but he tried to see if he could get a reaction that did not pull on Intent or Path power. He did not try to use anything but pure thought.

Pressure built up until sweat began to pour off of him. Lind could feel it. There was something there, something resisting his will. He was turning a deep crimson when the Harmonic Core seemed to stiffen.

It glowed with a gentle light and something shifted in Lind. He felt like something that had been missing was finally a part of him!

The threads of power flowing from the Harmonic Core into his mind now glowed with power as they moved in and out in a cycle!

He had primed the foundation but had to trigger it to start the change! It also flooded him with far too much information.

He lost all ability to float in place due to the combination of exhaustion and the newly freed power. Intent was one side of the coin and pure Essence was the other!

What he had been condensing in his mind was the Essence that made up his existence! Put the 2 together through his Harmonic Core and his mind held a new power that needed no Path power at all!

He wished he knew what it was called as it would give him definition of how to use it properly. He quickly had Haro give him some elixirs and recovered in the darkness.

The chaotic information was coming from all around him. He could feel a new layer to the holds and now the ones he had come to stood out even more.

They were silent. The feeling that had disturbed him was an instinctual feeling of what was different. The kind of control that made it clear only those invited were welcome.

Lind floated closer and the silence helped. The calm let him actually grasp what he was processing.

He was feeling all the Intent behind everything! The pure will that summoned each Eternal Realm cultivators' hold was now his to analyze with ease!

It was too much! There had to be a way to block it out!

Years passed before he finally figured out the trick. Rather than trying to block it all out, he had to regulate his new power to filter what he wanted to see.

It was impossible to lock it all out, there was just too much that would keep pressing down on him. As he carefully built the filters, the silence grew around him.

He became a center of calm at long last and only then did he frown. The chaotic and wild flow of information now made sense but not in any language he could grasp.

How did someone find shades of anger in so many forms and just label it with that inadequate word? The raw intent was what made the flow and arrangement of the holds.

In that cacophony of interactions, he felt it. It was not easy to feel but there were 3 places the flow just died.

The holds behind him were the largest void. He could just barely perceive some kind of barrier deflected the chaos without simply keeping it out. Just as he had protected his own mind, the barrier let the natural inclination of the energy to follow a path rather than direct resistance.

It told him his approach was a good choice. Still, there were 2 more areas where he could finally confirm voids in the new sensation.

One was fairly large but a pebble compared to the holds. He frowned as the void was not from a barrier but more like it just disappeared. Consumed would be a better word as he confirmed the direction relative to him was where his machines had gone to.

The Bastard did not have to care if he could detect something, he would just take it all! Still, Lind filed it away as he had to confirm if the Bastard truly had followed some similar path to the peak of the Demi Tier.

If so, he was sorely unprepared to face him. It would also explain his confidence in facing Lind. Consuming souls might have revealed the weakness of Eternal Realm cultivators to the Fiend.

He was already working on that weakness so one worry was no longer weighing on him. The final void, however, was different from the first 2.

It was moving far from the holds. It was also far larger than a single being should be. The only comparable being was a kraken or leviathan but even they were small compared to the void he felt.

He also felt a chill down his spine. He felt like that void was looking at him all the time! It knew where he was!

He sighed and did not wait. He slowly flew out and regulated the new sensations so he was not overwhelmed again. It was far more difficult as he was among the uncontrolled holds. His head felt like a mix of death metal, machinery, and unending lightning all going off at extreme volume all at once.

None were bad on their own but all 3 at once made his eyes twitch. His body sometimes distorted as he lost control of his transformation skill just to focus on the nascent barrier.

Eventually, he reached the border between the holds and the empty void. He was far from the Bastard's location but he did not assume that was safe enough to lower his guard. He was focused on the moving void.

It slowed, sped up, and generally just kept moving but never towards the holds. It did not seem to react to his approach until he was in the dark with it.

Just as Lind was finally feeling up to going faster, it vanished! It was not a void, it was just gone! How was that possible?! He tried to detect if they had torn through space or teleported or something, but only 2 voids remained.

"First indeed." Only someone who had experience avoiding peak Demi Tiers would so easily avoid him. He wanted to take the direct approach but any transmission in the empty space was as good as lighting up a whole fireworks show.

He floated in the dark before a thought occurred to him. He summoned his last drone. It was now repaired and he quickly snatched the free energy to cover both of them in a pseudo atmosphere.

"Senior, I am Lind Frey and wish to know if you are on the side of the enemy of all life or not. I am not asking you to help, just to know where you stand." He then dispersed it and prepared to run. He would only have 1 chance if he was wrong.

The fact he had not been sneak attacked gave him hope, yet he was not a fool. He knew something able to hide from him likely had far worse tricks to use against him.

The craft flew out and pulsed words around itself. It could not transmit audio in the empty space but it could display them easily enough.

Whether some ancient beast could read the script of his Divine Land was a worry but the light itself had no Qi. He hoped it would react as it had before. It did not seem to like light.

Sure enough, less than a few moments after it got at least a few arm lengths away, the light bounced off of a massive figure very close to him! Lind had sensed nothing!

He looked up as the blinking light now displayed the words on the dark flesh of the living being next to him. He had been trying to hunt the First but he had become the prey!

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