87 Chapter 87: Mission Accomplished

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As he felt the Chi of Smaug shut down, Edward sighed in relief. This had been one of the hardest fights he ever want through, the Kronans were annoyingly many and made the fight difficult with their number.

Smaug though, not only was he stronger than him, his defence was absurd. Aeglos was a legendary spear that could even hurt the Dark Lord Sauron himself, and yet even with Chi coating it he had difficulty drawing blood.

But it was over, and his mission was finished. As Edward realized that, he felt the last Chakra, the Crown Chakra, loosen up before breaking open. The Crown's Chakra was Sloth, and so the way to open it was Diligence.

After months of work, he had managed to finish his mission, allowing for the opening of the final Chakra.

As the last Chakra was opened, Edward did not feel a burst of power like the other times, his strength was already unsealed. The opening of this Chakra did not affect his Chi, his body, or even his Spirit. He didn't feel any stronger.

However, he felt something deep within him awaken as the world surrounding him suddenly changed. His soul had evolved, and the world's mysteries did not seem so obscure anymore.

He felt like lines had appeared all around him, and he only needed to touch one to get a new understanding of the world. In other words, the limits for his Concepts… had disappeared.

As a smile graced his lips, the world around him stilled just as he began analysing the water around him, and a figure appeared not far from him, illuminating the bottom of the lake with his mere presence.

Eru said, "You have finished your mission, good job of you. You are now free to choose a reward, or I can choose for you if you want."

Edward nodded, and proclaimed, "I have two, actually. First, I would like you to bring me to the Spacetime Tunnel, in a particularly turbulent region for as long as possible. Also, I would like to return here after that to breakthrough."

Eru replied almost instantly, "The more unstable the region in the Spacetime Tunnel is, the harsher the impact on your body will be. I can bring you to a place where the instability is such that your body will barely be able to resist, you should be able to stay there for about ten minutes."

"That would be great."

Eru continued, "As for your second request, it does not really raise any problem, but as you know an army of orcs is heading here, and…"

Edward grinned and assured Eru, "I wanted to help anyway. If I breakthrough too I should be a huge help on the battlefield. It would be a pleasure to fight this war and help the friends I've made."

Eru smiled and with a wave of his hand, Edward felt his injuries heal as a portal appeared in front of him. Him and Eru entered it as they found themselves in the familiar Spacetime Tunnel.

As soon as he entered, Edward felt very different from the last time he came. The surroundings did not seem as chaotic as before, although it was disorganized, he could somehow make sense of it, and understand it.

His Chi Sense also became capable of keeping itself useful for more than a meter now, it extended to ten meters, and beyond that it became chaotic.

Eru grabbed Edward and together the two sped through the Spacetime Tunnel. Edward wasn't really sure how Eru was travelling, but guessed his understanding of space and time wasn't enough, or maybe it simply was something accessible to higher beings.

Before long, the two stopped and Eru said, "Here we are, I'll stabilize space back when you reach your limit. Have fun I guess."

Edward smiled and with a gesture of Eru, the surrounding spacetime, which was calm because of Eru's presence, suddenly grew chaotic.

Edward felt the spacetime try to tear apart his body, and partly succeed, but his body was quickly healing itself. It was painful, but compared to what he went through in his life, the pain didn't seem too terrible anymore.

He could have asked for many things for finishing his mission, for example an even greater weapon than Aeglos, for the Ebony Blade to be repaired or for something similar, he didn't doubt Eru would be able to grant his wishes with ease.

However, he came here with a precise idea. Obviously, he wanted to further understand the Concept of Space and Time, but it wasn't just for kicks either that he wanted to further understand those two precise Concepts.

Edward got this idea a while ago now, it was while he was making the Spatial Bracelets for the elves.

His Lower Dantian had reached it's limit of 1000 drops of liquid Chi a while ago, and the only way to change that was to reach the next realm and solidify that Chi. However, what if he could apply the idea of a spatial artefact, onto his dantian?

And so he had tried, he had tried inscribing runes on his dantian, but unfortunately, it did not work. He was not devoid of hope though, as he still had the Concepts.

Standing in the chaotic spacetime, Edward felt his understanding of the two Concepts strengthen every second, and everything was becoming clearer to him. Using the boundless chaotic space and time fragments around him, Edward started directing them to his Lower Dantian.

The chaotic fragments fell under Edward's control as they began inscribing themselves onto his dantian, but midway through they dispersed. Edward didn't give up though and learned from his mistakes, and tried again.

As he understood more of the Concepts by the second, Edward also realized that the power of the Concepts weren't exactly as he thought. Concepts were only an understanding in the end, and although it could be used raw to manipulate the world, it was better used in conjunction with something else.

For example, even when he was blocked by the limit for the Space Concept, he could still teleport with effort using the raw power of the Concept. But it was much better used when used alongside magic, and had given Edward the power to create portals much more easily.

It was the same here. Although Edward understood more and more about the Concepts, and could use their raw power to achieve great things surely, as he began using magic and his inscribing the effects began stacking up.

And as the minutes passed, Edward successfully managed to inscribe runes onto his Dantian. With his Spiritual Energy, Edward could see his Lower Dantian was covered in blue and green runes, making it look quite esoteric.

Looking inside, the previous whirlpool of 1000 drops of Chi was still there, but it barely covered a percent of the entire space.

Edward's dantian was still the same size on the outside, but on the inside, the space had multiplied by a hundred times, meaning that at full capacity his dantian could now store 100 000 drops of Liquid Chi.

As a comparison, Edward's blood was also approximately 100 000 drops in quantity.

But although it was nice to have a much bigger reserve, it also meant recovering his Chi would take much longer, and so it wasn't just a space rune, but a time one too as the time inside his Dantian was accelerated too, so the whirlpool turned even faster and drew Chi in much more quickly.

It didn't feel very good to have his Dantian go from full to nearly empty, but his dantian was madly sucking the surrounding Chi, trying it's best to regain full capacity.

Now that what he came here to do was done, Edward used the remaining time in this region to further understand the two Concepts, Spacetime Magic was one of the greatest that could be used.

Unfortunately, before long Eru stabilized the surrounding space as Edward reached his limit, the brunt of the chaotic spacetime was accumulating and his body was getting shredded faster and faster.

Although he had to stop, Edward was more than satisfied by what he achieved. Eru smiled at Edward and asked, "Where do you want me to drop you off?"

Edward replied, "Back at the bottom of the lake, I have unfinished business."

Eru waved his hand and a portal opened. Edward nodded at Eru and walked in.

Even though he was more than a hundred meters underwater, the sudden change in pressure wasn't much of a problem as it was nothing compared to the shock spacetime gave him.

Edward looked down at the corpse of Smaug, and took out Aeglos as he cut a gash into the dragon's chest. As Smaug was dead and didn't move, although it took a little time Edward managed to cut into the dragon.

He also used a spell to form a kind of cage around Smaug's body so that the blood infused water wouldn't just spread everywhere, he had a use for it.

But for now he was here to breakthrough, and to do so he had to first fill his dantian. Inside Smaug's body, Edward could not feel any Core like the demon from Camelot had, but all of Smaug's Chi seemed to be in his heart, so Edward went to it and grabbed it.

Closing his eyes, Edward began absorbing the Chi within Smaug's heart, sucking up any remaining life energy the dragon had after dying. Since he hadn't died for too long and was a monster of power, even after his death there was more than enough Chi for Edward.

Under his accelerated absorption, Edward's Lower Dantian began filling up quickly, and as the heart of Smaug dried up, Edward's dantian was once again filled to the brim.

The whirlpool inside his body was not particularly big, but it swirled much faster, and drew in Chi even faster as the suction force strengthened. But more importantly, he was now ready for a breakthrough.

Edward ripped apart the dried up heart, revealing a flickering flame. As it came in contact with the water, the flame did not get extinguished but rather boiled the surrounding water, evaporating some. Edward, who was close to it, felt his entire body burn as he was in close proximity to it.

Dragon Fire did not come from nowhere, every fire breathing dragon had a flame in their heart, which could be used by the dragon to breath fire.

The flame was much more concentrated than the fire Smaug breathed out, and much, much hotter, but because he had died it had already gotten quite weaker, thankfully for Edward.

Waving his hands, Edward formed a space cube around the Dragon Flame and slowed down time inside. Everything trapped inside couldn't leave unless they managed to destroy the barrier surrounding the cube, but the flame wasn't intelligent and just remained in place, so it couldn't attack the barrier.

As for slowing down time, he did it so the flame wouldn't absorb all the oxygen in the cube too quickly, he wasn't sure whether this flame could survive without oxygen, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Last time, he used lightning to temper his body while he was breaking through for a myriad of reasons, and the result was a better quality Chi and an overall improvement of himself. However, it had allowed him to build a great resistance to lightning as his body was reconstructed through lightning.

As such, if he wanted to use lightning to temper his body again, he would need to find a lightning much stronger than the one he already used. And here was the problem, he reconstructed his body using Thor's lightning, while empowered by Mjollnir at that.

He had heard from Thor that Mjollnir had something called the God Tempest in it, so his lightning was much stronger than normal lightning. Aside from his resistance to lightning, Edward's body had also grown much stronger since then, so the lightning he would have to find to actually rebuild his body… he wasn't even sure it existed, and if it did, he didn't have access to it.

However, not all hope was lost, for he had picked up something great.