Book 5, chapter 17

There was a soft knock at the front door, the sound echoing through the mansion. 

"Give me a minute!" Zee shouted.

She was up to her neck in scattered piles of paper on the couch in the living room, with several texts and information crystals spread in the mix. All the while, the living book flew around the room, pausing on occasion to gobble up one of the loose pages when it thought she wasn't looking. 

Zee was well accustomed to its shenanigans and hardly noticed her sole attention on a fist sized gem.

She had been poring over the information in the crystal Julian gave her for weeks and was making some progress on forming her connected gates.

After enduring four months in master Anton's course, Zee finally had enough knowledge to understand some of Julian's ramblings stored in the crystal. 

A lot could be said about Julian, but one thing was for certain, her grandpa was brilliant.

Maybe not when it came to social cues, but with spatial manipulation, he was in a league of his own.

Even master Anton, who was notoriously difficult to get a compliment from, often praised Julian's skill.

Well, he also said Julian was a lunatic, which Zee couldn't blame him for. 

Scribbling down a few more notes into her incredibly detailed sketch, Zee put down her pencil and sighed. She stretched, her back sore from hunching over for so long. It appeared that even Middle E grade cultivators could get sore after weeks of hunching over.

Zee bit her lower lip, thoughtfully. Drawing out diagrams of what she was trying to create helped with visualization. She was working on forming a set of stable gates, a task that was proving to be a colossal headache. She gave her most recent sketch a once over. A swirling pair of ominous gates dominated the page, each of them looking like holes in space.

Instead of a pitch black vortex, the energy was a lighter gray hue, as these gates were connected through the spirit plane, not the Null. That was an important distinction, one that Zee knew all too well.

Using the Null as a bridge to form a gateway was very dangerous, and should be avoided at all costs.

The two swirling gates drawn in chalk were not the only thing on the page. Mixed in with the image of two connected portals were several dozen markings in a chaotic pattern that might look like random scribbles. It was far from random. They were ritual markings, each of them placed around the gate with exacting precision. The importance of precision could not be understated. When creating a ritual diagram of this scale, and power, everything had to be perfect.

It was a ninth tier ritual, and if Zee was being honest, it was still out of her depth. Months of tutelage under master Garg had elevated her understanding of rituals. The Couiliteen's teachings, and using the living book were the only reasons she had enough to know how to create this maddeningly complex ritual diagram.

Zee was still unsure if her idea was brilliance or madness. Combining an extremely delicate and complex ritual diagram with a notoriously unstable set of gates was a recipe for disaster.

One misstep in the process and her idea would cause an explosion of spatial energy that would make even Yukna weak in the knees. This idea was her best solution to fix the stabilization problem she was having.

Form the ritual to stabilize space, and then form the gate inside the ritual, creating a perfectly stable Gateway. It should work, in theory. Zee set down her most recent iteration of her hair-brained scheme and stood.

Best not keep her visitor waiting any longer. She crossed the living room, down the hall and opened the front door.

"Mellic, I didn't expect you for another week." Zee said, surprised.

He smiled, his gaze taking in her disheveled uniform and her unkempt hair.

"I was in town and wanted to stop by and see how you are doing. I hope I am not intruding on anything?" Mellic asked.

"I am just working on a project for one of my courses, but it can wait. Do come in," 

Zee said, opening the door, and gesturing toward the messy living room. 

"What are you working on?" Mellic asked curiously.

"Master Anton wants us to create a functioning pair of stable gates by the end of the semester. It's proving to be a tough challenge," Zee stated mildly.

Mellic hummed thoughtfully as he eyed the scattered pages and piles of books. The living room looked like a natural disaster swept through.

"That's a lot to expect from first-year students," Mellic replied.

Zee let out a weary sigh. "I know, I hear the other classes in the academy don't make you form a stable gate until the third year," Zee said.

"That sounds about right. Anton pushes his students hard, but it's not all bad. If you can endure it, you will be far better for it," Mellic replied.

"Ya, it's a lot of work, and a huge headache, but this is what I wanted. I need to get stronger, and fast. I don't have time to take things slowly," Zee said.

"I see. Tell me, how are you holding up under the stress?" Mellic asked. As he spoke, there was soft probing at the edges of her mental defenses. Zee instinctively wanted to reject the foreign influence, but ignored the urge and let him in.

Mellic was a mental health specialist, and could do his job the best if he could monitor her thoughts.

It was incredibly invasive, but it was a small price to pay.

And besides, Zee had more than enough experience with other people in her head. She had either Dern, or Kur Zul inside her mind constantly, and was quite adept at blocking out the thoughts and feelings she didn't want them to see.

Mellic hummed thoughtfully, taking a seat at the table. "I see that you have run into quite a bit of trouble since we last talked. Tell me about your time at the academy so far. Your thoughts seem a bit jumbled on the matter," Mellic said..

Zee took a seat across from him, clasping her hands in front of her. Well, Mellic was a mental health specialist.

Maybe he could help walk her through the mess of things she had been involved in recently.

"What should I start with?" Zee asked hesitantly..

"Start with your grandpa. Have you forgiven him for sending you with Glendale, and leaving you in the death chasm?" Mellic asked. Zee took a deep, steadying breath.

Just like before, Mellic knew just the right questions to get right to the heart of her problems.

"I can understand why he let the bone lord take me. Still, that doesn't make him any less of a jerk for doing it," Zee replied.

"Your anger towards him is understandable. How has the transition into the academy been? It must be hard going from a constant state of high alert to a safe environment?" Mellic asked.

Zee grimaced. "It's been difficult... My first thought is to alway deal with the problem through violence. With so many cultivators around all the time, It's hard for me to relax. I keep thinking people are going to attack me, or that something terrible is about to happen," Zee admitted.

"This is a common problem. I wish I could say it gets better, but it might not. Experiencing high stress for long periods of time is something that changes you," Mellic said.

"Are you saying I will never get better?" Zee asked.

He shook his head. "Don't look at it like that. There is nothing to get better from. You are a combat cultivator. Dealing with high stress is a part of your life now. Alot of people, people who live in the safety of the city and towns, don't have to worry about running into life and death situations. They don't need to be in a heightened state of awareness. For you, being on guard is only natural. Look at it like a trained skill that you have honed from years of fighting," Mellic said.

Over the next few hours, they went over everything that had happened in the academy. It was hard to open up, and let someone in, to see and hear her thoughts. Not all of them were pleasant thoughts, nor did she wish for others to see them. 

Still, she forced herself to endure. He had helped her a lot before, and if she wanted to have her mental state improve, she couldn't close off now.

Eventually, Mellic left, leaving her in an introspective frame of mind. Most of what Mellic did was to go over the things she had been through, and then talk about it. He never judged her for any of her actions. Not even the fact that she used soul sucking rituals to feed Dern the souls of monsters.

His concern was how doing that made her feel, and how it made others around her look at her.

When she was young, Zee had wanted to be a cultivator who fought monsters and villains to save innocent lives. It had been a naïve dream. Life had other plans, and through circumstances, she had been forced to become something that couldn't be considered righteous.

In her darkest hours, she had done things that made her feel like a monster. Even now, Zee couldn't see herself as a heroic figure. She honestly didn't think there were truly heroic people out there, at least not those with any kind of power.

Everyone she met in the Celestial grade so far was cold, and callus. Her grandpa, Tarnival, and the Bone lord were all similar. They all seemed incredibly jaded, greedy, and self serving, only caring about themselves and their loved ones. Others would have to fend for themselves.

The worst part was that she couldn't exactly blame them. Zee wasn't even at peak E grade yet, and her view on life had changed drastically.

She had seen too much to believe in truly selfless acts. Most of her friends were the same, only risking their life for people they cared about.

Even Mellic was only helping her because he was a close friend with her father.

It was an important thought to keep in mind. Once you reached a certain point, all cultivators were jaded, and self-serving. They had to be. The higher the rank, the harder it was to keep advancing.

 If one wanted to keep growing in power, they had to steal the resources from others. That was why war was inevitable, and a near constant in the universe. There weren't enough rare resources for everyone to share. To ascend through the ranks was to throw off the shackles of mortality and defy fate.

It was why Zee knew that the fight for the Eternal throne was going to be a bloodbath.

Capturing the throne could open the path for Celestial cultivators to ascend into the Boundless ranks. It was a prize that not even the A grade factions could ignore. Factions like the Ashary, the Kul A Var and the purgatory church would not let this opportunity go to some random person outside of their empires. It was a terrifying thought. Those two ancient forces could doubtlessly send billions of cultivators to scour the storms at the edges of the cosmic river. 

They would scour the nearby empires for Keys and when the eclipse came, would use them to gain access to the Eternal throne.

With the Terlashar, Blood Gorgers, and the Lorcoans in the mix, it was going to be a war of unimaginable scale. It was a terrifying prospect. The only bright side was that the keys could only be found and absorbed by cultivators below the C grade.

Zee had no idea why, but it was a well known fact. That was of little comfort. It meant that she might run into people at peak D grade who were looking for keys. At her current power, she would get slaughtered by such an opponent. 

It was an excellent motivation to get back to work. No time to slack off now.

Zee pushed thoughts of the war, and Mellic, from her mind. Time to get back to work.

She only had two months to finish her schematic and create a functional, stable set of gates.

It seemed like a lot of time, but she had other things on her plate, like opening her last few inner gates to rank up. 

Not to mention the fact that she had to convince Bastion to acquire her a spiritual natural treasure through his black market auction. To make things more hectic, she had to go visit her parents, fulfill monster hunting contracts, and prepare for the other three classes she had.

It was no wonder that she only had about five hours each night to rest and cultivate. Zee couldn't complain too much. Things were going pretty well, all things considered.

And besides, being crazy busy was a lot less stressful than fighting for life on a daily basis. Hopefully, she would be prepared for the expedition in two months. 

**********

Shrouded by arrays, a blood gorger scout ship of the mighty ninth squadron hid in a dense cluster of space debris. It had a vital mission, to crush the defenses of the planet known as Draug. The planet was a stronghold and an important supply point for the Lorocans. It was home to the largest spaceship manufacturing facilities in the Lorocan Empire. Destroying or capturing the planet would be a heavy blow to their fighting capabilities. The planet was also one of the richest in terms of Eridian, one of the major components needed to build spaceships. 

It was vital for the blood gorgers to either capture, or destroy those facilities. The planet had other uses, like the fact it was a blockade for a set of wormholes that lead deep into Lorocan territory.

Crippling the planet and securing it would allow for the blood gorgers to have a secure staging base for a full-fledged invasion into the Lorocan empire. 

The problem was that the Lorocans knew just how important the planet was. Draug had three separate shipyards in orbit, with three battle groups in station at all times.

That wasn't even counting the extensive planet wide arrays, weapons of the shipyards, and the orbiting planetary defenses. It would take hundreds of the best warships in the blood gorger fleet to have a hope of breaking the defenses. It was too high of a price to pay.

Vaulk only had sixty ships of the nineth under his command, which would be suicide, and do little under conditions. Even with those defenses, and his lack of ships, Vaulk wasn't too concerned. He wasn't planning on coming out of this alive, nor did he plan on capturing the planet.

No, his goal was to wipe the planet off the face of the universe. His meager armada was not enough to accomplish the task, no he had something else for that The sixty ships under his command would jump in and distract the defenses, while the fifty spatial cultivators activated an array.

The array would cause a spatial storm of unprecedented ferocity, opening a tear directly to the Null realm. Any sane person who cared about their life, or the lives of their comrades wouldn't do such a thing. 

Vaulk was not a sane person. He had been chosen for this mission because he was a fanatic, a staunch supporter of blood gorger superiority.

The fact that Caldas Thornhill had lost control of the Corlic wormhole cluster was bad enough. Then, the coward had returned to the heartlands of the domain in shame. He hadn't even had the decency to kill himself.

His cowardice made the blood gorgers look weak, something that could not be tolerated. That was when several enemies like the undead, and the purgatory church struck. The thought was enraging. It was time to show the galaxy that the Blood Gorgers were not to be messed with.

Vaulk gestured with his mandibles, and his navigator sent the message. On the display, he could see all sixty ships in his strike force jump into the system, within strike range of the planet.

As one, they unleashed their weapons, in brilliant explosions of energy that tore into the barriers protecting the shipyards.

As expected, the defenses reacted immediately, releasing earth shattering attacks. The three battle groups in orbit responded quickly, jumping in to engage the mighty ninth.

In only a few seconds, five ships were already drifting clouds of debris, having been ripped apart by the shipyard's defenses.

"Open a portal, we are going in," Vaulk ordered, watching with dispassion as his courageous fleet was being torn to pieces. As expected it was a slaughter. His ship shuttered, as they passed through the event horizon.

They appeared hovering over the greenish brown planet, on the opposite side from where the battle was going on.

"Activate the artifact, and hurry, we don't have long," Vaulk said, his body vibrating with excitement. Today was a good day to show the Lorocans, and everyone else why they shouldn't mess with the blood gorgers. 

The artifact in question was a priceless box, one found deep in the tomb of what was thought to be an Ascended grade cultivator. The treasure box hurt to look at, appearing like a hole in space, one that vibrated ominously with terrifying spatial fluctuations.

 The emperor had taken it from his personal vaults, willing to give up the priceless artifact for this mission. Caldas may have been a coward and a traitor, but he had provided some vital information.

If you could create a spatial storm of large enough ferocity, you could open a gate to the Null that would allow one of the Farahar to come through.

That was the plan. Fifty D grade spatial cultivators poured vast amounts of energy into the priceless box, causing it to release immense spatial fluctuations.. 

Vaulk wasn't sure what would happen, but he knew it would cause a spatial storm of unprecedented ferocity. The only snag, was that it took a minute to charge up. After nearly a minute, upon which his entire fleet was decimated, the artifact was finally charged. Bending space, the artifact rose from the deck plating, and in a display that made his heart run cold, it sheered space around them. The scout ship and the crew were ripped apart in an instant, torn to pieces by a spatial tear of terrifying proportions.

The spatial tear spanned the horizon, turning a large portion of the sky over Draug pitch black.

It was an awe-inspiring display, one that didn't appear to be doing much.

A scout ship of the Lorocan imperial navy watched on with wide-eyed fascination as the spatial tear roiled against the planetary shields.

It was a powerful attack, but it shouldn't be enough to penetrate the layered defenses. The captain was about to call it in, and say everything was fine.

Then everything changed. The rip in space suddenly shuddered, as a claw spanning several hundred meters wide burst through the spatial rift.

Defying all common sense, there was a deathly shriek that drifted to all the crew's ears, the sound making their ears bleed.

Horror crossed everyone's faces as a monstrosity from nightmare emerged from the spatial tear. It was immense and radiated an incredibly bloodthirsty aura. Its body undulated, as it forced its grotesque form through the rip in reality.

It was enormous, its body as large as the smaller moon that orbited the planet.

Space cracked around it, as it slipped free from the spatial tear, screeching in delight as it turned towards a nearby space dock. With a casual swing, the Eldridge horror lashed out, ripping the space docks barriers apart with a single swing. 

There was a huge explosion, one that sent cracks along the planet's barriers. A ball of plasma the size of a ship slammed into the abomination, doing little other than searing a small patch of its skin.

The captain's mouth dropped open. "What is that!" He asked, his mouth suddenly dry..

"No idea sir, but we need reinforcements!" shouted his second.

"Send out the distress beacon! We need all the ships in orbit here, now!" the captain shouted.