?2018 Exchange
And during all that time, he had to face countless outside attacks while never taking a step off of his path forward… Just what kind of pressure did he face?
"However, it was this that gave our elven and dwarven Clan an opportunity of a lifetime.
"For whatever reason, the arrogant Ancestor's ascension disrupted the fabric of time and space itself. Many speculated that this wasn't a simply related to the Ancestor alone. The only explanation was that his ascension was a critical point in the mortal plane's timeline. Who knew what happened in the past or future to make it so that reality itself didn't want him to transcend?
"This became an opportunity the likes of which we couldn't imagine. With the mortal plane collapsing, the barrier between us and other fabrics of reality wavered.
"For others, it was impossible to even sense these changes, however our Clan had been studying the Jafari Clan treasure for generations already.
"Since others were completely focused on the battle between the arrogant Ancestor and those supreme Star Grade Empires, they had little time to pay to us. After all, we were a pitifully small Clan in their eyes.
"Due to the violent changes in space and time, we were able to activate the Jafari Clan treasure without anyone knowing and enter a completely new Reality!
"The World Tree wasn't actually the first lifeforms we encountered… We lost many elders in those times, but we persevered. We knew that this was the only chance we would ever get to reach the pinnacle.
"During that time, we found numerous novel resources and created permanent bridges to worlds that had comparatively less danger in them…
"After months of trial and error, we finally found the World Tree.
"It was a world where the pinnacle species were Spiritual Plants, and their subordinate races were the Fairies.
"It was then that an exchange occurred between our two worlds. This was how our races came to be."
"An exchange?"
Dyon couldn't help but be a bit confused. What could a World Tree that ruled a Realm on the same level as the Mortal and Immortal Plane possibly need?
"The details of this is something even we do not know. But…" The elder hesitated. "… Worlds do not have an infinite lifespan…"
The elder didn't need to say more for Dyon to understand the heavy aura he was exuding.
Their Mortal Plane was quickly speeding toward its death. In fact, if things continued as they had on the previous timeline, it wouldn't even be much more than a few million more years until everything collapsed. This may seem like a long time, but this was the lifespan of a world they were talking about. Trillions of years to it should have been equivalent to seconds to a mortal. Yet, it actually had such a short time left.
Of course, this was sped along by The Entity, but was it really its fault? Or was it just speeding along the inevitable?
Heat Death was a novel concept to the martial world, but to Dyon's people, it was an irreversible calamity they had known about long ago. The addition of qi to the theory didn't make things any better, it was just yet another form of energy that would eventually become completely useless. Why else would universes slowly decline in qi density? Everything would eventually come to an end.
Maybe it was this very inevitability that caused the rift between The Entity and its senior brother.
The former felt there was simply no point. To it, the life of its senior brother was worth far more than the lives of everyone on the mortal plane combined. There was nothing its senior brother could say to convince it that the sacrifice was worthwhile.
As for the latter, he was enraged by something completely different. He was so powerful, yet he could only watch as everything he loved came to an inevitable end.
His parents came first, then his first wife… The second.. And eventually the ninth…
How infuriating such a feeling was. To hold all the power in the world at the palm of your hands, to be able to make sea, land and land, skies on a whim, yet to be completely unable to save what you wanted to the most.
There was definitely a secret here, though. What kind of price did the elves and dwarves need to pay in order to keep the World Tree happy? Why was it that the World Tree had never brought up this 'payment' after reconnecting with an Elvin Queen after so long? And was the World Tree really the only world like this to connect to their mortal and immortal planes?
'If there really were once near infinite universes, who's to say that there weren't also near infinite worlds? Is it really possible that in all these worlds across all of these walks of life, there was only one treasure like the Jafari Clan treasure?
'Is it really possible for a single race of Dark Phoenixes to cut the number of universes from countless trillions, to the barely 100 000 that existed today? What could a dying world need to sustain itself if not a living world full of vitality?'
The more Dyon thought, the more serious his expression became.
The mysterious beginning of all things? The root of all life? He wasn't qualified to ponder upon it. To the current him, it was an impossible question to answer. He couldn't comprehend how life began without anything sparking it, and if there was something that sparked it, what sparked this spark?
It was an endless cycle without an answer, the kind of mystery that could shatter one's dao heart if they pondered upon it for too long.
But, what Dyon was qualified to reflect upon were enemies that placed his family in danger.
He had yet to give Madeleine a child. His daughter had yet to find a man she could trust her life with. He had yet to resurrect his parents, for them to see the kind of man he had become.
After speaking with The Entity all those years ago, Dyon had given up on ever seeing his parents again. It was maybe that very point that began turning him from the Dyon he wanted to be, to whatever cowardly dreg he had become just a few decades ago.
But the current him wouldn't allow anything to block his path.
