When Ning reappeared from his teleportation, he was flying on top of the massive ocean that took over one-half of the entire world.
Ning enforced his body and dove into the water.
The many fishes and sea monsters swam past him as he let his body drop to the depths of the ocean.
As the pressure increased, Ning also started feeling the pull of the Aether within him. This concentration was too strong, and even his Underlord body was feeling the effect.
'If I had let it be, It would have gathered so much in the next few years,' he thought. However, he didn't want to wait that long.
Now that the Origin had opened up, he didn't have to keep these things down here.
When Ning finally reached the bottom of the ocean, doing his darndest to push back the millions of tons of water, he reached out to the giant glass sphere.
The moment he touched it, it disappeared into his storage. Ning teleported out and went to another location to do the same thing.
After going in a circle around the Origin, he finally managed to gather all the massive glass spheres he had left behind.
Finally, he crossed through a folded space by entering through the perfect location hung in the sky and appeared inside the origin.
"So it really is unlocked, huh?" he thought to himself. 'That means she truly is gone.'
Ning felt a tinge of sadness at the death of Alexis, but there was nothing he could've done to prevent it. Just like he couldn't prevent the ones he loved from dying.
Ning shook his head and walked upon the familiar red ground of the origin. He walked up the mountain and looked down on the water that had Alpurite mixed into it.
It wasn't very dense in the water itself, but that did not mean Aether wasn't flowing out of the pool.
"What's the time difference in this place compared to outside?" Ning asked.
<1:20>
"Hmm, is that lower or higher than Kumia?" Ning wondered. He quickly calculated and after seeing that it was just about the same difference, he stopped worrying about it.
"I guess nearly 2 hours for each energy reset is still pretty good," he thought and brought out the giant glass sphere with a very concentrated solution of water and Alpurite.
As soon as it appeared, the Aether in the area immediately rushed towards it, and the purple liquid started getting darker and darker.
Ning left that and went to a different location before bringing out another one. Then another one, and another one.
In the end, he ended up with 10 glass marbles that each held about 4200 liters of very, very high concentration of Aether solution.
Once everything was set up, Ning walked away from the location in fear of losing his own Aether.
After he was sufficiently far enough, he sat down and started gathering Aether like a mad man.
For the next whole day, he did nothing but collect energy as well as cultivate Aether.
'At this rate, I will only need 4 years to get back the amount I lost by removing everyone's memories, won't I?' he thought.
That fixed his mood a lot as he realized he wouldn't have to wait 80 years on this planet to get back what he lost.
After 2 more days of collecting Aether, he left. He still had a lot of different things to do before he could just settle down in the Origin.
Ning returned back to his house in the Damir city where the old woman Daani and Helena were staying.
Ning put on a foolish smile when he remembered how much he had to apologize to her for nearly killing her with fright.
After Ning and Alexis had left to find Darian, the old woman had stumbled upon Ning's 'corpse' and thought that Alexis had killed him for some petty reason.
"Hey, Mrs. Gaani, are you making potions?" he asked as he walked through the door.
"Aaah!" she squealed loudly. "Make some noise before you suddenly start talking. You nearly gave me a heart attack."
"Ah, sorry. Sorry," Ning said.
The old woman continued making her potions while Ning looked at what she was making.
"Are you only making healing potions?" Ning asked.
"And potions for better sleep. The people out there need it," the old woman said.
"I see," Ning said. "Do you want helpers? You could teach people how to make potions too. I think that would help you fantastically."
"That… hmm… that's not a bad idea," Gaani said. "Although I would like to learn a bit more myself before I think of teaching."
"Yes, yes, of course," Ning said.
"Also, where is Helena?" he asked.
"School. She should be returning soon," Gaani said.
"I see, then let me help you make some more potions," he said and got to work.
About an hour or so later, Helena returned in her white and blue uniform from a nearby school.
"Grandma, I'm hungry," she shouted as she made her way into the upper floor.
"Oh, teacher. You're already here?" she said with surprise. "Wait, let me go get ready."
"Stop," Ning said. "You need to eat first. The rest can come later."
"Ah, hehe," she gave a sheepish grin.
After Helena finished eating her afternoon lunch, Ning brought her to the underground floor to teach her the Aether arts.
Helena was slowly improving, but there was some definite improvement. Her control over the energy itself was fantastic, and as Ning helped show her everything, her mental image of how things are and should be also improved a lot, in return improving her Aether arts as well.
At the age of 20 years old, Helena had already become an Aether Magister. If people from this world found out, they would surely scold Ning for doing something so outrageous.
Ning brought out a thick book and handed it to her.
"What's this, teacher?" she asked.
"This is a list of all the ingredients for potions and what they do. From now on, you will start helping your grandmother little by little."
