She couldn't follow him.
No matter how much she tried, she couldn't trace his steps.
His back was so far away that she thought he'd disappear from her grasp, but he always stayed on the edge of her perception, just far enough ahead to make her painfully aware of the distance between them.
It wasn't her fault, but she didn't know that.
She simply didn't have the faculties to fall into his rhythm.
Eventually, she stopped and watched him walk.
His steps were unbelievably light, but each one took him an unreasonable distance away.
While her steps could only carry her as far as her body allowed.
It didn't mean much.
The reality was just a difference in affinities. Without understanding Spacetime, it was impossible for her to trace his movements.
But the feeling it gave was more inherent.
This was the difference felt by many.
The difference between a practitioner who could only rely on hard work and one who had sufficient talent to support it.
Iris was always the latter.
She was always leagues above her peers. Despite her age being over ten thousand years, the time she'd taken to reach Divinity was less than half of that.
During the rest of the time, she'd risen from a nameless Demigod to someone who stood above all else, one of the strongest Divinities in Grand Heavens Boundary.
She never felt the gap caused by her talent.
No, she never had anyone around her to be affected by that gap.
So she didn't understand it's pain.
Trying to follow his steps made her experience it.
And her mind flashed back to the man she's been traveling with for the past two and a half years.
It was hard to think of him as a mere lower existence watching him fight, but the facts didn't change.
He was still a Supreme who hadn't stepped on the road of Divinity yet.
Strangely enough, she never felt the weight of that.
Perhaps due to the special relationship they shared, his immense talent didn't frighten her, but empowered her.
The thought of him surpassing her never even came to mind, and now that it was, frankly, she didn't feel concerned about it.
If it happened, she would just work harder to keep up.
But…
That feeling was half due to her conjectures, and half due to the extent of Damien's talent.
Some talents caused people to feel envy and hopelessness, but when talent reached such a disproportionate level, one could only feel admiration.
Damien was at that level.
Now that she was here, Iris started to feel what she'd missed because of his extremity.
It was suffocating.
With everything she had, no matter how much she tried, it was impossible for her to even see his back.
Was that the future in store for her?
She couldn't accept it.
She didn't come here thinking about Damien, she came here to get answers from the Ancient Sovereign.
She couldn't stop their backs from overlapping.
And for some reason, the overlap spurred her thoughts.
What was her talent?
In truth, only Damien glimpsed it. Eyrrisea Luminus had always been a mystery to both comrades and foes, a person whose laws and affinities could not be understood.
The main reason was that she never used her true affinity.
She comprehended Universal Law based on its nature, but while she did progress it in secret, she never used it openly.
Iris never reached her full potential because of this.
No matter how much she could comprehend on her own time, unless she applied those comprehensions to real-life situations, how could she properly understand them?
It was just too esoteric.
The force that nobody else had comprehended, the force above all others that provided her the talent she held, she couldn't seem to grasp it, just like she couldn't grasp the Ancient Sovereign.
"Indecisive."
A single word.
It boomed in her ear.
She looked up, startled, but the Ancient Sovereign was still in the same place, just close enough that she could glimpse his back.
'Indecisive?'
Was that the case?
Was she hesitating?
What reason did she have to do so?
"Orion's descendant, you are a paper boat in a vast ocean. Your mind does not match your stature."
He spoke again.
Iris felt it in his words.
'He's looking down on me.'
In most cases, she would've taken insult from those words, but the man who spoke them wasn't someone who spoke without reason.
She'd learned much about the Ancient Sovereign from Orion before this moment, so she knew just how profound his every action was.
For him to directly tell her something like that…
She had to look inside herself and reflect.
'My mind was like a paper boat in a vast ocean…'
She reiterated his words.
She tried to internalize and rationalize them.
And she eventually realized their truth.
While she objectively accepted her position, considering herself one of the strongest Demigods in the universe, that was nothing but an objective view.
Her mind was truly immature.
The underdevelopment of her mind due to the lack of pure relationships in her life was already known. Adding to that the immense responsibility on her shoulders and many other factors, she realized that she undervalued herself to an extreme.
"You cannot find the answers you seek."
He spoke as if it was definite, but Iris knew it wasn't.
In her current state, it was impossible to pursue what she sought.
It was a matter of mindset.
The law she wanted to start pursuing was far too great for her to tackle with her current mindset.
Unless she could put herself in the same position as that law or stand above it, how could she ever wish to reach it?
"But…how?"
How was she to change?
Over ten thousand years she'd lived. It was an immense span of time, and something developed through it was not easy to alter.
"There is no how, and there is no what. There is no question, there is only an answer. That answer will not come from external sources, and it cannot come from inside. It does not exist."
Iris wasn't used to the Ancient Sovereign's strangeness, but just like Damien, she tried her best to understand it.
'There is no question, and there is no answer. It will not come from the outside, but it "cannot" come from the inside…'
Was he saying that she was limiting herself?
But if that was the extent of it, was there a point in him speaking?
Iris felt like a child again, listening to her elders speak about the mysteries of 4th class, completely unable to follow their words.
However, despite what the Ancient Sovereign said, she felt there was an answer.
There was an answer somewhere, she just didn't have the faculties to reach it.
She refused to allow this.
If the problem was internal, then she could fix it. If she didn't know how, then she just needed to create a "how" and make it work.
Iris never forced her way through a problem before.
She was always a rational thinker. Instead of using power where power wasn't necessary, she'd always use a roundabout method to achieve the most ideal results.
This was also the reason she became so accustomed to using Universal Law.
In the lower universe, that power was absolute. It put her in a position without competitors.
But in this place, it was useless. It barely held any weight.
After all, this was not the lower universe.
The Ancient Battlefield was a fragment that broke off the Heavenly World. That was why it could accommodate Divinities so easily.
She realized the need for growth that had long eluded her once again when she came here, and though she'd grown somewhat, it wasn't nearly what she wanted.
In her heart, a long-forgotten ambition sparked again.
The desire to see the Heavenly World and enter the grand stage.
If she wanted to do it, she couldn't stay the same.
At least this much, she'd understood clearly.
