A man with ashen-grey skin moved calmly through the battlefield.
Another similar in appearance to him into view, evident panic on his face.
A Seed had gone missing.
It had been stolen by a mysterious man who attacked the base.
Darkness erupted.
The scene crumpled. The edges of its frame began to burn as it disappeared from existence.
It was an excruciating process.
The scene was corrupted. Strange discrepancies began to appear within. The ashen-grey skin of the men began to morph, their words were distorted, and even the environment around them was altered significantly.
The warped scene continued to crumple and twist into oblivion. Its original form was wholly unrecognizable in its current state.
The darkness eventually dimmed down significantly.
The scene halted.
The two men stood frozen in place.
Damien's visage was covered in sweat.
'This is…much harder than expected…!'
In that instant, he almost completely destroyed the memory that he was trying to alter. He was barely able to restrain the Void Mana before it devoured the memory whole.
'Since the core of the memory is still there, I can still alter the details, so it should be fine…the problem is, do I have the ability to do that much intricate work?'
A mere touch was enough to destroy a memory, but to actually alter it perfectly would require countless precise touches.
Nevertheless, he has to try. In its current state, even a complete idiot could understand that the memory was altered.
Damien returned his mind to the process.
He slowly built the details of the scene back in.
The destroyed landscape of the Willow Continent was easiest to recreate as Damien had personally seen it before escaping to the Sanctuary. And because Damien was merely restoring the memory rather than altering it, it wasn't too difficult of a task.
The difficulty came after.
Two men stood above the destroyed ruins of the Willow Continent.
Their features were nondescript, and the words flowing from their mouth had no form.
"Did…arrive?! Seed…stolen…enemy! Fi—"
Words began to form through radio static.
"Did…you…arrive?! Seed…acquired…escaped! Find…reinforc—"
They slowly took shape.
"Did you just arrive?! The Seed has been acquired, but the enemy escaped! We must kill the enemy of the Blight Emperor before his reinforcements arrive!"
A man's face slowly became visible. His words were finally clear to the second man in the scene, allowing him to respond.
"I see, so something like that happened."
"Quickly help us sea—!"
The instructor's hand shot out. The Higher Nox was bisected and killed in an instant.
The scene began to change. The instructor realized the terror that a new Seed could bring, he realized how dangerous it was that the Nox had acquired it, and he realized the importance of the only factor that held the Nox back as they took it.
'The Stargazer Squad…'
He needed to learn more about them. If they truly lived up to their name, they could be valuable allies in the war.
The scene began to change.
The scene continued to change.
Waves formed, crashing about and colliding with each other. The seas rumbled with chaos, becoming turbulent in an instant.
Damien's wisp of awareness shrunk back. Baek Woojin's spiritual world suddenly turned violent and raged.
Those violent waves that crashed about caused great damage, almost completely destroying the spiritual world in an instant.
A wisp of pure white mana appeared instantly. Damien responded without hesitation, using his new Life Laws to heal the damage in the spiritual world.
The calm aura of Life Laws calmed the seas and dried the lands. The cracks formed by the commotion were patched, and the spiritual world once again regained peace.
'Phew…' Damien sighed in relief. If he'd been just a second late, Baek Woojin would've died right then and there.
'It's dangerous. That was only the first memory, but it already caused such a reaction.'
Changing the events themselves wasn't hard, but changing Baek Woojin's thought process to naturally veer in a different direction was extremely taxing, and evidently, it put a burden on his mind to process this drastic change in thoughts.
'Luckily, I was able to get through that entire interaction before the damage became too bad. His first impression of the squad has been shifted into a positive light.'
Now, all that was left was to continuously repeat the process until Baek Woojin's entire past week was different from the original.
'It'll be hard. I can't repeat this process for everyone he interacted with.'
Damien didn't want fanatic loyalty from Baek Woojin, he wanted realism. For that reason, he couldn't outright remove the hostility the instructor had for the squad, nor could he alter the conversations he had too much.
'But that wasn't the goal in the first place. I can get him as an ally without the help of altered memories.'
If that was the case, then not much needed to be changed outside of Baek Woojin's internal monologue.
'Yet, that's the hardest part. I guess I'll need a constant stream of Life Laws and countless hours to get this done.'
Damien sighed to himself. This was why he didn't like leaving people alive. It complicated things far too much.
But at the same time, it allowed him to learn and grow like he hadn't before. If it wasn't for his sudden desire to keep Baek Woojin alive, how long would it have taken him to realize the intricate usages of Void Mana?
Comprehending the Void was his main goal at all times, and if his decisions allowed him to do so with greater efficiency…
'…they might have to start calling me Saint Damien soon enough.'
***
The world was dark, but that darkness was hidden beneath an array of shining lights.
Starships lit up the sky with their splendor, creating a grandiose scene for those watching from below.
It was a truly beautiful scene.
Or at least, it would've been.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Countless smaller ships raced through the air in fierce combat with each other. Dazzling bursts of mana lit up the night sky like fireworks and rainbows, but at the end of each rainbow was a dead man.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Heavy artillery fired from the sky above, rocking the ground with force greater than any earthquake. Shockwaves spread through the world, incinerating those they passed through. The land itself was cracked and sundered beyond repair, almost razed down to the mantle.
The scenes of terror were numerous, and they didn't just exist on this one planet.
This planet only signified a smaller battlefield within the large-scale warzone that was formed in the area. At least ten different planets of the same size were experiencing similar scenes.
But the main battlefield was elsewhere, on a world of equal size to Calypto.
Yet this world was already in pieces. The entire world had been destroyed at some point, leaving only a murky black ball of ink that substituted its World Core.
Two sides stood against each other and fought with ferocious brutality. It was a scene where not a single soul was safe from the clutches of death.
It was the battlefield of Throh, where Heaven's Army was making a stand to reclaim the universe's lost land and drive back the invading scourge.
