Deadlock And Key

The following attempt was predicated on the idea that perchance, completely hiding themselves from their foe's perception might work, or at least buy him some time. To significantly improve his chances of success, Theodore chose to spend another one quadrillion and ten trillion Talent Energy to raise his Camouflage Shroud by two grades, all the way to Mythical.

[ Camouflage Shroud (Mythical):

• Can consume Energy to conceal oneself or an Energy expenditure-dependent area around oneself, shielding everything that has been veiled from the perception of others.

• The above will not be absolute if faced with a Transcendent-grade Talent, a Perfection-level Proficiency, or the senses of an entity vastly surpassing one's own cultivation realm. ]

Based on his experiments, not only had its Energy consumption efficiency been significantly improved, allowing him to envelop a far larger area with the same expenditure, but the concealment was also far stronger. It had entirely surpassed what the Array Disks that he could produce at this moment could achieve. Naturally, with both used simultaneously, the effects were further enhanced.

Under normal circumstances, people would rarely–if ever–encounter someone who had a Transcendent-grade Talent or a Perfection-level Proficiency to rely upon. However, Theodore was convinced that this aspect at least would not have much of an influence on the outcome which he would face.

'... well, for what it's worth, I wasn't wrong.'

After he had regressed once more, a helpless smile graced his lips. Absolutely nothing had changed from before. Evidently, he was dealing with a true expert here, not a run-of-the-mill old-timer.

Ideas were put forth by both him and his people, yet any progress was excruciatingly slow. With little achieved but a few more things to test, he embarked on another intel gathering run.

-----

The Sybillans had always prided themselves in their infallible prognostication skills. Although not all of them were capable of peering into the future, their most excellent Oracles had successfully helped them survive several potentially civilization-ending calamities.

In general, the Sybillans tended to avoid dangers, and lived a lot longer than other kinds of humans. As a result, they had plenty of wizened experts in their ranks, enough to make them into a bit of a local powerhouse that didn't need to be too afraid of outside threats.

They had never chosen to conquer other worlds, but some of their people had elected to leave or moved away over the ages. Keeping mostly to themselves, they developed and advanced, both cultivation and technology reaching considerable heights.

But one day, every Sybillan awoke to unprecedentedly grim news. Not just the Lead Oracle, but all other Oracles as well had experienced the same vision of the near future–one in which a grey light would descend from up above and eradicate every single one of them!

It wouldn't matter where they were or fled to–their entire world, and all of their people would die. Even if they were merely descendants of the Sybillans living in worlds far away, they couldn't escape this tragedy either.

Both warranted scepticism and doubt prevailed at first, until the Lead Oracle sacrificed her life to make a definitive and clear recording of the events to come. It was made accessible to all of their people, in the hope that someone–anyone–could find a way to overcome this mess.

Yet, although the public was hopeful at first, in the following days, all of the most esteemed experts fell silent, throwing in the towel. They could not see any way out of the plight that they found themselves in. Repeatedly, all solutions that they came up with were proven to be fruitless by the Oracles, who went above and beyond to peer into the future over and over again.

It didn't take too long for a civilization-wide panic to spread–and worst of all, no efforts to quell it amounted to anything. With death right around the corner, what use was there in fearing punishment or getting sent to the afterlife a little bit earlier?

Crime and despair abounded, continuously becoming worse. Many who couldn't stand the pressure and hopelessness, or who wanted to go out on their own terms, chose to end it all.

Amidst this turmoil, a young boy by the name of Rhain carefully studied the 'Doomsday Recording'. He was only eight years of age, but despite the immaturity evident in his features and bearing, he seemed immune to the hysteria that had overtaken his people.

Contrary to what might be expected, he was not a Heaven's Chosen, or some other similar, ridiculous existence having been born again in a new body. He was just a Sybillan child–one who not only had been blessed with excellent intellect, but also the ability to hyperfocus to an absolutely unhealthy degree.

"The grey light's target is clearly this big brother here. No matter where he tries to run to, it catches up–and then everything dies."

Muttering to himself, he made the same observation as many others of his kind. However, his following inference was what differentiated him from them.

"If I can find a way for the big brother to beat the light, then we'll be safe!"

Although there might have been some who had considered this option, everyone else very quickly discarded this train of thought. After all, wasn't it plain to see how miserable the young man was in the face of the grey beam?

Of course, the upper echelons knew of the Heaven's Chosen, having a few amongst their ranks and descendants. Still, those people weren't omnipotent gods–they just had fantastic Talents. Evidently, they couldn't place their hopes on the remote, ridiculous possibility of sufficiently 'powering up' the newcomer arriving at that plaza within less than a second.

But Rhain wasn't constrained by the jaded adults' ways. To him, this appeared to be the sole conclusion, therefore he did his best to figure out any way in which this ray could be counteracted.

"Wait a moment... it's just light! That means it can be refracted!"

Observing an empty glass on his desk, he suddenly jumped to his feet, exclaiming in unbridled joy. Having the biggest grin on his face, he quickly pulled out a notebook and began sketching. A few times, he needed to study up on some information that he was missing, but he finally figured it all out.

His idea was remarkably simple: Why not just refract the light endlessly, thereby trapping it? If it can never hit the 'big brother', then it will never lead to the end of the world!

The primarily glass contraption that he had designed should easily be able to do this, at least in his opinion. Instead of sharing this conclusion with his family or people, though, he put together a sign and drew his light-catching gadget on its front.

As his parents were never really home to begin with–and he hadn't seen them in days–he picked up some of the money that they had saved up and took the last still working public transportation lines to the plaza depicted in the Doomsday Recording.

Having always had a knack for staying out of harm's way, he carefully sneaked closer to ground zero. It hadn't been a challenge to find out the exact locale, a couple of searches had made it blatantly apparent.

'... this should be the spot. Come on, big brother! I'm waiting for you!'

Comparing his current location with that one area that the young man in the recording had briefly looked at before everything went downhill, Rhain nodded confidently, with hope in his heart.

He knew that a miracle would be necessary to turn it all around–but as a child, despite his brilliance and the horrid tragedies unfolding everywhere in his sight, he still had the heart to believe in these things.

Just like that, Rhain's 'long' wait began.

-----

To him, it might have only been a little more than a day, but from Theodore's perspective, it had been weeks since he had first noticed this kid in passing. Failed attempt after failed attempt, he died over and over again.

That was when he finally spent a minute instant of his time to study the 'doodle' on this child's sign. It was a mere whim that he followed only because he had no better ideas at the moment, and he fully expected it to be a waste of his precious time.

Yet what greeted his eyes was not the rather ugly scribble that he had anticipated, but a qualitatively excellent blueprint to a device–one that he instantly understood the use of!

With a hint of astonishment flashing across his eyes, he locked gazes with the excited kid, smiling slightly and sending a grateful nod his way. He didn't stay long enough to witness his reaction, as he would be busy from here on out.

Refracting the looming light had been something that he hadn't considered yet, as it was simply too difficult to deal with–even his Eternal Ice couldn't hold up against it!

Still, the boy's design did remind him that during the brief moments of resistance, small parts of the ray had indeed been getting refracted a tiny bit by the ice crystals. The difference was too minute to really have an impact, and the Eternal Ice was also destroyed in the process–but it had worked.

Already knowing that he was very much ill-equipped to properly face the grey beam this time, he fashioned a massive version of the kid's gadget out of Eternal Ice, patiently awaiting his 'foe'. All that he wanted to do was to test the feasibility of this approach, which he thought highly of.

He didn't have to sit tight for long, as the light arrived a prophetic vision and an instant later. To his relief, refracting it worked–but his Eternal Ice got damaged in the process, forcing him to continually repair it, rapidly draining his Energy reserves. Even worse was that he couldn't keep up with the rate of annihilation.

'Fortunately, I still have another option.'

Greeting death with a smile, as soon as he got back to his save point, he immediately rushed everyone else outside after telling them the good news and erasing all memories that had to be kept perfectly confidential.

All 'alone' in his cultivation room, he contacted Faavi and swore her to secrecy, then showed her a slightly altered, adjusted version of the unknown kid's contraption. With far more experience and knowledge under his belt, it hadn't been tough to make some further improvements. This didn't mean that the original wasn't quite the impressive achievement, though.

'I'll do my best, Theo! Just leave it to me!'

As enthusiastic as ever–and even more so now that she would be providing some thoroughly vital help, Faavi combined her efforts with his. Based upon his own understanding and thoughts, her Armament Transformation Talent got activated, then fed with Eternal Ice that had been created by his Energy.

Very quickly, the initial outline took shape. Following that, all of the gaps were gradually filled in. An Eternal Ice apparatus built via their cooperation had come together.

'For now, it's not significantly different from how it had been before. But this is where Faavi's most outstanding feature comes into play.'

Normally, he could of course infuse his Eternal Ice with more Energy, making it far more resilient and powerful–but there was a limit. Once that was reached, it would escape his control, functionally becoming dead weight that could at most be used as some sort of Energy bomb.

But Faavi's Armament Transformation Talent allowed him to imbue a truly limitless amount of Energy into the 'equipment' created by her, improving and strengthening it in absolutely all regards without end!

Still, it could be argued that there was one problem. How could this gadget possibly be considered a piece of equipment? Well, at the end of the day, it was simply an issue of semantics. If the sheer fact that it had been created via Faavi's Armament Transformation was not enough, then a little christening would do the job.

'I'll call you the 'Portable Light Imprisonment Device' from now on–PLID for short.'

Wasting no time on coming up with some sort of artistic name, he began to infuse as much Energy as possible. His Energy 'income' was far higher than his output, due to all of the Energy Veins that he had incorporated into himself, therefore he wasn't in any danger of ever running out. The sole limiting factor was time.

'Are less than 24 hours going to be enough? ... they'll have to be.'

Completely focusing on his task, he was soon ready to embark to the second round's event venue again–for the 21st time. And contrary to the last 20 attempts, his confidence had returned.