Wild Chains had always been fast, but it was only now that he had changing terrain and an open sky that he could see just how fast.

The world rapidly shifted below him in a blur, and Dei was once more struck with the question of how The Mother knew all of this. He'd always known she stored an entire world in her brain, one called the Realm of Mind, but it was simply unfathomable to him. What would occur for her to know all of this with such rigidity? She knew, factually, there were cacti, plants, and animals in these particular spots at this particular time, but how?

'It's not just "A world" either, it's many, overlapping upon each other. If Ty'Vi is to be believed, one "Layer" is usually within the timeframe of about a week, and how many millennia exist within The Mother, each one its own ecosystem similar to how the Spirit Realm has many layers? I'm taking shortcuts, removing who knows how many years each time I dive into The Mother's avatar. In other universes, with a thinking version of The Mother, that wouldn't be possible, as she wouldn't let them anywhere near her avatars. To reach the core of The Mother, someone would have to travel through her entire life. Backwards. Impossible to do without being caught and killed.'

As awful or dangerous as she was, it was awe inspiring, and showed him exactly why the other Primordial Children unanimously agreed she had to be sealed away. If they didn't, what would she have? Twelve utilizeable Primordial Parasites? The power of a Primordial Slayer? An endless, infinite army of supersoldiers? Put simply, she'd have all of that. If he'd thought Phantom Plague was bad, The Mother was a hundred times worse, capable of holding billions of worlds within herself and using twelve apocalypses, minimum.

He was a speck, trying to kill a universe.

'And I'm going to succeed.'

* * *

When they finally hit the ocean, they'd traveled over several expansive oases, some with small villages or settlements around them, but no forests yet. Traveling along the coasts changed that though.

Bustling port cities greeted him first, but he was truly impressed to see the shift into a short, wild grass with thin underbrush, which then transformed into forests and swamps. No matter where he looked though, he saw signs of thriving civilizations. Well maintained roads, long caravans, even small groups of armed people hunting foreign yet normal looking animals.

It all made him wonder what'd happened to destroy everything. To remove all life from the continent, replacing it with dead sand.

He could only shake his head, 'In order to find out, I'd likely have to experience the memory, and if I did that? I'd die along with everything else.'

* * *

The closer he moved to the southern tip, the more "developed" the land became. There was never some sudden change in architecture to indicate he'd crossed the borders of a country, but they moved from villages, to towns, to cities that rivaled even earthen architecture with materials reminiscent of concrete, which he thought would be the end of the technological advancement- an incorrect assumption.

The first time he saw hoverboards and flying cars, he was flabbergasted. Not just that, but entire islands of floating metal holding fancifully embellished mansions skirted around the cities in circuits, no doubt belonging to the upper class of this civilization. The difference in technology was not just one of advancement though, but material. Dei quickly noticed that many of the flying contraptions or otherwise futuristic-looking structures all shared shards of glimmering crystal somewhere in them.

'It's the same kind of prismatic stone the Primordial slayer's throne was made of. A type of material imbued with chaos?'

Flying closer to the ground, Perumah confirmed that there was not a single person she could see were chaos born, lending credit to their theory that the mysterious man was the first. It also struck Perumah as odd that everyone here was defined, not a shadow of a memory, but there was no answer to that either.

'This… doesn't seem like an active war zone though.'

They'd both assumed the man was a bioweapon to be used against the other Primordials, but everything seemed peaceful here. There was no grand battle going on. More than that, they couldn't find even a whiff of the Earth Primordial, despite this clearly being an age where such a being should exist. Nobody on the continent had ever even heard of a Primordial, from what Perumah could see through their memories. Not even the upper class or politicians. Oddly enough, there was a recognizable organization- one named something that translated to "Soldiers of Gold" in Undercant for Dei.

'The Golden Order? Or a precursor to it?'

It wasn't some mysterious organization though, but a simple branch of the military dedicated specifically to driving back Lunar Spawn from the settlements. There were at least a few Soldiers of Gold in every settlement, and they even managed to spot a few- all of which held a strong resemblance to Vy'Vex and Ty'Vi's armor, with far less embellishment but more defined features. Now that he got a more complete look at the armor, he could also see they weren't simple suits, but mechanical wonders of technology that likely gave its wearer access to magic, despite not being chaos born.

When the cursory investigation yielded no answers to the mysteries, they had to call it off and move on. He simply could not risk The Mother's soul defenses coming back online.

* * *

Past the hyper-advanced civilization was, surprisingly, wildlands. It was here that he saw the first genuine monsters rather than animals, as there were Lunar Spawn making their ways through the brush or through the ground, occasionally popping out to attack the golden soldiers that hunted them.

Further took him into a vast mountain range, and he followed his compass to one particular cave filled with Lunar Spawn.

Down he went into the darkness, miles into the earth, until he eventually came out to a massive cavern crawling with basic or weak Lunar Spawn.

Plus one queen. Mouth open, taking bites out of the ground below her, feeding on the organic material in the dirt.

He'd ventured around sixty miles down into the earth now, most of his time spent finding his way through the twisting caves. He did notice, however, that the quantity of Lunar Spawn slowly increased the closer he got to the queen.

'Now, where's the Primordial?'

His thought process was simple. The Mother was a parasite, and he was here at her birth in a time when he knew the Primordial was alive. It had to be here somewhere. Looking around through, he found himself disappointed. There was nothing.

For a moment, he considered diving even further into the earth, as it might be at the core of the planet like The Mother was, but threw it out. Not only would that take months if he could find a path down, he'd seemingly reached the end of the cavern line. They went no further.

Flying around the tunnels, he couldn't spot any path downwards. 'Perhaps it's the proximity to the queen? If The Mother is the one building caves back on avium, and she doesn't exist here, that might explain the lack of space going downwards. Now it's THIS queens job, but she's much closer to the surface'

Slouching, he finally accepted that he would be learning nothing about the Primordial, and resolved to finally end things.

Finding The Mother's egg was not difficult, as it was exactly where TyVi said it would be. Not just that, it was one of ten unique spikes on the queen, glowing with an odd earthy brown light. The other nine must've been the other nine guardians he'd seen in the previous memories.

Shrugging, he prepared a spell, when he saw something about the queen's head that gave him pause. He'd thought she was digging straight into the dirt to sift for nutrients for some reason, but he found she wasn't really moving at all… just biting into the ground. Stuck.

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Like a leech.

His eyebrows rose, and he moved closer to her head, seeing the open jaw locked onto the ground and a rhythmic pulse released every few seconds. Immediately, the realization sparked.

'The Primordial isn't just around somewhere on the continent, it IS the continent! It's carrying everything upon its back, like a Leviathan! I'm standing on it now!'

That explained why Leviathans said they were the most closely related to the Primordial as well. They might very well be the only genetically similar being of the four Primordial Children, and they functioned similarly to the Primordial.

A thought struck him. 'What if I… use Connection on it? What if I link our souls? These memories are clearly more tangible than regular memories… What could I learn from simply gazing upon the beginning of creation?'

Perumah had glimpsed at the mind of impossibility, now it was his turn. Speaking of, he asked her now how she'd missed the fact that there was a being right below their feet.

She simply sent back feelings of confusion, "What? Where? I'm not sensing anything. It's all just rock."

Raising his eyebrow, he shared his theory with her.

He felt frustration from their connection, "Perhaps it is, but I can't see it? Maybe it's too vast for me to understand?"

"Well, I guess this one's mine. You got to talk to the Primordial slayer, I get to talk to the Primordial… or at least look at it. Not sure if this one's as conscious."

"Oh, that's correct. I got a gift from the more powerful of the two. Nevermind, the Primordial is all yours to learn from," she said, jokingly sneering at him.

He rolled his eyes but made no comment, too excited at the chance before him.

Dropping to one knee, he laid a hand on the ground, breathing deeply to calm himself and let Meditation center his mind.

With a simple gesture, Connection went to latch on the material below him. For but a moment, he feared it would fail to find a soul, as Perumah had.

He shouldn't have worried. He gasped as a near-incomprehensible soul expanded in his minds eye. Normally, it barely took a moment for his view to encapsulate a soul, but he started to sweat when he realized that even two seconds later, there was no end to the deep well of life in front of him.

He didn't have the time to understand what he was looking at though when a second insight into Connection made itself known. In order to map out the other soul, it spread a light mist of his own into the other soul, barely dispersing the material his soul was made of. So negligible that he wouldn't even notice it normally. That's why it let him manipulate the mana in someone else as if it were a part of his soul, because it temporarily was.

Horror struck him when he realized the Primordial's soul was simply too much. He would dissolve into nothing before he was spread enough to see it all.

He tried pulling away, breaking the connection, but he couldn't. Soul and body intertwined in a union, he was physically spread out within the Primordial's soul. His presence was too solid within the Primordial's soul, the Connection too powerful to sever.

He felt himself begin to dissolve, but refused to die here, and his mind raced for solutions.

'I can't pull away, it feels like a pressure difference between my soul and the Primordial's soul. I need a new way to map out the entire thing, one that won't kill me. But what? Another soul, other soul stuff. Not Perumah, but something as grand as the Primordial itself. I need the soul of a God or… a God construct.'

Frantically, he looked towards the gate behind which The Dream was sealed. In the Physical world, it would've dissipated. Here? Its integrity would hold, perhaps better than it was before.

It was a mental construct made by The Mother, a being specialized into invading the Primordial. If anything could map out its grand soul without killing Dei, it would be The Dream.

Not hesitating for even a second, he released The Dream, pushing it out and down through his line of Connection to the Primordial.

The destruction of his soul ceased immediately, the task of his awareness handed over to the artificial God that was The Dream.

Yet still, he screamed in agony. Impossible knowledge entered his mind, stretching the bounds of it as he tried parsing through everything it told him.

It felt like catching a waterfall in a balloon, praying that it didn't pop. He grasped at the edges of himself, and did everything he could to weather it .

Seconds passed, then minutes, yet he continued to persist. He'd survived death, been raked by Void Beast attacks, and had his soul shattered only to come back stronger. The base strength of his soul was leagues above what some had with stats. Coupled with Pondering Sage and its multiplier of Spiritual increasing his durability almost fifty fold?

He might've been the only person in the world with even a modicum of a chance to withstand this.

His Profession bloated violently in his soul, before dissolving. For one dreadful moment, he thought he'd broken it- until he found his soul even more durable.

'I didn't break the Profession, I completed it,' he thought, shocked.

High Mind roared to life, free of the bounds imposed upon it by the System, clawing at every scrap of knowledge. For so many months it'd starved, stagnated as it was unable to get stronger. Now, he felt it lunge forward, riding the wave of The Dream to take in everything it could, expanding dangerously.

He watched, enraptured, as High Mind formed an entire new shell around itself, piece by piece. When the shell was complete, he felt it suddenly stop building in strength, until it abruptly broke through the wall that'd previously stopped it, building another shell.

'That shell is what it looks like when a spell levels up and reaches a threshold! Once the shell is complete, it evolves, but what evolution did I pick?'

Whatever it'd been, the evolution was subconscious- just like all the other evolutions he'd had before entering the System. He hoped he'd guided it somehow, but he'd just have to trust it was good.

High Mind, now over level two hundred, continued to surf on The Dream while Dei began to analyze what information he had about the Primordial's soul, finding himself shocked.

It was… an allsoul? Every soul was individual or unique in some way. Plant souls were structured for them, humans in another, monsters in another, so on and so forth. With his awareness expanding over the Primordial soul, he was discovering every possible theoretical combination of structure in the soul. Every theoretical combination of plant-type souls? He found them in this grand library, along with every variant.

It didn't have the memories or experiences of everything, but the structure was the same. It was every combination of infinity, predicted. Eventually, as his mind began to adjust and learn the patterns and how things were structured, he, too, started to predict what came next in the patterns. Each soul was a letter and he'd known the alphabet for a long time from his experiences alone. Now that it was all laid out before him though? He was starting to learn the language. He knew exactly how every single different type of soul would organize itself.

Soul, the affinity, reached into him. With a gentle touch, it caressed his mind, placed a construct within it, then receded.

Looking at it, Dei knew innately what it was.

'This is Knowledge, the second Leviathan spell.'

He wanted to stop and admire the momentous occasion, but nothing was slowing down. His awareness continued to expand into the Primordial, and both Knowledge and Connection started to gravitate towards one another

For a brief moment, he considered diving into the Primoridal's memories to see how creation started, but realized his budget of The Dream would eventually run out. He had a new piece of Right of the Leviathan, and that would have to do- mostly because he hadn't even hit any of the memories yet. He was still at the outer shell, and considering the infinite nature of the pattern of souls and how they were arranged, he wasn't sure he would ever reach the memories.

Pulling his soul out with a titanic effort, he allowed The Dream to fill in the holes he created, finally winning the tug of war, slowly relieving the pressure on himself. When he was at last free, he immediately disconnected- feeling The Dream run out of slack moments later.

The beauty of having his body and soul entwined was that despite not physically existing right now, he was still sweating bullets at how close he'd come to killing himself.

* * *

Standing over The Mother's egg, he watched the gentle ebb of light, Perumah at his side, Wild Chains beneath him.

Killing The Mother was as simple as smashing the egg… but that wasn't what he wanted to do. It would be a waste. He had in front of him one of the most powerful beings to ever exist, and only one of his spells could steal the Potential from souls.

Wild Chains vibrated in anticipation, waiting for his go ahead. The moment it bit down on The Mother, she would destabilize, and it would do everything it could to consume and contain her, as it had done the Duplication echo.

'This trip to Earth has been way too eventful…' he thought while gazing upon the slowly growing ball of faith in his hands. It'd started as a marble, but was up to a baseball despite only passively consuming the faith emitted from the soul wounds on The Mother. Almost nothing compared to what would spew out when she actually died.

He wanted Wild Chains to focus on consuming The Mother's soul, so it was now up to him to hold it in the spell's stead.

'I'm really hoping the weight of the faith won't translate over directly from the weight of The Mother, otherwise I'm getting crushed.'

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