Seconds later, there's another loud crash and explosion as the serpent's downward momentum hits another island's base.
Then, another, and another.
Before my eyes, a path of destruction is created through the sky.
Some of the islands begin to crack and disintegrate even before the monster hits them. The sheer overwhelming pressure of its green aura obliterates everything in sight.
I'm held high in the sky in a blue orb of light, like a tiny lightning bug shimmering between the city-sized cyan-colored armored guards on the serpent's back.
It doesn't even seem real.
The serpent's flight path starts to turn upward, but it takes the destruction of over ten more islands before we begin to angle up into the sky again.
Its impossibly long body follows its head, but the downward momentum still takes out a few more entire islands while it turns completely.
As the thousands of black trees fall into the endless sky below, I see them all begin to change in color.
The moment they're hit, none of them break or even sway under the pressure. They're all as rigid as stone.
However, once they're in freefall, each island appears to have a small black glossy orb at their centers connected to the chains that connect to the sea below.
As their mass is disrupted, and these small cores fall with the broken chains, many of the black trees, whose roots were seemingly siphoning life from these cores, start to have altered appearances when they're separated from the source.
The trees turn grey, then white. When they collide in the air, they break apart like fragile glass and are blown away in the wind just like the fragments of rock from the islands.
The only thing that stays in a perfectly solid state as it falls away and out of my perception is one black glossy orb per island.
My best guess, looking at the sight before me, is that each forest was really just a single organism growing from one central core. However, at these high speeds and in this chaotic atmosphere, I can't exactly discern what's going on.
Ember's words about how taking one of these trees out of the construct would be a profitable idea come to mind.
I attempt to activate my spatial magic at long range to let one fall into my storage, but I can't seem to activate any magic outside of the blue dome I'm trapped in.
They're most likely all falling into the sea below, so if I have the chance, I can go swimming to find them eventually... However, the more I think about the likelihood of this happening, the reality of this situation really sinks in.
The serpent's head points to the sky and we move upward at impossible speeds, leaving the obliterated islands behind and out of my vision in seconds.
All there is is endless sky around me.
I see the top of the snake's head and two guards holding me captive as I'm rocketed toward the top of the construct.
It's possible to guess how fast I'm moving at first, as the fragments of the island are still in my vision, but once we make it high enough into the sky where they're gone, all I can see when I look behind me is the tail and body of the serpent wriggling in the air to push us upward.
Again, it feels as if I'm stationary inside this orb, but I'm certain we're still moving upward.
As much as I try to spread my perception aura outward, nothing leaves this 30m spherical cage.
I downgrade into my base human form and let out a sigh, lying back in mid-air, and let the higher lifeforms take me for a ride.
Their power is too immense to even attempt anything.
Merely being within ten kilometers of the green serpent brought me close to death even while using every skill and hidden ability I had available to me.
Considering the common trend, these blue guards must be the core above green, far stronger than this serpent.
If I have no chance of even breathing the same air as a green core, attempting to escape or challenge two cyan knights whose transparent energy bodies are larger than the floating islands will be impossible.
If they wanted me dead, it would have happened before I even knew they were trying.
Wherever these beings are taking me, it's exactly what Ember most likely had in mind for letting out an attack like this, so I'll see where it leads.
I let out a sigh, placing my feet up on a small manifested bit of yellow divine energy while I put my hands behind my head to relax while floating higher and higher into the sky.
The fatigue from farming green divine energy has built up to a staggering amount over the last few days.
I'm able to go upward of a month without sleep, but the intensity of the activities I've put myself through and the calm of this ride upward into the sky make my eyes close.
I try to keep myself from sleeping for the first hour of the ride up, but nothing at all changes in the atmosphere.
The only thing around me is open sky and a thick aura of green divine energy tendrils from the snake that are thwarted by the cyan guard's contraption.
I feel no change in speed, air pressure, or even intensity of the green or light blue aura around me.
Eventually, my eyes shut and I fall asleep while being carried high into the unknown.
I sleep for a few hours, fully rejuvenating my body and mind, however, when I wake up, I'm met with the exact same endless sky above and below me.
The density of the green tendrils in the air has increased slightly, but not enough to make any difference other than a slight visual green tint in the air outside of my orb.
I continue to sit back and watch as the day goes by.
My mind wanders, thinking about the black orbs that fell out of the islands, but also a slight problem I'm going to have once I actually do make it out of this place.
Ember is out of commission in my item storage at the moment, meaning the hunter Emrie Carter isn't exactly going to be able to greet the association once we return.
All three of my body doubles are already active and out of range to communicate, so I can't create another to replace him.
On top of that, my limiter is completely shattered. It has been for weeks, ever since I started to absorb divine threads.
My mana control, Soul Energy, and now Yellow core are completely visible to anyone with enough perception to see it.
If that isn't enough problems for me to deal with, I still fly into the endless sky with emotionless higher life form energy beings as my captors with no explanation. Over sixteen more hours pass riding upward into the endless sky before anything changes at all.
The green aura in the air gets thicker and thicker, until it begins to mix with light cyan threads of energy.
I'm finally able to gauge that we actually are moving as the sky turns lighter and lighter blue.
My eyes widen once I begin to see the energy become so dense in the air that it gradually infects the serpent that we're riding on.
Its ethereal green body starts to receive cyan threads, creating pathways into the center of its skull.
Once the pathways become far too dense for it to handle, the serpent's head abruptly drops down and its body follows.
At this maneuver, both of the cyan knights move in unison, manifesting platforms of dense reality-bending energy beneath their feet and marching upward at the same exact rate we were moving before.
It looks as if they're carrying me up an invisible staircase in the sky.
Before I can conceptualize everything, the green serpent has already turned back and fallen into the depths of the green sky where it can survive in peace.
Meanwhile, the air within my blue sphere is unchanged.
More hours pass as all of the green divine energy fades away completely, making the atmosphere entirely comprised of cyan strands.
Their rhythmic footsteps through the air are silent, but they're eerily consistent and almost machine-like.
More hours pass, and the same phenomenon occurs, the air around us starts to change colors again.
From a light cyan to a dark blue.
The moment the dark blue threads start seeping through the cyan orb I'm trapped in, the guards stop their upward march.
Both of them glow brightly, and their spears' auras grow larger and larger, making the blue ball around me grow a much thicker barrier.
A few minutes pass as they siphon more and more of their energy into the ball, then eventually the dark blue threads stop seeping through.
One of the guards keeps me floating above its spear while the other leaves us, continuing its march upward into the dark blue abyss of even denser divine energy.
We wait, and I stare up into the nothingness waiting for the knight to return.
It takes over an hour for any movement to appear again, and what I see hurtling my way isn't what I expected to see.
The hand of a dark blue giant, with fingers larger than the guard that accompanies me, stretches out from the darkness above.
Its dark blue tendrils of energy threaten to tear open holes in this construct as it reaches downward, and it finally gets close enough for me to see the rest of its hand, and part of its forearm, but its head is too far up in the sky for me to see. Not even its elbow or shoulder is visible as they're hundreds, possibly thousands of kilometers away.
The cyan knight steps back, leaving me floating in empty space as the giant's dark blue hand comes down toward me.
It appears to be moving in slow motion in the sky, but in reality, it's moving extremely quick and this is a difference in perspective. I already learned my lesson in underestimating massive falling objects when I was almost crushed by one of the islands before awakening my orange and yellow core.
Seconds pass, but it feels like an eternity.
A massive orb of dark blue energy starts to form around the giant's hand, creating a sphere hundreds of kilometers thick.
Once it moves downward, the hand moves beneath me, and the massive blue sphere fully forms once I'm inside to create another airtight seal.
Before my eyes, the dark blue energy in the dome eats away at all of the cyan aura inside it.
The blue threads even eat away at the cyan ball I'm still floating in.
It dissolves in seconds, dissipating into the air, and the dark blue threads all move back toward the outer barrier of the sphere completely avoiding me.
By the time the sphere inside the giant's palm moves upward, the inside is completely cleared out, it's as clear and divine energy-free as the real world outside in here.
Again, as I'm thrust upward by the giant's hand, I don't feel like I'm moving at all. The only way I can tell is the fact that the cyan knight below me disappears like a tiny light that flashes out, and I'm plunged into the darkness of the thick blue aura above.
I know I'm moving far faster than the serpent's ride and the two cyan guards by a lot now, however, I can't see past the forearm of this giant, so it's nearly impossible to tell how exactly I'm even moving.
To me, it just looks like this massive arm is raising me into the sky and its main body isn't even moving.
In less than a minute, the atmosphere outside of the sphere on the giant's hand drastically changes.
It gets darker and darker, and I can tell the air pressure and heat outside are at limits unfathomable for my mortal mind and body to comprehend.
Whatever this creature is, and wherever I'm going, is not somewhere many, or possibly any people have gone before.
Just as these thoughts come to mind, there's another abrupt change.
The dark blue aura of the atmosphere completely ceases.
It's visible below me now, and it looks like I've just been thrust through a dark cloud line.
The giant's hand lifts me upward, and at the same time, I watch the top of the dark blue dome fade away.
There aren't any blue threads up here at all.
The sky is completely void of divine energy, all I see is a single speck of purple in the center of my vision as I stare above.
The purple dot grows and grows the more the hand rises from the dark blue sea of threads below, and the dome around me completely dissipates.
My eyes open wide once my perception skills can finally stretch outward and see where I really am.
The purple light before me connects to the outer edge of this construct, it's what I saw a glimpse of when I first awakened my sight with the red cores.
I whisper to myself while I'm thrust further and further upward by the giant's hand.
"This is it. They've brought me to the top... but why?"
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Author's Note:
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