Twelve years passed in the blink of an eye.
Viltz got out of bed drowsily.
To the side, a beautiful young woman with jet black hair slept peacefully.
"Yennefer...it's a pity that our paths have to part here."
Viltz sighed and got out of bed.
Completely naked, he opened the window and looked out at the clear sky.
His body began to twist and shrink and brown feathers began to grow all over his body.
A bald eagle flew out of the window and flew high into the sky.
This was the polymorph spell, a spell he used by combining the animal transformation magic of some wizards with his in-depth study of the dopplers' ability.
The eagle flew high before a portal opened in front of her and he jumped inside, reaching her room.
Viltz deactivated the polymorph spell and his body returned to normal.
Putting on a simple white robe, Viltz reopened another portal to another place.
A year ago, research was completed for the machine that would allow him to travel to other universes.
In the space inside his magic gourd, three items floated together.
The first was a two-meter high magical antenna created using the Weping Angel turned into stone and the unicorn's horn as raw material.
This antenna would be responsible for bringing him back once he had entered other universes.
Considering that he has no control over the universes in which he will appear and could not simply open a portal back to this space and time, going without this preparation would be extremely stupid.
This antenna was what slowed the research group down the most.
Even with Viltz and his two clones plus all the other staff working day and night, it took them a whole decade to create this tower.
The second object was a strange looking gun.
It was the same design as Rick Sanchez's portal gun.
This was the device that would be responsible for opening portals to other universes.
The final item was a case with six capsules inside.
Each of these capsules contained a special liquid created from unicorn marrow blood and fortified with other supplements such as Brokilon water.
Due to the shortage of marrow blood, only six capsules were created, five for travel and one for return.
Although they managed to create the means to travel to other universes two years ago, Viltz still did not rush and preferred to gain enough strength first.
During this time, she managed to enslave 40% of the members of the sorcerer's brotherhood and obtained all their information about the creation of the mana core.
Also, it seemed that Eithné developed one of his own naturally after drinking Brokilon's water after such a long time.
Having gotten rid of the main project, Viltz now had a gigantic research team completely at his disposal and during these two years he made them work non-stop.
Viltz appeared in a laboratory with three human-sized capsules at its center.
His two clones stood in front of him.
After they looked at each other, the other two fell to the ground, completely dead.
Their souls returned to Viltz's body and merged back into him, restoring his soul to 100%.
The staff members came over and picked up the two bodies, carrying them away.
Viltz looked at the three capsules in front of him and took a deep breath.
With firm steps, he removed the robe covering his body, entered the center capsule and the door closed as soon as he sat down on the seat.
A young blond elf and a beautiful black-haired young woman entered the other two capsules.
They injected anesthesia into his body and Viltz fell completely asleep.
At the same time, different needles pierced different points of his body, injecting some strange liquids.
A few hours later, his whole body had become extremely pale and he looked sick.
This was because he had been injected with a potion that temporarily disabled his immune system.
After five hours, he was injected again with another serum and this time, his body began to undergo major changes.
His pale skin began to regain its natural color and his muscles began to expand and retract steadily.
His height also began to grow, reaching a height of two meters.
At the same time that his body was being modified, a wizard with a staff on the outside constantly channeled his energy into the staff, which sent three beams of energy into the three capsules.
The energy beams penetrated the bodies of the three and began to fix each of the defects left by the transformation into witchers.
A few hours later, the cabins opened and a thick smoke came out from inside.
Viltz woke up in a daze and felt his body.
His senses were crazy at this point, which made him feel dizzy.
Climbing out of the cabin, he staggered and sat on the floor meditating to relieve this feeling of dizziness.
Magna and Lena, who woke up behind him, also did the same.
Although Lena was the only one who was 22 years old and her appearance matched her age, both Viltz and Magna did not look older than 20 either.
This was because all three drank the anti-aging potion at age 20.
This was the best age to preserve a strong physical body, unlike what those old men in the brotherhood who were more concerned with looking like respected scholars thought.
An hour later, all three opened their eyes.
None of the three showed any major changes in their features besides the increase in height and refinement of the shape of their physiques.
The only thing that could give them away were their vertical pupils.
Viltz's eyes already had vertical pupils due to belonging to a witcher to begin with, so they didn't undergo any changes.
Lena's emerald green eyes didn't change either and only the pupil became vertical.
Same with Magna, her blue eyes remained the same and only had vertical pupils.
"Well, let's move on to the next modification."
The three of them went back into their respective pods.
After multiple investigations, gathering data from Eithné's mana core and stealing research from the brotherhood, Viltz and his group finally succeeded in creating a stable mana core.
They also discovered that all humans, elves and other races capable of using magic in this world had a special vein system connected to their hearts.
Viltz called it a mana vein system.
What differentiated a sorcerer from a mortal was having these mana veins open for the flow of mana, or in this case chaos energy, to circulate within their bodies.
Because of how polluted the mana of this world was, they unfortunately did not manage to create a cultivation method to train this core but at least they managed to come up with a method to condense it.
Viltz also discovered that his mana veins were thicker, stronger and purer than that of other common sorcerers.
He speculated that this was the source of his talent as a sorcerer.
Viltz grabbed a mask connected to a tube and placed it in his mouth while biting down on the tube protruding from the mask.
A new syringe of anesthetic entered Viltz's vein and rendered him unconscious.
A greenish liquid fell out of the tube and down his throat.
This was a special potion derived from Brokilon water.
The potion began to take effect and strange runes that all three had drawn on their chests began to light up.
The energy from the potion was sucked into Viltz's heart and began to form a green crystalline sphere.
The chaos energy that coursed through his body was also drawn into his heart, traveling from his mana veins into the green sphere.
The sphere began to suck in the incoming chaos energy as it began to change shape, forming small appendages that began to merge with the mana veins running through the heart.
Viltz's body began to combust but due to unconsciousness and being currently bound, his body was only able to twitch slightly from time to time.
His heart started pumping like crazy as the mana core was forming inside him.
With a poof, the green energy bubble exploded, revealing a pea-sized gray core inside.
Despite its size, it stored a large amount of energy.
Viltz woke up again and this time, instead of feeling dizzy, he felt a lack of strength.
This was because his mana veins had no energy and were completely dry.
His new mana core was also completely dry.
Taking out a green potion, he drank it and regained some energy.
Putting his white robe back on, Viltz sat down in a chair to wait for the other two to wake up.
He planned to take them with him on this new journey to other worlds and for this purpose, he had been training them all this time.
Once Lena reached the age of ten, she had to face the same imfernal training that Viltz put Magna through.
As for Magna, during this time she had become Viltz's personal punching bag.
But as a result, he had become extremely powerful in both melee and magical abilities.
Lena joined his training during these last few years but could not stand the constant torture Viltz gave her during every workout and complained all the time but still persisted and kept training, which made him secretly proud.
When the two woke up, the three of them went back home and each did what they wanted for the remainder of the day as this would be their last day in this world.
The next day, Viltz appeared on the same mountain where he found the Holy Grail and placed the interdimensional antenna in the cave before sealing the entrance with an earth spell.
Then he went back to his personal laboratory and collected some items, putting them in the magic gourd.
Among them were some potions, weapons, ten amphorae with djinns just in case.
Then he returned to the secret laboratory and looked at the thirty cryogenic capsules with sleeping sorcerers inside.
These were capsules developed by the engineering team over the past two years and were a mixture of magic and technology.
This was the method he came up with to put living creatures inside the magic pumpkin.
Stuffing the thirty capsules into the gourd, he placed them together in an isolated place in the inner dimension before stuffing back inside another fifty empty capsules of different sizes that would serve him to store specimens from the other worlds.
"Idarran, I'm leaving you in charge for the time I'm away."
"Leave everything in my hands, sir."
Idarran knelt down and Viltz turned to leave.
According to the antenna configuration, he had a maximum of 100 years outside to explore the five worlds he could before returning, otherwise the signal would be lost and could be lost in spacetime.
As long as he did not exceed 100 years, he could return to this world within a one-year time window.
In other words, he would return to this world in less than one year for these people even if pra he spent 100 years.
"Brother! Can I take him with me?"
Lena appeared dressed in a beautiful black dress with a six-foot-tall wolf following her through the space portal.
"Sigh...whatever, just put him in a capsule and get yourself in too."
"Hehe. Thanks bro!"
Lena gave him a hug as she laughed playfully.
She was young and afraid of getting bored on the other worlds since she heard from Viltz that they would be spending almost a hundred years outside.
She could not get away from her giant furball named Sasrir.
Sasrir entered a large cryogenic capsule and closed her eyes.
White smoke flooded the capsule and sasrir was completely frozen.
Lena did the same.
Viltz put them in his magic gourd and waited for Magna for a few minutes before she came.
"I apologize master. My spear broke."
"Don't worry about such trivial things, I can surely get you a better one.
Quickly get into the capsule."
"Yes!"
Before entering the capsule, Magna seemed to remember something.
"By the way master! Didn't you say the other day that one of our goals in exploring these worlds is to recruit people for our future clan?"
"Yes, why do you ask all of a sudden?"
Viltz looked at his disciple with a confused look.
"But master, you still haven't told me what our clan will be called. The other day you only said you would think about it.
Don't tell me you haven't come up with any good names yet."
"This brat."
Viltz gritted his teeth, his sense of naming was lousy and this disciple of his liked to use this to tease him from time to time.
"Hmph! You brat! You dare to belittle your master? How could I, your cool and sexy master not think of a good name?"
Viltz smiled broadly as he uttered the name of the clan that in the future would make heaven and hell tremble just hearing it.
"We will be the clan that will expand into the omniverse.
We will travel the cosmos free and unfettered!
We shall be...the Astaros clan! The clan of the stars!"
Viltz smiled broadly as he pointed a finger at the sky, though there was only a wall there.
"And I...Vilgef...no! That's not me! I never was and never will be! I have always been myself, now, before and in the future.
I will use the name that gave me so many painful memories as a token of my own overcoming and moving forward to a better future.
I am...Noah Eclipsis Regis Astaros!"
With that statement he made in his mind, Viltz, or rather, Noah, seemed to feel as if his whole body relaxed all at once and had lifted a great burden upon his mind.
His mind was now clearer than ever.
Having established and proudly proclaimed his own identity, he felt liberated from many things.
Turning to look at Magna, he found that she had already fallen asleep inside the capsule.
Returning to Stygga's palace, he looked at the scenery outside one last time before pulling out his portal gun and a capsule with red liquid inside.
Placing the capsule on top of the gun, he aimed in front of him and pulled the trigger.
The liquid in the capsule was quickly consumed before the capsule fired a red energy beam that hit the void a couple of meters away.
A circular portal opened in front of him and expectantly, he stepped inside.
----
Next world: Martial Peak.