182 Wanna See How Big My _____ Is? (1/2)
”That's not possible. It shouldn't be possible...” murmured Haydn as he strained his Anima-infused eyes to their absolute limits. He wanted to capture every single second of it, for he had no other choice but to do so.
What had occurred could not have been the work of Men. To Haydn, the only logical explanation to him was that he had witnessed an act of God.
A genuine miracle — a feat that no person cut from mortal cloth could have accomplished, even with the almighty power that came with possessing an Alma.
”How... long have you known?” asked Haydn via a telepathic message. The contents of their conversation could never be spoken aloud, for fear of the immense ramifications it would cause.
Anima had infinite potential. It was limitless. This was a hard fact. Under the right conditions, it could become anything and enable one to do anything. It was, in essence, the physical manifestation of the word ”potential”.
”Since before either of them even appeared in Mulia. More than five millenniums ago, if you want a rough approximation of the number,” responded Velvund, without a single stutter.
But this, of course, did not mean that the people who harnessed it had the same potential within them. Not in the slightest. They were finite beings. Mortal creatures. Born with a limited set of possibilities on a path that would eventually lead back to whence they originally came from.
Death.
A return to nothingness.
The cessation of their ephemeral lives.
”How can that be?! Foreknowledge? But that also shouldn't be possible! I've heard about it... But not even the Ancient Mulians themselves were capable of extrapolating the future, at least not without the assistance of artificial intelligences of inconceivable magnitude and complexity,” retorted Haydn in disbelief.
The world-sibyls, the enormous moons that once served as oracles for the Ancient Mulians, had all but disappeared by the ending of the Great War. It was unknown to the remaining survivors where they had gone.
Too much had been lost and forgotten during the final confrontation against the Infestation.
”It is exactly as you say, so I'll leave it to you to form your own conclusions. And to keep the record clean, I'll promise you this — Everything I have told thus far contains no falsehoods. Consider this piece of truth a small token of my trust in you, Crown Prince.”
”I'm honored that you think so highly of me, Lord Velvund. I'll make sure not to disappoint you in the future... for the sake of the North and the East.”
How large was the gap between a simian born in the primitive jungles of ancient Earth millions of years ago compared to a modern-day human living in Mulia?
The answer? The entire span between Heaven and the Earth.
In the same respect, one could only question how large the gap was between the Ancient Mulians, who were born as the earliest sapient species in the Primary Universe where Anima was at its purest and most abundant...
Velvund once pondered the very same question himself in his youth, to no avail. For five thousand years, the abducted races that the Ancient Mulians brought to Mulia had proliferated in an environment designed to accelerate their development.
But it had all been for naught.
They had not advanced enough, even though they had been given the best possible conditions. Compared to the Ancient Mulians, the modern-day people of Mulia were...
”Hopeless,” said Velvund.
Haydn furrowed his brow in confusion and asked, ”What is hopeless?” He didn't think that the situation they were in was completely hopeless yet, though he did have some concerns...
”Not what, Crown Prince, but rather, who is the correct question.”
And the answer is... all of us.
One only had look at what was happening ahead of them to understand that simple fact.
She had moved it on her own without any assistance to speak of — with her bare hands. Though it was a crude method, that did not deter from the unimaginable difficulty of the act.
The amount of skill and physical fortitude required to pull something close to that required an inhuman comprehension of one's body and an affinity for Anima that was not currently attainable by any Chosen.
No amount of training, experience, or manufactured genius could make for what Chosen lacked, despite the continued efforts of a particular individual.
A crystal iceberg of souls — the size of an entire metropolis — shifted itself on its y-axis until it became an upright tower rather than a floating island. Well over a trillion tons of ice and crystal had been laboriously moved by a single person into an arrangement most peculiar.
Such an act violated the common sense of Mulia and, therefore, could not be allowed to be known by the rest of the world. Events like these were the very reason that Velvund had only allowed his personal ship, the Spirit of Bountiful Charity, to remain around the fissures.
Not as support for Reed and Lu'um, obviously. There was nothing they could do on that front on that, much to his hidden frustration. Though he understood that the fissures were a problem that only they could tackle, it pained him to not be able to anything for them.
The only he could do was remove any unnecessary obstacles and potential disturbances that might impede them at a later date. Dirty work was a better word for it. Cleaning up loose threads was something that Velvund was an expert at anyway, so he didn't feel it too burdensome a task.
He'd do anything to ensure the success of his magnum opus... even silence the crown prince of an empire if the situation demanded it. Nothing was off the table for him.
Thankfully, he would not have to do anything, given the young prince's response.
...At least, not for the time being. But that was not important at the moment, not by a long shot. What was happening in Itroch took precedence, especially as of now with what was current occurring.
”Oh my Goddess, what is that...? Is... that Anima? What is she doing? Why is she—”
Deep beneath the bowels of hell, unearthly tongues of Anima furiously stirred as they were forced into unnatural angles and positions, curved in self-containing shapes. But for all that was being worked upon below, an occasional flare of super-compressed Anima escaped containment and flew out of the fissure's gaping maw towards freedom.
It was a horrifying sight to behold from the Spirit of Bountiful Charity. Judging from the size, density, and brightness of the Anima flare, even one of them had enough energy to power the entire continent for, well... an inestimable amount of time.
The number was large enough that the onboard intelligence in the Spirit of Bountiful Charity was unable to crunch the data on the spot.