Chapter 447: Closing the Distance

"Looking for Hestia is hardly an escape," Adrian replied with an easy smile. "If anything, I am probably walking toward another lecture."

Lysandra's expression softened with faint amusement. "Sect Leader Hestia is inside the Central Origin Construct. She has been training there since the last inspection meeting ended."

Adrian inclined his head and began to turn away, but Selena's voice followed him before he could leave the platform. "You should know that Sect Leader Hestia usually dislikes anyone interrupting her training sessions. That warning includes you as well."

"I think I can survive the consequences," Adrian said. He stepped from the elevated platform, let the golden-white transportation current recognize his Founder authorization, and vanished into the stream of light connecting the industrial world to the heart of the headquarters.

The Central Origin Construct grew across Adrian's vision as the transport current approached its white-grey frame. Immense circular layers rotated through folded space around a stable core, receiving golden-white currents from all seventeen worlds. The primary Origin Ink Forges occupied only one protected region inside it. The construct also governed headquarters transport, Founder authorization, the deepest storages of the Origin Net, and the central formations that distributed energy and defense across the surrounding planets. It was the place from which the entire headquarters functioned as one.

The transport current carried Adrian through an opening that formed across the construct's surface and released him into a broad internal passage. Disciples walked around distant intersections, but Founder authorization quietly opened a private route before him and redirected ordinary traffic away from his path.

Adrian drew the compact silver node from his storage ring. The moment his mana entered it, the node connected to the Origin Net and unfolded a translucent model of the Central Origin Construct above his palm. Personnel markers appeared across the construct, and Hestia's crimson-green signature glowed within one of the restricted training sectors.

He selected the marker, and the route shortened as a nearby spatial passage folded open. A few transitions later, Adrian arrived before a pair of enormous sealed doors covered in layered containment and restoration runes built to contain explosive training. The formation recognized him at once. The doors separated without a sound, revealing a chamber whose inner space had been expanded until thousands of warriors could have trained within it together.

Hestia floated alone near the center while two lengthy crimson cloths moved around her, each one ending in a narrow, gleaming blade. They appeared almost weightless as they followed her arms, coiling around her body in broad spirals before reversing with enough force to split the air. Faint verdant-green radiance traced their crimson surfaces whenever Crimson Genesis flowed through them, transforming the graceful ribbons into bladed arcs that crossed from opposite directions, curved around unseen defenses, and struck again from angles no ordinary weapon could reach.

Adrian stopped just beyond the entrance, and for several breaths he forgot why he had come. Hestia turned within the storm of crimson cloth, her movements carrying the same effortless confidence with which she confronted hostile sects, governed Andromeda, and corrected Adrian whenever his instincts carried him toward another unnecessarily dangerous decision.

He knew the strength concealed beneath every graceful motion and understood the discipline required to maintain that degree of control. More importantly, he knew the woman herself, someone who had repeatedly chosen to remain beside him despite understanding exactly how dangerous his path could eventually become.

Her beauty caught Adrian's attention immediately, but it was the complete familiarity of her presence that kept him standing motionless.

One of the crimson cloths abruptly left the pattern around her, and the blade at its end crossed the entire chamber before it stopped beside Adrian's cheek with its edge only a finger's width from his skin. Hestia turned toward him, and the severity in her eyes was weakened by the curve of her lips.

"You interrupt my training," she said, "and then stand there staring at me... Should I be concerned about what is going through your mind?"

Adrian glanced at the blade beside his face before returning his attention to her. "Only that Selena should have warned me I would forget why I came."

The blade remained motionless for a moment. Hestia then drew it back, the cloth curling through the chamber until it once again floated beside her. "Since you have already disturbed me, come here. It has been a long time since we last trained together."

Adrian floated away from the entrance and raised both hands slightly. "Let us keep it simple. The moment I touch you, you lose."

Hestia's smile deepened as the two bladed cloths spread to either side of her. "You will have to reach me first."

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Adrian had barely crossed a hundred meters when both weapons moved. The first cloth swept across the space before him in a crimson curve, while the second descended from above and bent midway through its strike. He blinked to the right, but Hestia altered the first weapon's path before he fully emerged. Its blade passed across his chest, missing his body while opening a thin cut through the outer layer of his white-grey robe.

He blinked again as both cloths crossed behind him. Hestia did not simply chase his current location. One weapon occupied the most favorable path toward her while the other attacked the spatial point at which he was most likely to reappear. Adrian changed his destination midway through the transition, emerged higher in the chamber, and twisted aside as a crimson blade curved upward. The edge grazed his sleeve before he disappeared once more.

Adrian crossed thousands of meters through successive blinks, but Hestia did not remain at the center and direct the weapons from a distance. She moved with him, repeatedly shifting hundreds of meters as her arms and body changed the cloths' direction, stealing the approaches he tried to claim before one weapon drove him toward the other.

Adrian's perception followed every movement clearly, and his spatial abilities kept the blades from touching his body, yet recognizing an attack had never been the same as moving fast enough to evade it physically. Another edge skimmed the lower part of his robe as Hestia crossed his path and forced him back from the space he had gained.

"You have become very good at damaging my clothes," Adrian said as he appeared near the chamber's upper boundary.

"Your clothes are considerably easier to catch than you are," Hestia replied. "For now."

Adrian smiled and stopped preparing his next spatial transition. Time essence spread from the completed chamber within his Source Seed, but instead of forming the isolated perceptual layer of Temporal Veil, it carried his thoughts, mana, body, life force, and consciousness into one continuous accelerated history.

Temporal Continuum activated at fivefold acceleration.

Neither the chamber nor Hestia slowed. Adrian began to live five moments for every one that passed around him, then lowered his hands and floated directly toward her.

Hestia moved with both cloths as she attacked, crossing to Adrian's right while one blade cut toward his neck and the second curved behind him to remove the path of retreat. Adrian inclined his head and let the first pass beside his jaw, shifted one shoulder before the returning cloth could reach him, then turned his waist and passed through the narrow interval between two converging crimson arcs. He never blinked or broke the calm line of his approach. Combat drew slightly more willforce than steady travel, but the difference remained negligible against the ocean within his consciousness during an exchange this brief.

Hestia changed direction and attacked again, but disbelief had already replaced the amusement in her eyes. Few people understood Adrian's physical limitations as clearly as she did. During the Andromeda Supremacy War, Adrian's raw bodily speed had remained below that of several ancient sect leaders. His overwhelming versatility had allowed him to compensate through Space, Gravity, prediction, and other Arcane Concepts, often letting him match or exceed opponents whose bodies were naturally faster than his own, but the difference had still existed beneath those techniques.

Hazel had exposed that weakness more brutally than anyone else.

When she arrived and suppressed nearly every Arcane Concept Adrian had been relying upon, his body alone could not keep pace with her. He had been able to perceive portions of her attacks, yet his flesh simply could not escape quickly enough. Her fists broke through his defenses and cracked his ribs before Hestia intervened.

At that time, Hestia arrived there and saved him from Hazel. She had been capable of confronting Hazel's speed, but her advantage had never come merely from ascending into the Astral Stage. Astral ascension represented a progression of consciousness, and it did not suddenly grant a cultivator a vastly superior physical body.

Hestia's speed had been earned long before her ascension.

For more than a million years, she had continuously refined her body through brutal physical training, strengthening medicines, and alchemical resources that she could produce for herself.

Even among the other sect leaders who fought during the Supremacy War, her physical speed had never been inferior. In several cases, it surpassed theirs.

Until now, that difference had always remained one of the clearest reminders of Adrian's young age. His concepts could be terrifying. His comprehension frequently ignored every reasonable expectation. Yet his body had simply not undergone the millions of years of refinement that ancient cultivators like Hestia had accumulated.

But now even that limitation was disappearing. Adrian was moving several times faster than she could.

Hestia propelled herself backward and released the most intricate sequence of the spar. Her hands and body changed direction with every strike, sending the bladed cloths into twisting crimson-green paths that crossed, recoiled, and attacked again before their earlier arcs had faded. Adrian slipped past the first with a turn of his shoulders, let the second sweep behind his back, and stepped through the opening before Hestia could close it. She shifted across the chamber to rebuild the angle, but Adrian adjusted with her without blinking, and the remaining distance narrowed with every exchange.

Hestia withdrew one weapon and sent the other into a final spiral around Adrian's approach. He passed through its last curve and entered the open space within her defenses before she asked, "How did you become this fast in such a short time?"

Adrian's gaze never left hers as he crossed the final step. "Probably the same way you become more beautiful every time I see you."

Hestia's fingers caught in surprise at the unexpected reply. Adrian caught her around the waist and released Temporal Continuum as he drew her into his arms. The bladed cloths stopped throughout the chamber, their crimson lengths settling around them like suspended ribbons.

Hestia placed one hand against his chest and looked up at him, caught somewhere between reproach and laughter. Adrian's smile remained unapologetic, and although her bladed cloths had already withdrawn to her sides, and despite the ease with which she could have stepped away, Hestia made no attempt to leave his arms.