Chapter 732: Native Inheritor

His body trembled.

"What is happening to him?" Althea asked.

Kali didn’t answer. Her gaze swept across the mural before returning to Elion, her expression growing increasingly dark.

For Elion, the pain had become so overwhelming that he found himself almost welcoming the darkness gathering at the edges of his consciousness, only for another surge of information to wrench him back from those depths.

Kali could see that something was terribly wrong, but she couldn’t see what.

Althea reached toward his head, light gathering around her fingers, but before she could begin examining him, Kali abruptly stumbled.

Her hand slipped from Elion’s shoulder.

A sharp breath escaped her as the same agony struck, flooding through her mind with such sudden violence that even she staggered.

"What..."

She caught her balance, only to drop onto one knee beside him, one hand clamped against her temple.

Her strength and tolerance allowed her to endure it far better than Elion, but the pain still drew a strained hiss through her teeth.

Althea’s expression darkened as she concluded that whatever had struck Elion had now reached Kali as well.

The paladin rose swiftly, her sabers sliding from their sheaths with a sharp metallic shing.

She stepped between her companions and the open chamber, her gaze sweeping across the columns, the broken galleries, and every shadow beyond them, looking for any sign of the invisible enemy.

"Show yourself, you vile fiend!" she shouted, her voice seething with anger. "How dare you use such dishonorable means to ambush us!"

"Put those away."

Kali’s strained voice reached Althea from behind. The paladin glanced over her shoulder, finding the woman still kneeling with a hand pressed against her temple.

"No one is attacking us."

"Then what is happening to you?"

"Information," Kali replied through gritted teeth. "Far too much of it."

Her gaze moved toward Elion, who remained hunched over beside the mural. His screaming had stopped, but his body still trembled, and the hand pressed against the floor was clenched so tightly that his fingers had begun digging into the stone.

Althea hesitated before lowering her sabers.

"What information?"

"The formation," Kali said. "The one holding this world together."

Elion barely registered their conversation. The knowledge continued pouring into him, vast and incomprehensible, each fragment seeming to contain another hundred things he lacked the ability to understand.

He caught glimpses of intersecting circles and immense structures of power, but the moment he tried to follow their workings, the terrible pain within his mind became unbearable.

’System... do something!’

[Separating the incoming information into fragments]

The flood did not disappear, but it ceased crashing through his consciousness all at once.

The system divided it, drawing the incomprehensible mass away from the small portion of his mind still capable of thinking.

Elion dragged in a breath.

His headache remained terrible, but eventually, he could distinguish his own thoughts from the knowledge forcing its way into him.

’What the hell is all this?’

[Knowledge pertaining to the world’s formation. The host lacks the capacity to perceive its complete structure, much less comprehend its functions]

’I noticed.’

[The host would need to reach at least the Sage stage before attempting to understand knowledge of this level. That, or become a renowned formation master]

Elion closed his eyes, swallowing another groan.

Even a Sage was merely the starting point for understanding something that the dying figure had created while gravely weakened.

Remembering the battle he had witnessed, he found the difference in their strength considerably more difficult to comprehend.

’Then leave the complicated parts alone. Can you at least tell me something useful?’

[Individual fragments can be interpreted. A complete understanding is not currently possible]

’Fine. Only the most important parts then... Maybe something about the formation that is not obvious from what I have already seen in the vision?’

The system fell silent briefly. Beside him, Kali slowly lowered her hand, her expression drawn as she studied the mural.

"HELLOooooo... Elion?" Althea crouched before him. "Can you hear me?"

He nodded faintly, though his focus remained fixed inward.

[The most useful piece of information I found is that the natives’ souls are tethered to the formation]

The explanation arrived alongside a fragment of understanding. Elion saw those fine strands from the vision again, passing into the returning inhabitants while they celebrated upon the green hills.

What he had witnessed was only the surface of something that extended throughout their very existence.

The formation was bound to their very souls and all of their future descendants. Wherever they traveled within this world, that connection remained.

[Because of a structural flaw in the formation itself, the formation undergoes a period of weakening once every ten thousand years. During this interval, fluctuations in the spatial laws containing the world’s destruction allow a passage to form between this world and yours]

’The entrance...’

Elion’s brows drew together. So that was why outsiders could enter at certain intervals, and why the opening never remained available indefinitely.

[However, the passage does not release the native inhabitants from their tethers. The surrounding spatial turbulence presents an additional obstacle, but overcoming it would not resolve the underlying restriction]

’Meaning they could get through and still be bound?’

[Correct. The formation contains a safeguard against such an occurrence. Should a tethered native escape beyond the permitted boundary, their life force will be extinguished.]

So even if they survived the turbulent spatial laws and found a passage wide enough to lead their people through, the formation would simply kill them.

"Elion, what did you see?"

Althea asked, but he barely acknowledged it. His thoughts had already wandered to Albert and the empty settlements the princess had described.

The man wanted to leave.

Whatever he had said about his responsibilities and the life his people had built here, it was becoming increasingly clear that he had concealed his true intentions.

Perhaps the attacks upon the entrants were part of that effort, though Elion still had no idea what he hoped to achieve through them.

But now he understood something Albert did not. His plan wasn’t going to work.

This formation was far too grand for the problem to be solved by finding a weak point in the boundary.

If Albert knew nothing about the soul tether, then he could very well lead his entire settlement through a passage only to watch them die upon reaching the other side.

Elion slowly straightened, sitting back upon his heels. He raised a hand toward his mouth and caught the edge of a nail between his teeth, frowning as he considered it.

’This has absolutely nothing to do with me.’

Albert had lied to them. Either he or other natives had killed entrants, and there was no reason to assume that those attacks would stop.

Yet he had allowed Elion’s cohort to leave.

He had welcomed them, answered their questions, and given them information, even if much of it had proved far less useful than they had hoped.

Perhaps he had only done so because Kali was with them, and attacking the Arachnid Saint’s bonded partner would have started a battle he wouldn’t have wanted to fight.

Despite that, the fact remained that he hadn’t harmed them, or even shown any malice toward them.

"Elion." Althea’s voice sounded very frustrated and impatient, but he held up a hand distractedly.

"Give me a moment."

She looked as though she wanted to argue. Kali had also settled into a thoughtful silence, sorting through whatever portion of the knowledge had reached her.

Elion looked toward the mural.

He could sympathize with the natives’ desire to survive. Their ancestors’ choices had condemned them to a dying world, and whatever else Albert had done, wanting to get his people out of it was hardly something Elion could blame him for.

Perhaps telling him the truth would be a good bit of karma.

That didn’t mean fighting him, or forgiving the attacks. He could simply explain what he had discovered and leave Albert to decide what to do with it.

’Assuming we can even find him.’

As for the nine trials, it was certainly tempting, but there was little Elion could do about those. The vision had made the condition clear enough. A worthy successor had to arise from among the world’s own inhabitants.

He was an outsider.

Even if he somehow managed to overcome all nine trials, there was no reason to believe the formation would recognize him as a suitable inheritor.

’Wait.’

His hand slowly lowered from his mouth as he turned toward Kali. The woman noticed his stare, one brow rising as their eyes met.

"What?"

Kali had been born here. She had lived within this world for centuries, bound to it just like the people Albert was trying to save.

Technically, she was a native, wasn’t she?