Chapter 2322: Arad’s Hibernation XXXIV

As Ginger and Akasha led everyone else deeper into the temple, they left the AGENT’s statue behind them, and the titanic thing sighed as he watched them leave. He’ll probably be left alone here for a few years at least. Such a boring existence; it wasn’t fun at all.

“At least, I’ve got you by my side.” He mumbled, but no one replied.

Back in the private quarter, Neptune looked at the black hole on its pedestal, and then at the nuns praying around it. Arad had been hibernating for a while now, and his wives came to check on him every now and then, always asking the same question about if something had changed.

Nothing had changed since they put him there. The black hole always floats about a foot above the pedestal, spinning rapidly and emitting faint light from its accretion disk. Thanks to Amaterasu’s will, the black hole won’t go out of control and swallow everything, so it was relatively safe to handle.

Neptune had seen what black holes could do. Even one the size of a grape would have enough power to swallow an entire world in the blink of an eye, so one this big was nothing short of an unstoppable disaster. ⅇℓ.

She looked down at herself, and she was only wearing a translucent dress. She wasn’t alone; all of the nuns here wore the same clothes because they were being used as conduits to channel power. Amaterasu sends her will and divine magic to Eris, and Eris routes that power back through their bodies to maintain the black hole’s stability and barrier. So if they were to stop, leave, or wear clothes thick enough to hinder the flow of their magic, the black hole would quickly spiral out of control.

While everyone here couldn’t feel it, she did because she had served Amaterasu for centuries. The quality and quantity of divine magic she had been sending through Eris were steadily growing larger and larger. Neptune was almost certain that not even Eris had noticed that, since Amaterasu is so good at compressing her divine magic, but right now, maintaining the black hole used almost twice as much divine magic as before.

Arad’s evolution was clearly happening at a strange and horrifying speed. He wasn’t just growing his draconic nature, but everything. His draconic, vampiric, werewolf, pricolici, Nymph, and whatever he has hidden within his blood, all of it was rapidly expanding faster and faster.

Behind the nuns, Kali teleported in, and she walked between them with a smile. “Neptune, how is he?”

“Doing great and stable, nothing out of the ordinary, except that the divine magic Amaterasu sends has doubled.” She looked at the black hole, and so did Kali. “Doubled indeed.”

Kali could see further than Neptune, and she could easily tell that the extra divine magic wasn’t used to maintain the black hole, but was consumed directly by Arad himself. Even with all of the power he had, Arad still needed more energy.

He was hungry, starving even for power. He was evolving his draconic body into a Mature Adult Void Dragon, empowering his Pricolici side, which includes both vampirism and lycanthropy, as well as aspects of several higher powers. For example, he was already rewriting the fabric of his eldritch power as AO, extending his tendrils into the primordial concepts as well as things beyond that.

Looking into the black hole, she could see that Arad was now reforming his nervous system in a pool of blood, and that brain didn’t resemble anything else in all of existence. It was created from several million small folds, layers above each other, not just in the three physical dimensions, but in space, time, magic, and eldritch magic as well.

And those folds weren’t random but deliberate, and are now being fueled by the memories and life experiences of millions of vampires all around the world. Arad was seeing the world through their eyes, sensing their bodies, and reforming his neurons by using them as living blueprints. She could literally see it happening in real time as Arad took the entire blueprint of a vampire paladin’s nervous system, copied and compressed it into a single neuron, and integrated it into his mind.

But then was the scary part. His brain wasn’t made of grey matter anymore; it wasn’t made of flesh and regular neurons, but of fluctuations in the fabric of space and time -several ripples in the void of nothing working as a massive consciousness. The Blood was just the medium that the brain uses to interact with the physical world.

The process itself wasn’t something that Arad himself was conscious of, but it was happening naturally as his souls grew larger and stronger, requiring an even larger and better body to accommodate them.

Kali smiled. “He is growing nicely.” She tapped Neptune on the shoulder. “I’ll be sending you divine magic as well. Make sure to feed him a lot.”

Neptune blinked. “Feed him? He is consuming the divine magic?”

Kali waved her hand as she was leaving. “Take care of him. If he doesn’t come out fat, I’ll skin you alive.” And she disappeared.

Neptune wanted to call her back, but just ended up growling, throwing a glance at the nuns who started looking at her, and then sighing. “What shall we do…” She shook her head, and one of the nuns stood, approaching her.

“Just do our job, slowly drip the divine magic over him, and make sure this black hole doesn’t swallow us all. I’m pretty sure Lady Kali was joking.” Hearing her, Neptune nodded. “Yeah… All we can do is do our job well.”

Outside, Kali walked through the hallways of the private quarter in her little girl form, humming as she walked past several maids and waved her hand happily at them. At this point, all of the maids knew that this form of hers was for their safety and that she was much older and more powerful, but there were still a few maids who didn’t believe that. ℯ

“Lady Kali…” Diana approached her from behind. “Lady Eris has something to talk to you about. She requested that I bring you to her at once.”

Kali looked back at her. “What? She wants to play?”

“No, it’s serious. Arad’s blood magic is going out of control. No, that’s the wrong way to put it. It is getting stronger at an alarming rate.” Diana explained, and Kali giggled. “Of course it is getting stronger. You saw the aftermath of his fight against Vorvadoss, Nyar, and the abominations. That was him pushing himself while being on the verge of evolving.”

“That level of power is… as per her words… abnormal.” As Diana added, Kali shook her head. “I know that Eris wanted to catch up to Arad, but that simply isn’t possible. Arad’s growth curve is too much to scale with. His blood isn’t what’s growing stronger now, but his mind is, and that is resulting in him having wider and finer control over his blood.

Kali lifted her finger, and a single droplet of blood fell from the tip of her finger and was suspended in the air. “Eris and all of the vampires… they are part of his blood. They are his, and that’s why they can feel his presence getting stronger.”

What Arad is going through is smilar to metamorphosis, but on a much, much larger scale.