Chapter 4655 Growing Times

The past half year had been fruitful for Ria. She had continuously hunted infected worlds, cleansing them of the virus and then transmitting their information to interested parties, each of whom had come to treat Ria as more of a prophet than a business partner.

The power she had gained from continuous operations in these infected worlds exceeded their expectations, but she had already made massive strides in the Sage Realm despite her youth. She had yet to even turn nineteen, yet her parents could sense that she had already begun to obtain a mastery of materia prima that only many years of experience could otherwise provide.

However, they didn’t just pay attention to her power. They paid close attention to her state of mind as well. Thankfully, they liked what they saw. They didn’t see signs of deep emotional anguish. The brain waves her mind released weren’t hiding emotional instability, either.

An air of confidence and certainty hung around her, as it did about everybody who reached the Sage Realm. At this stage of power, one was a walking calamity with the power to bring about great ruination to everything around one. With that came a certain understanding of one’s position in the hierarchy of power.

Even if being a Sage was nowhere nearly as prestigious as it once was, it still put one above a vast proportion of the population and even among pathwalkers. It appeared to her parents that this confidence anchored her psyche, preventing her from being swept away by the lingering grief and negativity from the death of her friends on their very first mission into outer space.

"Congratulations on breaking through to the Transcendent Realm, mom," she smiled at her mother with an enthusiastic expression. "I came back because I heard the news and wanted to see you in person. After all, you were in isolated training the entire time the last time I was around."

Amare felt another driving urge to hug her adorable daughter into a tight embrace. "Oh you..."

In her mind, even the most ordinary words of well-wishing from her daughter were the most precious thing in the entire universe. Rui felt jealous that Amare got to experience that, Ria had been too young to understand anything for her to offer the same words to Rui when he broke through.

"Your mother has missed you so, so much more than you could ever imagine," Amare told her precious baby girl, pulling her into a tight hug. "Everyday, when I was in training, the desire to see you again was my greatest motivator. You’ve grown so much. And... you’ve been through so much."

Amare spoke the last sentence with a regretful tone. She had learned about what Ria had been through the memories of her alternate future self. She regretted that she hadn’t been around to help her daughter through this tough time. Rui had chosen to weigh the options and had ultimately decided it was too risky to pull Amare out of the deep mind-body trance that she was in.

She partly resented Rui for that decision. So what if her path to Transcendence was impeded? Their daughter was more important to her than every ounce of power she had cultivated in her entire life and in all her lives.

Ria’s expression darkened at her mother’s allusion. The past half-year hadn’t been easy, but she had built up a core of strength that was driven by her feelings of inadequacy. The girl blamed herself for the death of two of her friends and that caused her to push herself hard in the depths of the unexplored cosmos.

The more infected worlds she hunted, the more she realized how arrogant her younger self had been to lead her friends into such dangerous places when all of them were merely of the equivalent of the fourth rank in each of their paths. There had been times when she had been challenged immensely despite being a Martial Sage.

If they had happened to enter one of these worlds for their first infected world excursion, then all of them would have died without exception.

That made her feel somewhat fortunate that her humbling hadn’t cost all of them their lives. At the very least, she had been able to preserve her life and those of two of her friends, and she was grateful for that at least.

Now, she was different. She had shed her weakness and had obtained a strength to protect those she cared about. And yet, she knew better than to immediately undertake the burden of protecting a team. Runark had written to her sporadically, talking about rejoining the team and going together, but Ria had drawn the line. She would only accept him back on the team if he could do it without her.

"Power is an isolating force." Her father’s wise words drew her attention. "I know more than anybody how much it can isolate you from those you love on account of their weakness. But you must resist isolation, otherwise you will lose your ability to connect with others."

She turned towards him, studying him and his ethereal eyes.

The past half year she had spent in the Sage Realm had helped her hone her senses and deepen her understanding of the ranks of power in nature. That was why she understood just how abnormal an existence her father and mother were.

They went beyond a material measure of power. From within them, she could feel a universe of Water and Martiality respectively, though she had the faint instinct that it was... incomplete. Regardless, it was power that defied her fathoming.

She sensed that that the vast chasm between herself and them wasn’t merely a scaling problem. It wasn’t as though if she pumped her body with one hundred times the materia prima she could wield presently, she would be able to reach them. On the contrary, it seemed like no amount of raw power could ever make up for this extraordinary power.

Of course, being a Martial Sage of the modern era, she understood what the power was. It was the power of the Verse, the power of phenomenological uniformity, the power of the information dimension.

"You may have grown strong, but don’t allow that to become a barrier between yourself and the people you love," her mother added.

Both of her parents admonished her for her admittedly strict consideration of power in whom she allowed to join her.