Chapter 501: The Truth of Lost Realities (3)
Ash and the others settled comfortably as the Dream waved her hand in a slow, graceful motion.
The silver-lavender grass beneath them rose and reshaped itself into soft, cushioned seating arranged in a loose circle.
The air around them grew warr, gentler, as if the very reality was adjusting to make them feel at ease.
And the shifting sky above slowed its endless dance, the clouds forming gentle, dream-like shapes that hovered like silent spectators.
The Dream sat opposite them, her flowing silver dress pooling around her. Then, she looked at Ash with those ever-changing eyes and spoke softly.
"Well, if that be the case... then let
show you."
HUM!
With those words, the world around them began to transform.
The rolling plains blurred and stretched, pulling them into a living collage of events as the Dream began to narrate.
Her voice remained lodic, but now it seed to echo from everywhere at once, weaving through the visions like a gentle current.
"In the beginning of Ti, there were not always a bunch of Realities... but every 1,000 Cycles another one of us ford until there were Eighteen."
"Hmm?" Ash rose a brow hearing this but didn’t interrupt.
She went on to describe the origins of the entire Mana-Verse as she understood it.
In ti, eighteen distinct realities ca into being, each one sentient in its own right.
Every single one was a Mana Verse, created to achieve the impossible through the endless flow of mana.
At first, these verses existed on opposing ends of existence — light and dark, order and chaos, creation and oblivion — yet all remained perfectly balanced within the grand design of the Mother.
The more she talked the more the landscape around them continued to shift.
When it all finished, they were now hovering high above a vast, ever-shifting domain within her Reality.
It was a sprawling kingdom of living dreams where landscapes constantly morphed and reford.
The Dream carried on as the past slowly began to settle into place.
"And with us being sentient... that brought more problems in the long run than we could have ever imagined," she said, her eyes fixed on the bustling domain before them.
From the very beginning, these Realities refused to follow the power system that had been instinctively built into them.
It all started from a simple thought...
Why should we bind ourselves to sothing that would limit what we could beco?
However, Mana was the thing that gave them the chance to achieve wonders beyond comprehension.
But in the end, it was rely a connection—one link from one thing to another.
Ash’s expression remained calm, but his eyes sharpened with interest.
"So, let
guess," he said. "You all rejected the system eventually... and grew unruly to your Mother?" He joked.
The Dream nodded, a hint of sadness in her lodic voice.
"Yeah... if you want to put it like that," she said, then went on, "For a long ti, it seed to work... or maybe we were just foolish enough to think it did."
Each of the original Eighteen Realities, they each had their own way... they own vision of how they wanted to truly break free of the Mana completely.
And the Dream, she raised a warrior within her reality — soone strong enough to make dreams the main source of power.
The plan was simple, or it should have been.
She would help him grow... to the furthest extent the power system could take him.
At that point, it wouldn’t be hard for him to render mana completely useless for not just himself, but for her as well.
"Freedom from Mana... it’s the only thing I wanted." Her words echoed as the vision shifted again.
Now, they watched as a single figure — the warrior — rose through the dream-realm.
He trained, fought, and evolved, his power growing until he could bend the very fabric of the reality to his will.
The Dream stood beside him in the vision, guiding him with quiet pride, her hand resting on his shoulder as cities of pure thought blood around them.
"But in the end," she continued, her voice growing quieter, "he betrayed ."
The scene darkened in an instant.
The warrior turned against his own reality, and Ash found it ironic for more than a few reasons.
’This all sounds like the Primavus...’ he thought, recalling how they still inhabited the Realm of Ancients in Pantheos.
But it was also ironic because... ’They say people don’t change overnight, but this guy pulled it off.’ He was intrigued to see what would happen next.
The Dream paused for a mont, her colorful eyes studying Ash carefully, searching for any shift in his calm, laidback deanor.
Seeing none, she continued.
She raised her hand, and a vague, hazy image ford in the air before them — the faintest silhouette of a woman, tall and ethereal, her form barely visible, as if even the mory of her was too much for this place to hold clearly.
The scene around them shifted once more.
They now stood in a vast, dream-like space where the warrior knelt before a towering, glowing figure — the Mother.
Her voice echoed softly, gentle yet carrying an undeniable authority.
"Your ambition, and the ambition of this Reality, is foolishness." She said, "Mana is not sothing that can simply end, nor is it as simple as you believe. It is the thread that binds all things."
The warrior looked up, his expression conflicted but determined.
The Mother’s voice softened, almost coaxing.
"I can promise you a place beyond even this re Reality... a place where Dreams can be just as endless as Mana."
The warrior was silent for a long mont, then slowly nodded.
"I accept."
HUMMMM!
In that instant, the Mother’s presence surged.
For the briefest mont, she took control of his body. His eyes flashed with a different light as she used him to open a rift — a jagged tear into pure Nonexistence.
"I will let him handle this..." She muttered.
GRRRRR!!!!!!!
ROARRRRR!!!!!!
AHHHGGGHHH!!!!!
Through it, a Reality of Nightmares poured in — dark, twisted, screaming forms that flooded the once-beautiful realm of Dreams.
In that instant, the Mother’s presence faded away with the warrior, and the Reality of Dreams slipped from the Threshold of Existence forever, condemned to endure the unending assault of Nightmares.
When the vision faded, the Dream gazed at Ash with quiet sadness in her ever-changing eyes.
"And that’s the tale," she said softly. "The Lost Realities.... we are rely the Original Eighteen."
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