Defiance of the Fall

The Void Engine] was still being cooked inside his Hidden Node , but that didn’t mean Zac could sit around . From the second he began the process , there would be no rest . His core was currently just two treasures pushed against each other , gradually being distorted by the immense pressure released by the Core Formation Array .

The next step was to mix and shape the temporarily malleable materials into a proper nucleus , adding the critical pathways and connections that would make up the inner circuitry of his Cosmic Core .

Zac was full of anticipation , sending the mental tendrils forward like a swarm of snakes . Everything until now was just the warm-up . The next step was what he’d truly practiced for .

The actual Core Formation was finally starting .

79

UNCERTAINTY INTO TRUTH

The pressure the Core Formation Array levied on the treasures was immense , and they sporadically released bursts of energy that shook the Hollow Core] . The energy was then forced right back into the materials after wreaking havoc , leading to a volatile cycle .

Zac controlled the Mental Energy tools to mold the blobs of Conflict and Life , relieved to find the surgical tools mostly unaffected by the gravitational force . The refined Calamity Core] and Warstone] were very responsive , like putty . There was one problem , however . He had no way to interact with the deathly half of the Calamity Core] in his human form .

His Life and Conflict-attuned Core Formation tools were blocked when trying to pass through the Death-attuned half of the Calamity Core] , but they couldn’t mold or move it at all . It lived its own life , changing shape based on pressure and the movements of the other two materials .

Similarly , he’d lost his connection with the tools filled with his Branch of the Pale Seal the moment they entered the Duplicity Core , transformed by the mysterious quantum state that influenced all Death in the core . But that was fine . He would start the process in his human form and then swap over to his Draugr side .

The pressure was almost too great to form his core next to the two spheres . However , it was the pressure which kept the energies contained and the materials malleable . If he turned off the main array , the materials would rapidly cool and harden . Since that wasn’t an option , Zac used the tendrils to force the materials to spin while pressing against each other . The gravitational force and the spinning treasures created a makeshift roll press , a technique only possible when having surgical tools to assist the formation .

From there , he extracted a piece from each blob , like string pulled from spools , and pushed them together . He formed a simple braid before it was crushed between the rolling spheres . The braid emerged significantly more compressed on the other side and stuck to the Warstone]’s surface . The more condensed the nucleus was , the stabler it would become .

Zac added a few more sections of Conflict to the braid while preparing half a braid on the other sphere . Each cycle fused and arranged the preliminary connections in the Cosmic Core’s center .

A surge of energy warned that the materials wouldn’t come together without a fight , and Zac was forced to give up a cycle as the braid released a tremendous shockwave of intermixed energy .

A large section of his budding creation was damaged , undoing most of his work in one go . This was the uphill battle any mortal would face , especially one wanting to create such a complex core . He salvaged what he could and let the rest rejoin the spinning blobs as he extracted new strings .

Thirty minutes passed as the super-condensed nugget grew bigger and bigger , where every layer was earned after multiple setbacks . The Death-attuned energies were unsurprisingly the source of the biggest headache . The growing ball of yarn was filled with uneven spots of Death dragged inside by the process , only some of it intentionally . The nucleus was roughly 60% in line with his blueprint , and every eruption came with the risk of pushing that number lower .

Not being in control of one-third of the matter going into the nucleus created a lot of difficulties . Zac did what he could to indirectly influence the uncontrollable half of the Calamity Core] . He intentionally created empty pockets between Life and Conflict where Death squeezed inside . Along with temporary blockades when too much Death was about to be pulled into the roll press .

Not much time had passed , yet he’d already lost count of the number of explosions the Hollow Core] had been forced to absorb . Zac avoided some of the disasters , but most didn’t even give him a chance to react . His mental tendrils were repeatedly shredded , forcing him to expend energy reforming them .

During this time , there were no signs of Void Heart] releasing the missing piece of the puzzle .