Mad God – Reborn

Ren sat in a room with hundreds of books stacked on top of each other while notes and torn-out pages littered the floor around her. She became the center of this messy, chaotic landscape as three thick lexicons floated before her, flipping pages automatically while she scratched her chin, lost in thought. It looked idyllic at first, but it shattered when the whole Spire shook from a loud explosion at the top.

"Huh?" Ren blinked, then stepped to the room's only window. She opened it, leaned out, and bathed in the strong sunlight as she looked up at the purplish smoke rising toward the sky. It was sparkling in the sun's bright rays like fireworks. "That crazy bastard!" She flew out and rose quickly to the top, taking a deep breath and blowing the thick, flowing smoke away. "Hey, gramps, are you still amongst the living?" She shouted, waving the remaining dark blue clouds out of the room.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine!" Rabout coughed, slowly becoming visible as he walked towards her. His clothing was shredded into multiple pieces, hanging from his body like rags, while his long, silvery hair was reduced to a buzzcut, with thick clumps curling upward, where their ends still smoked like some strange incense. It wasn't just his hair; he had lost his beard and eyebrows, making Ren laugh as soon as she saw him, not holding back. "What?" He blinked and pulled out a small handheld mirror. "FUCK! My lush, beautiful mane! It's gone! Damn it! Wha?! My eyebrows?! Why are they missing!? And my beard! My baby!"

"Bwahahaha! You should shave it all off now, gramps! Embrace it! If you want, I can polish it for you until everybody can see their reflections on the back of your head!" Ren laughed, slapping her own thighs.

"Very funny!" He groaned and then looked at her with slanted eyes, adding in a barely audible voice, "6 out of 10."

"Sorry?" Ren wiped her eyes, stopping her laughter. "That had to be better!"

"I said, laugh 'til you can!" He snorted, showing her a perfect octahedron, the size of a human eye, spinning rhythmically above his palm. It was without color, completely see-through, and seemingly empty.

"Huh? What is that?" Ren asked, raising both eyebrows as her laughter died down at once.

"A vessel. A perfect vessel. Also, it acts as the world's first immaculate and functional energy filter!" Rabout explained proudly.

"I do not follow you." She looked up at him, then back at the… thing, trying to see what he meant... because what she was feeling from the thing was nothing she had ever experienced.

"Try fusing your energy into it." A grin crept across his face as the octahedron was tossed towards her. When she caught it, it continued to spin with the same speed above her palm, unaffected by Ren's hand or the motion when it was thrown over. Even when she tried to speed it up... it refused to budge.

"Wait… It pushes me away… I can't… touch it?" She said with awe, as no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't grab it. The weird octahedron refused her body with such a strong, natural repulsion that she couldn't touch it. Not even when she was using her full strength, making the air crackle with lightning and thunder.

"I told you. It is the only perfect filter ever created. It refuses anything that is from this realm. Or are you not from here?" He grinned, watching her struggle. In the end, Ren finally gave up, letting the octahedron just float above her palm.

"Damn… you are a madman… I love it!" She laughed once again. "How did you manage to create this?"

"Are you really interested in it or just asking?" Rabout asked, tilting his head.

"How long would it take you to explain it to me?"

"A few days."

"Then just asking." Ren shrugged, turning her eyes back to it and letting her energy seep into the thing. At first, it was wholly refused, but soon something changed. Its previously transparent color began to change, as if some kind of smoke appeared inside it, bearing the same reddish and purplish color as the Cosmos. As it appeared, they both heard an ear-splitting rumble from the Sky itself. Looking up, they saw the Tear becoming visible, and not just to them. Everyone in Rozex could see it, looking up as red lightning flashed above them, as if it were searching for something.

"Damn, stop the flow! It attracts the true energy from the Cosmos itself!" Rabout exclaimed loudly, but by then, Ren had already cut all her connection to it, not wanting to draw down a tribulation.

"You made something perilous, gramps…" Ren whispered, watching the Tear slowly fade, visible only to her eyes while everyone with lower cultivation could no longer see it.

"It would seem like it…" He nodded, childlike wonder glinting in his eyes as the Sky returned to its previous calmness. "But this can capture and filter energy. It is going to produce real cosmic energy! If I can study it, I can eventually replicate the Cosmos's energy with its help. I derived it from the room you set up and perfected it to this form, bwahaha!" He laughed, but then he suddenly started to cough, and blood flew from between his lips onto the floor, almost collapsing forward if Ren had not been there to catch him.

"What the?!" Ren exclaimed, pouring her own energy into him as her face trembled and her expression turned serious. "Are you mad?! You are completely fucked up inside! Almost all of your organs shifted places or ruptured! Are you suicidal or something?!" She produced a healing pill quickly, almost pushing it down his throat.

"A small price for success!" Rabout grinned while Ren just let out a loud sigh.

"Idiot… Even if a Harmony expert can live a really long life, your life energy has become extremely weak and jumbled up just now! You sacrificed who knows how many years of your life in this experiment..." She scolded him as she helped Rabout out of the destroyed laboratory. That was when Milly arrived up the staircase, rushing with a panicked expression, especially after seeing Ren drag out her Lord's feeble body.

"What happened?!" She asked, running over to help Ren carry him into his room and lay the old man on the sofa.

"He went overboard! Milly, go to my tower and ask Sentios to come here immediately."

"Yes!" She nodded and hurried away without thinking, while Rabout just looked at Ren.

"Why send her away? She should learn about it." he looked into Ren's eyes with a soft smile.

"So you also felt it?" She scanned his expression and let out a long, drawn-out sigh. "I only did after I started supplying energy into your body."

"I felt it right after the explosion." Rabout nodded, his eyes unchanged, unbothered. "My life force is leaking."

"Yes…" Ren nodded heavily. "You hurt yourself deeply. Even if you had 4,000 more years ahead of you, they're ticking down like sand in an hourglass. I can't tell you how many years, months, or days you lose per second, but…."

"Enough." he chuckled, waving his hand, sitting back up, and shaking his head. "I don't care about that! Everyone has to die one day. I don't want to know when or why, and I'm not interested in how many years I have left. What matters is enjoying the now, and I am greatly satisfied right now..."

"Satisfied that you essentially killed yourself for your stupid experiment? Huh?" She scrunched her eyebrows and looked up at him, breathing faster with anger.

"No! Satisfied because I have such a cute little descendant!" Rabout smiled delightedly, rubbing her hair vigorously and making a complete mess of it, while Ren just watched with a somewhat dumbfounded look.

"Tsk…" She clicked her tongue and looked away, drawing another laugh from him. What frustrated Ren was that the situation made her remember when she told her then-disciples her plan. Tearing open the Sky and that it would result in her own death. Even with all the preparations, it could still have failed in the end. But it was a risk she was willing to take and even give her life for it. What was happening now with Rabout was something she knew very well, and she completely understood his reasoning, unable to refute him with absolute honesty. "Let's find a way to slow it down first… then we can think about a solution."

"Sure! That is the proper way." He clapped, laughing again as he fiddled with the weird octahedron floating above his hand.

…

….

…..

A few days later, Ren stood in the room where she set up the teleportation formation, and when she activated it, the mirror-like gate rose from the middle. Sentios was prepared this time, sitting in his spot and providing energy to their side more easily than before.

"Did something happen?" Xendar asked, a bit worried, as Dermitos stabilized the formation on their side, not Aerthus.

"Yes. I can't explain it in detail because we have a little time before the connection goes out. Please send someone to Thunder Valley and ask Kai to come here."

"So it is something serious…" Her father furrowed his brows.

"It is, but it is not me who is affected by it. Anyway, I need him in person for this."

"Won't he be noticed by Zelig?" Xendar asked, crossing his arms, unsure if it was a good idea.

"Don't worry, Dad, he has a Demigod body, and he is an old God… if he didn't come here unnoticed, I would make fun of him for the rest of his life!" Ren chuckled, easing her father's nerves.

"Okay, I'll go myself and tell him. Anything else?"

"This." She threw a rolled-up parchment into the 'mirror,' and it took a minute for it to appear on the other side.

"This is?" Xendar looked through the projection, right into his daughter's eyes, then at the half-drawn, weird diagram on the paper itself.

"I don't know." She shook her head. "My guess is that it is a formation. Show it to Levictus, please. He is most likely able to come up with something more substantial than the wild guesses I have right now." Ren sighed softly. "I'll call you again three days later to see if there is any progress."

"Okay. And… Be careful…"

"No worries, Dad." Ren winked with a playful grin at him as the connection was cut between them.

When the room fell silent and calm again, Sentios stood up, let out a long breath, and dusted off his hands.

"You did not say anything to us either, but if you need the help of Kai… something has gone completely awry. Isn't it true?" Sentios asked, watching her reaction, but Ren just sighed.

"The only thing that's gone sideways is Rabout!" She shook her head in anger, then briefly explained it to him. "The injury he suffered is something that is related to the outside world. I need the advice of someone who is FROM the outside. The other problem is… still up for debate. It is nothing concrete now; you don't need to worry about it. Yet!"

"Yet? Geez…" Sentios smiled, twitching his mouth as he shook his head.

"Only one problem at a time, okay?" Ren laughed, "I'm such a good Boss, aren't I? I am not dumping dozens of problems on you at the same time! Now you should only focus on the Wonder Emporium. Everything else comes after that." She said as they walked out, heading up the spiral staircase and watching the clear night sky from the Spire's huge windows.

"Luckily, there are no problems with it." Sentios reported, "The people Ooda introduced are easy to work with, and with the efforts of all of us, it should be finished by the end of this month."

"Oh? That is pretty quick. Quicker than I anticipated." Ren nodded, licking her lips as she watched the full moons outside, already excited about how the public would receive it. "Well, then I must get to work too. It would look stupid if there were no things to sell and we opened up an empty building."