Immediately he spoke the words, the space around the Freehold Sanctuary suddenly stilled. The chaotic spell that was attacking the barrier of Freehold also stopped for a short second, before resuming promptly after the Exalted One cast his gaze on it, giving it permission.
But aside from that uncanny stillness, nothing really seemed to have changed much on the outside of the barrier, but for Komi on the inside, she immediately felt the effect.
A sharp pain tore through her mind and she fell to the ground with blood spurting out of her orifices. It was like her mind had been slammed with a terrible recoil.
All the progress she had made in loosening the pocket space from the main world was gone in an instant, like there was now another layer of space they had to first get through.
Zephyr was at her side within a split second, catching her before she could hit the ground.
"Komi! Are you okay Komi?! What’s happening?! What’s happening?!" He tried dragging her from the area where the spell model thrummed in the air, but he caught the fiercely burning look in her eyes that leaked blood.
She hadn’t let up yet. All through that, she hadn’t let up. She was still weaving the spell model.
"DAMMIT!" Zephyr knew there was no stopping her. He was confused as to what was going on, he didn’t know the cause of her current state, and didn’t even know what he could do to help. All he knew was that Komi was still fighting. Regardless of what was happening, she was still fighting.
He saw her try to gurgle out a few broken words despite her focus being locked on the spell model.
Zephyr quickly leaned his ear close to her lips.
"—cked sp—space. Locked—space," she whispered out repeatedly.
"Locked space?" Zephyr tried to catch her words. "The space you’re trying to break through is locked?! Is that what you’re trying to tell me?!" he stared into her eyes for a sign of affirmation and saw a small, purposeful constriction that told him that was it.
Immediately, he carefully set her down against a table as her hand moved robotically with small movements that showed she was still weaving the spell.
"I’m going to figure something out." He yelled into her face before disappearing from her view, rushing directly to the table that held new sheets of paper.
’Aegis, I need you right now! How do we solve this?!!’ he sent a thought, fully sure that Aegis could cook up another miracle.
Already on it, host. Correcting previous calculations to account for a spatial blockage.
’No, no, no! Aegis, not just that! We can’t go back now. Komi can’t go back on what she’s done already! She won’t be able to handle it.’
Already factored into calculations, host. New calculations are working within the last few parameters.
Hold for new parameters.
Zephyr quickly scribbled the new answers as Aegis fed it directly into his brain. Aegis hadn’t even bothered to give him calculations at all. Zephyr had looked at the grimoire when Komi had been translating the numbers to symbols earlier, so Aegis simply used that and gave Zephyr the symbols for the rest of the parameters without all the extra steps.
He rushed to Komi’s front immediately after he scribbled out the next parameters and held the paper up in her face.
"Hey! Use this! Use this instead, Komi! Stop with the other symbols!" he yelled in her face as she slowly brought her red eyes to look at the paper.
She had just slotted the fourteenth symbol into the place for its parameter, so she simply continued with the new symbols on the next one.
Zephyr held the paper up for her as she started to weave without hesitation.
But as she started on the symbol, a small, croaky groan of pain escaped her lips. The strain on her mind had more than doubled compared to what she had been feeling when weaving the previous spell. In fact, it was almost as terrible as the recoil she’d been hit with earlier.
She bit her lips, drawing blood as she strained.
The pocket space began to oscillate more intensely, and even Komi and Zephyr were affected. Their bodies began to vibrate along with the space, building more intensity.
The origin crystal in its socket began to glow more brightly from the power draw that had increased drastically.
The pocket space was now in a weird position where it was building up energy that was supposed to free it from the hold of the host world, while staying in one spot due to being blocked from moving.
This energy had nowhere to go, hence, the rapidly increasing oscillation as Komi added more symbols into their parameter slots.
The only good thing was that even this seemed to have been factored in Aegis’ calculations. The rapid destruction that this insane buildup of energy should have caused on the structural stability of the pocket space was not happening at all.
Instead, the ’exterior’ of the pocket space seemed to be getting charged with this energy.
Aegis’ calculations this time were not for a simple jump in space... It was for a jump in energy state!
To bypass the locked space that held them in place, Aegis had decided to give the pocket space so much charge that it would—for the briefest of moments—break through the wall of the "general space" that held everything in this physical universe.
They would not be bound by any so-called lock any longer because they would no longer be operating within the same spatial dimension as the lock for that short moment.
This was only possible because of the amount of energy Aegis had observed an origin crystal output before... That kind of power output reminded it of something similar...
But still, the whole thing was a long shot. A very dangerous and very long shot.
It went way beyond the safety levels Aegis was designed to always keep its host at.
Zephyr and Komi didn’t know it, but they were literally sitting inside a space that was already vibrating with energy equivalent to a small star...
And it was still increasing exponentially.
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