Lightning Is the Only Way

Gravis lost himself to time. For once, he was able to forget everything about himself and dedicated his entire being to understanding the different kinds of stone directly in front of him. It was like the magic of understanding Laws had returned, and Gravis felt like it was even more beautiful than back then.

Back then, Gravis wasn't able to properly appreciate the feeling of wonder. Only when someone lost something and regained it much later would they truly be able to appreciate it.

It was simply a joy to look at all the different stones.

Whooom!

Suddenly, the Energy inside the ore stopped moving. The metallic essence vanished, leaving behind only dead stone. Gravis frowned as he inspected everything. Was something wrong with the Virtualization Array?

Gravis checked the Virtualization Array, but it didn't move at all. It had simply stopped working for some reason.

Gravis concentrated on the Virtualization Array and felt that there was no more Energy inside it. It was empty.

"Empty?" Gravis asked himself. Then, his eyes widened. "Are 500 years already over? But I didn't manage to comprehend the Law of Core!"

Gravis inspected his surroundings with his Law of Time and noticed that 500 years had passed. Sure enough, Gravis had stayed here for the entire duration.

"What!? That was never 500 years!" Gravis said.

"Father, has it been 500 years?" he asked.

"Yes," his father answered.

"What? How?" Gravis asked in shock. "I only just started!"

you lost track of time, Gravis. It happens.

around it, but everything pointed

Gravis said to himself as he grimaced. "So much time has passed, and I didn't even notice. This feels similar to when Heaven told me that I had stayed 200 years in the gap between worlds. It feels like time has been

will happen more frequently in the

Virtualization Array only controlled the metal

Ferris had been around 3,000 years old. He felt absolutely ancient to me. 3,000 years was such an incredibly long time. I also thought about how much I

already around 3,650 years old. I'm even older than Ferris back then. It felt like I had been only 100 years old, only one year ago. I

is unforgiving," Gravis said, "but I

couple more minutes, just thinking. Then, he sighed again and pocketed the ore mountain. This was a byproduct of the Virtualization Array, and it belonged to Gravis. One could say it was a nice

and concluded that this was around three million Immortal Stones worth of ore. This sounded like an enormous number, but one shouldn't forget that Gravis paid 50 million Immortal Stones. On top

pocketed the Virtualization Array and inspected the city to find Yersi. He wanted to

found two people in his "living room". One of them was Jake, while the other one

"Already?" Gravis asked himself.

to them and looked with

hair. Her hair actually reached the floor, and for some reason, Gravis got reminded of a scorpion's tail when he looked at it. Her

shouted in surprise as she jumped into Gravis' embrace. "I'm a human now!" she said

a smile. Then he put his hand on her head and ruffled her hair. "You look beautiful. Honestly, if you had a different hair color, you

I was very deep in the philosophy of beasts and didn't care about meeting

"I thought you would have seen her at least once," he said as he broke the embrace to

ground and shook

want to

He didn't

the element of light to create an image of Azure. Then, he adapted his

time he first met Azure, in the