Guild Wars-Novel

The group entered the Inner World and marveled at the beauty of the place. Draco had chosen a fine piece of land to adopt and they were loving it, especially Shuangtian and Eva.

Shuangtian looked around from within the air and wondered what they were doing here. Eva smiled as she read her thoughts and explained.

"It might be a small issue, but it would be a problem if your child was much younger from ours, especially given how fast they seem to develop. As such, we're going to fast forward Time so that you can go through pregnancy and birth in practically an instant."

Shuangtian was surprised and thought about it. "Will doing this have any effect on my child?"

"Not with Eva's proficiency in Time Control as well as our own pocket dimension to smoothen things. For all intents and purposes, Time will pass normally for us in here but once we're out, not even a second will have passed for them." Draco explained with a smile.

Shuangtian was about to ask why they hadn't used this option before, but realized it was stupid. They only just got the ability to manipulate Time and Space from the Eternal World. Besides, it was one thing to speed up gestation and birth, and another to fast forward the growth of a child.

Both would not yield any physical or mental deficiencies or consequences, but there was just something wrong about the latter that made Draco and Eva never walk down that path.

Of course in reality, there were millions of parents in the world who, woken up by the cries of their child in the night, would pay a hefty price to be able to fast forward time to a point that their baby would become a fully functioning adult that wouldn't wake them up when they were so tired, but that was a more spur of the moment thing born from frustration.

Parents who lost their children, but found them in the future after they had already grown into adults were grateful for being able to meet their child again, but there would always be a mental and emotional scar from missing out on being part of their formative years and not seeing the next generation grow.

Shuangtian also thought back to Draco and Eva's shared memories and realized that there was one other problem with this method.

"What about energy? If I remember correctly, Lucitera required a lot of energy to be born right?"

Eva nodded. "That's right, Lucitera did drain me a lot in order to be born, but that was over the 9 month period and she took almost half of my bloodline source."

Eva then smiled. "But for you, it should be much easier since Draco paid a lot of energy up front when he filled you up. You'll still pay the necessary bloodline source because the child needs it to have a perfect balance of bloodlines, but at least you won't have to restore it with NuSmoothies like me, it will be automatically restored over time for you."

Hearing this, Shuangtian had no more gripes or worries. It was clear that Draco and Eva had thought this through for her and this made her happy and confident.

Draco then nodded to Eva who manifested her Creation Branch and directly replicated the Pangu Estate in this pocket world. Not only that, but with a wave of her hand, she created human bodies, belonging to all the Pangu members who had been alive before the raid began.

However, things were now different, the ones locked up were Shangtian and his branch, whereas Shuangtian's family were seated on the throne. There was only one problem with this scene and that was the fact that none of these people were moving.

Time was frozen because while Eva had perfectly created their bodies and even injected relevant memories in their minds taken from the Pangu souls suffering in Draco's Nine Hells, these bodies did not have souls.

Eva also did not yet have the ability to create souls like Hikari. She could create something artificial, but it would be no different from letting the AI run the body. What they were doing here was to temporarily create an authentic family experience for Shuangtian, which was their second method to wash away her pain.

Creation of souls was something Eva would definitely learn to do as long, but for that she would have to dig deeper on the Creation branch and acquire the abilities deeper within.

Current, she could only use raw Creation, Creation of inanimate objects, Creation of animate objects and Creation of True Life. Eva had already taken a peek down the branch thanks to Draco's own master of Destruction which leveled out her Creation when she unlocked it.

New and sick abilities like Creation of True Souls, Creation of Elements, Creation of Worlds, Creation of Concepts and Creation of Universes were waiting for her, and there were even more she had yet to see.

Now was also a good time to talk about the situation surrounding their branches and why Draco and Eva coincidentally had the exact same efficiency and understand of their thematically opposite branches.

You see, when the World Will of the Eternal World was bestowing them Enlightenment, Draco and Eva were connected at the time. However, through their connection, they noticed that their old and new branches were disjointed, having some that unlocked more abilities than others and whatnot.

So like Zaine did when they Ranked Up from Rank 3, Draco and Eva took charge of it and made some changes. Firstly, they prioritized synchronizations over exploration and secondly, they limited acquiring new ones for merging old.

In essence, if the bloodline trees we've envisioned were like a game's skill tree, Draco and Eva had hacked the game to assign their skill points manually rather than having them assigned automatically for them.

And to take it a step further, they also reassigned old skill points and shared skill points among each other, so that they would be on par.

For example, Draco was further ahead in his Destruction tree than Eva was in Creation, as such he 'canceled' learned skills and gave those 'skill points' to Eva so his Soulmate could unlock her Creation branch abilities. This way they both had the exact same amount of unlocked leaves on each branch.

(Author's note: Remember, each leaf in this visualization represents an individual ability on the branch.)

Eva also did the same for him with Draco's newly unveiled Celestial Overlord branch which was the thematically opposite to the Mother of the Abyss Branch. So Eva had lost a lot of abilities there to bump Draco up on that branch, making them on par.

This was why they were currently so perfectly equal to each other and also why Shuangtian could not benefit much from them.

Alright, back to the current matter at hand.

Draco stepped forward to wave his hands. He unleashed his newly acquired Celestial Overlord ability and a whisp of golden-white light flew from his brow and entered the heads of all the beings that Eva created.

What was Celestial Overlord, this new branch about? And what did it mean for Draco to have this ability?

First, we have to look at its antitheses and thematic opposite, the Mother of the Abyss. The Abyss was the depths of the universe, where all the unsavory and corruptive elements of the universe existed.

In other words, it was the slum of the universe, the trash can where rubbish was thrown out, the place those normal and above were disgusted by, and even disdained to enter it. Those who ended up there, no matter how clean they might have been, would eventually be corrupted by the dirt and become filthy.

One thing is that the Abyss was often confused with the Underworld and Hell. It was not the same as these two would never be. Even the Underworld was different from Hell, and it was likely that Draco possessed this branch somewhere high up on his tree.

The Underworld was a place where those who could not survive in normal planes were sent to, and it was not a fiery burning place, just a wasteland and underground location with a variety of different races. Heck, it even had some indigenous and unique races that thrived from there and even disdained those above.

Hell was directly a unique plane where only souls of the deceased could enter, bound for torment based on a set of rules and regulations put out by the master of Hell. It was spiritual and could not be entered with the real body.

This was the difference between the three, Abyss was corruptive and full of trash, Underworld was thriving and full of unique life while Hell was punitive and full of suffering souls.

The Celestial was essentially the opposite, the pinnacle of the universe where every living species wanted to enter and live. It was utopia, clean, perfect and just by sniffing the air there, even the most average fellow would become a transcendent being.

Another thing was not to confuse the Celestial with Elysium or Heaven. It was not the same as those two and would never be. It was also likely that Eva possessed Elysium somewhere up on her tree, waiting to be unlocked.

Elysium was the thematic opposite of the Underworld. It was a specially promised land of wealth and purity and certain beings could only survive there. Species like Angels, Immortals, Fairies and the like were spawned there as a result of the area's uniqueness.

Just like the Underworld it was its own place where anyone could visit, but only a select few could survive. Just like how you would see Dark Elves in the Underworld, you would see Light Elves on Elysium, but never vice versa since their species would perish in the wrong place.

Species that lived in middle planes like humans, halflings and most animals could visit either locale and survive there due to adaptability.

Heaven was more direct, also being a spiritual plane where the souls of deceased went to to enjoy eternal bliss as a result of the rules and regulations that the owner of Heaven put in place.

This was the difference between the three, Celestial was perfect and full of superiority, Elysium was lush and full of special life while Heaven was paradisaical and full of blissful souls.

So the Celestial Overlord branch was about perfection, or perfecting things. It was slightly similar to purifying, but not exactly.

Purification meant cleansing something and sending it into a normal 'clean' state. However, Celestial Overlord went a step further, that after cleaning you, it would optimize you to be in your perfect form, far superior to what you were before.

It was all about superiority, looking down on others and being a clean and pure 'Celestial'.

So while Eva using Mother of the Abyss would corrupt things and render them into powerful abyssal life forms, Draco using Celestial Overlord would perfect things and strengthen them into powerful Celestial life forms.

In this case, Draco was trying to perfect these creations of Eva using this branch's ability, which was to give them True Souls. The Celestial Overlord was not about creating things, and you couldn't always decide what you would get when strengthening something, so it wasn't a catch all for all situations.

That was why Eva created artificial souls for the various entities here, which the Celestial Overlord perfected and made True Souls with the requisite memories and experiences that Draco and Eva wanted them to have in order to make this scene real.

As such, when Eva resumed Time, everyone began moving and acting like things had always been this, way, moving up and down to fulfill various personal purposes that humans were known for.

Before this though, Draco and Eva turned and their eyes flashed. Since they were already here, they would go all the way!

They immediately wiped the memories of Shuangtian who was shocked beside them, and tossed her down into her family. Then, they turned back Time for this pocket world back to when Shuangtian was still a baby, making sure to keep relevant memories and persons around.

They were going to let her experience a new life with her family, a normal upbringing to wash away those years of suffering she should never have had to experience!