Chapter 3101: Conscious Thalorien

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Lil’ Red Storm Realm, Freedom Megalopolise

"What are you?"

Thalorien’s voice echoed through the layers of the Lil’ Red Storm Realm’s crust as his gaze met Dalia’s. Surrounded by his newly recreated clones, the Snow Elven Crown Prince couldn’t hide the confusion in his eyes.

He had encountered countless strange entities and inherited memories containing knowledge accumulated over generations. He had even witnessed things most Ruler-class beings would dismiss as impossible.

Yet Dalia’s existence made no sense to him.

He couldn’t understand how the core of a realm could also serve as the core of a Celestial array formation.

At first, Thalorien had assumed that the realm’s Celestial will had simply used its surroundings as materials to construct the array formation. That was unusual, but not impossible. Given enough time and resources, even a Celestial could construct an array formation around its realm.

But after witnessing Big Crunch, Thalorien understood that his assumption had been completely wrong. The Celestial array formation wasn’t something surrounding Dalia. It was Dalia herself. Or, more accurately, Dalia was the living will of the Celestial array formation.

The realization left him deeply unsettled. It was like discovering that an Array Master had refined themselves into an array formation and somehow survived the process.

People could be incorporated into formations.

Battle formations, for example, relied on living beings as nodes, allowing their combined strength to become part of the formation. A person could even be used as a material or sacrifice during the creation of certain arrays.

But this was the opposite. Dalia wasn’t merely part of the formation. She wasn’t a node, she wasn’t a component, she was the core. The entire Celestial array formation appeared to be an extension of her existence, while she herself remained alive, conscious, and capable of acting independently like a true celestial.

It was simply unnatural.

Thalorien couldn’t help but wonder which had come first. Was she originally a Celestial who had somehow transformed herself into a Celestial array formation? Or had the array formation itself somehow developed a will and become a living Celestial?

The latter possibility was even more absurd.

As far as Thalorien knew, the Myriad Realms contained countless natural wonders, strange lifeforms, and even worlds capable of producing powerful entities.

But natural Celestial array formations? He had never heard of such a thing. And if they did exist, then what exactly was standing before him? A Celestial? An array formation? Or something that didn’t fit into either category?

Learning that directly attacking the realm’s core was simply a dead end, Thalorien quickly abandoned that plan.

If the core was protected by a defensive mechanism capable of turning an entire section of reality into a crushing singularity, then repeatedly throwing himself at it would accomplish nothing except waste his clones.

So, he changed his approach. If he couldn’t destroy the core directly, then he would dismantle the Celestial array formation itself through brute force.

Under normal circumstances, Thalorien would have considered the idea insane.

A Celestial array formation wasn’t something a Ruler-class entity could casually dismantle through sheer strength. Even with his clone army and the vast collection of special snows he had accumulated throughout the Myriad Realms, attempting to destroy such a formation was the kind of plan that usually ended with one’s name becoming a cautionary tale.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. He was already trapped inside the Celestial array formation. More importantly, he had somehow managed to reach its core. Even if directly attacking the core had nearly gotten him killed, the fact that he could reach it at all meant there had to be vulnerabilities he could exploit.

At least, that was what Thalorien hoped. His first idea after the failure of the initial idea to directly destroy the realm core was simply to overwhelm the realm. Thalorien considered emptying his dimensional storage and using every piece of special snow he possessed to create an army of clones large enough to flood the Lil’ Red Storm Realm’s crust faster than its defense mechanism can whip them out.

If he produced enough clones, eventually there would be more of them moving through the crust than there was mud surrounding them. At that point, they could spread throughout the realm, locate the array’s important nodes, and begin destroying them one after another.

Alternatively, he could take an even more destructive approach. He could detonate the cores of his clones throughout the realm’s crust. He didn’t need to destroy the entire realm at once. If enough of its internal structure was damaged, the Celestial array formation would inevitably be affected. However, Thalorien ultimately restrained himself.

Something about Dalia’s earlier attack continued to bother him. She had clearly held back. If she truly wanted him dead, Big Crunch could have been far more devastating. That realization made him hesitate. He didn’t know what other defensive measures she was hiding.

Until he was certain that he had no other choice, Thalorien wasn’t willing to commit all his resources to an attack that could trigger another unknown countermeasure.

So, he decided to get out of the crust first. Almost immediately, Thalorien began producing Frost Clones at an incredible rate. Clone after clone appeared before him. But instead of preparing for battle, they arranged themselves into a tightly packed formation and began tunneling upward.

They became a living drill. The clones at the front tore through the frozen crust while those behind continuously pushed them forward. The moment the leading clones were crushed by the immense pressure of the surrounding earth, Thalorien simply created replacements.

Their frozen and shattered bodies accumulated along the walls of the tunnel. Layer after layer of crushed Frost Clone corpses formed a temporary casing, freezing the surrounding crust and preventing it from immediately collapsing inward.

It was a crude method but it worked. The clone drill continued upward, sacrificing hundreds, then thousands of bodies as Thalorien forced a path toward the surface. He remained at the center of the formation, continuously producing more clones while advancing through the temporary tunnel they created.

As the pressure around them gradually weakened, the pace of the drill increased. Finally, with the surface within reach, Thalorien accelerated the creation of his clones.

The living drill surged upward, tearing through the crust of the Lil’ Red Storm Realm. After being buried deep beneath the surface, the Snow Elven Crown Prince and his clone finally prepared to break free. Behind the living drill, they shot upward through the tunnel it had carved, bursting toward the surface like a powerful underground spring finally finding an outlet.

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