Chapter 1: Prologue: It’s Mine Now

Lloriel gently tapped the armrest of his resplendent throne with a finger, pretending to listen to the courtly talks currently going on. 

Twelve men debated eloquently within the court today. They were all high-rank leaders—the lowest rank man being planetlord—of a mid-sized federation of colonies and planets. What was the subject of their discussion? He couldn't be sure; to him, it didn't really matter. 

Politics. An excruciatingly boring game he left to the children.

If some being at a higher plane of existence heard his thoughts, they might've chuckled. The Genesis Beyond Origin's physique and face matched that of a thirteen-year-old child, after all.

He didn't quite understand why that was. Primevalight, in all his knowledge of the supernatural energy, shouldn't have that effect on his body. Naturally, his lack of comprehension resulted in him being unable to cure his unique form of dwarfism…

—Lloriel sighed for the umpteenth time. He'd definitely taken a ride on this train of thought today. How many hours has this been going on, again? He didn't know; he didn't want to know, so he further distracted himself.

‘Aya?’ he thought, and a cyan holographic image of a young woman with a perfectly symmetrical face materialized at the epicenter of his vision.

[Hello, Llor.] His virtual assistant smiled. [How may I be of service?]

Lloriel paused, subtly casting a glance at the still ongoing talks, then recalled his promise to Priscilla.

‘Please, Father,' she said moments before the meeting started, ‘at the very least, try not to ‘wander off’ during the meeting. Your audience, both in body and spirit, is well deserved by the men gathered today. They have served your Empire adamantly.’

At the time, he was so flustered by his most beloved daughter's visit that he agreed immediately. 

Aya tilted her head—it wasn't a sign of sentience, just one of the things it did to seem more sapient—as she awaited his command. 

‘Play Puppet,’ he thought, exerting a sliver of primevalight to the cybernetic enhancements fused to his brain. To voidspace with that unfilial brat!

[Command acknowledged.]

With a cold, mechanical voice, Aya systems began integration with the machinery and cells making up the Emperor's body. His eyes glazed for a split second, a warmth spreading from his chest as more primevalight poured from his heart; his consciousness shifting until it was completely separate from his original body.

Teal-colored wisps of energy only visible to him invaded his perception, his psyche finally solidifying into something akin to a ‘ghost’ or ‘spirit.’

Lloriel enjoyed the feeling of the atmospheric primevalight flowing through and against his very soul for a moment, then flew down; phasing through a few dozen thick floors to get to the underground laboratory beneath the court chamber.

The defenses put in place, for the most part, were ineffective against the wavelength of his primevalight. 

When he reached his lab, he slowly floated through another metal wall, arriving in a room lined with capsules—big and small—in a tight cylindrical formation.

Lloriel hummed, placing his hand against the smooth, glass-like surface of a container. 

A warm frisson ran down his metaphysical spine. Floating in a goo of bubbling bluish-white primevalight was a man; a masterpiece.

The man was about six feet tall, perhaps an inch or two taller than that. He had a body that seemed to be sculpted by a god—which it was—with cleanly cut lean muscles and shoulder-length platinum blonde hair. His empty eyes an azure shade, and his face… looked strikingly similar to that of the Emperor's, only matured.

As it should have, as the soulless body was a clone of the Lloriel. He pushed a storm of energy into the clone, and his consciousness jerked before snapping into a comatose state.

For an instant, darkness was all he knew. 

Then.

[Aya·002 booting to Llor·x1's neural network … completed.]

He heard a familiar voice.

[Syncing to the archives… completed.]

Lloriel blinked, vision hindered.

[Connecting to the nexus of the palace server… completed.]

[Discharging and removing liquid primevalight from Cloning Vat·x1… Error! Administrative access required to chang—]

‘Access Granted,’ he thought.

The liquified energy was quickly sucked from the chamber, and as soon as fresh air was introduced to his body, Lloriel broke out into a fit of coughs; vomiting out the blue goop that filled his lungs and guts.

He blanched one more time, walking out of the cloning facility and into a smaller, sterile white room. 

‘Aya, Clothes,’ Lloriel thought, and he felt his nanosac—an artificial organ attached to his lower spine—drain a portion of his primevalight, spilling a myriad of nanobots into his bloodstream. Some of the atom-sized robots then escaped his body, quickly clumping up together to wrap around his skin as a loose-fitting black-gold robe.

Lloriel slowly moved to the lifebed in the corner of the room, then paused, glancing at the frail-looking woman suspended in the pod-like device.

The woman's, Amara's, eyes slowly pried open. In her sickly state, even that seemed to be an arduous task. Nonetheless, her pale-purple lips were adorned by a ghost of a smile at the sight of her visitor.

“...Son…?” a hollow voice reverberated from the speakers on the side of the lifebed. 

“Mom,” Lloriel said softly, “you're up.”

Amara hummed yes. “I had a visitor a few minutes before you entered…” a daunting pause that made the blood running through his veins turn frigid. “And you know how… hard it is for me to sleep after stirring awake.”

He could only nod meekly. 

“It was Priscilla.”

“...Huh?” Lloriel said, breaking out of his thoughtful daze. 

“...We had quite the pleasant conversation…” Amara continued.

The smooth white floor beside him contorted, morphing into a chair. 

Lloriel took the seat, raising a brow. “You did?” he asked, voice dubiously playful. “I would've thought her only reason for coming was to drop those old cronies on my lap.”

Amara chortled faintly. "I can't tell if you're seriously bashing that child, but… I feel I need to defend my granddaughter."

"Hah. A rebellious little street rat like her is undeserving of your support,” Lloriel muttered, smiling. 

"...That child is just…" Amara was saying, "...a little stubborn is all. Just like you."

Lloriel stifled a laugh at that.

***

With a peaceful expression on her face, Amara fell asleep. He didn't know whether that was good or bad for her. Sometimes, his mother could stay up years at a time despite the pain of exhaustion, other times she'd fall into a coma for decades. Her body was also in a state of decay, and yet, at the same time, her heart did not stop beating nor did her brain rot away.

The only thing Lloriel knew for certain about her condition was the fact she was immortal, and that the cause of this terrifying ailment was probably because she gave birth to a thing such as him.

Still, not once did he ever overhear this woman call out for death, neither did she ever show any form of repulsion toward him. The one who caused her such an agonizing fate. She loved him wholly and was proud of all he had accomplished.

You are reading story Mana: A Key to the Omniverse at novel35.com

Lloriel gritted his teeth. He knew pain. More than most would even dare to fathom. But he was born a god, she was only a frail woman. A fragile human. 

How much agony has she been enduring for the last twenty centuries?

He'd tried everything…so why? Why couldn't he save her?

A deep ping broke him out of his brooding.

[Aya·001 sent a message. Open, yes or no?]

Lloriel let out a hot, misty red breath. Without him noticing, he seemed to have raptured some of his blood vessels from the deep stress. ‘View message.'

[The meeting is finished for today, however, it ended at an impasse and will continue tomorrow.

Also, it seems Lady Priscilla requires your audience. What shall I do?]

Sighing, Lloriel pressed his will against the threads of primevalight connected to his original body, then violently warped space-time with the same energy. 

There was a ripple in the middle of the room, followed by a dull burst of bluish light.

"I know you aren't really my father!" Priscilla was saying, a slender finger against the shorter other… self of Lloriel.

It was only when the spatial tremor fully settled and the dancing cyan burst of light vanished that the rowdy woman seemed to notice what happened. 

She turned her head to the 'real' Lloriel, her lips pursed. "...Aya…you…bitc…"

"I thought you had urgent business."

Priscilla pouted, glaring cheekily at her father with vibrant amber eyes. She, like most humans, was a creature of beauty. Her thick locks of curly hair were a golden color, falling wavily to her lower back. She wore tight-fitting leathery pants, black boots, and a shirt that didn't reach her midriff, exposing the reddish-black tattoos marking her upper body.

"Well?"

Finally, after staring at him for a while, she sighed. 

"I did…but, here," Priscilla tossed a black, fist-sized cube towards him. "Take a look at this."

Effortlessly fishing the strange box out of the air, Lloriel observed the device for a moment, then shot her a quizzical look. 

"...Father's Day is still months away," he said when she didn't explain herself. "Isn't it a little too early for you to be handing me trashy trinkets?"

Priscilla snorted softly. "But every day is God Emperor Day, isn't it?" She retorted. "And no. I don't know what that is either… it resembles old gen storage cubes, though. Even the plug port is identical to what the records show belong to those devices."

"But?" he probed.

"But," Priscilla said, "It doesn't react to any energy I feed into it. Almost as if it rejects it."

"Maybe it's broken."

"It's not. Though it is a few thousand years old, the metal seems to have withstood the tides of time," she explained. "I ran all the tests. Not once did I find any malfunctioning hardware."

Lloriel sighed, gesturing for her to follow him. "So? What would you have me do?"

"Simple. Inject your primevalight into the—" 

"Did you not try using—"

"I did," Priscilla hissed, going through a doorway, her steps weightless. "But, you should know, no amount of mechanical distillation could make primevalight as pure as that which pumps through your body."

"This again?" Lloriel mumbled, entering his office. He gently plopped down on the cushioned seat behind his hardwood desk. "Your obsession will be the end of me."

Priscilla leaned over the table, flushed. "This is not that!" She protested. "This metal—"

"Cleavage," Lloriel softly said, awkwardly looking away from the ample bosom suddenly in front of his face.

She squeaked, stepping back in a flash, arms over her chest; her face tinting a deeper shade of red.

…This child… is she forgetting who used to wash the dirt off her body?

"Anyway," he said, not bothering to entertain such thoughts. "This is hardly the first time we discovered a new element."

"B-, but this is from a time before the Great Expansion," Priscilla uttered meekly. "Please just try…?"

Lloriel shrugged, forcefully shoving his finger into the power port. His fingernail peeled away as he squeezed into the tiny opening, and his flesh was split, spilling fresh blood. Nanobots healed the wound, changing the disfigured stump of a finger so it could properly connect to the port.

There was a soft click as Lloriel pushed his plug-like finger deeper into the port, then he poured primevalight into the device.

The thing hummed, dim streaks of purple light streaking across the surface of the cube, interlocking to form a complex geometric sigil that seemed to contain all shapes possibly imaginable.

Lloriel frowned. Like that one time he had to fill a dying planet's oceans, his primevalight just kept flowing into the device. Before folding open, turning into a thin,glass-surfacedd rectangular…sheet? 

"...this is a smartphone…?" Priscilla whispered, regaining her cool at some point. She deflated, then perked up. "...How come it reacted to your power, Father?"

Shrugging, he picked up the smartphone, toying with it until he was able to turn the device on. It took a few seconds, but, eventually, the screen showed a locked screen.

"Well, am I correct to assume you won't be of further help?" 

He nodded, tapping at the screen curiously. "It's interesting. Can I keep it?"

"Eh…? But… It's mine," Priscilla said, then just sighed. "Keep it. But I'll need a replica."

'Aya,' he thought, leaving that to his virtual assistant, going back to prodding the smartphone. The AI instructing his nanobots to recreate the device.

Priscilla grabbed the copy and turned heel. "Be well, Your Eminence."

"You too."

The giant doors closed automatically as she left.

"Ah?" Lloriel breathed, suddenly taking notice of the two apps at the tip of his finger. "Anime DLR and…Tachiyomi? What the hell…"

Why were these two apps specifically faintly radiating his aura? Wait…could all the primevalight he forced into the smartphone have fuse with it? But then, why is it only those two applications that are—

"This isn't twenty questions," he said to himself, clicking the Anime DLR app. "Things'll be obvious once the first step is taken."

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