Chapter 1831: Aftermath (1) With the completion of Telmus’s ascension to Primordial, Rowan began to face new challenges. Every breath that Telmus took was siphoning an incredible amount of Ether from his Origin Land. He was losing two percent of his overall Ether Capacity every second, although Rowan was regenerating his Ether even more quickly than this consumption, he was dimly aware that Telmus was slowly getting stronger. If he did not handle this correctly, then he might not be able to hold multiple Primordials inside his Origin Land. Expanding his consciousness power to tackle the source of the problem, it did not take long for Rowan to discover the root of the issue and the methods he needed to use to stop the drain. The answer was almost instinctive, but Rowan wasn’t sure if he wanted to implement them. Ether was a powerful force, greater than Aether and Aetherium and reaching the potency of "Primordial Essence." A single drop of Ether was enough to transform the body and soul of an Old One and give them enough fuel to fight for billions of years. The entire race of Elythrii, who had built their society around Ether for hundreds of thousands of years, had not even consumed one-tenth of a drop of Ether in all this time. However, every time Telmus inhaled, he was consuming billions of drops of Ether; this number was so ridiculous that even a Primordial body should not be able to accommodate this amount of power, not because of its potency but the sheer volume. Rowan’s investigation had revealed that although Telmus was consuming billions of Ether droplets every second, all of that Ether was being transformed into Origin Power. This process was the final step in Rowan’s Ascension, which would transform his energy stores from Ether to Origin. Telmus Ascension to Primordial revealed another secret of the ninth-dimensional realm to Rowan and exposed one of the reasons Primordials hunt down Realities: the answer was Origin power. A Primordial needed Origin power to function and grow. Only a profound energy ot this level was able to support a being as powerful as a Primordial. Still, they could not create Origin power; that privilege was left to Realities. It was already amazing that Rowan, being technically a Reality at the eighth dimension, had enough energy stores to be able to withstand the consumption of Telmus, but he knew it was because of his ceaseless evolution and ascension. Back when he had less powerful energy stores with his Primordial Seas of Light and Darkness, a single breath from Telmus would have drained him dry. Still, even with his current energy stores, Telmus had just been born, and already there were warning signs. What would happen when he became stronger or when he entered battle? In battle, Rowan did not expect Telmus to be drawing in only a few billion drops of Ether but multiple trillions of drops with every moment... and a moment for a Primordial did not mean a single second; it could mean stretching a second to a trillion years. In battle, it was possible for Telmus to exhaust his entire storehouse of energy in a single second! Except Rowan chose to cut him off, he would not be able to endure feeding a Primordial. He did not intend to cut Telmus off from accessing his storehouse of energy, because that would invalidate his entire reason for creating a Primordial in the first place. A situation like this almost made Rowan want to laugh and cry at the same time. For a long time, one of his greatest advantages had always been his impossible storehouse of energy. Rowan had long believed that he would never have any reason to ever need more energy, and for the most part, this was the truth. With Ether, he was able to battle multiple Primordials and win while barely pushing the limits of his energy storehouse. However, this was because Ether was ideally suited for him, and he was able to effectively utilize it in a manner that no one else could match. However, Telmus was different; as a Primordial, Ether was too shallow to power the concept of Defiant Ascension. How would Rowan be able to solve this issue? Well, the first and most straightforward method would be to follow his instincts as a Reality and begin draining power from Limbo, transforming that power into Ether. Then, he would never have to depend solely on his energy regeneration, essentially giving him an infinite energy pool to draw upon. The instinct to do this was extremely strong. For Rowan to resist pulling energy from Limbo was similar to a mortal holding their breath. What made this sensation worse was that with the addition of Telmus, his body was craving more energy than it usually should. Even though Rowan knew his passive regeneration could more than withstand Telmus’s everyday needs, he could only suppress his instincts and not cancel it entirely. This method of drawing power from Limbo had its advantages, but its disadvantages were so immense that Rowan would be mad to consider it. Limbo was now corrupted. The death of so many Realities had led to its poisoning, and Rowan feared that so much Origin Force of Death and other negative Forces had corrupted it. If he began drawing power from Limbo, there was a chance that he would be able to filter out the impurities. In fact, this should be extremely possible, but Rowan knew that his filtration process would have its limits. When he began expending a lot of energy, he would not be able to keep his Ether pure enough, and corruption would be added to it. It would be similar to bringing the Origin of Death and whatever corruption that was in Limbo inside his Reality. Rowan did not think this corruption would be enough to kill him or irrevocably change his realm; he would still be able to purify it, only the process would not be worth the effort it took to collect this energy. The danger was not in corruption; what he feared was bringing the Primordials into his realm. To gain access to Eosah, the Primordials tricked her children into gazing into Limbo and brought the corruption of death into her Reality, giving them a doorway to inject a portion of their corrupted Origin Force into her Reality. If he chooses to allow the energy of Limbo to flow into him and makes a mistake of not entirely purifying it, then the Primordials would see a free road into entering his Reality. This would not do. When the Primordials infiltrated Eosah’s Reality, the number of Origin Force they had placed in their "Avatars" was small, except for Primordial Soul, who had other plans, but overall, they used a small amount of Origin Force in each Avatar, knowing it was more than enough for their plans. But if they gained access to Rowan’s Reality, their omniscience would instantly show them the truth of who he was, and Rowan knew that the Avatars they would send inside his Reality would not be the weak Primordials inside of Eosah’s Reality. The Primordials had spent a stupendous amount of time gathering power, and the number of Origin Force each of them controls must be at least in the tens of thousands... at least.