Chapter 1661: Festering Madness Calling his serpents into the fourth layer of the void was not a simple affair. Though they still shared some similar traits with his dimensional flesh, they were now Origin Beasts, and Rowan could not just suppress them into lower-dimensional states. Well, he could, but it would not be easy, especially when he was inside Oblivion itself. With his serpents all returned to his Origin Land, his connection with them was virtually cut off. If he wanted to bring them here, he would have to find a different method of not just contacting them, but slipping them through four layers of the void without alerting any outside party. The first challenge Rowan would have to pass was contacting the serpents, which turned out not to be much of a challenge at all, especially when it came to someone with his consciousness power. Just because he could not contact his serpents did not mean they were not connected. He was like a blind man who could not see his limbs, but if needed, he could move them. Granted, in his case, his limbs could be said to be in another universe, and he would have to bring them to him while crossing them through countless dangers and pitfalls along the way, and he would be doing all of that while blind. Rowan could not even sense his serpents, but he knew that if he willed them to move from the Origin Land, they would. This was a connection not even Oblivion would be able to break. The first challenge had an answer, the second was far more trickier. He could move his serpents, but how could he allow them to enter the realm of Oblivion? Rowan could not allow them to blast through the deeper layer of the void; doing so would announce to all that he was able to assimilate with space and was going after its origin. Yet he could not leave this place until he consumed these bones. Oblivion was different from the first three layers; it was vast and held closely to its secrets. Just because he was able to find the Maw of Oblivion the first time he entered into this space, it did not mean he would be able to see it again if he left. Granted, with the power of Serathis, it might be possible for him to reach this place, but that would mean exposing a different higher-dimensional power into this space, and that would undoubtedly draw attention to his presence. Rowan brainstormed furiously on this dilemma. His usual method of folding space, time, or even dimensions would not work; Oblivion would resist all of these methods. If it could hold a Primordial bound inside of it, then Rowan was joking to himself if he believed that he would be able to break this barrier. After a while, he knew that he was going nowhere with this and decided to focus on entirely comprehending the realm of Oblivion. Rowan chose not to move from this spot and finish his comprehension. This should delay the time needed to finish his comprehension, but not by much; he figured that it should add a year or two to the total time required, which was all he had to sacrifice. He gave himself five years to finish comprehending Oblivion, and if he did not succeed in that period, he would leave this place and plunge deeper to rapidly finish his comprehension. If there were ever to be a solution to his problem, then he would only gain it if he finished comprehending Oblivion. A thought occurred to him, and he sighed, not expecting much from it, he called out to the space around him. "I am a successor to the Ouroboros Serpent. My body remains outside, and I want to bring it into Oblivion. Can you help me with this?" There was a silence for a long while, and Rowan was about to close his eyes to enter comprehension, when her voice entered his mind again, "You already know the answer to your question. You are refusing to see it." "Surely you do not mean..." Rowan closed his eyes and ignored the voice, but the thoughts in his head kept returning to the answer that he was supposed to know. Surely it would not get to that level, at least not yet. ® Deep in the Origin Land, where no light could touch and none of Rowan’s children could reach even if they were given an infinite amount of time to find it, six gigantic serpents the size of universes slumbered. In the depths of the Origin Land, the flow of time was like a storm, and a single second in Reality could be as long as ten thousand years, and when the storm of time blew especially fiercely, a single second could stretch to a million years. Not even immortals could live in a place like this, for the time flux would drive them mad and collapse their souls. But this spot was the right place for the serpents to sleep, for such harsh winds of time were nourishing to their spirits and bodies, and they enhanced their endless growth. The greatest nutrients for the Origin Serpents were time because, unlike most creatures in existence, they could grow in strength without any known limit. As long as they had a source of sustenance and enough time, they would continue growing in strength. This meant an endless increase in their attributes, from strength to agility to durability, and even their soul and spirit would keep growing stronger. A normal Ouroboros Serpent, even the first Primogenitor serpent, would have a limit to their growth, but the Origin Ouroboros shared Rowan’s trait of limitless potential, and with the ease with which they could grow stronger, it was impossible to determine their future capabilities. In any realm or Reality, such a power was enough to crush all things and dominate all life; however, for Rowan, it was becoming hollow, due to his incredible talents and the sort of enemies that he faced. An endless strength was undoubtedly powerful, but it wasn’t very meaningful against a Primordial whose existence had surpassed the realm of strength, not unless Rowan could bring these serpents to a limit of strength in the future that would break all concept of what it meant to be strong. Even if that were possible, Rowan shuddered to think how much time would have to pass for his serpents to become truly invincible in all Realities. It was a hollow sort of victory in his heart when he acknowledged that even if he dies, if his serpents were able to survive in the future and keep out of harm’s way, then there would be a time, and this was inevitable, when they would be able to eat Primordials like snacks. Not even Rowan could determine how strong they would become or what this strength would look like in the future. But for now, Rowan knew that the greatest strengths of his serpents did not lie in their physique or soul, but in their talents, Wills, and in this case, the power he had begun to harvest from the previous Primordial Beasts. Although only two had consumed the essence of the previous Primordial Beasts, the six serpents were all connected, and they shared in the improvements gained from the evolution of their bloodlines. In this manner, all the serpents would share the traits in a limited manner that was supposed to be enjoyed by only one of them. Divus and Bahamut now had a name, and they were presently the strongest two out of the six serpents, and they were currently at the center of a massive coil of flesh that would have made an Old One go insane at the sight of their immensity. Divus was the first to awaken, and the space around them shuddered as the storm of time surrounding the massive coil of snakes was shattered. Her head emerged from the coil, revealing her scales that were not made from flesh and bone but the iridescent membrane of dying universes. The Ouroboros Serpents had firmly inherited Rowan’s trait of destruction, and their bodies were evolving along that direction. It emerged from the coil of its brethren, and due to its size, she would appear to be moving slowly from afar, but only with careful observation would the ridiculous speed of her movements be revealed. Hovering above, her full glory was revealed to all of creation, and it was a thing of horror and beauty. Each of her scales was a swirling nebula, each ridge a supercluster collapsing inward. Her body, coiled in a perfect infinite loop, was shifting through space and time, sending shockwaves that would inevitably travel to the ends of the Origin Land. Divus tongue, forked tendrils of antimatter, tasted the void around her, detecting a smell that had dragged them from their eternal slumber as they awaited the summoning of their father. Slowly, her eyes opened. Like ruptures opening in space time, her eyes were Abyssal black, and rimmed with the light of annihilation. These eyes showed such pure rage and madness that if Rowan had known, he might not have considered reaching out for them. The instincts of the Origin Ouroboros had become that of protection, and watching their father be killed in front of their eyes had triggered madness that could not be described, and in all this time they had slept, without the intervention of Rowan, that rage had festered and grown. Her movements began to stir the others awake, and they opened their eyes one by one.