Almost 12 hours of discussions passed by the time they finally concluded on a set of possible methods for escape. The least suitable methods utilised almost 5 different parts from objects all around the large workspace, and as such were incredibly disliked by the pair. Travelling a couple kilometres wasn’t impressive for either of the two, but in this situation it might as well be impossible.

They settled on taking a straight path in either direction, with a focus on Akevorax combining parts for a stun effect. The half-built lightning element devices made it unbelievably easy for him to create something which even a supreme tier would struggle with momentarily.

In terms of direct offences, several options appeared viable but a critical problem came with the schematics added on. One pleasant thing was discovering how their captor decided to follow these plans almost perfectly, with changes only made when material inefficiencies shined through. Therefore they could reasonably assume that everything worked and detached as they discussed… But that didn’t suddenly make it easy.

Like he realised long ago, these advanced devices relied on natural properties to merge the various components together, allowing energies to transfer from part to part with minimal arrays between them!

Was it easy to rip apart two bricks held together by cement?!

Of course not! And these were supreme tier, in what world could the two of them pull away parts merged like this?

And so, even through all this, methods showed up throughout. Both of them learnt the inner-workings of every allocated device intimately, whilst planning a path which gave enough time for deconstruction on the way to another. By the time they finished, almost 30 hours had passed since Akevorax first arrived. Adret’s position hardly changed in regards to breaking past what held her back, but he ignored that in favour of the greater plan at hand.

He laid it out into a five-step plan, and as the potion refinement continued even now, he decided there was no benefit in waiting…

The first step was also the least dangerous; destroying the array.

His eyes opened and Origin Force within him moved, not at all to the surprise of Alkuthuzen who continued his potion creation. Speaking with a hint of amusement, “So you’re finally going to try to escape? As fun as it might be to challenge you, I’m still not an idiot like your old foes.”

Akevorax’s body froze in place. His connection to every coloured dimension cut off instantly, his bloodline turned sluggish, his Mind and Soul both failed to react when he called upon them, and even his divinity struggled to fight against a suppressive force. Below him the full extent of a supreme tier array activated, covering him in a pillar of white light which somehow solidified into a crystal, trapping him within.

Much like a bug trapped in amber… But how stupid would it be to act without having a full counter to the array?

At the spirit’s behest, Dimension Force slipped out from his body and instantly locked down the array’s golden attribute. With control over divinity nullified, his own surged in power and instantly took a hostile attitude to the array beneath. He didn’t even need to truly control it, as soon as his spirit enhanced it fully, the blindly raging divinity willingly ran amok in the partially countered array. He directed it to core array components one after another, allowing the full extent of a supreme tier power to counter the array’s own.

But without any specific counters to the golden divinity, the white crystals condensed of light cracked and shattered. Akevorax walked out of the array without much struggle, staring at the captor who accidentally allowed a potion to fail.

“Evolutions, how foolish to assume otherwise. Why wouldn’t you be smart enough to abuse that… I applaud you nonetheless, but you seem to forget where you are.” The situation evidently shocked him, but not enough to inflict any real worry. Following which, hundreds of arrays immediately flashed to life along the kilometres of walls in the main lab, of which he barely identified a fraction at a glance.

Not that Akevorax gave him that attention, as a headache already appeared at the thought of what approached. He spoke tiredly, “You’re really going to need to behave or I’ll destroy both of you.” For once, he truly confused the masterful dragon, and just as an insurance, Alkuthuzen spread his senses far and wide to ensure no one else approached in the meantime.

But as he very clearly noted nothing in any direction. Nothing hidden in less common dimensions, and no stealth methods used to blend in at any place.

Then the dragon took out a vial of blood and drank it? He stared at the blood but found very little about its internal composition. Akevorax swallowed it too soon. Given the confidence exercised by such a young and trapped dragon, he chose to believe there wasn’t any sort of bluff and that he truly had a way to escape here and now.

Even worse, direct action right now left him wide open to an attack. If the Clan Lord came herself, he certainly wouldn’t be able to stop her entry. How many supreme tiers could she bring alongside her as well? On top of that, even now he couldn’t tell what gave the ice cream dragon so much confidence.

But before destroying a ton of valuable objects with offensive arrays, Alkuthuzen first suppressed space with his Soul and activated some more sealing types on the walls. Sealing the kid resolved one major threat at least.

However, these still couldn’t act through the Dimension Force and divinity working together. He never built the damn things to fight off demigods, the last thing any researcher wanted was a pantheon coming after them! Meanwhile, most Primordius ranks only gained Domination Force through their evolution, leading him to find it wholly unfair…

The hypocrisy was not lost on him.

And this began Akevorax’s second stage of escape, a part he very aptly called Voidflames.

Layers of Origin Force coated the active, angered divinity and Raccelline’s blood, mana attached to provide the force necessary in this combination.

A purple crystal came out of his storage at the same time and released a wisp of invisible flame right into his body. Another action which made no sense to the avid researcher that instantly recognised Divinus-wrecking flames, however, this action gave him a chance.

As divinity fought against fire, and the Auric Spirit now focused on encasing the two in Origin Force, the numerous arrays all over activated without concern and trapped Akevorax rapidly. One by one sealing his senses, abilities, and powers to every extent, except the ones which mattered most in this circumstance. Divinity and the transparent energies. It sure as hell wasn’t the safest method, and became downright worrisome as control over mana immediately waned, but he found the two powers significantly less resistive this time round. So much so that just by controlling the raw Origin Force directly with the spirit, he pushed the two together!

Just before they merged fully, he moved the entire mass of confused energies away from his body and finished the combination in the air around him.

Pitch-black flames burst outwards at almost uncontrollable speeds in front of Akevorax, himself and the spirit barely able to divert the forceful and chaotic expansion to the sides. Meanwhile, what rushed towards Adret had to be diverted as well, on top of trapping Alkuthuzen. He knew it would be hard, but hadn’t expected this degree of trouble.

As soon as the black flames with no end enveloped him, the sealing effects lost their source of power and crumbled away under what divinity remained within him. All his powers returned completely.

Without hesitation, his pocket watch activated with a fifty-fold acceleration over a whole second. The world slowed immensely, with the flames now moving at a reasonable pace with which Adret’s path opened up. Where the flames travelled, cracks of nothingness formed, cutting through the floor like blowing away dust. The array beneath her broke in an instant and the flames rushed for the final target.

Alkuthuzen’d been so focused on the ‘true threat’ with actual ability to threaten him this whole time, yet now he was forced to accept something entirely illogical. No one in their right mind could look at those two powers and think a combination of them ended like this.

Without time to grab any materials from his lab, a moment’s hesitation appeared on top of the purely curious time he spent observing whatever flames Akevorax created. It didn’t immediately occur to him that a concept like voidflames could ever exist, and then confused himself as they clearly shouldn’t. Much like the young dragon back then, he was coming to terms with something so illogical that it just broke common sense.

But the reason he hesitated was because the flames never attacked, instead they diverted suspiciously and encased him.

If dangerous, he’d have teleported away in an instant, but now encased by the wall of endless dark, he found it manageable. For some reason, he repulsed such a creation with mana alone! It cost him huge amounts every second, but so long as he pushed away with full force, the flames couldn’t approach him! Unfortunately, the small orb of intact space within a field of void blocked off all sight, senses, and routes to escape. His lab might be completely ruined by the damn dragon after that too! Years of research on top of decades of wealth lost in an instant!

But parts of it could still be recovered, and the arrays also worked automatically…

If only any of those still existed outside of that black orb. From the moment he trapped their original captor, Akevorax forced the flames to snake around the entire room, his actions combined with the Auric Spirit’s impressive control instantly destroyed every single array threatening to the pair.

In truth, that hadn’t at all gone to plan. He fumbled up horribly at the beginning as all those arrays on the wall threatened him into a slight panic. Rather than immediately, and fluidly, swallow the blood and flames at once, he gave Alkuthuzen too much time to think and react.

If they hadn’t assumed the true threat came from outside, those voidflames would’ve hurt him and Adret a lot more…

With every array destroyed, he turned around and teleported towards the tables nearby. With every flash of movement, he picked up another metal object and pulled apart the desired component before landing on the final one. In total grabbing a total of 8 parts to create 3 devices.

The first two made use of 2 parts each, very simply a powerful store of lightning elements and applicable great runes alongside something to discharge it instantly as he desired.

“The flames are still going on? Really?” He asked out loud to his spirit. As he created the three weapons with ease, alongside Adret finishing her own pair of items on the other side of the lab, she looked over with confusion as Akevorax spoke.

It quickly responded in his mind, ‘Flames a lot more stable. Currently outside of control’

“Where did they go exactly?”

‘Lunar realm’

That didn’t sound good… Hopefully the planar will didn’t hold it against him. Not that he could do anything about it now, he’d have to try and ask the Nexus about it later. But since the flames still existed and rampaged on, it hadn’t bothered to start a repair process. With an unexpected amount of time, he took this as an opportunity to freely loot Alkuthuzen’s lab. With more teleportation, he threw every table’s experiment into his dimensional storage, after which the flames still continued on.

With so much spare time, even Adret realised something went awry and took time to grab whatever lay near her. He reactivated the pocket watch to grant a few more seconds of acceleration and dipped into the various attached rooms to see what he could further obtain.

On the way he even asked, “Are you still bound by Nexus rules, or can we talk about Exeters a bit now?”

[This has been a very fun lesson for both of us. On the plus side, it seems the enslavement method used on the lunar realm has been removed… We can only imagine why]

Well that was certainly a way to answer. Though it didn’t stop him from asking a small request anyway, “When you repair space, can you create a small gap for me to fire this through?”

He motioned unnecessarily to the white crystal slab with flashes of black lightning arcing within it. On one side of this almost foot-long object was a long nozzle with some sort of rubbery sack halfway along the metal ejector.

[We can give you two seconds. It’s so much of a mess that we have to work fast]

“Two seconds is enough. I’m still trying to figure out why this was so stable. Last time it barely survived a few seconds,” he posed the question purely out of curiosity, but received no answer. Hopefully he could figure it out soon without any more experimentation.

Not long after, a confirmation of the voidflame’s collapse finally arrived as some divinity surged back into him from god knows where.

With its removal, the random blossoms of black void closed up as space returned to usual under the Nexus’ powers, but none of the matter from before remained. Floor, decorations, arrays, and walls failed to return.

The plan’s third step began immediately, named Completely Stunned.

As the major region of void, layer upon layer of the ball quickly wore away, but the Nexus indeed promised a gap to attack. Just in front of the dragon and his makeshift creations, a small hole no larger than a coin drilled into the ball. On his cue, black lightning rushed out of the crystal and gathered within the rubber sack as an intermediary space. Flexed and even bulging, the grey rubber sack reached its limit as lightning rushed out and escaped the nozzle. A black beam coated in arcs of similarly coloured lightning fired into the nearly-finished hole. A portion vanished into the void as it arrived too early, but this ensured it was ready just in time as that last fraction disappeared.

From within, Alkuthuzen’s body froze in mid-air as lightning elements rushed into him at unfathomable speeds. By the time his half-exhausted pool of mana reacted, the elements already travelled from a spot on his side throughout all four legs and wings!

While the huge crystal supported that beam resplendently well, it very clearly drained about a quarter of its power source every second. By the time it was half-empty, the orb of void finally vanished entirely with Alkuthuzen’s full body revealed, static in the air as he focused on the tiresome struggle at hand. And yet he smiled. Looking over towards Akevorax with mockery in his gaze.

Not that it stopped the young adult dragon from throwing over a spherical bomb-like object after injecting a couple parts with mana.

Unlike the highly rudimentary beam, Adret titled this a psycho-shock bomb. Using a refined and condensed version of that crystal slab combined with a psychic wave generator, highly destructive lightning power agitated psychic elements into an… interesting combination. The original spherical device wasn’t really designed to create these waves as well, but when activated in a certain way, did so anyway.

And perhaps the best part was in its irony. The device only created these psychic waves as a wide-range soothing option!

One after another, the device built entirely from supreme tier materials released an unfiltered expulsion onto Akuthuzen’s Mind Palace. Not some childish Adept or Master Mind Palace, but all the way at Cornem, and yet the attack of so many great runes combined with elements put him on a precarious edge.

Not because of the lightning or psychic stunning effects… But because he couldn’t help himself from laughing at the sight of what else the two put together against all expectations. He couldn’t currently escape from the next step of their plan. What annoyed him most is that he made sure to take the first response at every step. He never once underestimated the young dragon, but even so, where did it all even go wrong?

How did they know what parts to use for these makeshift weapons? How did Akevorax know to create those black flames leaving void in its wake? How were those flames even possible!?

Even as he smiled at the two dragons, thoughts never stopped as to how he lost so unbecomingly. However, while none of those questions ever received an answer, it reminded him of a conversation from a day prior. Where he eagerly talked about something which drove him to do all this in the first place…

And he couldn’t help but laugh on the inside. Laughing at both himself, but also at how that kidnapped kid lied so casually. And then laughing at himself some more.

The two threw their last few objects towards him, initiating step four then and there, Fatal Detonation.

Akevorax created a tunnel outside the sub-realm through its utterly demolished dimensional walls which the Nexus kindly rebuilt into a barebones form. But as the lines of simplified space warped rapidly, the two of them clearly heard Alkuthuzen’s Soul roar out constantly. It tried to lock down space, but soul power alone lacked the force to overcome Akevorax’s spatial bloodlines. He didn’t give up so easily though, utilising every spare means to trap the two dragons with him.

An Exalted Soul and advanced True Will released a new pressure and wore down on both younger dragons. It was no different that day standing before all five elders and their True Wills, but the child made of ice cream pushed through and knocked a frozen Adret through the tunnel.

That dragon’s laughter still rang through his Soul as they escaped, carried along the spatial tunnel whether he liked it or not. That laughter became the perfect signal

When it cut off suddenly, he threw Adret out of the tunnel, into a blank space between planes, and joined her. With both divinity and faded Auric Spirit, he tightly gripped her body, even if it broke scales and forced her to bleed. Hefty chains created from some random mithril tier metal quickly encased the two of them, tying them together closer…

And then he fell unconscious, in the final moments of thought only barely catching sight of a pinprick of light in the darkness. Step four ended successfully.