235: Chapter 235 Oort—Cloud

The demonic dragon Durin is a new life created by several witches using the Durin from reality as a blueprint, but in Teyvat, fate is linked to one's name—that is, one's self-identity.

For example, Childe Tartaglia; his name, Ajax, is the name of a legendary hero. After inheriting this name, he fell into the Abyss just like the hero and became a disciple of Skirk.

Since this Durin inherited the name of the demonic dragon Durin, he naturally must also bear his fate.

At this moment, as Durin's heart merged with the building-block dragon, the blocks actually began to grow blood vessels as if they had come to life.

"Thump, thump."

Every beat of the heart pulsed blood carrying Abyss Power throughout the building-block dragon's body. As blood vessels spread across its form, the block dragon gradually lost its color, finally turning into an evil dragon composed of rotting flesh.

The moment the evil dragon appeared, madness began to seize Durin's mind, causing this young fairy-tale creature to start converging toward the version of Durin from official history.

The evil dragon shook its heavy head, its crimson gaze shooting straight toward ORT.

"Roar!!!" The evil dragon Durin suddenly lunged forward, slamming its decaying body into ORT.

The dragon's head collided with the silver-white behemoth. Although their sizes were comparable, ORT did not move an inch; instead, many of the bones covered in rotting flesh on Durin's body shattered.

With [Anti-Hero] activated, Durin's consciousness, which had been eroded by the Abyss, suddenly cleared significantly. When it looked up, it saw ORT raising his scythe high.

The scythe swung down; if this strike hit, Durin would be split in two in an instant.

However, a sudden breeze blew through the air. Dvalin descended from the sky, using his sharp claws to hook onto Durin's ribs and pull him out of the attack's range.

ORT's scythe missed, but the wind blade generated by the swing's massive mass still sliced straight out, cutting through several floating islands on the distant horizon in succession.

On that floating island stood three divine statues. The statues were shattered by the strike, and as the stone fragments fell into the silent sea of clouds, they reflected three full moons.

On the other side, Dvalin tossed Durin aside, looked at his own claws, and wiped them on a nearby floating island with great disdain.

"Thank you, beautiful dragon." Contrary to his disgusting appearance, the voice coming from Durin's mouth was that of a clean-sounding youth.

Dvalin and Wendy were stunned. Wendy laughed and patted Dvalin's head, while Dvalin simply gave a cold snort and ignored Durin.

Confused by Dvalin's behavior, Durin turned and followed them.

On the dragon's back, Wendy tried attacking ORT with wind blades, but as expected, they had no effect. He then began trying to use wind blades to slice up the floating islands and fire the entire islands at ORT like bullets.

With elemental abilities ineffective, the four massive beings returned once again to the most primitive of melee tactics.

If the Seven Sovereigns were at full strength, they could indeed use power capable of cleaving the earth, but that was under the premise of being able to utilize their full power.

Now, they were growing weaker with every exchange, while ORT remained overwhelmingly strong.

The silver behemoth roared at the sky, raising its two scythes high. Every slash could traverse the sea of clouds, shattering countless more floating islands. The terrifying shockwaves from the blades nearly crossed the spatial barriers to strike the Star-Rail Royal City.

These were no longer attacks that could be taken head-on. Wendy saw clearly from the sky; every strike from the current ORT likely possessed the power of the Musou no Hitotachi.

That was a slash that, after cutting down Orobashi, could still bisect one-sixth of Japan. It was absolutely not something they, who were being constantly weakened, could withstand now.

Witch A, Alice, stood on a floating magic circle. A magic wand resembling a conductor's baton appeared in her hand, and every wave of it left behind a trail like a cluster of stars.

With several "pop-pop-pops," several Dodoco dolls appeared by her side. At first glance, they all looked similar, but the expressions in their eyes and the hats on their heads were all different.

They were substitute dolls Alice had made using magic, allowing each witch to descend here in place of their distant bodies.

"Oh?" The witch wearing the blue hat looked at ORT with some surprise. "This child has grown so big? Children really do grow up fast."

"Wait, this is growing way too fast, isn't it? Didn't you guys tell me last time that he was still a little kid who only came up to your waist? How long has it been? Has it even been half a year? He's grown this much—he must be seven or eight hundred meters tall now. And to go from a human child to such a huge... bug? That's crossing species boundaries. No matter how you think about it, it's just too strange..."

"Nicole, calm down. You didn't listen properly last time; the human form is just that child's transformation."

The several witches began to chatter and discuss, while Alice, for once, played the role of the one applying the brakes.

"My dear sisters, we can't just keep watching like this. If you're interested in the child, I can take him to visit you later, but if we wait any longer, our good friends really will all turn into humans!" Alice reminded everyone.

But the Nicole doll suddenly blurted out: "Eh? Isn't that a good thing?"

"...Nicole Rehne, you really are..."

"Nicole, no matter what, you can't put your personal preferences before the safety of the world..."

"Nicole, you shouldn't repress yourself so much normally; you could try interacting with humans more."

"Stop talking about it already!!!!!!"

The nonsensical clamor finally ended with Nicole's wail.

The next moment, the witches took their positions in the corresponding directions. The giant emblem of the Hexenzirkel appeared above the entire sea of clouds as the witches began to perform their respective duties.

The Realm of a Thousand Stars originally belonged to Witch O. Although the usage rights had been transferred to Huo Xi, the witches naturally had backdoors for a hidden area like Simulanka.

Golden threads fell from the sky, connecting everyone present. As each person was incorporated into the network, everyone's stats rose once.

Power surged within Zhongli and the others, who had been at a complete disadvantage. Although it couldn't make up for their previous depletion, they were no longer at risk of being instantly defeated.

"Power is surging?" After several rounds of maneuvering with ORT, although Durin's strength was continuously weakening, the pollution from the Abyss had almost dissipated. He was now a giant dragon with purple skin.

Wendy also looked at the surrounding airspace. More floating islands were being created; clearly, these were the ammunition the witches had made for them.

The next moment, countless star rails reappeared across the entire sky. It was Alice and Barbeloth performing some kind of stellar magic.

The Dodoco with the blue hat shone with the radiance of the stars: "Simulanka was originally modeled after Teyvat. While the world cannot define the fate of Descenders, not being able to define it doesn't mean we can't observe it!

Next, I will attempt to anchor its orbit of fate within this fairy-tale world by bestowing upon it an identity from a fairy tale!"

What Barbeloth intended to do was quite straightforward, much like how Huo Xi created a new ORT by hypothesizing his own possibilities.

Barbeloth was directly restricting ORT's saint graph by forcibly observing ORT's existence within the fairy-tale kingdom of Simulanka.

For example, it was as if the original world was a two-terabyte hard drive. When ORT was born, he might have only been a few hundred megabytes. Through the continuous efforts of Zhongli and the others, he was fed until he reached a gigabyte. With a bit more feeding, he might grow to a terabyte.

Barbeloth, however, was going to restrict him to the Simulanka 'hard drive,' which had a limit of only one gigabyte. This way, ORT could not continue to grow; any further growth would only result in an error.

ORT looked up, and countless stars actually began falling toward him.

Silver threads connected the stars, turning into puppet strings to bind him, seeking to anchor him in this fairy-tale world and use the rules of a small world to constrain his power.

He tried to struggle, but these threads were not magic and could not be touched. No matter how sharp his blades were, they could not cut these threads.

However, as the orbit of fate continued to take shape, the expression on the previously confident Barbeloth's face froze again.

When those stellar threads wrapped around ORT, they accidentally passed through the exterior to the interior. They inadvertently entangled a pinky finger of the sleeping Huo Xi, who served as the soul.

That was a soul of an Extraterrestrial Demon, born from the narrative layer.

"Alice, your ideas are always unrestrained, but your intelligence work really needs to improve," Barbeloth said resentfully.

What was reflected in the hydro astrolabe was not a pure Descender.

Rather, it was an Enemy from Beyond the Universe—wrapped in the skin of a Descender that had been stripped off.

ORT suddenly stopped his movements, looked up at the sky, and slowly raised his two scythes.

"What is it doing?" Nicole asked.

Alice also shook her head in confusion. What was it doing raising its hands? Surrendering?

Then, ORT's two scythes crossed and suddenly struck against each other, sending sparks flying.

And those firework-like sparks did not fall downward; instead, they flew straight toward the sky.

The sparks were like a game of Snake, devouring all the stellar threads in the air before turning into starlight themselves.

"It's overwriting my technique?!" Barbeloth questioned. "Monsters from beyond the universe really aren't that easy to deal with."

A crimson galaxy appeared in the night sky. Simultaneously, the Servant status panel in Alice's eyes began to update.

Text suddenly began to appear in the blank space originally reserved for the Noble Phantasm, and Alice's expression became increasingly vivid.

"No, Barbeloth, it's not overwriting what you did, but replacing it... The good news is that your method was effective. It indeed lacked the ability to resist the world's suppression before, and so—it has begun to evolve. It is hand-crafting its own Noble Phantasm!"

If there were no means of counter-attack, it would create one. What appeared in the sky was not the real starry sky, but a celestial body simulated by ORT using his hand-crafted Noble Phantasm.

Rather than letting others control one's fate, it was better to entrust that fate to the heavens.

This Noble Phantasm possessed no offensive capabilities, but it would isolate all suppression brought by external laws. Unless the power of the laws was directly struck into its body, they would be completely useless.

Its essence was to seal away its own consciousness, letting the stars act as a computer to perform calculations, turning its own flesh into a machine that only needed to output results.

That crimson galaxy in the sky was the external brain it had summoned—Oort-Cloud!