Chapter 117: Chapter 117: Caelum’s Silent Growth

The halls of the Imperial Palace, once echoing with the cold, calculated directives of a thousand-year war preparation, had softened into a sanctuary of warmth. The transition from a military fortress to a family home was spearheaded by the presence of Caelum, the child who had spent a millennium gestating in the laws of the universe.

To the citizens of Eternia, he was a living myth. To Aegis and Bella, he was a miracle that required protection not just from enemies, but from the crushing weight of his own destiny.

​Aegis sat on the plush carpets of the private living quarters, his God-Killer Trident leaned against a corner like a discarded toy.

He was currently occupied with a much more complex task than moving planets. He was trying to stack wooden blocks infused with gravity-stabilizing mana for a toddler who could already see the atomic structure of the wood.

​”Look at this, Caelum,” Aegis said, his voice dropping the imperial resonance for a tone of gentle encouragement. “If you place the block here, the center of gravity remains true. You don’t need to use your Law-Manipulation. Just use your hands.”

​Caelum, a child who looked barely two years old but possessed eyes that held the depth of ancient nebulae, sat cross-legged. His hair, a perfect blend of Aegis’s midnight black and Bella’s crystalline silver, shimmered with a faint luminescence. He reached out a small, chubby hand and touched the block.

For a fraction of a second, his golden eyes flashed with a Tier 15 calculation, seeing the most efficient way to bind the atoms of the blocks together to create a structure that could survive a supernova.

​But then, he saw the hopeful, loving look on his father’s face. Caelum suppressed the urge to rewrite the physics of the room. He let the block wobble. He let it fall.

​”Up!” Caelum chirped, clacking his tongue with a fabricated innocence.

​Bella walked into the room, carrying a tray of nectar-fruits harvested from the high gardens. She laughed, the sound bright and clear, devoid of the icy edge she showed the rest of the world.

“You’re trying to teach a child of the Prime World about gravity, Aegis? He was born from a thousand years of siphoning a sun. I think he understands the concept.”

​”I want him to be a child first, Bella,” Aegis replied, picking Caelum up and settling him on his knee. The universe is going to demand everything from him soon enough. Let him play with blocks. Let him scrape his knees. I don’t want him to grow up in a hell hole like I did.

​Bella sat beside them, stroking Caelum’s hair.

“We agreed that he will have a natural growth. No system-interfaces until he is ten. No Law-binding until his soul is settled. We give him the childhood we never had.”

​Caelum leaned his head against his father’s chest, listening to the rhythmic thrum of the Sea God’s heart. He projected an aura of sleepy contentment, the perfect image of a blessed infant.

But deep within the folds of his consciousness, Caelum was already running thousands of combat simulations.

​

​The moment his parents left his room that night and the obsidian doors hissed shut, the sleepy facade vanished.

Caelum did not lie down.

He sat up in his cradle, his small body floating three inches off the mattress as he manually suppressed the light radiating from his skin.

​He knew his parents loved him. He knew they wanted him to have a “natural” life. But Caelum had been awake for a thousand years inside the womb. He had heard the whispers of the Kyros High Arbiter’s threats.

He had felt the vibration of the Planet-Cracker arrays being forged.

He understood something his parents, in their protective love, had chosen to ignore: the universe did not care about a child’s right to play.

​Caelum closed his eyes. He didn’t open his System interface as his father had placed a parental lock on it, but Caelum didn’t need the System. He was the Heir of the Whole. He reached out with his mind, connecting to the “Planetary Link” his father had mentioned.

​He felt the oceans of Aquabyss. He felt the humming gears of the Xylosian moon. Using a technique he had devised by eavesdropping on Felix’s research lectures, Caelum created a “Temporal Pocket” around his cradle. Inside this bubble, time moved ten times faster than the rest of the room.

​He began to train. He wasn’t lifting blocks now. He was practicing the compression of Abyssal Mana into his bone marrow. He was refining the Absolute Zero aura so that it didn’t just freeze matter, but froze the “intent” of an enemy.

He also pushed his tiny mana-veins to the absolute limit, the pain searing through his nerves, but he didn’t make a sound. A single cry would alert his father’s Stage 16 senses.

​”I must be ready,” the toddler thought, his mind projecting logic that would have intimidated a veteran general. ” Father is strong, but he is kind. Kindness is a blind spot. I will be the blade in the dark that he refuses to carry.”

​While Caelum practiced his forbidden arts in the silence of the nursery, the outer edges of the Helios-9 system were anything but peaceful.

In the command center of the Xylosian moon, the mood was grim. Felix and Grand Marshal Kaelen stood before a massive holographic map of the sector.

​The border of the Oort cloud was lit up with hundreds of crimson markers.

​”They’re testing us.” Kaelen growled, his hand resting on the hilt of his Law-Glaive. “These aren’t High Arbiter spears. These are scout-swarms. Automated harun-vessels designed to draw fire and map our defensive grid.”

​Felix adjusted his spectacles, his eyes reflecting the rapid data-scrawls.

“The Kyros Hegemony is now playing a political game,” Felix explained. ” They lost a High Arbiter. In the Interstellar Chatbox, their reputation is bleeding. They can’t launch a full invasion without a casus belli from the regional Overlords, so they are trying to goad Aegis into firing the first shot.”

​”They’ve already crossed the line into our gravitational well,” Sora added, appearing from the shadows of the room. “They destroyed three of our deep-space monitoring buoys this morning.”

​Aegis entered the command center, his presence immediately silencing the room.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep