Gravis lost himself to time. For once, he was able to forget everything about himself and dedicated his entire being to understanding the different kinds of stone directly in front of him. It was like the magic of understanding Laws had returned, and Gravis felt like it was even more beautiful than back then.
Back then, Gravis wasn't able to properly appreciate the feeling of wonder. Only when someone lost something and regained it much later would they truly be able to appreciate it.
It was simply a joy to look at all the different stones.
Whooom!
Suddenly, the Energy inside the ore stopped moving. The metallic essence vanished, leaving behind only dead stone. Gravis frowned as he inspected everything. Was something wrong with the Virtualization Array?
Gravis checked the Virtualization Array, but it didn't move at all. It had simply stopped working for some reason.
Gravis concentrated on the Virtualization Array and felt that there was no more Energy inside it. It was empty.
"Empty?" Gravis asked himself. Then, his eyes widened. "Are 500 years already over? But I didn't manage to comprehend the Law of Core!"
Gravis inspected his surroundings with his Law of Time and noticed that 500 years had passed. Sure enough, Gravis had stayed here for the entire duration.
"What!? That was never 500 years!" Gravis said.
"Father, has it been 500 years?" he asked.
"Yes," his father answered.
"What? How?" Gravis asked in shock. "I only just started!"
"You were so entranced with the Laws that you lost track of time, Gravis. It happens. Just rent it again," his father said in a bored manner.
Gravis still couldn't wrap his head around it, but everything pointed at that 500 years had passed.
"500 years, over just like that," Gravis said to himself as he grimaced. "So much time has passed, and I didn't even notice. This feels similar to when Heaven told me that I had stayed 200 years in the gap between worlds. It feels like time has been stolen from me."
After a while, Gravis sighed. "I guess these occasions will happen more frequently in the future. Understanding the Laws will take longer and longer."
Gravis looked at the mountain. The mountain was still there since the Virtualization Array only controlled the metal essence, which created different kinds of ore on its own.
Gravis thought back to the time he met Ferris. "Back then, Ferris had been around 3,000 years old. He felt absolutely ancient to me. 3,000 years was such an incredibly long time. I also thought about how much I could learn in 3,000 years."
Gravis laughed bitterly. "Yet, look at me now. If I add everything together, I'm already around 3,650 years old. I'm even older than Ferris back then. It felt like I had been only 100 years old, only one year ago. I have become ancient."
"Time is unforgiving," Gravis said, "but I already know that."
Gravis remained silent for a couple more minutes, just thinking. Then, he sighed again and pocketed the ore mountain. This was a byproduct of the Virtualization Array, and it belonged to Gravis. One could say it was a nice bonus.
Gravis estimated the ore's worth and concluded that this was around three million Immortal Stones worth of ore. This sounded like an enormous number, but one shouldn't forget that Gravis paid 50 million Immortal Stones. On top of that, Gravis had seen the clerk putting around 25 God Stones into the Virtualization Array. So, in total, this ore was not even nearly enough to make up for the cost of producing it.
After that, Gravis pocketed the Virtualization Array and inspected the city to find Yersi. He wanted to talk to his daughter after such a long time.
Gravis' eyes widened in surprise when he found two people in his "living room". One of them was Jake, while the other one was a cute girl, seemingly 20 years old. The girl was also an Early Minor Circulation Immortal.
"Already?" Gravis asked himself.
Gravis teleported over to them and looked with wonder at his daughter.
She had pale skin with extremely long, black hair. Her hair actually reached the floor, and for some reason, Gravis got reminded of a scorpion's tail when he looked at it. Her hair kind of looked… dangerous.
"Father!" Yersi shouted in surprise as she jumped into Gravis' embrace. "I'm a human now!" she said with excitement.
"I can see that," Gravis said with a bit of shock and a smile. Then he put his hand on her head and ruffled her hair. "You look beautiful. Honestly, if you had a different hair color, you would look very similar to your mother."
Yersi halted. "Mother?" she asked uncertainly. "I have actually never seen mother. Back then, I was very deep in the philosophy of beasts and didn't care about meeting her. Now that I think about it, I think I regret not meeting her."
"You never saw her?" Gravis asked in surprise. "I thought you would have seen her at least once," he said as he broke the embrace to look into her eyes.
Yersi looked towards the ground and shook her head. "No, I didn't," she said.
"Do you want to see her?" Gravis asked.
Yersi hesitated a little bit as Jake remained silent. He didn't want to interrupt the reunion. Then, Yersi nodded.
Gravis used the element of light to create an image of Azure. Then, he adapted his Will-Aura and Spirit to emulate Azure's aura. Lastly, he used the wind to emulate her voice.
Gravis decided to show Yersi the time he first met Azure, in the middle of the competition for her future mate.
Yersi looked with confusion at her mother. She told herself that this was her mother, but she couldn't feel a connection at all. Looking at the images of her mother felt very foreign and weird.
Gravis showed her a lot of his conversations with her, and when Azure said that she didn't care about her children, Yersi winced a little. Yet, she knew very well how beasts were. She only had to look at Cera and Aris. Hearing these words from her mother hurt her, but she could also understand her. It was not her fault. This was simply how beasts were.
"Thank you, father," Yersi said. "I think that's enough."
Gravis stopped the simulation and looked at his daughter with a complicated look.
"There was no love between your mother and me," Gravis said.
Yersi nodded. "I know. I can understand your predicament, and I also know how beasts think," she said. But then, she smiled at her father warmly. "But even when everyone else said you don't need to care about us, you still watched over us and helped us. Even when we rebelled against you, you only showed us the error of our ways."
"I'm glad that you're my father," she said wholeheartedly.
Gravis felt like his heart stopped when he heard that. A sweet wave of love, happiness and caring went throughout his body as he hugged his daughter again.
"Thank you, Yersi," he said.
Yersi only giggled a bit. "Why? I'm only telling the truth. You don't have to thank me for that."
Yersi had seen her mother now, and she had realized that she and her mother had no chemistry. Azure was prideful and distant. Even when Gravis showed Azure's constant complaining, she had still felt somewhat distant. It was like her inherent pride didn't allow anyone to get too close to her.
Because of this, Yersi could finally say goodbye to the mother she never had.
They simply were two different beings from different worlds.
