Galaxy's First Ruler

Aldrich plummeted down into his shadow, and all sounds vanished around him.

There was nothing to be seen remotely, except the white-haired girl in front of Aldrich. Her blue eyes twinkled like lone binary stars in the space's depth. Her body had lascivious curves, and though her breasts weren't big, they felt just right for her size.

But something had changed. The black leathery suit or skin on her body wasn't as dull anymore. From her neck, countless runic symbols that seemed like complex geometric shapes ran down towards her breasts. But they didn't stop there. They kept going down and down, covering her chest entirely and then reaching her navel area.

If seen with blurry eyes, the entire structure looked like randomly thrown equations and diagrams by a scientist on a piece of paper. And somehow, despite its complexity, it felt simple and captivating at one glance. The way it kept giving out blue and green flashes was like countless fireflies roaming around in the deep of the night.

This was the RUMOK Aldrich had carved out and engraved on the Item, the Shadow Homunculus.

As he marveled at his creation with his almost dead white eyes, he remembered the Rumok's Stats.

[…

Item: Remote Link

Type: Rumok

Rank: Baron

Description: The many part Item can control its parts remotely and function by itself

Warning: The Item can only control four parts, including itself, at the same time

…]

It was incredibly simple to understand how this Rumok worked.

But the scariest part about this Rumok wasn't the number of Items it would let Sha and Aldrich control simultaneously. It was the lack of mention of any distance. As Aldrich had found out after his various experiments, there was no limit of any distance that needed to be maintained between Sha and him.

No matter where Sha would go, how close and far, she could maintain at least three Items on Aldrich. Yet, this was only a direct effect of this Rumok. Aldrich and Sha had found out there was also a hidden aspect of it. Sha was an Item with an intelligence rivaling the Dreamers. With the other Items being nothing but the separated parts of her, she could use them to sense everything that happened near Aldrich.

Even if Sha were to be in a distant part of the Galaxy, she could sense what Aldrich sensed, and she could perceive what even Aldrich couldn't. And even though Aldrich couldn't do the same with Sha, she could let him know the things on her side using the bond they shared in his mind.

This was also the reason for Aldrich to make her hide in Nicholas' shadow before the end of the ceremony. He knew there was something wrong with the Marquess, and if his instincts were right, then he would come back for him.

Aldrich had no way to sense Nicholas' presence given the fact he was a Marquess and on top of it, he had a gene-based Skill tailor-made for him to hide. But Sha kept giving him live feedback about Nicholas' position, making him tune his plan accordingly.

As Aldrich was contemplating his next move, Sha let out a shriek and lunged at him.

"Whooo… Daddy… It's so… fun."

Aldrich tried to move, but in the Shadow World, only Sha had such mobility. Sha took full advantage of Aldrich's incompetence in mastering the Law of Shadow and put her hands around his neck like a piggyback. Her legs wrapped around Aldrich's waist, and she shouted in Aldrich's ears.

"Daddyyy… Sha… Hungryyyyyy!!!"

Aldrich squinted his eyes in annoyance and replied.

"Tch! Calm down. Are you trying to burst my ears or…"

"Hungryyyyyyy…"

"…"

Sigh!

Aldrich couldn't help but let out a sigh. He didn't know what it was, but the Law of Shadow just didn't come to him as naturally as the Law of Darkness and Devil had come. Aldrich had come here many times by now. Even though both Shadow World and that Darkness were similarly dark, their essence differed to a great extent.

The Darkness Aldrich went to after his death was like dense black water and fog mixed into each other. It was heavy, but it was also smooth. It flowed like a calm river, eternally in search of an ocean. And that ocean was the enormous Being behind the Black Veil.

On the other hand, the Shadow World was like mud. A mud, so dense, the more one struggled to come out of it, the more they would get buried. It wasn't smooth, nor was it calm. If Aldrich had to give it term, it would be more in tune with a chaotic nature.

'Turbulence at its core,' Aldrich nodded to himself and thought.

Both Darkness and the Shadow World lacked Mana. But Aldrich was more concerned about a fact that he had found out after using it.

In the Darkness, Time seemed irrelevant to him. He could never say with surety how much time he had spent there. To him, it always felt like hundreds of thousands of years or more, but for all he knew, it could very well be only one second. Even after mastering the Law of Darkness, he couldn't figure out this property. The one thing he realized was that this irrelevance of Time wasn't because of the Darkness.

In the Shadow World, the irrelevant thing was the Distance. All shadows above in the real dimensions felt close and far at the same time. If Sha hadn't marked all the shadows she entered and came out of, even she could lose her way in this dimension. Eternally doomed to roam in search of the right path.

Aldrich lifted his right hand somehow and banged Sha's head with his knuckles.

"Get off me! Food is coming soon."

"Aah!"

As soon as she heard the good news, Sha exclaimed out, and a stream of her drool fell on Aldrich's shoulder.

Not minding the wetness he felt on his greatcoat, Aldrich spoke out.

"Let's go. You have marked Harold's shadow, right?"

"Yes.. yes…"

Sha nodded and grabbed Aldrich by the back of his neck before dashing away in a planned direction. As he felt the surrounding heaviness, all Aldrich had on his mind was nothing but one question.

'If there is that Being in the depth of that Darkness, what lay in the depths of this Shadow World?'