Adrian hovered in the chamber, his legs crossed as he meditated above the floor. He was working on more complex formations and behaviors.

He was surrounded by hundreds of active formations, none of them complete, each one a step closer to a vision that grew more complex by the hour.

Fire circles flickered to his left. Spatial distortions rippled to his right. A life-essence array pulsed faintly near the far wall.

"This won't work," he muttered, his eyes sweeping across the chaos. "I don't want hundreds of formations for hundreds of tasks. One formation should handle all."

Not a hundred circles for a hundred purposes, but a single formation that could shift its nature, adapting to the situation, attack, defense, recovery, all woven into one seamless logic.

His essence flared around him as he guided the ink. Thousands of fine runic lines crawled across the metal floor, forming layers upon layers of symbols.

He began inscribing, the tip of his finger moving faster than sight as he commanded the ink.

First came the Space and Fire, his two strongest domains, their advanced galactic concepts forming the backbone of the design.

Then, one by one, he added the others, Life, Water, Earth, Lightning, each one etched as a secondary layer. Their patterns overlapped until the chamber itself shimmered with dense light.

From above, the formation looked less like a circle and more like a fractal web, lines curling into recursive loops, the density rivaling the rune clusters in a Node's architecture.

Adrian didn't just want complexity, he wanted behavior.

He expanded the logic, not just reading mana signatures for allies and enemies, but evaluating them. A recognition pattern that scanned for strength, calculating threat levels, identifying which of his elemental layers would be most effective against each intruder.

He wrote symbols that assessed mana flow density, aura fluctuation, power output over time, and conceptual resonance, metrics that together painted a being's strength profile.

Then he added the decision logics to make the formation take action based on threat level and concepts the enemy wielded.

Fire against ice, water against flame, void against solid. The formation would think tactically, selecting its best tool based on the danger.

"If the enemy is stronger, prioritize defense," he whispered, his finger tracing new conditional branches. "If weaker, overwhelm. If balanced, adapt."

Soon, the floor of the chamber was unrecognizable, a vast diagram that looked nothing like the rigid, geometric formations of Lexaria.

It had turned into something far beyond the comprehension of even the most advanced Lexarian scholars.

Still, he wasn't satisfied.

He extended his hand and added another layer of symbols, concealment. Cloaking logic that would mask the core of his creation.

Anyone trying to study or break in, to see the symbols would only see misdirection and noise. The true structure would remain invisible, buried beneath false pathways.

No one would ever decipher what he wrote here.

Not even the Lexarians.

But then Adrian hit the next obstacle.

To imprint mana signatures, every being would have to personally step into the formation's core, millions of people. Entire armies, merchants, families, travelers.

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He frowned. "I can't bring them all here… I need the formation itself to reach them."

He thought of the Nodes again, of how they managed billions of beings across empires with seamless registration.

The Nodes scanned mana signatures, then they transmitted data instantly across the galaxy to the Galactic Net. What if he made the formation itself a node?

He began adding another sequence of runes, link concepts that mirrored the same logic he'd seen when analyzing his Node. Slowly, he recreated the structure of communication and exchange, runes that could receive, store, and send.

Then he tested it, connecting his formation directly to the Galactic Net. The formation responded instantly, fetching data just as their Nodes did.

The formation itself worked exactly as a Node.

Mana threads reached outward, scanning through galactic signals, fetching the registry of every Origin Clan member recorded in the Galactic Net and using it as the imprint needed for the formation.

"It works…" Adrian murmured, watching as thousands of signatures flooded into the formation.

But then, his expression hardened.

This connection also meant he'd have to depend on Lexaria. Through the same line, they could monitor the formation, even manipulate its core from afar, because the formation is a type of node now.

That would never do.

He couldn't depend on the Galactic Net itself, but his research wasn't a waste.

He'd proven his formation could work as a node. His problem was with the Galactic Net that Lexaria owned.

Adrian knelt, touching the glowing symbols, and severed the runes that tied it to the Galactic Net. The light flickered, connection cut.

The formation dimmed for a moment, then stabilized. Independent and Blind.

"Maybe I should build my own," he whispered.

Then, carefully, he started writing a new system from scratch. A pure inscription framework that could simulate data flow, independent of Lexaria's web.

He mimicked what he knew of Earth's technology. Memory storage, transfer nodes, layered instruction sets. Only here, instead of wires and silicon, there were runes.

Each rune acted like a cell in a network, replicating the flow of information technology, but entirely inscribed through mana.

His fingers moved without pause, the Source guiding each stroke.

Days passed as he worked on this.

The chamber floor was filled with cascading symbols, overlapping in dense clusters.

Within days, he created his first prototype of a self-contained system. A net made not of machines, but of runes.

It was crude, limited, fragile. But it worked.

Then he took apart his own Node next.

He erased the Lexarian network symbols and replaced them with his own runic circuitry, connecting it directly to the formation's core.

When he activated it, the modified Node lit up with a different glow. Softer, golden-white instead of blue.

He opened its interface.

And for the first time, it didn't connect to the Galactic Net.

Instead, a single phrase appeared across the glowing surface of the Node.

› Origin Net. Connection Established.

Adrian stared. The Origin Net was born.

He had done it.

"I've just built my own network," he murmured, disbelief creeping into his voice. "A framework without surveillance, without Lexaria's anchors."

It was rough, primitive, empty. No data but his own signature. But it worked.

Once the new Origin Net was made public, once every member of his clan connected to it, the net would begin to live.

It could grow, expand, and one day rival the Galactic Net itself.

Adrian smiled faintly, holding the small metal sphere. It looked identical to a standard Node, indistinguishable even under inspection.

He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the pulse of it. "So this is how Lexaria felt when they built the first Net…"

What began as a defensive formation had grown into something much greater.

But then came the realization that stopped his heart cold.

To keep something like this running, even this small prototype, the energy required was staggering.

Not just one element. All of them.

Adrian turned back to the formation sprawled across the floor. Every layer drew from different essences.

To power the full network, he'd need every kind of elemental crystal. Space, fire, water, lightning, life… and more.

Right now, it worked only because of his Source.

He fed it directly, converting his mana into whatever the formation demanded.

He could already think of the only viable solution. The Blackwood Ink.

It could convert pure mana crystals into any element required. That was the secret behind the balance of Earth's runes. No affinity limits.

"It would solve everything," Adrian muttered, pacing the chamber. "One ink, all elements."

But Adrian knew it was too risky for now. The galaxy was still bound by these limits. Breaking it now would make him a much bigger target, and he knew he wasn't strong enough to reveal something like this.

Even if he didn't reveal it to anyone and just used the ink to etch the formation, beings that traveled to the capital could still feel and see the ink.

Even if the formation hid the symbols, he couldn't hide what the formation was made of. This still had a possibility of exposing the Blackwood Ink to the galaxy.

He didn't want to risk it for now.

Adrian stood in silence, staring at the web of runes beneath his feet.

But no matter what he thought, the only solution to solve this remained as the Source.