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Chapter 171: The Darkness In All Of Us VI

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The flower blossomed, spreading its petals before Ian placed Ivy on it. The white flower then closed, forming into a cocoon of sorts.

As for Ian... He was exhausted for the first time in forever, and he had no idea why as he fell back onto the ground.

"Ahh... Okay?" Ian felt mentally and emotionally exhausted, something he never felt before, not even when he last used the white light of life.

"Was it too much? Or is this how the emotional spectrum works?" He felt drained like he had overworked his emotions. Most important of all, he felt cold and emotionless, for the most part.

The only emotion he could feel at the moment was that of fear, and well, it made him go into a daze for a long time, just lying there.

His fear was overwhelming even to him, and it made him confused because he doesn't know where it comes from!

So Ian closed his eyes after a while, just to rest. He didn't stop thinking though, especially about what brought him to his current state.

And soon enough, he had a pretty good assumption, one he was very sure of. The green is many times bigger than the solar system where he used the light of life. 

So in the previous incident, he didn't use nearly as much of his emotions as he did just now. 

Moreover, his emotional spectrum works a bit differently than others, he doesn't feel like he can absorb others' emotions but use merely his own.

On top of that, he had to fill a vast realm with all of his emotions, even the weak ones. That's mostly what led to him being left drained.

The solution to all of that is very simple, the white light of life itself. It's the problem, but also the solution.

Like all emotional spectrums, the white light of life also has an entity. That Entity is the living embodiment of the White Light of Creation that gave birth to all living things in the universe. 

It is one of the two most fundamental aspects of the cosmos, Life, along with its direct counterpart Nekron, Death.

It also happened to be the origin of all lights of the emotional spectrum. The white light was forced to split into seven lights by darkness, but reversing the process is extremely difficult.

Ian tried and tried to mix all of the emotions together to form the white light, but it always fails as if he was missing something.

The only success he saw in creating the light of life was the force of evolution. When all of the emotions assemble in one place, introducing the force of evolution evolves them into their true self, life.

Their origin was life itself, but they've been downgraded into what they are now, so it was only natural for such a possibility to exist.

Ian however doesn't really realize just how incomprehensible his actions were. What he just achieved wasn't supposed to be possible. The force of evolution might be just as broken as the speed force.

Evolving the emotions into the white light of life might take a long while, but Ian wasn't in a hurry. He remained resting in the realm for days as it started to dim, the white light of life seemingly vanishing.

As the light was vanishing, however, the realm was growing back to what it once was, and even surpassing its limits. It was healing, just like Ivy.

"So much destruction. It's been a long while since I felt destruction I do not understand..." 

Ian was awoken from his sleep by a voice next to him. He opened his eyes to the figure of a big, red-haired, bearded man.

"Why cause so much destruction?" The redhead asked.

"I? I never meant to, but I'm happy it happened because it has taken me one step closer in my pursuit." Ian closed his eyes again, seemingly feeling safe in the company of someone who can appear right next to him instantly, granted, Ian wasn't being too careful.

"So you see no problem in destruction?" The redhead further questioned.

"There is destruction in all of us, just like there is darkness in all of us... It's nature, and it's lovely." Ian answered.

"I see... Do you desire more destruction?" The redhead asked one last question.

"No more than what necessity requires." Ian honestly answered before asking a question of his own, "Where is Death?"

"I do not know. My siblings do not either... She had vanished a while ago," The redhead answered before turning around, starting to turn into a cluster of mist, "Be easy on destruction from now on..."

"No promises." Ian shrugged as he stood up, feeling a tad bit better. It was weird, he felt like he will fully recover only after about a month, a very long time in his mind.

His exhaustion didn't take too much from his overall power though. The only thing he felt was weak as a result were the energies of the emotional spectrum.

Alas, he couldn't wait in the realm any longer. He checked on Ivy for one last time, making sure she was well protected in the white flower before leaving the realm.

It'll take a long while for her to completely recover, and what she'll wake up to will be an entire green realm of her own. She has basically become the queen of nature.

Ian added several spells and tricks to keep her safe, and a moment later, he was back on the grey Rose with Harley.

He directly activated the warp drive to warp to earth. He spent enough time in space for enough, and he had acquired what he wanted on his first trip.

Now it was time to go back to earth and refresh his knowledge about what became of it. 

Back then, he sensed a disturbance in space so great it gave him a pretty good idea of who visited earth, but he still needed to do a bit of investigation.

Earth's technological level was advancing very quickly as of recently. It was out of necessity, and bountiful resources. 

Knowing of such dangerous aliens' existence led most of Earth's governments to focus on the military side more than ever, especially the space side of things.

Many governments sought to create something similar to the Justice League's watchtower, albeit only a few were successful. Not everyone has the technology and resources to build such a thing.

Unfortunately, even that wasn't enough to stop what was to come, or even what has happened. They could only watch helplessly as aliens came crashing down on Earth.

The only ones who were able to face the threat were the Justice League. The threat was none other than Darkseid, or his underlings, Steppenwolf to be specific... Darkseid was on his way. 

And Ian had just landed on Earth. A second later, he was in Gotham, standing right next to someone unexpected considering he was in the Roses' base, "Batgirl?"