Chapter 183: Contrast

The two of us stood side by side on the burning surface of Venus, taking in the alien world. There was a raw, primal beauty to the hostile planet, a world where no ordinary mortal could set foot, yet we were standing here enjoying the view like tourists on a weekend getaway.

“Not a bad stop for our first planetary visit,” I said, taking a deep breath of the thick air. “Though, it’s pretty boring so I probably won’t make a second trip here.”

“Where to next, driver?” Paige purred, turning her golden eyes toward me with a teasing smile. That was another thing I noticed. She was constantly changing the colour of her eyes because it amused her.

I looked up at the orange sky, my grin widening. “Mercury is right next door. Let’s see how close we can get to the Sun.”

“Sun, huh. It’ll be funny to land on it’s surface,” Paige giggled softly. “Let’s do that once we reach there.”

“You do realize there’s no solid ground on the Sun, right?” I asked, resting my wrists on the custom steering wheel as the black convertible hovered in the void above Venus. “It’s literally a massive, floating sphere of superheated plasma and compressed gas. A giant bum.”

Paige scoffed, waving a manicured hand dismissively while her nine fluffy white tails swished lazily over the leather passenger seat. “Small details, Seth. You hold Origin authority, and I’m a reality-warping system. If you want a solid marble platform sitting right in the middle of the solar core, we just make one. What is there to even consider?”

I couldn’t fight against that logic. I rolled my eyes, a smirk tugging at my lips. “Fair enough. Let’s hit Mercury first on our way in. The poor planet closest to our dear sun.”

I slammed my foot onto the gas pedal.

“Let’s go!!!” Paige cheered on.

VROOOOM-!

The convertible shot forward, leaving the thick yellow clouds of Venus behind and launching across the inner solar system at blinding speed.

In a matter of minutes, the vast distance between Venus and Mercury dissolved into nothing. Behind us, Earth and Venus rapidly shrank into tiny, fading specks against the dark canvas of space. Ahead of us, the Sun expanded so dramatically that it consumed my entire field of vision.

Normal human eyes weren’t made to stare at a star from this distance. Anyone else would have had their retinas fried and their body vaporized in a fraction of a millisecond. But with Paige’s passive protection and my own authority, I didn’t even have to squint. Instead, I just smiled, finding the whole journey full of excitement. Who gets to see a freaking star so close?

I could sense the raw magnetic waves surging out from the star, vibrating through the steering wheel and chassis. Overhead, massive magnetic flux ropes-glowing bridges of superheated plasma the size of Jupiter, twisted, snapped, and whipped energetic particles across millions of miles of empty space.

“Now that is a sight,” I muttered, adjusting my dark sunglasses. “Also, the perfect use of Sunglasses.”

“Isn’t it?” Paige said with a smile, leaning her head back against the leather headrest as the solar wind rustled her fluffy fox ears. “Magnetic reconnection events up close. You can’t get a front-row seat like this anywhere in the mundane world.”

A few seconds later, Mercury came into view.

It was a small, airless world, heavily scarred with ancient impact craters. Because Mercury lacked an atmosphere to trap or distribute heat, it presented one of the most extreme thermal contrasts in the solar system. The side directly facing the Sun reached blazing temperatures above four hundred degrees Celsius, while the dark side plummeted below minus one hundred and eighty degrees Celsius.

Which means a fun trip for me.

I steered the car down, landing on the terminator line, the sharp boundary where daylight met darkness.

I turned off the engine, opened the door, and stepped onto the grey, dusty ground. My face was full of smiles.

“Check this out,” I said, placing my right boot in the sunlit zone and my left boot in the pitch-black shadow.

Paige slid out of the passenger side, her dark silk kimono trailing over the dust as her nine tails fanned out behind her. “How does it feel?”

“My right foot feels like it’s inside a pizza oven, and my left foot feels like it’s buried in liquid nitrogen,” I said with a chuckle. “A perfect contrast, haha.”

Paige grinned mischievously. She walked over and stuck one of her fluffy white tails into the sunlight and another into the shadow.

“Hey,” I warned. “Don’t singe your fur. I love them so they’re my property now.”

“Please, as if mere solar radiation could damage my fur,” Paige sneered playfully. But a second later, she pulled her tails back, blinking in genuine surprise. “Okay, wait. The shadow side actually froze my fur tips into tiny ice crystals, and the sunny side warmed them up like a hot towel.”

She wrapped both tails around her face, snuggling into her own fur. “Ooh, actually, that feels great. It’s like a thermal spa treatment, a free one hehe~”

I laughed, shaking my head. “You’re unbelievable.”

“If I was that believable, I wouldn’t be this beautiful,” Paige said, flicking her hair past her shoulders.

I was speechless, staring at her. “There’s literally no correlation.”

Paige huffed in response. “There is, Boss. You’re just too blind to see it.”

There really wasn’t any point arguing with her.

I kicked a chunk of Mercury rock, watching it fly across the low-gravity terrain. “It’s pretty crazy how dead this place is. No wind, no sound, just extreme heat on one side and frozen darkness on the other. It’s just a giant big rock.”

“That’s what makes it fun,” Paige said, leaning against the hood of the convertible. “No crowds, no traffic, no divine pantheons bothering us. Just us messing around on a dead rock.”

“Can’t argue against that,” I smiled, raising my hand to observe the planet’s surface. “It’s a perfect place for peaceful retreat.”