"…Heaven?" Even before he properly entered the domain, his senses were overwhelmed trying to make sense of the illogical information they were fed.
The confines of space within this realm were perhaps blasted open, as every cubic meter of space stretched in all directions. The flow of time itself faltered as it reached this domain and was moulded to suit the desired pace.
Shoulders tensed, Varian broke through the final barrier and stepped into the world.
The sky was shrouded in a twilight hue, a sickly greenish that suffocated the very stars. The great mountains stretched themselves to the crimson clouds that hovered over the land, overlooking like a silent judge.
Varian frowned as he breathed in, the aura here felt pure.
'A bit too pure.'
It felt like he was taking in something that should not exist, like a mortal who sneaked into the world of gods and drank their elixir.
Even though it was a silly notion, something from deep inside yelled at him.
'Blasphemy!'
This place was against the natural order of the cosmos. It's something that should not exist.
"I…I don't care." Shaking his head from the bizarre thoughts that popped out of nowhere, Varian purified his soul with the power of Samsara.
The thoughts subsided and a chill shot down Varian's spine.
'It's a very clever ploy to provoke infiltrators to attack.'
(Your soul was affected. But I can't tell with certainty if it's from this realm or something else.)
"What else can be there?" Varian asked rhetorically.
(That makes sense.) Samsara nodded, her voice accepting.
Varian still disguised himself to the fullest and inspected the realm. As the remnant piece of Heaven tribe and something hidden so far by Neveah, it should be as dangerous as it could get.
Despite confidence in his strength, Varian didn't leap into the sky and scan the world in a go.
Perhaps it was his instinct or maybe it's the experience that dictated it so, his approach was one of caution.
The scars from God Emperor's onslaught were still fresh. When he was still a rank 1, God Emperor's actions seemed outrageous but there was a bit of hope that they would turn difficult but achievable in rank 2.
But despite being a powerful mid rank 2 or maybe because of it, the act of splitting an entire galaxy into half by a casual move by a clone started to seem more and more outrageous.
This world was more complex than the simple slivers-win-it-all he initially believed.
If the words of the dead god were really to be believed, then slivers were not the solution but the problem to everything.
Glancing at the pair of glowing eyes imprinted on his soul, Varian gnashed his teeth.
'I'll save Aurora first. God Emperor, this entity and the secret of slivers will have to wait.'
He didn't fully let loose his powers and continued scouting his surroundings.
The ground was filled with layers upon layers of vegetation. When he plucked one flower, the entire layer responded, releasing toxins at him. If he managed to pierce through one layer, multiple layers responded and their offense was much more dangerous.
The trees here and there were dripping vicious dark liquid from their branches, their swaying leaves shaking up gravity with every movement.
The monsters were mostly irrational and bloodthirsty. Their skins engraved with strange runes and they seemed intent on dying together than securing a hunt. Of the ones he encountered, many were at the peak of celestial, a couple of them divine.
His combat instinct warned that these monsters were stronger than their modern-day equivalents.
Thankfully, the disguise allowed him the luxury of not finding out.
Even though he didn't turn invisible, through the power of chaos, Varian's physical presence was erased. All ways of perceiving him were messed up by the chaos and even the finest of detection treasures would fail to pick any signs.
Soul power was added to this disguise. So, even if someone got lucky and perceived him, they would subconsciously ignore.
Unless there were powerhouses in mid rank 2 or high rank 2, he didn't have to worry about being found.
This should've allowed him to act recklessly but the more he ventured in this realm, the more Varian's senses tingled with danger.
After nearly three hours of searching, Varian came across a ruins. What he felt after the discovery was not joy, it was fear. A spine chilling jolt of fear.
What his instinct or experience seemed to respond to was now a little more clear.
'This place is dangerous!'
His senses were tingling.
'It can kill me.'
The danger might be an unknown beast lurking around or maybe it's in this ruins. But if he had to get any useful legacy from this place, his life must be put at stake.
Taking a deep breath, Varian created a clone and sent it into the ruins. A few seconds later, flashes of light emerged out of a ruined building before it collapsed.
The clone has encountered someth—
"Wu! Wuwwwu!"
A flying centipede the size of a horse flew out of the ruined buildings, its sharp teeth chewing onto some precious metal.
The clone and the main body looked at each other with a dumbfounded gaze before the exploration resumed.
The architectural style of this ruined…town was unlike anything he had seen before. The buildings were all made of a mix of diamond and eternity stones—a mix that should've been impossible as these two would react rapidly and create a dangerous explosion.
Interestingly, even after being dilapidated, not a single house exploded.
Through a special combination of powers, materials and runes, the diamond and eternity stones were programmed to skip each other's existence at any moment, for all moments to come.
The main energy for this came from the tiny reactions of diamonds and eternity stones deliberated allowed to happen—as controlled errors.
'It's like a controlled fusion reaction…'
What caused these houses to be ruined was actually the wearing away of the runes engraved on each house.
Varian invoked the runes on a slab and inspected it with care.
"They are similar to the ones on the beasts. Two possibilities.
Heaven tribe learned this from the beasts and developed it further. It's like any other early civilization—learning from nature.
Or.
Heaven tribe started the runes. And imprinted them on the beasts, which they carry to this day, billions of years after the Heaven tribe are gone.
If that's true, then they're dangerous. And Neveah who ended them is more than dangerous.
Either way, these runes are more advanced than the ones on the monsters."
Each rune was actually a micro formation built with the gathering of aura, balancing of diamond-eternity reaction, formation for the margin of controlled error and more.
"This ruins had not brought any tangible results. But as the last place of Heaven tribe, ." Varian stood up and raised his arm.
Using the power of Order, Varian created three different 'rules' for three runes.
{The rune will resonate when coming in contact with diamond-eternity formations}
The other two runes resonated for different formations.
Still aimed to remain hidden, Varian decided to capture a few monsters in the ruins and imprinted on their souls the runes.
He then enslaved them using his soul power and set them free. Even with them, Varian took utmost caution to keep his involvement with them hidden.
While he had to remain hidden, he had to speed up the search.
'The flow of this place is a bit slow compared to the outside. Aurora has only two weeks left but in this place, it'll be over a month.'
Varian took a deep breath and instructed the monsters to run at their full strength.
'Three new ruins! One of them is a city!'
Three clones emerged out of Varian and sprinted to the new findings. Meanwhile, he kept enslaving the weaker monsters and using them as live radars.
The returns from the clones kept disappointing and hours continued to pass. But there's one finding that led his way. The ruins were getting more and more sophisticated.
Patches of aura explosions. Broken metals engraved with lethal formations.
And finally, a formation to harness the power of a sliver strand!
Varian was fine with his clones inspecting everything else. But he had to inspect the large manor which contained the formation to harness the sliver strand.
Without compromising his stealth, he moved as fast as he could.
And unintentionally, Varian moved from the edge of the edge and jumped somewhere much closer to the center.
Inspecting the exquisite formation that's rotting away in the abandoned manor of the city ruins, his hopes were bolstered.
'I found something like this with less than a hundred monster radars. Once I up it to a thousand or even ten thousand, I can search the whole realm.'
As he raised his hand to extract the rune to imprint on another monster, the formation of the place that should've been rotting for an eternity lit up and the time flow slowed down.
A shadowy figure emerged behind Varian.