Floor 3, Endless Wasteland.
Standing on a giant boulder, Rio used his mana perception to search the area around him.
[That guy is really good at running… We were just right behind him a while ago, and now he's gone! Unbelievable!!]
Rio shook his head at Shadow's words; he glanced at the ruins nearby and spoke in his usual emotionless tone.
"The main problem is that he's the master of the spire of ascension…"
"Even if his connection with the spire of ascension is already severed, he knows the layout of this entire place…"
"He's using the terrain to his advantage…"
Rio's face was now just as emotionless as it always has been, but now his eyes seemed even more dead.
Advancing to S-rank pushed him further on the path of becoming an 'Emotionless Weapon of Mass Destruction.'
Although he doesn't really want to walk this 'Path,' for some reason, he's incapable of changing it.
Thankfully, he still has Lia.
[Alverto is not a coward; there's no way he would run away from his opponent to hide… there's definitely something going on...]
[But how do we catch up to him though… he seems to have already left this floor and we are unable to find the exit…]
The lowermost floors in the Spire of Ascension are the most difficult areas in the entirety of it.
Rio could easily cross several floors before, but now even he's having a hard time finding the exit to this floor.
Wherever you look, there's only a barren wasteland on this floor with no living creatures in sight.
'This barren wasteland… this sight of destruction… how weird, it's giving me a sense of familiarity… as if I have seen this before…'
Rio may be dull in expressing his emotions, but he certainly doesn't have a bad memory.
In fact, he has an impressively good memory, so if he had seen a place like this before, he would have remembered it immediately, and yet he can't remember this place.
'Odd… very odd…'
*Boom!*
Rio flew towards the ruins in the distance; his flying speed was so fast that it caused a sonic boom in the air, causing the boulder to shatter from the power of the shockwave.
After reaching S-rank, Rio has become capable of flying, and despite not practicing his flying technique for long, he already is quite fast.
He flew towards the ruins and arrived above them in less than a second.
'This…'
A rare look of shock appeared on Rio's face as he saw the real situation of these ruins.
'Isn't this Oaklum!?'
The ruins resembled the port city Oaklum, which Rio and the others have previously been to in the past.
It is a major city in the human empire and Jin Walt's current residence.
Rio has an impressive memory; he has seen the city from the sky in the past, and he can easily distinguish it from others. Thus, he was able to easily figure out everything.
'The architecture style is also same…'
Rio eyes narrowed suddenly, and he placed his hand on the hilt of his sword.
'If it's like this… then perhaps…'
As if he had guessed something, Rio held his sword with hands raised above his shoulders.
[What are you doing?]
"Just giving it a try… let's see if my guess works…"
Rio's mana condensed, and a huge amount of mana flowed into his sword.
From the moment Rio became an S-ranker, his mana has become purer and denser.
Now it's so overbearing that just imbuing his sword with his mana makes the surroundings tremble from his aura.
[Sword Intent!]
[Elemental Sword Art: Illusion Type: Reality Partition!]
Rio swung his sword towards the ruins of the city below at an extremely high speed and then sheathed his sword instantly.
Even though he had swung his sword at an extremely high speed with the full might of an S-ranker, oddly enough, no disturbances occurred in the surroundings.
As if he had never swung the sword, not even the air around him moved.
Usually, a massive sonic boom would have happened when swinging the sword at such insane speed, and even the mana in the surroundings would have become chaotic.
But nothing happened.
*KIRRRRRKKKKKRRRRRRRRR*
An extremely weird and loud noise rang out from all directions as if it was coming from everywhere.
The ruins of the city suddenly disappeared, and a massive hole appeared in the ground.
"My guess was correct…"
[Well, what did you guess? Can you tell me too? Sorry for having a dull brain, but I don't understand a thing you did there…]
Rio flew towards the giant hole in the ground without hesitation while speaking.
"Up until now I had no idea why the insides of the spire of ascension were so weird and why every floor was random… but now I seem to have an idea…"
"The spire of ascension seems to have recreated all these weird environments on all these floors from Alverto's memories!"
"The Ocean on the above floor was also likely from a memory fragment… perhaps from the time when he killed Zach…"
Spire of Ascension is a weird place; Rio has no idea what its actual purpose is but from its name, he can guess certain things.
'If this place is somehow related to some kind of 'Ascension'… then it is even more reasonable for the floors here to be from Alverto's memories…'
'Although the port city Oaklum was never destroyed by Alverto, he likely intended to destroy it…'
'He wanted to see it in a destroyed state; that's likely the reason why this city was in ruins…'
Rio has no idea about the actual functions of recreating these memories in the form of floors, but as a transmigrator who has read all kinds of novels in the past, he knows one thing for sure:
'Everything related to the word 'Ascension' brings big trouble most of the times… and anything is possible in a magical world…'
'If these floors are really Alverto's memory fragments, then I should be able to break through faster if I use 'Illusion type'…'
Rio flew down at an extremely high speed, and he finally reached Floor 2 after a lot of effort.
'Hmm… what is this place!?'
Rio's eyes narrowed as he looked at the dark red moon in the sky.
Snow fell slowly from the sky, and the entire landscape was covered in snow as far as the eye could see.
'I can sense 'Miasma' in the air…'
Rio is immune to the negative effect of exposing his body to miasma and can even manipulate miasma to use it for himself, so he's not afraid of being eroded, but even he's surprised by the huge amount of miasma in this place.
'This is the 'Demon Continent'!'
Rio immediately figured out what this place was.
Demon Continent is the only place on this planet where the concentration of miasma in the air is higher than mana, and it snows there all year round, as it's located very close to the south pole.
Being an S-ranker, Rio doesn't have to worry about being cold anymore; he's already beyond normal mortals at this point.
An S-ranker is a being who's ascended past his gene limiters and can be considered a transcendent.
S-rankers don't need to breathe, drink, or eat to survive anymore. They can just absorb the mana from the surroundings and use it as energy.
[What is this place? I can feel the gloominess from the environment itself… it's so weird…]
"This is the demon continent… likely from Alverto's memories… At this rate, I won't even be surprised anymore if Floor 1 is the Demon King's Palace…"
[Haha… yeah…. Wait, do you even get surprised!? I thought your heart was made of stone!…]
"I am but a normal guy with a cute girlfriend… I love my girlfriend so my heart is not made of stone… your argument is baseless…"
Rio can accept anything but being called a heartless person; that would mean he had no feelings at all.
[Whatever you say I guess…]
Shadow couldn't even be bothered to argue at this point; he knew that Rio was too delusional and wouldn't listen to a single word against his feelings for Lia.
'Despite being the demon continent, this place doesn't seem bad to me actually…'
'The environment is quiet and everything is calm and serene… this is the perfect place for someone like me who enjoys being in a quiet place…'
'If I was a demon, I would just eat and play in snow all day long wasting my life away in fun…'
It's odd, but Miasma doesn't feel bad to Rio.
If it were any other human or creature, miasma would be like poison to them and would destroy their body from the inside out; even their soul would get corrupted.
Even most of the demons go mad and berserk because of being influenced by miasma too much.
Yet, Rio only feels warm and comfortable even while being surrounded with miasma; his ability to deal with miasma is even more powerful than a royal demon's.
It's almost as if he's more suited for being a demon than the demons themselves.