"Rare ores from the spirit realm!? That’s a nice idea! I haven’t seen them for decades now!"
Not many people go on adventures to the spirit realm, and even dungeons based on the spirit realm are also quite rare.
So, it’s not often you come across specialties from the spirit realm, making them very valuable and precious.
"Err... I don’t know how you controlled that rebellious cube, but if you can control it, it might not be a bad idea to give it to you..."
Kehrid looked at the cube floating around Rio and sighed at how obedient it had become.
"By the way, how did your friend get lost in such a dangerous place?"
Rio shook his head and spoke in a confused tone.
"Truthfully speaking, even I don’t know... but as a close friend, I have to go and find him no matter what..."
Rio is emotionless and does not feel any such emotions called camaraderie towards anyone, but he’s learned to ’act.’
He ’acts’ according to a situation to function like a normal human.
Even now, he’s acting to be devastated and worried about Liam, but in reality, he does not feel anything at all.
To function and prevent his last bit of ’humanity,’ Rio has to do this ’acting,’ just like how he’s acting according to how a close friend would have behaved in the current situation.
’I am sorry Liam, but I am trying to help you for my own selfish reasons... don’t blame me for not being able to feel bad for your situation...’
If Rio could feel ’sadness,’ he would have been sad at how emotionless he had become, but he couldn’t, so all he could do was ’act.’
"By the way, try not to go too close to the tower of stargazers; after Fabian died there and a miasmic rift opened, the area has become completely uninhabitable..."
The miasmic rift was closed off afterwards, but once miasma has corroded a place, it takes hundreds of years for it to regain its vitality even if it’s completely purified.
Thankfully, Astra purified the entire landmass after the demon extinction war; otherwise, most of the planet would have been a barren wasteland even today after the aftermath of the thousand-year war.
"Although there is no miasmic corruption over there anymore, it’s not a good place to be; people still get nauseous staying there for too long..."
"Hmm... but you are an S-ranker, so you should be fine. Forget I said anything..."
Rio nodded his head and asked,
"By the way, I wanted to ask if the ’Tower of Sea Gazers’ is still functioning? Or has it been abandoned?"
In the novel, the tower was abandoned after so much chaos happened in the world because of Fade, and many nations were in turmoil.
Fade only visited the tower in the later stages of the novel when it was already in disrepair.
"Like I said, Fabian, that idiot, he died.... He was the one in charge of managing that sh*tty tower!"
"He died and now there’s no one taking care of it... I seriously don’t even know why we have that kind of ominous tower in the first place..."
The Tower of Sea Gazers has powerful telescopes installed on it, and it can give you a very clear view of the ’Sea of Endless Miasma.’
But nobody wants to see that thing in the first place!
Just looking at the ’Sea of Endless Miasma’ can drive a normal person insane; low-rank awakeners lose control and go berserk. Only those who are A-rank or above are able to resist the horror of that bizarre existence.
The ’Sea of Miasma’ is immense and insanely massive; it’s so massive that it’s covering 1/10th of the entire universe!
Just looking at its massive scale is enough to give a person an existential threat!
Moreover, it’s always expanding and destroying everything in its way; looking at its horrific ability to easily destroy worlds in a matter of seconds can make even SS-rankers feel scared.
Most demons in the entire universe come from that place.
If their solar system and galaxy is the area with the highest concentration of mana in the entire universe, then the ’Sea of Miasma’ is the place with the highest concentration of miasma in the entire universe!
Looking at that bizarre existence is akin to staring right into the ’abyss’ itself, and that can affect you mentally and physically if you are not careful enough.
"I see. I will keep your advice in mind..."
Rio wasn’t too surprised that Kehrid was so scared of miasma and so uncomfortable when talking about the tower of sea gazers.
Unlike Rio, who’s usually taking baths in miasmic corruption, others don’t like even mentioning the words ’miasma’ and ’corruption,’ as just mentioning them can make you prone to them.
Various researchers and powerful people around the world have concluded that ’Miasma’ is a semi-conscious existence; the more you know about it, the more it will know about you and will adapt to you.
It’s a horrific curse in the existence of the universe that is impossible to get rid of.
Many scientists even speculate that the sea of miasma represents the natural destructive order of the universe.
According to them, their universe will one day be completely taken over by the sea of miasma, and then the universe will be destroyed.
A new universe would be created, and the cycle will repeat all over again.
But Rio does not believe this theory.
’The presence of mana and miasma is unnatural in this world... considering ’miasma’ as the sole villain breaks the ’balance’ of the world’s natural order...’
Rio didn’t care whether Kehrid was scared of miasma or not; he was definitely going to the tower to have a look at the sea of miasma.
"I am curious about King Allen too; can you tell me more about him?"
Rio wanted to know more about the legendary ’chosen of the heaven and world’ who had gone missing.
Not only was King Allen a peak SS-ranker, but he was also the holder of two legendary skills and various powerful artifacts.
He even had the support of the world’s greatest healer, ’Astra’; there is no way he was a normal person in the slightest!
"Haha, many curious young folks used to come to me to ask the same question before I had retired..."
At Rio’s question, Kehrid smirked a bit.
"And my answer was always the same: as a ’hero,’ he was respectable and trustworthy, but as a ’person,’ he was very ’dangerous’..."
Kehrid looked at the cube floating around Rio and spoke.
"He gave me such a weird artifact as a compensation for creating three legendary swords for him..."
"From this, you can understand that he was very good at bargaining! That weirdo was very good at scheming, and his strategies were so good that you feel like an idiot when discussing tactics with him..."
By the time Kehrid met King Allen, the thousand-year war was already reaching its climax, and King Allen had already lived for centuries!
He had already experienced enough in his long life that he had become a very crafty and scheming type of person.
"He was the type of person you wouldn’t want to fight even if you become stronger than him..."