Dwarf Kingdom, Southern Edge.
Outside the tower of Sea Gazers.
"Hmmm... it’s in more disrepair than I expected it to be..."
Standing on top of a massive cliff, Rio looked at the shattered tower in front of him with a look of disappointment.
"Did this tower get destroyed after that guy ’Fabian’ went rogue due to miasmic corruption?"
In the original novel, the tower was also heavily damaged, but only after seeing the structure in person did Rio realize how bad the situation was.
The upper floors were blown away by some powerful attack, and the lower floors that had somehow remained intact were heavily eroded by rain and bad weather.
It’s only been a few years since the tower became abandoned, but the location of the tower makes it prone to heavy damage due to weather.
Rio glanced towards the south, and there was a vast ocean spread far and wide until the horizon.
’Thunderstorms, cyclones, etc., must have helped in damaging the tower after its upper floors were shattered...’
Rio shook his head, spread his sword intent, and scanned the entire tower with it to find the artifact he was looking for.
He already knew that the tower was in disrepair, but he didn’t come here for this ruined building; he came here because he wanted to have a glimpse of the rumored ’Sea of Endless Miasma.’
Others are afraid of the miasmic sea and don’t even want to look at it directly for fear of mental corruption.
But Rio doesn’t care about all that.
He has no reason to fear it, but he can’t stay unconcerned about it either.
*Thud!* *Thud!*
Rio used his sword intent to toss or shatter the debris in his way and dug out a small binocular from under the debris.
[Sword Intent: Precision Approach!]
Using sword intent, Rio blew away the dust from the binocular and cleaned it with extreme precision.
Only then did he hold it in his hand.
"To think they abandoned an SS-rank artifact in this random place... it’s almost as if it was left for Fade on purpose..."
Rio shook his head as he thought about the original novel.
Fade found this powerful artifact capable of looking at things located far away from the user without any difficulty!
He just found it lying here in the debris!
"Forget it, I have stolen so many ridiculous chances of the protagonist by now that I won’t even find it weird if a random tile in a dilapidated house had a powerful cheat buried under it..."
Rio has even gotten ’limitless’ talent by stealing Fade’s chances; a mere binocular was not worth mentioning.
Rio shook his head, took the binoculars, and jumped to the top of the highest intact pillar of the tower.
’If I remember it correctly, this artifact can show you a clear image of a location as long as it is in direct line of sight and you know a general description of it...’
This artifact can only be used to see a clear image of locations you already know about, which makes it very inconvenient and useless.
Compared to other SS-rank artifacts, this one isn’t all that overpowered, but it also has a unique feature.
Which is that it can resist miasmic interference a lot when watching a location filled with miasma and corruption.
You can even use it in the spirit realm to see far and wide.
Most artifacts that can be used for looking at faraway locations are not able to deal with miasmic interference, but this one can do that.
Originally, it belonged to Fabian, who used to work here with his fellow researchers, and their main research topic was recording and understanding the movements of the miasmic sea.
Fabian went rogue and likely caused the place to be abandoned.
The tower of sea gazers used to be a major tourist attraction spot in the nation, but after the spread of miasma and the incident with Fabian, almost no one ever comes here anymore.
Rio didn’t even see a single tourist on the way here, and there weren’t even any flying buses or vehicles, causing all roads to be empty.
’I don’t care about whether tourists come here anymore or not, I just hope that this thing is still working properly...’
Rio stopped thinking about random things in his head and used the binoculars to look towards the sky.
He didn’t need to worry about finding the sea of miasma, as it was such a massive structure in space that it was simply impossible to miss it.
In fact, it was possible to see it from other places on the planet, but this location is much better in terms of view.
The moment Rio used sword intent to activate the artifact and thought about the sea of miasma in his head while looking in its direction, he found his vision extend farther and farther.
First, he could only see things inside the solar system, then the vision kept stretching farther and farther at such a fast speed that Rio almost felt dizzy.
It was as if his eyes were travelling through the fabric of space and time and heading towards the sea of miasma.
He saw hundreds of thousands of galaxies pass by.
Stars, big and small, were everywhere, as were black holes, rogue planets, gigantic dust clouds, neutron stars, etc.
Rio saw everything in that moment and accelerated forward faster and faster with each passing moment.
This scene helped him understand why some people experience existential crises after realizing how vast the universe truly is.
The universe is insanely big; it’s so big that their solar system is smaller than an atom when compared to it.
After a few seconds of acceleration, Rio’s vision finally reached close to the Sea of Miasma.
In every direction, there was a massive sea of liquid miasmic corruption; it was pure and condensed miasma in the truest sense.
And it had no end.
It kept expanding in every direction possible, and whatever came in its way was literally ’erased’ from existence at the moment of touch.
Rio could only see it all from several galaxies away, as this was the limit of the artifact.
The artifact could deal with miasmic corruption interference, but it was still too weak to penetrate the mysteries of the sea of miasma; the miasmic resistance here was simply too difficult for it to see through.
Rio moved his vision to see in various directions.
Just as Rio was about to look and observe more, a sudden change happened.
’Hmmm?’
He noticed that the ’Sea of Miasma’ suddenly trembled violently and stopped expanding for a bit.
The artifact was showing Rio a ’vision’ of real time!
Which means it was showing Rio exactly what was happening in that faraway place without any time lag.
’What happened?’
Just when Rio wanted to investigate why the sudden change happened, he heard a loud cracking sound.
*CRACK!* *SHATTER!*
His binoculars shattered and broke apart.
Rio was stunned when he noticed that the density of miasma had suddenly increased around his binoculars, and they became corrupted with miasmic corruption!
Rio used his sword intent, but the artifact melted away into liquid miasma and got completely destroyed.
"What the f*ck!?"
Rio was so shocked at this scene that he could not stop himself from cursing out loud.
"Don’t tell me that it noticed that I was looking at it!?"
The binocular was not just a random cheap item; it was a genuine SS-rank artifact powered and protected by Rio’s sword intent!
There’s no way it could have been destroyed so easily while Rio was using it.
Such a thing can only happen if the sea of miasma noticed that someone was looking at it and retaliated.
’To think that it would break my new binoculars right after I stole them... sigh...’
If it were anyone else using the binoculars when they melted away into miasmic filth, their eyes and hands would have been affected by corruption.
Perhaps looking at the sea of miasma might have directly shattered their brain, but Rio wasn’t worried about it.
He just used his sword intent to blow away the miasma in his hand as he jumped down from the pillar.
"Ugh... what a shame, I wanted to observe it more... It noticed too fast..."
Rio wasn’t worried about the sea of miasma doing anything to him, but he was surprised too.
’Why was it trembling, though? Did it hate me looking at it this much that it had to retaliate so angrily?’
Rio could not find the answer to these questions, so he walked over to the edge of the cliff and sat down with his legs hanging down.
"Tch! Forget it! Once I am an SS-ranker, I will go to your front door myself! I will see how you will stop me then!"
Rio looked at the amazing scenery to calm his mind and brought out his phone to take a selfie and then sent it to Lia.
’The weather is nice here; it will be a waste to just leave so early...’
While thinking that in his head, he brought out his flute once again and started blasting off sword intent inside it in copious amounts to play a melody.